Laptop users at the Google I/O developers conference
Attendees using their laptops at the Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco June 26, 2014. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

Looking back, the tech titan has been one of the late entries in the Chromebook arena. It launched the Toshiba Chromebook, which happened to be the world's first 13-inch model at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show. The company decided to release a follow-up on its first generation laptop, thus the birth of the Toshiba Chromebook 2.

Design and Display

The Toshiba Chromebook 2 sports an all-plastic silver-colored body and compared to its predecessor, the laptop is thinner and lighter. According to Arstechnica's review, the fan-less laptop weighs 2.95 pounds and 0.76 inches thick.

The laptop comes in a standard 1,366x768 screen resolution and also comes in a full HD version with 1920x1080 display. The difference between the two is noticeable on its screens' sharpness.

Features

The laptop comes with an HD webcam with a dual-mic array and sports one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 port, a full-size HDMI output plus a headphone/mic jack and an SD card reader. It also features an 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The Chromebook 2 is also equipped with stereo speakers by headphone-maker Skullcandy.

Performance

The Chromebook 2 is powered by 2.58GHz Intel Celeron N2840 processor with 4GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage. It is also equipped with 100GB of Google Drive cloud storage. There is a non-upgradeable 2GB model available if consumers prefer to have the lower-resolution version.

Business Insider reports that the laptop is fit for consumers who are into light web browsing, checking email and working on tasks found in Google Drive. The portable PC peforms fast enough given the power under its hood.

Battery Life and Price

Toshiba claims up to 11.5 hours of battery life on the 1,366x768-resolution model and up to 9 hours on the 1,920x1,080-resolution model. However, reports say that the laptop can withstand 7 hours of continued web-browsing, which is quite a big gap to what the company said.

Apparently, Chromebooks have been popular because of its affordable price. The 4GB, full HD version of Toshiba's Chromebook 2 costs US$330 or AU$449, while the entry-level 2GB version costs US$250.

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