As Google Chromebook's popularity is increasing, Toshiba joined the fray with its first 13-inch Haswell-powered Chromebook.
Toshiba is known for producing reliable and often lower priced laptops, and this new Chromebook does not disappoint in terms of the value it offers.
Priced at $279, which is same as HP's Chromebook 11 designed by Google, the Toshiba Chromebook does not look as elegant but comes in a reasonably minimalistic design and sports much larger screen. It weighs a pound less than HP's giant 14-inch version, so the laptop's weight-to-size proportion is comparatively low, giving off a very light feel on hand.
Intel's Haswell dual-core processor is much more capable than HP Chrombook 11's Exynos 5 Dual (by Samsung), but at the same time the battery life on this Toshiba is longer at 9 hours, compared to HP Chromebook 11's 6-hour life. Other specs are pretty much the same with same 2GB RAM and 16GB SSD, but the Toshiba Chromebook does come with more ports, with two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI out and a card reader.
It is difficult to go wrong with Toshiba's new Chromebook. Though, the HP Chromebook 11 does look much more like an iPad, so the coolness-factor is substantially less with the Toshiba product. Nonetheless, this new Toshiba Chromebook may be the best looking Toshiba laptop to date, and it is definitely worth checking it out.
Specification Processor Intel dual-core Celeron "Haswell" CPU
RAM 2GB
Storage 16GB SSD 100GB of Google Drive
Screen 13.3 in. 1366×768 resolution
Connectivity Dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi 2x USB 3.0 HDMI card reader