[6] Both were initially assembled in the company's manufacturing plant in St. Joseph, Michigan,[7] a union shop represented by United Steelworkers; according to Czernek, Zenith was the only union-manufactured personal computer in the world at the time.

[8] In keeping with the Road Warrior theme, the unveiling was held at an event center in Chicago, Illinois, with helmeted performers and motorcyclists showcasing the SupersPort and TurbosPort.

[8] In May 1988, as part of a multi-million dollar agreement,[16] Zenith became the official supplier of laptops for the Master's program of Harvard Business School.

[17] Harvard Business School's Master's program in fall 1988 had 800 students registered to enter; Zenith expected to sell roughly 640 units to them.

While Hewlett-Packard had sold two models of laptops of its own design under the Vectra line, it only achieved limited success,[1] and the company admitted to the press that Zenith's product was more feature-packed and offered higher performance.

[1][2]: 106 Sherwin Levinson of InfoWorld wrote that "the Zenith SupersPort 286 may well be the harbinger of a new era of laptop computing", "embod[ying] a combination of speed, weight, size, and battery life that we've seen in no other laptop" and that "Zenith's engineers have come closer to the ideal laptop than any so far".Levinson particularly praised the processing speed, hard disk access times and battery life of the SupersPort 286 and while finding some software incompatibility with FastBack Plus (a file backup utility for DOS) and Crosstalk Mk.4 (a terminal emulator for DOS), he wrote that such errors were correctable and subsequent tests ran fine afterwards.

Levinson found reservation with the keyboard layout which he deemed slightly cramped and recommended purchasers get the optional numeric keypad.

[18] A full review of the SupersPort 286 in the same issue said that it offered "the computing power of a desktop or transportable machine and the convenient size and weight of a laptop".

[20] Bill Howard of PC Magazine, writing a year after the SupersPort 286's release, wrote that the machine was "still competent" as a business laptop and praised the display and keyboard.