+1 on being a great read. To try out a Chromebook for myself, I picked up a reconditioned Acer 720 on a NE Shell-shocker and I have been very pleased with it. It would be nice to have a 1080 res screen, but as a quick web consumption device, I find it more convenient than my tablet. The unique one handed touch-pad movements are very nice as well and provide the feel of using a tablet in some ways. I also like how fast it boots up. With more options coming from other brands, I think Chromebooks do have a niche for certain users. I think Chromebooks are especially great for individuals who are not very tech savy and just tend to browse the web. No need to deal with various OS updates and anti-virus programs. I hope they remain as secure as they seem to be.
My experience is very similar. I too bought a c720 - though as a refurb off e-bay at a price too good to pass up. Amazing little machine for the money and will be happy to pay a bit more for better hardware next time around as the basic usage of ChromeOS is brilliant and gets better as time goes on. The fast boot is great and coupled with the cached transaction update system ChromeOS employes means updates to the OS take literally about 10 seconds of my time as opposed to the hours of finger tapping I've spent waiting for Windows to do the same over the years. Even better the return from hibernation is rock solid so I hardly ever even shut the device off in the first place. 99% of the time I just sleep the device by closing the lid and awaken it by opening the lid. My desktop is up and ready by the time I get the screen fully opened. Also worth mentioning is the great battery life. This thing lives next to my couch and gets frequent use to look up an actor or movie or whatever. Friends who stop by and want a computer to look up something or the like get it. Just general 'whatever' around the house use. Whenever I think of it - every few days or perhaps weekly - I plug it in for a few hours to charge it. Brilliant.
This provides you with scaled virtual resolutions from 1280x720 up to 2732x1536, and also frees up between 400 and 700M of RAM, making the experience much more like a native installation. The main limitations of running under ChromeOS are A) lack of native WIFI control from the chroot, and lack of certain kernel modules so for example I'm unable to run the Arduino development stack on the C720, and I've heard that some multi-function storage devices and printers are unsupported, and things like DVB. My Wacom devices are perfectly supported though. Inkscape and Gimp run delightfully. Inkscape at 1920x1080 is a lot more useable than at 1366x768! Fonts are still quite legible at 1821x1024, and Netbeans IDE is a lot more pleasant to share the screen with Firefox at that resolution.
1.) Your usual argument is that Chromebooks are suitable for moderate tasks/light users. However, CBs are also interesting for power users (which use it as a secondary/tertiary device). I suspect many power user opt for Linux on CBs. So it would be nice if you commented on Linux compatibility in the reviews. (I know, power users are capable of researching this themselves. Still, it would be nice to have thoughts on this in a concise review.)
2.) Even for non power users, the issue with Chromebooks is that, due to limited local storage, you are basically forced to rely on "the cloud." I would like to read more about that aspect of the Chrome OS in reviews. Can I encrypt my data before uploading it? Or am I forced to give my unencrypted data to Google (and possibly intelligence agencies, too)?
I always laugh about it being qualified for 'light work' too. A lot of businesses run on Google services and applications. Contrary to much marketing hype you don't need Microsoft Office to get by. You'd have no problem running a small business or being part of a big business (depending upon their tool set) or writing the great American novel on a Chromebook. It's quite capable of quite heavy lifting.
I think it all goes back to relying on the internet (probably the most controversial thing about Chromebooks). Privacy is a concern, but speed is too. Fast internet is often ridiculously hard to get or very expensive, unless you're on a university campus or a corporate network. Internet access while commuting is even worse.
Linux on Chromebooks - Limited local storage would present plenty of problems, and I wouldn't want to compile big projects or edit images on generally weak Chromebook processors. It might be tolerable for web browsing, but Chrome OS gives you that anyways. How is this better than running/dual booting Linux off a $300 laptop (or a refurbished cheaper one)?
An average broadband speed is more than adequate, and other than for video streaming which understandably needs a bandwidth to suit the download bandwidth of the video stream. For people on the move, Chromebooks will also work well on a cell net Internet connections tethered to a mobile phone. For example Gmail and Google Drive, Docs, Sheets etc. have an offline mode which do not require Internet connection, and has transparent syncing to the internet when bandwidth permits. This and the online mode is far more efficient than Windows for syncing up to the Cloud, because unlike Windows applications where you have to download, edit and then upload the whole document file, Cloud based Chrome apps only download and upload the characters on the screen and the keystrokes corresponding to changes. This is how for example Google Docs continually saves your document to the cloud every 3 seconds as you work, which means you will never ever lose more than 3 seconds worth of work on a Chromebook come fire, theft, or damage - even if while you are typing your Chromebook is grabbed by thief or run over by a steam roller in mid sentence, and since the files are redundantly backed up in multiple geographically locations, even fire, earthquake or a tactical nuclear strike won't cause your data to be lost.
Again, you don't need more than an average broadband speed, and apart from video streaming, it works well on cell-net Internet access tethered to a mobile phone, and you can work offline on most apps that you would use while travelling - Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Google Drive, viewing PDF, Word, Excel, image files, movie and audio files etc. . I don't know where you live, but in all but a very small number of locations, in most countries, Internet broadband connection is not only cheap, but essential for business, leisure, or anything else for that matter - if you can't get an Internet connection, it isn't worth getting a computer or starting a business. Cellnet Internet may be expensive in some places, but in most places they are not expensive for the convenience you get, and these are only required when you are on the move and you want access to the Internet - you would normally use a WiFi router at work and home to access your LAN and Internet at office and home, and one of the many WiFi access points found in restaurants, hotels, airports, airplanes, trains, stations, service stops etc.
Chromebooks will run all Windows, OSX, and Linux apps out of the box without any setup. The best way to do this is to run them the same way as Chromebooks run all web apps - in the cloud or on a server on the LAN/WLAN - run Windows/Linux/OSX on a hot and heavy mains powered server (or old PC serving that purpose), and use the free Chrome Remote Desktop to connect in remotely. This works very well on an average broadband connection - no lag or stutters. For business/university/school use you would use Ericom Access Now, or an RDP Chrome App to access local servers without having to connect to the Internet https://www.youtube.com/user/ercm231?v=OkSn8xhl8e0 If access is via the LAN/WLAN alone, it is always lightning quick.
Using a Chromebook - Acer Chromebook 13 as shown in the first video, beats the living crap in terms of performance out of running it on a $1700 hot, heavy, and noisy high end Windows CAD workstation laptop with a battery life of less than 2.5hrs in CAD use. It simply cannot match the performance of the high end mains powered server and server GPU cards at the back end used by the Chromebook solution, nor the light weight, and the 11 hour in CAD use battery life, security, stability, ease of use, and much lower cost of maintenance and manageability of the Chromebook plus back end server solution.
Besides that the best way to run Linux is as a server, and the cheapest way to run Windows desktops (in terms of maintenance staff salaries which is horrendously expensive for Windows desktops), and most secure way to run high maintenance Windows desktops is to run it virtualised on a Linux server - and use a Chromebook front end. Linux is a natural as a server, not so good as a local desktop, especially when installed on a low end limited resource Chromebook or a slow $300 Windows netbook with limited SSD storage or a a slow $300 budget Windows laptop with a large but very slow mechanical hard drive.
Can someone please assist me advising how I can lock an OFFLINE folder/file etc in a Chromebook...on an attached SD card etc. One needs to remain stuck in there because of the low internal memory and I while the Cloud portion of the chromebook is secure, anyone can take out the SD card and access the contents of an unsecured folder. There are apps for this Android and Windows and making a secure drive etc in Mac... how do I achieve something so basic in a Chromebook? This is the only piece of the puzzle missing for me in adopting this full time and loading it up with my data.
Even at only $300 it bothers me to see you'd have to be concerned with video settings when playing something as basic as a Youtube video. I feel like that should not be an issue in 2015, even given the budget/basic segment this device is targeted for.
The GPU should most definitely at least be able to play video at the displays intended resolution and refresh rate... its not like that is so hard when it is already mentioned that the previous chip is 2-3x faster. Just seems like a very odd and poor choice by Toshiba here.
Part of the problem is that the html5 player is not wall optimized. On my FHD Toshiba CB2, I can play 1080p60 Youtube videos using their flash player and even 4k videos recorded from my OnePlus One locally but Youtube's default html5 player will stutter and lag all over 1080p60 or 3840p30 videos.
Jimmy, who's recently pushed aside his core 2 duo laptop with its 480GB hard drive, returns home after using his Nokia 1020 for recording video. He plugs in the phone, that has the best phone cam you can buy (He likes shiny things), then drags across the video (I hope the Chromebook can access the device otherwise he's back to his Core 2 duo).
A few seconds in and the device is full.
Chromebooks = Pointless. They're only really suitable for people that MUST have the latest techie fad that others are talking about. Sure, yeah, ok, they're actually not THAT bad but lets not pretend here... 16GB storage is pathetic for a laptop based device. If this were windows it would be laughed out of the page even with 32GB of storage.
If Jimmy A) likes shiny (expensive) things, and B) bought the 1020 because it has the best camera you can get on a phone, and C) needs a computer on which to store/manipulate large video files, then he is not the target customer, and I suspect he already knows this.
And that's OK. Chromebooks aren't for everyone. Don't discount a product simply because it doesn't fit your needs. Some people don't need more than a cheap, speedy laptop for web browsing, etc.
I upload all my photos and videos straight to cloud storage from my phone. I don't bother with this dragging it across to my device thing you speak of. Old school right there...
Plus, to discount your final point: there's a number of W8 based devices (mostly x86 tablets) with a similar amount of storage - from the same OEM's.
I have the older Toshiba 13 CB at home. I have easily gone 3+ weeks without touching my desktop machine. But I don't do pix, audio or movie editing. I need zero local storage. The only reason I use my desktop is the once-a-month itch I get when I feel like doing a bit of gaming (cheap Steam games).
The real crime is that they even make laptops with HDD anymore. That should be the premium upgrade, not the SSD. I would be willing to bet 95% of the PC (windows, MAC and 'linux' desktops) could get by with a 256GB SSD. Which is less than $80. But Apple, Dell, etc. make it a premium option only for stupid expensive PCs.
I wouldn't go so far as to call them pointless - you just need a really, really good internet connection. The intention is this: Jimmy loads the video into his Chromebook, which realizes it doesn't have enough internal storage left. So it uploads directly to the cloud through his dedicated low-latency gigabit connection, and it doesn't feel much slower than using internal storage. The pro is that when Jimmy gets a new Chromebook, he doesn't have to worry about spending hours copying files. The problem is how hard it is to get a high speed internet connection. It's hard even at home, let alone when traveling (which kind of defeats the portable laptop form factor).
>>If this were windows it would be laughed out of the page even with 32GB of storage.<<
Yes quite right if you were using Windows OS on the device - like for example the HP Stream 11 Windows netbooks which Microsoft has being trying to push as Chromebook killers - these have only 32GB local storage, which reduces to 17.5GB after you deduct the space used by the Windows with no apps installed. These crappy revisited netbooks have apparently flopped very badly.
However this limit does not apply to a Chromebook because, unlike Windows, the ChromeOS image is tiny and doesn't grow in size (in only contains the bare minimum required to run the provided hardware and the web browser, and you can't install programs or drivers on it). ChromeOS also does not use local storage at all except for user downloads and for caching data - all user data, apps etc. are created and stored in the cloud other than for what is temporarily cached locally (eg. local apps, data). Indeed Chromebooks will warn you that data in the local downloads directory may be subject to automatic deletion if space is required (you should use an SD card to store local files you do not want deleted).
Chromebooks just work completely differently to an old OS designed for the low end disconnected desktop era like Windows or an OS designed for high end connected network servers like Unix/Linux. This is how they are able to boot up fast, and run fast and responsively on low end hardware and limited disk/RAM space on which desktop Windows and full Linux installations run very slowly and very painfully.
Lame. The whole industry needs a complete kicking. What we want is a cheap option, and a decent option. So for granny I don't give a crap, I'm happy with the low end, easy care device. What I want is a real laptop that runs chrome AND allows me to do what I want. So give me a Chromebook that has denet spec, and upgradable ram, disk, etc. ts been the heart of the PC industry for two decades, the fact Google and the tech companies can't do this is purely embarrasing.
The google guys have added the capability to run linux in the OS. Thats awesome. But not on 16GB of space it's not.
I accept adding ram slots and disk slots adds to price. I accept a faster CPU does as well. *I* accept it has a higher price. Guess what. I have not yet bought a chromebook, and I'm not going to. Not unless this is fixed.
No prime OS and vendor should be happy failing to youtube in 2015. Its pathetic.
Somethign seems to have changed starting with the haswell pentium/celeron U lines. They seem to be all vapor. I cant find one reasonably priced product containing any haswell pentium/celeron 15W chips.
I'm not aware of any Haswell Pentium ever being offered in a ChromeOS device. Haswell Celerons were the standard for a while. Acer C720 and others of its era should still be readily available and at good prices. The screens on most of them aren't great though. Last year Intel really began pushing BayTrail chips in tablets and Chromebooks. Almost all the Chromebooks switched to it. Though I think all the Chromeboxes stayed using Haswell Celerons. Now Broadwell is about to launch in the Celeron class chip and there is already information that at least some Chromebooks will be using it. Should be on sale in another month or two. I'm hoping Broadwell Celeron is the common chip this year as the Bay Trail stuff was slightly too much of a regeression in my book. The Haswell Celeron is a plucky little chip though and the Broadwell should be all the better.
Why can't a single PC laptop maker make a laptop with this great screen with a DECENT CPU/iGPU, expandable HDD/SSD, and decent battery life at the $500 price point? Everything else still comes with the same $25 TN panels that should be all automatically thrown in the dumpster.
Awesome screen. Awesome WiFi. Yet, what to do with those with such an OS? I'd buy in a heartbeat with a big Celeron chip and Windows based for that price.
Fixed. I initially thought it was a quad-core CPU (before doing additional checking), and apparently I wrote that part of the text before I fixed the table. I think I actually had the CPU listed as the N2940 at one point, which is the quad-core part.
It's nice hardware for Chrome OS, but what worries me is that there are two fundamental problems. The price for what ought to be a budget-friendly, inexpensive throw away device is far too high when compared to cheap Windows-based notebooks like the Stream 11 (which isn't favored in benchmarks in this article, but as those benchmarks are largely Google-based and Google products will invariably see favorable numbers due to bias). In fact, across the board, Microsoft devices have really turned the tables on pricing, seemingly winning the race to the bottom with sub-$100 dollar tablets and that ilk that have greater functionality than any Chrome OS or Android device. In a price- and feature-sensitive market, Google appears to have presently lost the lead.
The other problem is fundamental to the Chrome OS design being cloud-centric using Google services. Google isn't a company that's no longer commonly trusted to be a proper caretaker for user data and I often wonder what kind of information about what I'd be doing on any Google product is being sent upstream to be stored for an indefinite time period and then monetized. The general sense I get is that these sorts of trust issues are already a problem (as Google's recent moves to take Glass development in-house and out of the public view where people are being punched in the face for wearing it) and are likely to get more prominent as information security takes a more prominent role that enhances public awareness. It's a perfect storm that's brewing and Google's business model places it at the very heart of the looming controversy.
The Stream 11 hardware is identical to most entry level Chromebooks using the Intel Celeron N2840 Dual core Atom Bay Trail CPU and 23GB eMMC storage which are also priced $199, but the Stream 11 runs the full browser benchmarks (Google Octane and Firefox Kraken) at half the speed of the identical Chromebooks and about a third of the speed of the $179 Acer C720 Haswell Celeron 2955U Chromebooks. This is nothing to do with the fact that the benchmarks are specified by Google or Firefox - they are both good indicators of overall performance - ie. rendering, video/audio decoding, SSL encryption/decryption, etc as well as Javascript code execution - unlike SunSpider for example which just benchmarks Javascript execution.
This is entirely due to the Windows resource hog the system as everything else is identical. The Sunspider pure Javascript benchmarks aren't affected by the Windows resource hog because they don't need much resources, while the full browser function benchmarks are, because they do hog resources - eg. RAM disk swap of virtual memory, use of shared RAM for graphics etc.
16GB is pathetic storage for a laptop. 32GB microSD cards are sold for $14 shipped in retail. Toshiba was literally just trying to save a few bucks. As a consumer, wouldn't you rather pay $335 instead of $330 to have 32GB? I hate it when companies cut corners like this.
The marketing dept was clearly copying Apple with those pictures, adding the diagonal glare line.
It's not storage for the user (unless the user is specifically using Offline capable apps). It's local storage only for the OS. The user is supposed to be 100% network connected and be using the cloud (Google Drive), which itself is 100GB of space.
Dinosaurs need to carry big hard drives, ultrabooks don't. I've had the Samsung 303c for 2 years plus, and never had a problem about the size of the drive. Maybe 15 to 20 times in those 2 years I've "increased" the size of the memory by using SD Cards.
The video editing knock isn't fair to the Chromebook. If you need professional Adobe editing, then you need a MacBook and $600 Adobe software. For screencasting, and simple video like trimming the start and stop of a video, or a cut and paste, the Chromebook gets the job done, but it ain't great.
What Chromebook doesn't have is an easy way to use it as a developer. Installing Meteor, AngularJS, Ruby, basically can't be done, and have the Chromebook still be a Chromebook. For those with advanced skilz, it does have a nice SSH terminal for reaching your server.
I know I'm adding to a dead thread here, but I just set up a Dev environment on my chromebook using cloud9 online IDE, and it's working very well for me. You get a very functional code editor in a browser, and full terminal access to a VM on their end, set up for whatever you're doing. I haven't come across any major limitations yet, but I'm just getting into it. Check it out if you haven't already.
I love Chromebooks and think they are the way ahead for many. However, they have one big issue that stops me recommending them to the very people they are often aimed at.
Printing.
It's still a mess. I hate printing but so many others live by the ability and Chromebooks still don't have a simple easy way to print. I have a Chromebook enabled printer and it's still hit and miss.
Great review Jarred, thanks for taking the time to review this machine.
Just one thing I would like to add regarding your mention of the "walled garden" experience of Chromebooks. While on the face of it true, I think it's important to point out a huge caveat: Chromebooks have an official way to be rooted, it's easy to do that, requires no hacking or jailbreaking, and doesn't void the warranty. Once rooted, obviously the walled garden falls and you are in full control and can run anything you want, including an alternate Linux distro. As a bonus: you can even restore it back to a non-rooted "secure" state with no effort.
Plenty of people, power users in general, like to have full control of the machines that they "own". This is why a lot of us are hugely dismayed by Apple's walled garden approach and their quest against jailbreaking, or by many Android manufacturers who make it very difficult to root devices. Chromebooks offer the best of both worlds: a walled garden for the average user to keep them protected from the nasties, and the ability to fully own the system for those who demand such freedom.
Yeah, it's pretty close to full sRGB gamut, though I'm not sure how to get gamut in this case. (Normally, I get gamut from Windows laptops using the ICM file, but there's no way I know of to create an ICM for a Chromebook. I'm sure there's some way to still get gamut somewhere in CalMAN, but I admit that software is not my forte.)
I recently bought an Asus C200 chromebook. While it has some redeeming features, namely build quality and especially battery life, it is too slow in daily use. I understand that for the money you should expect some issues, but I find myself waiting on everything. Page loading, open Chrome apps and everything. It has a 2830 processor compared to the 2840 in this one, but then again the Toshiba got a higher resolution screen. I would be very hesistant to buy another Chromebook with such a slow processor. Chromebooks themselves are awesome though.
"In Octane, Kraken, and SunSpider, the N2840 consistently beats the Tegra K1 and in some cases it even ties (roughly) Apple’s A8X." Umm, isn't nexus 9 running a K1, and beating n2840 here in Octane and Kraken?
"Take NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 SoC, which pairs one of the fastest SoC GPUs with a respectable ARM-based CPU; by contrast, the N2840’s CPU is generally faster than the Tegra K1’s CPU" Both won 2 of the 4 benchmarks you ran (if comparing to nexus 9 which houses the latest K1 rev), not sure how you say either won. Seems like a tie? But yes, gpu lopsided to NV. I think we'd need Denver in a chromebook before you could say these statements for sure correct? You talk as if there is only ONE version of K1. There's only one version in a chromebook, but it's incorrect to say faster than both K1 versions here. Maybe I'd feel better about the statement if you called it 32bit K1 in this context. I can see you're talking chromebooks, but people may not get that denver simply can't be bought yet in one (or at least note that when saying it). We'll probably see an x1 based chromebook before denver again but still...Since I don't think it will be back until 14nm samsung version that is.
You compare the cpu to apples A8x, so why are you not mentioning the 64bit Denver version of K1 in Nexus9? Apple isn't a chromebook either, but is lopped in the cpu talk. If you hadn't done that, it would be clear you're not comparing cpus from tablets and chromebooks. But with apple you ARE adding tablet cpus to the talk, so why not nexus 9's K1?
Technically the Nexus 9 is the Tegra K1-64, or more commonly referred to as Denver. Of course, Denver has its own pros and cons, with performance sometimes being quite a bit slower due to the way the binary translation works. I'm not super hung up on which CPU is fastest by 5-10%; it's merely interesting to see Bay Trail Atom doing reasonably well. K1-32 and A8X are both more power efficient however, which is at least as important as raw performance.
But you're missing the real point, which is that as slow as the N2840 is, it's as fast as (faster than) the top smartphone SoCs. And yet the slowest Haswell-U processor runs circles around N2840. And the 2955U does that without really sacrificing a lot of battery life. I'm super interested in the 3205U, as you might guess.
@JarredWalton Excellent review. Informative and useful for comparison. I would very much like to see a review of the Windows 'chromebook', the Acer ES1-111M, or one of its variants. It is very similar to the HP Stream 11, but with upgradeable RAM, it makes for an interesting contender in the sub $200 range.
This was a really nice article, thanks. Would you mind providing the vintage of your benchmark results? That 5440 Octane score for the HP Chromebook 11 looks dated. My girlfriend's HP Chromebook 11-1101 is on Chrome 41 the current beta release. I get octane scores that average around 6800 on it. My 2013 Samsung Chromebook X303C12 has very similar hardware. It has the same SOC, the same display resolution, and the same 2G ram and 16 GB SSD. My Samsung is on Chrome 40 stable. It has Octane scores above 6400. I realize you might not have all the devices lying around to retest, but if you could indicate when a test was done and on what release that would be great. Chrome OS is very much a moving target. My Samsung Chromebook had Octane scores in the mid-3000 range when it came out in Q4 2013. Now it's in the mid-6s.
You're right: some of the scores are quite old. The only recent scores for Chromebooks are the two Acers (C720 and CB13) and the Toshiba; everything else is probably at least a year old. I hope to retire some of the results soon and replace them with more recent offerings.
Is this a paid article? It sounds very pro-Chrome OS, which given the severe limitations of that OS seem to skip over that completely and even mention it as a benefit.
Given that an end-user are basically buying a web browser with no ability to do simple things like print or work offline, it's a lot of money for a pretty worthless PC. It only has 16GB storage (or whatever is left of that).
There are cheaper and more capable PCs around these days running Windows that provide so much more functionality. If all you do want is a portable web browser, there are many tablets that provide more for less too.
The Windows alternatives have garbage displays, and while you *can* run the stripped down version of Windows on 32GB of storage, it's not comfortable to do so. Chrome OS also boots faster and stays peppier than Windows in general with limited resources. It's so far the best Chromebook in my opinion, but would I personally want to do all my work on it? No, because Chrome OS has plenty of limitations. I covered those extensively in a previous article, and rather than trot out the same content every time I just link back to the relevant review. Like this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8928/acer-chromebook...
Chrome OS is a waste. It is not as 'fully featured' as Windows 8.1 even and is not able to do a lot of the things that Windows 8.1 can do. Such as full-featured multimedia viewing. Such as even low-end ACDSee Pro-esque photo viewing and editing. Need I keep on going? Chrome OS is a toy to the most 'in the know' out there today and just is not going to overtake even iOS for most people. Give me a cheap 400 dollar Windows laptop for each of my children and they are pretty much golden. It can do nearly ANYTHING save for high-end, last 5 year AAA gaming.
I bought the Toshiba CB35-A3120 13.3-Inch Chromebook last year for my girlfriend. I am a graduate student studying computer science and have experience with OSX, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. With the chromebook I don't have to spend an hour every month removing viruses from the PC the way I did with her Windows laptop. If anyone has to deal with supporting Windows for friends and family Chrome OS is a great alternative.
I also installed Ubuntu on my girlfriend's chromebook. I downloaded Sublime Text and Libre Office. I also downloaded Ruby and was able to run some Ruby programs I created without any issue. Keep in mind the Chromebook I used had the Celeron 2955U processor. I'm curious if Bay Trail would be much different.
The only downside is to get crouton you ha be to leave the chromebook in developer mode so it won't boot up as quickly. However I like the combination of linux + chrome OS. Linux lets me work on coding assignments but when I want to watch HBOGO I can switch over to chrome OS.
Lastly, don't be one of these jokers that complains about not being able to run Photoshop. You remind me of the people that buy ultrabooks on Amazon and complain that there is no DVD drive.
I am pleasantly surprised that such an inexpensive product can come with such a high quality 13.3" 1080p screen. Now, if only we could get that on a Windows notebook. The fact that we can't is just outright infuriating.
Beware of the Toshiba Chromebook 2 - there appears to be a quality issue with its display.
After four months of normal laptop use, a crack developed in the membrane (?) behind the display glass. I sent pictures to Toshiba for the warranty claim - and they rejected it, claiming "physical damage" was done to the machine.
If opening and closing the lid normally is considered physical damage, I guess they're right.
Wondering if I was the lone crank in the Toshiba electronics universe, I went onto Amazon - and lo and behold, under the 1-star reviews there are several reports of display cracks and problems for the Toshiba Chromebook Two within the first few months of ownership. In all of the cases, Toshiba refused to honor its warranty service for these problems.
So be very careful. I suspect a Quality Control issue - and tried to uplevel my concern to Toshiba but met a dead-end in the customer service department.
Can someone please assist me advising how I can lock an OFFLINE folder/file etc in a Chromebook...on an attached SD card etc. One needs to remain stuck in there because of the low internal memory and I while the Cloud portion of the chromebook is secure, anyone can take out the SD card and access the contents of an unsecured folder. There are apps for this Android and Windows and making a secure drive etc in Mac... how do I achieve something so basic in a Chromebook? This is the only piece of the puzzle missing for me in adopting this full time and loading it up with my data.
You know, I'm a very demanding customer. One day a came to a conclusion that billion corporations around the globe produce their stuff in order to: 1 - sell their products; 2 - truly help people and make their lives easier. First aim is much more valuable than second! That's the reason I always demand products appropriate to thier prices. Toshiba laptop costs nearly $270 http://cent.im/popular/259/toshiba_chromebook_2 For this amount you receive 13,3'' Full HD screen (which I consider the best decision), fast SSD inside, 4 Gb RAM and 64-bit Windows. Keyboard is quite convenient. As for mouse, I use my old Logitech.
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KZ0 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Table on first page claims 13.3-inch TN 1920x1080. Otherwise good read.ddriver - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
TN is the new IPSJarredWalton - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Fixed, sorry -- we typically reuse HTML tables and update the content; obviously I missed that one line.ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I don't get it. This chromebook has a TN panel without any viewing angles problem?III-V - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
No, it's an IPS panel. The tabel has a typo.III-V - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
table*GotThumbs - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
+1 on being a great read. To try out a Chromebook for myself, I picked up a reconditioned Acer 720 on a NE Shell-shocker and I have been very pleased with it. It would be nice to have a 1080 res screen, but as a quick web consumption device, I find it more convenient than my tablet. The unique one handed touch-pad movements are very nice as well and provide the feel of using a tablet in some ways. I also like how fast it boots up. With more options coming from other brands, I think Chromebooks do have a niche for certain users. I think Chromebooks are especially great for individuals who are not very tech savy and just tend to browse the web. No need to deal with various OS updates and anti-virus programs. I hope they remain as secure as they seem to be.savagemike - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
My experience is very similar. I too bought a c720 - though as a refurb off e-bay at a price too good to pass up. Amazing little machine for the money and will be happy to pay a bit more for better hardware next time around as the basic usage of ChromeOS is brilliant and gets better as time goes on.The fast boot is great and coupled with the cached transaction update system ChromeOS employes means updates to the OS take literally about 10 seconds of my time as opposed to the hours of finger tapping I've spent waiting for Windows to do the same over the years. Even better the return from hibernation is rock solid so I hardly ever even shut the device off in the first place. 99% of the time I just sleep the device by closing the lid and awaken it by opening the lid. My desktop is up and ready by the time I get the screen fully opened.
Also worth mentioning is the great battery life. This thing lives next to my couch and gets frequent use to look up an actor or movie or whatever. Friends who stop by and want a computer to look up something or the like get it. Just general 'whatever' around the house use. Whenever I think of it - every few days or perhaps weekly - I plug it in for a few hours to charge it.
Brilliant.
leexgx - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
c720 owner here and typing this, for £120 is very good for what it is battery is good as wellleexgx - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
(only thing i would like is 4GB of ram, but i do tend to have a lot of tabs open)w_barath - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
If you use crouton [ https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton ] to run your favourite supported distro under ChromeOS in a chroot, then you can use these tips: [ https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/issues/1336 ] which I posted on the crouton GitHub page.This provides you with scaled virtual resolutions from 1280x720 up to 2732x1536, and also frees up between 400 and 700M of RAM, making the experience much more like a native installation. The main limitations of running under ChromeOS are A) lack of native WIFI control from the chroot, and lack of certain kernel modules so for example I'm unable to run the Arduino development stack on the C720, and I've heard that some multi-function storage devices and printers are unsupported, and things like DVB. My Wacom devices are perfectly supported though. Inkscape and Gimp run delightfully. Inkscape at 1920x1080 is a lot more useable than at 1366x768! Fonts are still quite legible at 1821x1024, and Netbeans IDE is a lot more pleasant to share the screen with Firefox at that resolution.
jasperjones - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Two things regarding your Chromebook reviews:1.) Your usual argument is that Chromebooks are suitable for moderate tasks/light users. However, CBs are also interesting for power users (which use it as a secondary/tertiary device). I suspect many power user opt for Linux on CBs. So it would be nice if you commented on Linux compatibility in the reviews. (I know, power users are capable of researching this themselves. Still, it would be nice to have thoughts on this in a concise review.)
2.) Even for non power users, the issue with Chromebooks is that, due to limited local storage, you are basically forced to rely on "the cloud." I would like to read more about that aspect of the Chrome OS in reviews.
Can I encrypt my data before uploading it? Or am I forced to give my unencrypted data to Google (and possibly intelligence agencies, too)?
savagemike - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I always laugh about it being qualified for 'light work' too. A lot of businesses run on Google services and applications. Contrary to much marketing hype you don't need Microsoft Office to get by.You'd have no problem running a small business or being part of a big business (depending upon their tool set) or writing the great American novel on a Chromebook. It's quite capable of quite heavy lifting.
chlamchowder - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I think it all goes back to relying on the internet (probably the most controversial thing about Chromebooks). Privacy is a concern, but speed is too. Fast internet is often ridiculously hard to get or very expensive, unless you're on a university campus or a corporate network. Internet access while commuting is even worse.Linux on Chromebooks - Limited local storage would present plenty of problems, and I wouldn't want to compile big projects or edit images on generally weak Chromebook processors. It might be tolerable for web browsing, but Chrome OS gives you that anyways. How is this better than running/dual booting Linux off a $300 laptop (or a refurbished cheaper one)?
SM123456 - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
@clamchouderYou haven't actually used a Chromebook then.
An average broadband speed is more than adequate, and other than for video streaming which understandably needs a bandwidth to suit the download bandwidth of the video stream. For people on the move, Chromebooks will also work well on a cell net Internet connections tethered to a mobile phone. For example Gmail and Google Drive, Docs, Sheets etc. have an offline mode which do not require Internet connection, and has transparent syncing to the internet when bandwidth permits. This and the online mode is far more efficient than Windows for syncing up to the Cloud, because unlike Windows applications where you have to download, edit and then upload the whole document file, Cloud based Chrome apps only download and upload the characters on the screen and the keystrokes corresponding to changes. This is how for example Google Docs continually saves your document to the cloud every 3 seconds as you work, which means you will never ever lose more than 3 seconds worth of work on a Chromebook come fire, theft, or damage - even if while you are typing your Chromebook is grabbed by thief or run over by a steam roller in mid sentence, and since the files are redundantly backed up in multiple geographically locations, even fire, earthquake or a tactical nuclear strike won't cause your data to be lost.
Again, you don't need more than an average broadband speed, and apart from video streaming, it works well on cell-net Internet access tethered to a mobile phone, and you can work offline on most apps that you would use while travelling - Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Google Drive, viewing PDF, Word, Excel, image files, movie and audio files etc. . I don't know where you live, but in all but a very small number of locations, in most countries, Internet broadband connection is not only cheap, but essential for business, leisure, or anything else for that matter - if you can't get an Internet connection, it isn't worth getting a computer or starting a business. Cellnet Internet may be expensive in some places, but in most places they are not expensive for the convenience you get, and these are only required when you are on the move and you want access to the Internet - you would normally use a WiFi router at work and home to access your LAN and Internet at office and home, and one of the many WiFi access points found in restaurants, hotels, airports, airplanes, trains, stations, service stops etc.
Chromebooks will run all Windows, OSX, and Linux apps out of the box without any setup. The best way to do this is to run them the same way as Chromebooks run all web apps - in the cloud or on a server on the LAN/WLAN - run Windows/Linux/OSX on a hot and heavy mains powered server (or old PC serving that purpose), and use the free Chrome Remote Desktop to connect in remotely. This works very well on an average broadband connection - no lag or stutters. For business/university/school use you would use Ericom Access Now, or an RDP Chrome App to access local servers without having to connect to the Internet https://www.youtube.com/user/ercm231?v=OkSn8xhl8e0
If access is via the LAN/WLAN alone, it is always lightning quick.
If you want to run Windows/Linux applications with really high end 3D graphics CAD workstation class graphics, then you need to use virtualised server GPU solutions like servers with nVidia GRID vGPU cards and VMWare/Citrix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbP5jsoyxOY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYefdXMSGn0
Using a Chromebook - Acer Chromebook 13 as shown in the first video, beats the living crap in terms of performance out of running it on a $1700 hot, heavy, and noisy high end Windows CAD workstation laptop with a battery life of less than 2.5hrs in CAD use. It simply cannot match the performance of the high end mains powered server and server GPU cards at the back end used by the Chromebook solution, nor the light weight, and the 11 hour in CAD use battery life, security, stability, ease of use, and much lower cost of maintenance and manageability of the Chromebook plus back end server solution.
Besides that the best way to run Linux is as a server, and the cheapest way to run Windows desktops (in terms of maintenance staff salaries which is horrendously expensive for Windows desktops), and most secure way to run high maintenance Windows desktops is to run it virtualised on a Linux server - and use a Chromebook front end. Linux is a natural as a server, not so good as a local desktop, especially when installed on a low end limited resource Chromebook or a slow $300 Windows netbook with limited SSD storage or a a slow $300 budget Windows laptop with a large but very slow mechanical hard drive.
mbhatia - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link
Can someone please assist me advising how I can lock an OFFLINE folder/file etc in a Chromebook...on an attached SD card etc. One needs to remain stuck in there because of the low internal memory and I while the Cloud portion of the chromebook is secure, anyone can take out the SD card and access the contents of an unsecured folder. There are apps for this Android and Windows and making a secure drive etc in Mac... how do I achieve something so basic in a Chromebook? This is the only piece of the puzzle missing for me in adopting this full time and loading it up with my data.Insomniator - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Even at only $300 it bothers me to see you'd have to be concerned with video settings when playing something as basic as a Youtube video. I feel like that should not be an issue in 2015, even given the budget/basic segment this device is targeted for.The GPU should most definitely at least be able to play video at the displays intended resolution and refresh rate... its not like that is so hard when it is already mentioned that the previous chip is 2-3x faster. Just seems like a very odd and poor choice by Toshiba here.
dli7319 - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Part of the problem is that the html5 player is not wall optimized. On my FHD Toshiba CB2, I can play 1080p60 Youtube videos using their flash player and even 4k videos recorded from my OnePlus One locally but Youtube's default html5 player will stutter and lag all over 1080p60 or 3840p30 videos.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Jimmy, who's recently pushed aside his core 2 duo laptop with its 480GB hard drive, returns home after using his Nokia 1020 for recording video. He plugs in the phone, that has the best phone cam you can buy (He likes shiny things), then drags across the video (I hope the Chromebook can access the device otherwise he's back to his Core 2 duo).A few seconds in and the device is full.
Chromebooks = Pointless. They're only really suitable for people that MUST have the latest techie fad that others are talking about. Sure, yeah, ok, they're actually not THAT bad but lets not pretend here... 16GB storage is pathetic for a laptop based device. If this were windows it would be laughed out of the page even with 32GB of storage.
iMPose - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
If Jimmy A) likes shiny (expensive) things, and B) bought the 1020 because it has the best camera you can get on a phone, and C) needs a computer on which to store/manipulate large video files, then he is not the target customer, and I suspect he already knows this.And that's OK. Chromebooks aren't for everyone. Don't discount a product simply because it doesn't fit your needs. Some people don't need more than a cheap, speedy laptop for web browsing, etc.
nafhan - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I upload all my photos and videos straight to cloud storage from my phone. I don't bother with this dragging it across to my device thing you speak of. Old school right there...Plus, to discount your final point: there's a number of W8 based devices (mostly x86 tablets) with a similar amount of storage - from the same OEM's.
BackInAction - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I have the older Toshiba 13 CB at home. I have easily gone 3+ weeks without touching my desktop machine. But I don't do pix, audio or movie editing. I need zero local storage. The only reason I use my desktop is the once-a-month itch I get when I feel like doing a bit of gaming (cheap Steam games).The real crime is that they even make laptops with HDD anymore. That should be the premium upgrade, not the SSD. I would be willing to bet 95% of the PC (windows, MAC and 'linux' desktops) could get by with a 256GB SSD. Which is less than $80. But Apple, Dell, etc. make it a premium option only for stupid expensive PCs.
chlamchowder - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I wouldn't go so far as to call them pointless - you just need a really, really good internet connection.The intention is this: Jimmy loads the video into his Chromebook, which realizes it doesn't have enough internal storage left. So it uploads directly to the cloud through his dedicated low-latency gigabit connection, and it doesn't feel much slower than using internal storage. The pro is that when Jimmy gets a new Chromebook, he doesn't have to worry about spending hours copying files.
The problem is how hard it is to get a high speed internet connection. It's hard even at home, let alone when traveling (which kind of defeats the portable laptop form factor).
SM123456 - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
>>If this were windows it would be laughed out of the page even with 32GB of storage.<<Yes quite right if you were using Windows OS on the device - like for example the HP Stream 11 Windows netbooks which Microsoft has being trying to push as Chromebook killers - these have only 32GB local storage, which reduces to 17.5GB after you deduct the space used by the Windows with no apps installed. These crappy revisited netbooks have apparently flopped very badly.
However this limit does not apply to a Chromebook because, unlike Windows, the ChromeOS image is tiny and doesn't grow in size (in only contains the bare minimum required to run the provided hardware and the web browser, and you can't install programs or drivers on it). ChromeOS also does not use local storage at all except for user downloads and for caching data - all user data, apps etc. are created and stored in the cloud other than for what is temporarily cached locally (eg. local apps, data). Indeed Chromebooks will warn you that data in the local downloads directory may be subject to automatic deletion if space is required (you should use an SD card to store local files you do not want deleted).
Chromebooks just work completely differently to an old OS designed for the low end disconnected desktop era like Windows or an OS designed for high end connected network servers like Unix/Linux. This is how they are able to boot up fast, and run fast and responsively on low end hardware and limited disk/RAM space on which desktop Windows and full Linux installations run very slowly and very painfully.
AdmV0rl0n - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Lame. The whole industry needs a complete kicking. What we want is a cheap option, and a decent option. So for granny I don't give a crap, I'm happy with the low end, easy care device. What I want is a real laptop that runs chrome AND allows me to do what I want. So give me a Chromebook that has denet spec, and upgradable ram, disk, etc. ts been the heart of the PC industry for two decades, the fact Google and the tech companies can't do this is purely embarrasing.The google guys have added the capability to run linux in the OS. Thats awesome. But not on 16GB of space it's not.
I accept adding ram slots and disk slots adds to price. I accept a faster CPU does as well. *I* accept it has a higher price. Guess what. I have not yet bought a chromebook, and I'm not going to. Not unless this is fixed.
No prime OS and vendor should be happy failing to youtube in 2015. Its pathetic.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Somethign seems to have changed starting with the haswell pentium/celeron U lines. They seem to be all vapor. I cant find one reasonably priced product containing any haswell pentium/celeron 15W chips.savagemike - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I'm not aware of any Haswell Pentium ever being offered in a ChromeOS device. Haswell Celerons were the standard for a while. Acer C720 and others of its era should still be readily available and at good prices. The screens on most of them aren't great though.Last year Intel really began pushing BayTrail chips in tablets and Chromebooks. Almost all the Chromebooks switched to it. Though I think all the Chromeboxes stayed using Haswell Celerons.
Now Broadwell is about to launch in the Celeron class chip and there is already information that at least some Chromebooks will be using it. Should be on sale in another month or two. I'm hoping Broadwell Celeron is the common chip this year as the Bay Trail stuff was slightly too much of a regeression in my book. The Haswell Celeron is a plucky little chip though and the Broadwell should be all the better.
Pneumothorax - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Why can't a single PC laptop maker make a laptop with this great screen with a DECENT CPU/iGPU, expandable HDD/SSD, and decent battery life at the $500 price point? Everything else still comes with the same $25 TN panels that should be all automatically thrown in the dumpster.jabber - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I bet the IPS option costs $25 and the TN $10.zodiacfml - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Awesome screen. Awesome WiFi. Yet, what to do with those with such an OS?I'd buy in a heartbeat with a big Celeron chip and Windows based for that price.
ezschemi - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Table on page 1 says:"Intel Celeron N2840
Dual-core 2.16-2.58GHz"
while directly below the text says:
"The processor of choice this time is Intel’s Celeron N2840, a quad-core Bay Trail chip running at 2.16-2.58GHz."
dual core vs quad core. One of them is incorrect.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Fixed. I initially thought it was a quad-core CPU (before doing additional checking), and apparently I wrote that part of the text before I fixed the table. I think I actually had the CPU listed as the N2940 at one point, which is the quad-core part.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
It's nice hardware for Chrome OS, but what worries me is that there are two fundamental problems. The price for what ought to be a budget-friendly, inexpensive throw away device is far too high when compared to cheap Windows-based notebooks like the Stream 11 (which isn't favored in benchmarks in this article, but as those benchmarks are largely Google-based and Google products will invariably see favorable numbers due to bias). In fact, across the board, Microsoft devices have really turned the tables on pricing, seemingly winning the race to the bottom with sub-$100 dollar tablets and that ilk that have greater functionality than any Chrome OS or Android device. In a price- and feature-sensitive market, Google appears to have presently lost the lead.The other problem is fundamental to the Chrome OS design being cloud-centric using Google services. Google isn't a company that's no longer commonly trusted to be a proper caretaker for user data and I often wonder what kind of information about what I'd be doing on any Google product is being sent upstream to be stored for an indefinite time period and then monetized. The general sense I get is that these sorts of trust issues are already a problem (as Google's recent moves to take Glass development in-house and out of the public view where people are being punched in the face for wearing it) and are likely to get more prominent as information security takes a more prominent role that enhances public awareness. It's a perfect storm that's brewing and Google's business model places it at the very heart of the looming controversy.
SM123456 - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
The Stream 11 hardware is identical to most entry level Chromebooks using the Intel Celeron N2840 Dual core Atom Bay Trail CPU and 23GB eMMC storage which are also priced $199, but the Stream 11 runs the full browser benchmarks (Google Octane and Firefox Kraken) at half the speed of the identical Chromebooks and about a third of the speed of the $179 Acer C720 Haswell Celeron 2955U Chromebooks. This is nothing to do with the fact that the benchmarks are specified by Google or Firefox - they are both good indicators of overall performance - ie. rendering, video/audio decoding, SSL encryption/decryption, etc as well as Javascript code execution - unlike SunSpider for example which just benchmarks Javascript execution.This is entirely due to the Windows resource hog the system as everything else is identical. The Sunspider pure Javascript benchmarks aren't affected by the Windows resource hog because they don't need much resources, while the full browser function benchmarks are, because they do hog resources - eg. RAM disk swap of virtual memory, use of shared RAM for graphics etc.
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
No mention of color gamut?16GB is pathetic storage for a laptop. 32GB microSD cards are sold for $14 shipped in retail. Toshiba was literally just trying to save a few bucks. As a consumer, wouldn't you rather pay $335 instead of $330 to have 32GB? I hate it when companies cut corners like this.
The marketing dept was clearly copying Apple with those pictures, adding the diagonal glare line.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Sorry -- I had the images and forgot to include them on the LCD page. I've added another gallery at the bottom of page 3.AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Thanks Jarred! That's commendable that you respond to and address our feedback :)CoreLogicCom - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
It's not storage for the user (unless the user is specifically using Offline capable apps). It's local storage only for the OS. The user is supposed to be 100% network connected and be using the cloud (Google Drive), which itself is 100GB of space.bsd228 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
you have 2 usb ports and an SD card slot. If you want local storage, it's trivial to add, using one of those tiny form factor usb sticks.AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Ok, the SD slot sounds like a reasonable solution for a decent hard drive.gd22 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Dinosaurs need to carry big hard drives, ultrabooks don't. I've had the Samsung 303c for 2 years plus, and never had a problem about the size of the drive. Maybe 15 to 20 times in those 2 years I've "increased" the size of the memory by using SD Cards.The video editing knock isn't fair to the Chromebook. If you need professional Adobe editing, then you need a MacBook and $600 Adobe software. For screencasting, and simple video like trimming the start and stop of a video, or a cut and paste, the Chromebook gets the job done, but it ain't great.
What Chromebook doesn't have is an easy way to use it as a developer. Installing Meteor, AngularJS, Ruby, basically can't be done, and have the Chromebook still be a Chromebook. For those with advanced skilz, it does have a nice SSH terminal for reaching your server.
Tin Weasel - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
I know I'm adding to a dead thread here, but I just set up a Dev environment on my chromebook using cloud9 online IDE, and it's working very well for me. You get a very functional code editor in a browser, and full terminal access to a VM on their end, set up for whatever you're doing. I haven't come across any major limitations yet, but I'm just getting into it. Check it out if you haven't already.jabber - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I love Chromebooks and think they are the way ahead for many. However, they have one big issue that stops me recommending them to the very people they are often aimed at.Printing.
It's still a mess. I hate printing but so many others live by the ability and Chromebooks still don't have a simple easy way to print. I have a Chromebook enabled printer and it's still hit and miss.
jabber - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
As for my next Chromebook, I'd settle for a 11" 1600x900 IPS one.gd22 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Yes. I also pro Chromebooks, but agree that printing experience is still a mess.aryonoco - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
Great review Jarred, thanks for taking the time to review this machine.Just one thing I would like to add regarding your mention of the "walled garden" experience of Chromebooks. While on the face of it true, I think it's important to point out a huge caveat: Chromebooks have an official way to be rooted, it's easy to do that, requires no hacking or jailbreaking, and doesn't void the warranty. Once rooted, obviously the walled garden falls and you are in full control and can run anything you want, including an alternate Linux distro. As a bonus: you can even restore it back to a non-rooted "secure" state with no effort.
Plenty of people, power users in general, like to have full control of the machines that they "own". This is why a lot of us are hugely dismayed by Apple's walled garden approach and their quest against jailbreaking, or by many Android manufacturers who make it very difficult to root devices. Chromebooks offer the best of both worlds: a walled garden for the average user to keep them protected from the nasties, and the ability to fully own the system for those who demand such freedom.
derder1 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
About time, Anandtech! I've been waiting a review for since like Nov/Dec 2014! By the way what is RGB % that this display show?AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
"sRGB" - about 72% I think.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Yeah, it's pretty close to full sRGB gamut, though I'm not sure how to get gamut in this case. (Normally, I get gamut from Windows laptops using the ICM file, but there's no way I know of to create an ICM for a Chromebook. I'm sure there's some way to still get gamut somewhere in CalMAN, but I admit that software is not my forte.)AgeOfPanic - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I recently bought an Asus C200 chromebook. While it has some redeeming features, namely build quality and especially battery life, it is too slow in daily use. I understand that for the money you should expect some issues, but I find myself waiting on everything. Page loading, open Chrome apps and everything. It has a 2830 processor compared to the 2840 in this one, but then again the Toshiba got a higher resolution screen.I would be very hesistant to buy another Chromebook with such a slow processor. Chromebooks themselves are awesome though.
tdo51144 - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
like itTheJian - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
"In Octane, Kraken, and SunSpider, the N2840 consistently beats the Tegra K1 and in some cases it even ties (roughly) Apple’s A8X."Umm, isn't nexus 9 running a K1, and beating n2840 here in Octane and Kraken?
"Take NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 SoC, which pairs one of the fastest SoC GPUs with a respectable ARM-based CPU; by contrast, the N2840’s CPU is generally faster than the Tegra K1’s CPU"
Both won 2 of the 4 benchmarks you ran (if comparing to nexus 9 which houses the latest K1 rev), not sure how you say either won. Seems like a tie? But yes, gpu lopsided to NV. I think we'd need Denver in a chromebook before you could say these statements for sure correct? You talk as if there is only ONE version of K1. There's only one version in a chromebook, but it's incorrect to say faster than both K1 versions here. Maybe I'd feel better about the statement if you called it 32bit K1 in this context. I can see you're talking chromebooks, but people may not get that denver simply can't be bought yet in one (or at least note that when saying it). We'll probably see an x1 based chromebook before denver again but still...Since I don't think it will be back until 14nm samsung version that is.
You compare the cpu to apples A8x, so why are you not mentioning the 64bit Denver version of K1 in Nexus9? Apple isn't a chromebook either, but is lopped in the cpu talk. If you hadn't done that, it would be clear you're not comparing cpus from tablets and chromebooks. But with apple you ARE adding tablet cpus to the talk, so why not nexus 9's K1?
JarredWalton - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
Technically the Nexus 9 is the Tegra K1-64, or more commonly referred to as Denver. Of course, Denver has its own pros and cons, with performance sometimes being quite a bit slower due to the way the binary translation works. I'm not super hung up on which CPU is fastest by 5-10%; it's merely interesting to see Bay Trail Atom doing reasonably well. K1-32 and A8X are both more power efficient however, which is at least as important as raw performance.But you're missing the real point, which is that as slow as the N2840 is, it's as fast as (faster than) the top smartphone SoCs. And yet the slowest Haswell-U processor runs circles around N2840. And the 2955U does that without really sacrificing a lot of battery life. I'm super interested in the 3205U, as you might guess.
LazarusNine - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
@JarredWalton Excellent review. Informative and useful for comparison. I would very much like to see a review of the Windows 'chromebook', the Acer ES1-111M, or one of its variants. It is very similar to the HP Stream 11, but with upgradeable RAM, it makes for an interesting contender in the sub $200 range.benelux - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
This was a really nice article, thanks. Would you mind providing the vintage of your benchmark results? That 5440 Octane score for the HP Chromebook 11 looks dated. My girlfriend's HP Chromebook 11-1101 is on Chrome 41 the current beta release. I get octane scores that average around 6800 on it. My 2013 Samsung Chromebook X303C12 has very similar hardware. It has the same SOC, the same display resolution, and the same 2G ram and 16 GB SSD. My Samsung is on Chrome 40 stable. It has Octane scores above 6400.I realize you might not have all the devices lying around to retest, but if you could indicate when a test was done and on what release that would be great. Chrome OS is very much a moving target. My Samsung Chromebook had Octane scores in the mid-3000 range when it came out in Q4 2013. Now it's in the mid-6s.
benelux - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
Correction: the Samsung Chromebook came out in fall 2012, not 2013.JarredWalton - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
You're right: some of the scores are quite old. The only recent scores for Chromebooks are the two Acers (C720 and CB13) and the Toshiba; everything else is probably at least a year old. I hope to retire some of the results soon and replace them with more recent offerings.realwarder - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Is this a paid article? It sounds very pro-Chrome OS, which given the severe limitations of that OS seem to skip over that completely and even mention it as a benefit.Given that an end-user are basically buying a web browser with no ability to do simple things like print or work offline, it's a lot of money for a pretty worthless PC. It only has 16GB storage (or whatever is left of that).
There are cheaper and more capable PCs around these days running Windows that provide so much more functionality. If all you do want is a portable web browser, there are many tablets that provide more for less too.
JarredWalton - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
The Windows alternatives have garbage displays, and while you *can* run the stripped down version of Windows on 32GB of storage, it's not comfortable to do so. Chrome OS also boots faster and stays peppier than Windows in general with limited resources. It's so far the best Chromebook in my opinion, but would I personally want to do all my work on it? No, because Chrome OS has plenty of limitations. I covered those extensively in a previous article, and rather than trot out the same content every time I just link back to the relevant review. Like this:http://www.anandtech.com/show/8928/acer-chromebook...
Christopher1 - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
Chrome OS is a waste. It is not as 'fully featured' as Windows 8.1 even and is not able to do a lot of the things that Windows 8.1 can do.Such as full-featured multimedia viewing. Such as even low-end ACDSee Pro-esque photo viewing and editing.
Need I keep on going? Chrome OS is a toy to the most 'in the know' out there today and just is not going to overtake even iOS for most people.
Give me a cheap 400 dollar Windows laptop for each of my children and they are pretty much golden.
It can do nearly ANYTHING save for high-end, last 5 year AAA gaming.
RadioShackLives - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
I really enjoyed this review.I bought the Toshiba CB35-A3120 13.3-Inch Chromebook last year for my girlfriend. I am a graduate student studying computer science and have experience with OSX, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. With the chromebook I don't have to spend an hour every month removing viruses from the PC the way I did with her Windows laptop. If anyone has to deal with supporting Windows for friends and family Chrome OS is a great alternative.
I also installed Ubuntu on my girlfriend's chromebook. I downloaded Sublime Text and Libre Office. I also downloaded Ruby and was able to run some Ruby programs I created without any issue. Keep in mind the Chromebook I used had the Celeron 2955U processor. I'm curious if Bay Trail would be much different.
The only downside is to get crouton you ha be to leave the chromebook in developer mode so it won't boot up as quickly. However I like the combination of linux + chrome OS. Linux lets me work on coding assignments but when I want to watch HBOGO I can switch over to chrome OS.
Lastly, don't be one of these jokers that complains about not being able to run Photoshop. You remind me of the people that buy ultrabooks on Amazon and complain that there is no DVD drive.
tipoo - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Jeeze, what was she doing to get a virus a month?sirkiwi - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link
I am pleasantly surprised that such an inexpensive product can come with such a high quality 13.3" 1080p screen. Now, if only we could get that on a Windows notebook. The fact that we can't is just outright infuriating.calexander16 - Tuesday, April 14, 2015 - link
Beware of the Toshiba Chromebook 2 - there appears to be a quality issue with its display.After four months of normal laptop use, a crack developed in the membrane (?) behind the display glass. I sent pictures to Toshiba for the warranty claim - and they rejected it, claiming "physical damage" was done to the machine.
If opening and closing the lid normally is considered physical damage, I guess they're right.
Wondering if I was the lone crank in the Toshiba electronics universe, I went onto Amazon - and lo and behold, under the 1-star reviews there are several reports of display cracks and problems for the Toshiba Chromebook Two within the first few months of ownership. In all of the cases, Toshiba refused to honor its warranty service for these problems.
So be very careful. I suspect a Quality Control issue - and tried to uplevel my concern to Toshiba but met a dead-end in the customer service department.
mbhatia - Saturday, October 17, 2015 - link
Can someone please assist me advising how I can lock an OFFLINE folder/file etc in a Chromebook...on an attached SD card etc. One needs to remain stuck in there because of the low internal memory and I while the Cloud portion of the chromebook is secure, anyone can take out the SD card and access the contents of an unsecured folder. There are apps for this Android and Windows and making a secure drive etc in Mac... how do I achieve something so basic in a Chromebook? This is the only piece of the puzzle missing for me in adopting this full time and loading it up with my data.George.Madison - Thursday, November 26, 2015 - link
You know, I'm a very demanding customer. One day a came to a conclusion that billion corporations around the globe produce their stuff in order to: 1 - sell their products; 2 - truly help people and make their lives easier. First aim is much more valuable than second!That's the reason I always demand products appropriate to thier prices.
Toshiba laptop costs nearly $270 http://cent.im/popular/259/toshiba_chromebook_2
For this amount you receive 13,3'' Full HD screen (which I consider the best decision), fast SSD inside, 4 Gb RAM and 64-bit Windows.
Keyboard is quite convenient. As for mouse, I use my old Logitech.