[4] While modern laptops do not necessarily share its design, it was arguably the most practical machine until desktops embraced 3.5-inch floppies.

[7][8] The Pivot I has one 5.25-inch floppy drive, 256 KB of RAM, and an LCD capable of displaying bitmapped graphics at an abridged resolution of 480 by 128 pixels or text at 80 columns by 16 lines.

Because these resolutions were smaller than standard CGA, a pop-up TSR utility built into ROM allows the user to scroll the screen in the four cardinal directions dynamically, while a program is running.

In February 1985, they revised the LCD to have an electroluminescent backlighting panel, allowing users to operate the computer in the dark.

Zenith sold over US$27 million worth of ZFL-171s to the United States government, mainly to the Internal Revenue Service—notably beating out IBM and their PC Convertible clamshell laptop.