We propose a new portable iris recognition system. Because existing portable iris systems use customized embedded processing units, they are limited in ability to expand to other applications, and they have low processing power. To overcome such problems, we propose a new portable iris recognition system consisting of a conventional ultra-mobile personal computer (UMPC), a small universal serial bus (USB) iris camera, and near-infrared (NIR) light illuminators. In general, portable iris systems produce considerable optical blurring. Although auto-focusing motor-driven lenses can be used to overcome it, they are too bulky to be used in a small-sized portable iris system. Therefore, we adopt an iris image restoration algorithm which performs at real-time speed. And by using a conventional UMPC as a processing unit, our portable iris system is more extensible than previous systems. In general, the performance of iris recognition has been mainly evaluated based on the quantitative metrics such as EER (Equal Error Rate), ROC (Receiver Operational Characteristics) curve or recognition time. We propose a new performance measuring method based on qualitative metrics. That is usability evaluation including user acceptance, convenience, satisfaction and resistance.