LAS VEGAS — Toshiba has finally joined the ranks of laptop manufacturers with a Chromebook. Others have stood out with rock-bottom prices or high-res displays, but Toshiba opted for sheer size: Its Chromebook's screen measures an impressive 13.3 inches.
Although that's not the biggest Chromebook on record (the HP Chromebook 14 is one inch larger), it's still pretty hefty for connectivity-dependent laptops, with the idea that the extra area will encourage using the machine to stream video. There's even a full-size HDMI port for relaying videos to an external TV or monitor. It also has a pair of USB ports and SD card slot.
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The non-touch display has a resolution of 1,366 x 768, which tells you Toshiba isn't trying to compete with retina level laptops, and it keeps the most important spec — the price — down to an attractive $279. That's the same as the HP Chromebook 11, which sports just an 11.6-inch screen.
Said to be designed from the ground up, Toshiba's Chromebook is a lean(ish) machine at 0.8 inch thick and 3.3 pounds, although that's not terribly slim as Ultrabooks go these days. It doesn't feel small by any stretch. But that's kind of the point.
Inside, there's an Intel Celeron processor powering the whole experience, with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Of course, the storage is really incidental, since the real action of any Chromebook is happening in the cloud, and Google gives you 100GB of Google Drive storage with purchase.
Toshiba's large-but-not-too-large Chromebook goes on sale Feb. 15.
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Images: Mashable, Christina Ascani
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