Toshiba has announced the Portégé R500-S5007V, an ultra-light 12.1-inch notebook weighing in at just 1.1kg, or 2.4lbs. Supposedly it's the lightest notebook on the market, some 200g lighter than the Apple Air and Lenovo's X300. It's almost as light as Atom-powered netbooks, which weigh around 1kg. Furthermore, it's even got an optical drive, unlike the Air.

One of the more innovative features is its transreflective 12.1-inch screen. Toshiba claims it can use direct sunlight to illuminate the screen, shutting off LED backlighting and saving some power. We still wonder how this will look in real life, but it sounds interesting. The new Portégé is powered by a 1.33-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7700 processor, it has 2GB of RAM and a spacious 128GB SSD.

It's expected to sell at $2,999 and it should be available in Q3.