Toshiba has shown off a new Chromebook 2 and Satellite Radius 11 Windows convertible tablet. It doesn’t sound like much, but the Radius 11 shows that the company isn’t quite ready to give up on the whole folding laptop concept yet. A new Chromebook is also potentially interesting if the company is able to nudge the price down a little.
The Chromebook 2 is a 13-inch notebook with a 1920 x 1080 IPS display, although this appears to be an upgrade to the regular 1366 x 768 display on the baseline model. An Intel N2840 Bay Trail processor powers this, which should be more than enough to run a Chromebook that already has 4GB of RAM. With 16GB of internal Flash storage and 11.5 hours of battery life (nine hours on the 1080p version), it should be enough to do what a Chromebook is meant to do. Although the lower end processor on a 1080p display does cause some performance concerns.
On the other hand, the Toshiba Satellite Radius 11 is a 15-inch laptop that takes a form similar to that of Lenovo’s Yoga; with the ability to fold over completely to turn into a tablet. Like the Yoga the keyboard switches off after the display tilts to a certain angle, preventing keys from accidentally being hit. With that in mind, the insides are powered by a choice of Celeron or Pentium processors; which looks like Toshiba is really trying to grab hold of the lower end market.
The Chromebook 2 will be priced at US$250 (RM795) for the base model and US$330 (RM1050) for the HD version. There is no pricing for the Satellite Radius 11 yet; nor is there any word about availability in our region.
