Epson Advert - August 1983
From Practical Computing
The Epson HX-20: for Business on the Move
Considered to be the world's first true mobile computer[1], the HX-20 came from a company better known for the printers which it had been producing for 20 years.
The HX-20 was first announced in 1981 but wasn't generally available until 1983 - the year of this advert. Also introduced in 1983 was the HX-20's stable-mate, the larger more PC-like (although running CP/M) QX-10, which is shown in the advert alongside one of Epson's printers.
The portable HX-20 would run for up to 50 hours on rechargeable batteries, came with 16K RAM (which was upgradeable to 32K) and even had an optional acoustic-coupler modem available.
The display was an LCD capable of displaying 4 rows of 20 characters, giving a total of 120x32 pixels. It ran Epson BASIC on two 614KHz Motorola 6801 CPUs.
Date created: 01 July 2012
Last updated: 24 September 2025
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