So it’s possible to get a slightly more premium-feeling laptop for just a little bit more.īefore I get into the specifics of the Toshiba device, it might help to explain a little bit about how Chromebooks work. It’s not going to blow your socks off and make you shout, “Chromebook, where have you been all my life!” If Chromebooks were pizza, this one is a slice from a mediocre chain, not a deluxe pie from a top-notch joint.Īnd for $300, you can get a Chromebook - the Acer C720P - with a touchscreen display and 32 gigabytes of flash storage, instead of the common 16GB. The Toshiba is - how can I put this - okay.

Also, the Toshiba showed surprisingly good battery life in my tests. Cramped fingers do not a happy reporter make.

A 13-inch display means not only more screen real estate, but also a more spacious keyboard. Google’s own Pixel Chromebook has a 13-inch display, but costs more than $1,000. Its biggest differentiator is that it offers the first low-cost, 13.3-inch display in a Chromebook.

When you consider the long history of the PC, Chromebooks haven’t been around for very long, yet they already claim a small slice of the PC market.

Hardware makers like Samsung, Acer, HP and Lenovo all have their own versions of a Chromebook. At least, that’s what more and more consumers - especially students - are doing.Ĭhromebooks are laptops that run on Google’s Web-browsing software and have minimal capacity for running traditional desktop apps. What do you do when you have less than $300 to spend on a new laptop, one that you’ll use mostly for Web browsing and light applications? You buy a Chromebook.

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