I guess Sharp/Dynabook must’ve liked my coverage of their Portege X40-M2 unit. Why say so? Because about 2 days after I sent that unit back, they sent me another more powerful laptop to look at. Today’s blog post describes my Dynabook Tecra A60-M intake experience (Model PNL21U-017004). It’s a bigger beast, but a little less sturdy (it’s got what feels like an all-plastic lower/keyboard deck) albeit with minimal flex. For the first time, ever, it comes with Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise loaded as well.
Describing Dynabook Tecra A60-M2 Intake Process
Again and suprisingly, Dynabook uses closed-cell plastic foam inserts to enshroud the unit in an otherwise all-cardboard set of nested shipping boxes. It comes with exactly two parts: the laptop itself and the power brick/power cord. Initial setup was absurdly easy. But, for some odd reason, Intel BE201 802.11 Wi-Fi 7 adapters won’t let me log into the 5GHz band on my Asus router. I have to use the 2.4 GHz band instead. If I need to go faster than that, I can plug my trusty StarTech GbE USB 3 adapter into one of its two 5 Gbps USB 3.2 version 1 ports.
It took me some time to get all the bits and pieces in place for my usual setup. I used Patch My PC Home Updater to bring in 7Zip, GadgetPack, CystalDisk mark & info, CPUID, Everything, Chrome, and more. Because this is an Intel-flavored Copilot+ PC, I also installed Intel Driver and Support Assistant as well, along with the Dynabook Support Utility to check for vendor UEFI, firmware, and driver updates.
A Clean, Clean, Clean Machine
I’ve got to say this is one of the cleanest review units I’ve ever gotten. It required very little by way of update or clean-up to bring entirely up to snuff. It’s also got the fastest and most accurate fingerprint scanner I’ve ever used (Device Manager identifies it as a FocalTech Electronics device). So far, it’s fast, has a nice 16″ display, and does everything I’ve asked it to in short order.
The Tecra A60-M2 Components, Listed
According to the vendor web page, this unit goes for US$1249 (MSRP). I don’t see any major discounts available online but it’s pretty new still, so they may be coming. Here’s what’s inside:
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 225U
- OS: Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise (26100.4946)
- 16.0″ WUXGA display (1920×1200)
- 16 GB DDR5-5600 (Samsung)
- 0.5TiB Samsung OEM PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD
- Ports: 2xUSB4/TB4 USB-C ports, 2xUSB3.2 Gen 1 ports, HDMI, RJ-45 GbE, microSD, mini-RCA (headset) jack
- 60 Wh Lithium polymer battery; 65W USB-C power brick
What it doesn’t have that I might want? Offhand, I’d say a Hello-capable IR camera, and a touch display. Other than those things, and a bigger SSD, it’s pretty well-equipped. What one gets for US1,250 for this unit isn’t at all bad.
All in all, I like it pretty well so far. I’ll report further as I spend a bit more time with it, and learn more about what it can and can’t do. I’m curious about its SSD speed, USB-C performance, and general processing oomph. Expect to hear more from me on all of those topics, soon. In the meantime, I’m having fun playing with this new toy.
Does your Asus router have the equivalent of Netgear’s Smart Connect feature? Smart Connect allows you to use a single network name (SSID) for both the 2.4 GHz & 5 GHz bands. Smart Connect also automatically assigns devices to the best available WiFi band for optimal performance. I highly recommend using Smart Connect if it’s available on your router.
The only downside to using Smart Connect is getting the WiFi Analyzer Android app to display each of the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands for each router. I was able to cope with this issue since we have 2 routers, (a WiFi7 router without a GUI which is connected to a WiFi6 wireless access point router that has a GUI). By connecting your smartphone to the WiFi 6 router, you can use WiFi Analyzer to observe the spectrums of the WiFi7 router. Conversely, connecting your smartphone to the WiFi7 router allows you to observe the spectrums of the WiFi6 router. This viewing method is required since I can’t specify wireless N only for the WiFi7 router because it doesn’t have a GUI, so it broadcasts all the wireless bands simultaneously. Pretty cool workaround, huh?
Basically, there would no downside to using Smart Connect if both of our routers had a GUI. As it happens, our WiFi7 router is from Quantum Fiber which never had and will probably never get a GUI. You can think of my workaround for viewing the WiFi7 spectrums with WiFi Analyzer by connecting to the WiFi6 router as an external sync analogy since our WiFi6 router has a GUI and is configured for wireless N only on the 2.4 GHz band. That allows WiFi Analyzer to sync on the 2.4 GHz wireless N band. It’s impossible to view the WiFi7 spectrums when I’m connected to the WiFi7 router since it’s broadcasting all possible standards of 2.4 GHz bands simultaneously. In this scenario, WiFi Analyzer can’t sync up.