This WEIRD Japanese Laptop LOOKS 20 Years Old…

this laptop came out in 2022 and it's packed full of Modern Hardware but just about everything else about it looks like it came straight out of 2002 and I'm not even exaggerating from its matte screen to its delightful round track pad Panasonic has used nearly the same design on its let's note lineup for the past 20 years but for their customers that's a feature not a bug and honestly I can kind of see their point I mean sure it's a little on the thick side but on top of the usual suspects USB a HDMI Thunderbolt 4 we've got ethernet VGA an SD card reader and do my eyes deceive me a DVD drive wait a user swappable battery this raises so many questions for me I mean what did happen to laptops that actually have ports on them why are these ones exclusive to Japan and with all these features does it have a place for me to plug in this message from our sponsor build Redux build Redux assembles fully customizable gaming PCs suitable for any budget all you got to do is pick your favorite games see how they perform using their online pc builder then relax and do your gaming stretches so you're ready when it arrives head to build redux.com Linus and create your new rig today as anyone who's been shoved into a police cruiser can probably tell you Panasonic makes laptops and much like Epson they offer a far more varied selection in Japan compared to the West the let's note line began production in 1996 and it would continue to receive periodic updates over the years in 97 it got its first optical drive in 98 it got a mobile phone that's kind of weird in 99 it got Wi-Fi and in 2000 it got its signature circular track pad more on that a little bit later first by 2002 2003 the let's note looked nearly identical to what's in my hands today speaking of what do we have here today we've got a 12 inch IPS display with the more traditional 16x10 aspect ratio love to see it an 11th gen Core i5 processor 16 gigs of ddr4 memory and a 512 gig pcie Gen4 Samsung nvme Drive our machine could be configured at the time of ordering but there were only a handful of options for CPU RAM and storage the keyboard has minimal Flex to it and nice long travel on the key switches but the layout is kind of cramped and the keys are a touch on the mushy feeling side I'd describe it as pretty okay for touch typing that is at least ignoring the unfamiliar Japanese layout for me but if you're hand packing it's probably a great experience and if the Target demographic is on the older side that makes a lot of sense and it is more on that later first did I mention that the battery is not the only thing you can replace on this thing you can also swap out the entire keyboard with a US Standard lip I mean can this thing get any cooler believe it or not like many of the other advantages of the sv2 this sort of thing used to be common entire companies existed to import Japanese laptops and then replace the keyboards with localized layouts but then with the wide breadth of choice in the laptop Market these days it seems like these Services have failed the test of time what hasn't is this trackpad for whatever reason Panasonic decided 20 years ago that their trackpad theirs was going to be circular and that's a decision that they have stuck with to this day while it does have modern features like support for multi-touch it doesn't really have a lot of room on it for multiple fingers but then it turns out that that's barely an issue the left and the right click are both physical buttons so you just use it two-handed and scrolling can be done with a single Finger by just spinning around the outside like you're a DJ scratching a record okay this is actually pretty cool and as an extra bonus you don't have to worry about Palm rejection since it sits comfortably right in between your hands on the wrist rest I wouldn't personally trade away my larger more modern design though I mean you can't even move a cursor all the way across the screen without lifting your finger so given the obviously ample internal room they have to work with why is Panasonic still putting these archaic designs out specifically in Japan well there are a couple of reasons for that but the main one is that for one reason or another Japanese companies tend to devote a lot of development resources to the domestic market and the population of domestic Japan is old how old are they so old that according to the world economic Forum they have the oldest population of any country on Earth as you'd imagine then this permeates many aspects of modern culture including the decisions of I.T departments for large companies you see when it's time to replace all your laptops company-wide it is much easier in terms of training to transition over to something that is familiar for your users and this is especially true for older users similarly if you're making decisions for an I.T Department in an older company with lots of withering technology you're going to need machines that still work with those older devices hence the VGA ports for example and this is not an issue that's exclusive to Japan as we saw it not that long ago when we discovered Nexus a company that manufactures brand new Windows 98 PCS that is a little different though in that scenario it's assumed that those systems are going to be used for controlling industrial Machinery that depends on Legacy Isa cards or ancient software with the Panasonic it's much more about the day-to-day use I can roll into a meeting room and whether it's HDMI Thunderbolt or even VGA I can output to the projector and if I need to transfer a file from someone I can use USB a USBC and SD card or even yeah the included DVD drive with no dongles required and it's all in a shockingly lightweight package thanks to the magnesium alloy chassis I gotta say having gotten used to modern laptop designs it does feel a bit more like a novelty at this point to me but I still can't help feeling a bit sad about some of the things that we've lost along the way I mean sure I can open up my modern machine and replace the battery if it fails but what I can't do is swap in a new one to get me through the rest of the day or put an extended capacity one in if I don't mind having a bit of a caboose on my machine and I mean even the optical drive kind of hits me in the feels this 11th gen model is likely to be the last laptop that Panasonic makes that is widely available with this feature they've actually already sold this one out through their own website and when we attempted to purchase one at a retailer we were told they wouldn't be getting any more in stock so we nabbed this one new inbox from Yahoo auctions which means the only manufacturer still offering opticals is via now a machine with so many features for usability it's also targeted at corporate it departments should have easy maintenance and upgradability right well that's not entirely incorrect but it is certainly not the full story part of the story is that we might have a Precision screwdriver coming with in handle bit storage super cool bearing sorry anyway the point is while the battery is obviously swappable and this is really cool there's a handy little access panel here that allows you to blow up the heatsink there are some bigger issues that we would be remiss to not mention the M2 Drive is only accessible once the bottom cover has been removed an Endeavor that requires removing 21 screws and RAM it's soldered to the motherboard guys you were so close to killing my framework investment Panasonic so close so then as long as framework keeps selling serviceable laptops with user upgradable Ram something that you can find a link to down below by the way Panasonic won't be showing up to eat their lunch anytime soon but I will be showing up right now on your screen to segue to our sponsor Vistaprint they're the go-to company for all your personalized printing needs whether you're looking to design business cards sports team t-shirts or eye-catching tote bags 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Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 308,432

Keywords: panasonic, laptop, let's note, japan, japanese, japan pc, japanese pc, panasonic sv2, thunderbolt, vga, dvd drive, optical drive, bluray drive, dvd, optical, bluray, laptop io, laptop features

Id: FLG08-xJGyM

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/_Cap10_]

Funny he plugs Framework at the end, but then you go to the website and they're sold out of everything until Q4. Like I get the plug but it seems they really don't need it right now.

[u/Scabendari]

This might be an unpopular take on this sub, but I feel like its bad form to plug personal investments (Framework) into laptop review/showcase videos, complete with a link straight to them in the description.

I understand LTTstore product placement as that benefits/funds the company but Framework, as far as I understand it, is a personal Linus investment and not an LTT business investment. It's his company so he can use it however he wants, but it's just a bit too much of an apparent conflict of interest to me if he's going to be plugging them outside of Framework focused videos.