The concept for the LTE line was originally drafted for Compaq in 1986 by Christopher J. Gintz, who was director of technical and planning development for the company at the time.

[6][7] Weighing in at 4.4 pounds (2.0 kg), the UltraLite eschewed from conventional floppy and hard disk drives for software and data storage, in favor of proprietary ROM and RAM cards.

This approach was technically impressive but led to slow adoption rates by consumers due to the difficulty of transferring data to and from IBM PCs and compatibles because of the lack of an internal floppy drive.

Zenith Data Systems' notebook-sized MinisPort, released slightly after the UltraLite in 1989, did little to ameliorate this issue despite offering an internal floppy drive due to its non-standard, 2-inch format.

[6] The LTE and LTE/286 were true notebooks, each occupying exactly the footprint of ANSI Letter paper while measuring 1.9 inches (48 mm) thick.

A few weeks after their announcement, Compaq signed a contract with Citizen to allow the latter to manufacture models of the LTE and LTE/286 for distribution in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; while Houston would cover the United States, Canada, and Australia.

[15] Almost exactly a year after Compaq announced the LTE and LTE/286, in October 1990 the company unveiled a new model in the line, the LTE/386s, featuring the Intel 386SX processor clocked at 20 MHz.

[23] While Compaq believed the new formulation to have been better for strength characteristics, a significant number of units began developing hairline cracks on the sides of the case over a year after their market introduction.

[23] Following the incident, in October 1990 Compaq returned to their original ABS resin and issued newly manufactured cases to dealers for customers requesting repairs to their defective units.

"[19]: 81  While finding the LTE's keyboard layout and keyfeel inferior to that of the MinisPort and decrying the lack of a docking station option on the initial LTE models as "effectively rul[ing] out the systems as primary machines", Knorr wrote that, "Quibbles like these aside, the LTEs seem certain to sell like snow chains in ski season".

[19]: 82 Mitt Jones of PC Magazine called the LTE and LTE/286, "without reservation, the most exciting and usable laptops on the market", albeit very expensive at over US$3,500 and $5,000 at launch, respectively.

[29] He opined that the power-efficient nature of the 80C86 did not warrant the same heavy battery as that of the LTE/286 but found, as a consequence, the laptop lasted over five hours on a single charge, without any power-conservation features enabled.

[29] Fredric Burke of the same publication, reviewing the LTE/286 a year after its release, called it "the class act in its field", praising its expandability, the legibility of the LCD, and the performance of the battery.

[30] In PC Magazine, the LTE/386s was featured on the front page of their March 12, 1991, issue, where the review board evaluated it as the fastest-performing 386-class notebook in terms of conventional memory writes, file access in MS-DOS, and DOS API–initiated disk seeks; it also scored high marks in number-crunching power and graphical performance.

[31]: 117  Reviewer Greg Pastrick wrote that "Price considerations are always important, but the LTE/386s's functionality, performance, and expansion possibilities justify its place in business and industry".

[31]: 122  Joseph Desposito of the same publication was less impressed with the laptop a little less than a year after its introduction, writing: "Unless you need the Compaq name on your notebook, you'll find more elsewhere, and for less".

Compaq was helped in no small part by their decision to incorporate both a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and a conventional spinning hard disk drives on higher-end models—data storage mediums that the majority of customers using desktop computers had built their entire computing ecosystem around by that point in 1989.

[34] The unexpected success of the LTE line was a major factor in the development of notebook computers at both Apple and IBM.