New Toshiba Chromebooks confirmed, 4K monitor too

There has been rumors and even leaked reviews of these Chromebooks due to be announced tomorrow. We were just given this look at the Toshiba booth where they will be displayed.  We’re told the display is prominent and one of the bigger ones on offer. Word is also that Asus, the inventor of the netbook, would be showing off a Chromebook this year but so far only whispers.

Additionally we’ve seen a 30-ish-inch 4K display from Toshiba that will compete with Sharp’s and others for 4K desktop workstation market.

A review of the Toshiba Chromebook that was pulled from the web is pasted below:

We’ve seen Chromebooks from several companies in recent months, but now Toshiba is hopping onto the shiny Chrome bandwagon with its very own Toshiba Chromebook. Selling for $279 and coming to stores early this year, the new Chromebook isn’t distinguished with any model number or fancy name, but the Toshiba Chromebook should stand out nonetheless as the only 13-inch Chromebook currently announced.

Toshiba has been a player in the value laptop category for some time, yet the design of its new Chromebook isn’t simply a recycled version of a previous model. Though the construction is largely inexpensive plastic, the Toshiba Chromebook still looks pretty slick, with a portable design that measures only 0.8-inches thick and weighs roughly 3 pounds.

Toshiba’s Chromebook is aimed at the hither-to-unfilled 13-inch space for laptops running Google’s lightweight, cloud-friendly operating system. It boats a 13.3-inch display with basic 1,366-by-768 resolution. There’s no touch functionality or ultra-high resolution here, but in this price range those sorts of features are exceedingly rare.

The keyboard features the unique Chrome layout, with several Chrome function keys along the top—the Caps Lock key is replaced with a search key and the familiar Windows key is nowhere to be found. The full-size keys have a matte finish with rounded corners. The chiclet style keyboard is a bit of a departure for Toshiba, given that many of its laptops in the lower price ranges use adjacent keys with little to no separation between them. This design is clearly influenced by other Chromebooks, seeing as it is virtually identical to that of the Acer C710 models and Samsung’s Series 7.

The lid of this model features a subtle texture, a stippled pattern that provides some visual distinction from other inexpensive Chromebooks. The body of the laptop and the trackpad both feature Toshiba’s distinctive U-shape with rounded top corners, in keeping with its current design ID across the brand.

Inside the Toshiba Chromebook is an Intel Celeron 2955U processor, part of Intel’s Haswell line, which features improved performance and enhanced energy efficiency. While this processor wouldn’t cut it in a Windows machine, where all of the processing resources reside in the user’s laptop, Google’s Web-centric operating system only requires hardware that will allow decent Web browsing, opting to use apps and extensions that shift the bulk of processing to the cloud.

Similarly, Google’s G-Drive provides plenty of storage space, with 100GB of free cloud storage coming with the purchase of Toshiba’s Chromebook. That means that there’s not much use for local storage and this 13-incher has just 16GB of solid-state memory with the rest going to the cloud. This hardware setup isn’t unusual, as it is virtually identical to that of other Chromebooks.

Despite the low-powered hardware, there’s still a full selection of ports and connections on the Chromebook. The 13-inch laptop boasts two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader (which supports SDHC and SDXC formats as well), and a full-size HDMI out port. The Chromebook features 802.11n Wi-Fi, with no current plans for mobile broadband connectivity. A Kensington lock slot lets you physically secure the device, making it well suited to use in public or educational environments. Toshiba reports up to nine hours of battery life in normal use, with even longer life in standby mode.

While I can’t speak to the specific performance of the Toshiba Chromebook without first testing the system, I am looking forward to getting the new 13-inch Chromebook into the labs to put it through its paces. Even with variations from one model to the next, Chrome provides a consistent experience across devices, and the 13-inch design will be a welcome addition to the budget-friendly collection.