Toshiba has made its first Chromebook laptop available ahead of schedule in the UK and US.
Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6, the Toshiba Chromebook was supposed to hit shops on February 16.
Those plans appear to have been brought forward, with the affordable Chrome OS laptop available to purchase now.
UK customers can head on over to Amazon now and order the Toshiba Chromebook, with the shipping date put at February 10. It costs £249, which is precisely the price Toshiba predicted.
There seems to be a little confusion concerning price for US customers, however. Toshiba’s own website is listing the Chromebook for $280, which is $20 more than was initially predicted.
One of the most exciting things about the Toshiba Chromebook is that it’s powered by Intel’s latest power-sipping Haswell processor architecture, making that low price seem extra tempting.
Aside from an impressive CPU, the Toshiba Chromebook features a 13.3-inch 1366 x 768 display, a 16GB SSD (Chrome OS relies heavily on the cloud, with 100GB of Google Drive storage included), and 2GB of RAM.
You also get a full keyboard, an HD webcam, stereo speakers, an HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports, and an SD card reader. You connectivity options include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
As you might expect given the lightweight Chrome OS, the Haswell CPU, and that compact display, the Toshiba Chromebook has excellent stamina. Toshiba expects you to get 9 hours out of a single charge.
When we went hands-on with the Toshiba Chromebook back in January we concluded that "If you are thinking of swapping Mac and PC for Chrome, Toshiba's Chromebook is shaping up to be one the better alternatives."
We’ll let you know for sure in our full review.
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