Toshiba CB30-102 Chromebook review - MSN UK ~ Electronic Gadgets

What is it?

Toshiba's first Chromebook is also the first one to feature a larger 13.3-inch screen.

What's great?

The large screen and low price make this an appealing Chromebook option for the majority of users.

What's not?

It does feel slightly cheap, and the limitations inherent in Chrome OS have to be considered.

The bottom line:

To assess the Toshiba Chromebook, you have to ask if you can work with Chrome OS. If you can, then this is a great value model for getting stuff done on the web.

Toshiba CB30-102 Chromebook: Review

Toshiba Chromebook review (© Toshiba)

Toshiba

By now you probably know what a Chromebook is: a lightweight laptop offering Google's Chrome OS operating system, which is essentially a web browser and not much else. All of your apps and files live online, which makes them perfect for email, social media and a little bit of office work but leaves you struggling if your internet connection should disappear.

There are an increasing number of Chromebooks appearing on the market: there's the dinky HP Chromebook 11 with an 11-inch screen and the premium touchscreen Chromebook Pixel as well as models from the likes of Acer and Samsung. If this stripped-down way of working appeals to you, then there's more choice than ever when it comes to picking a laptop. This is Toshiba's first foray into Chromebooks, and the CB30-102 offers a 1.4GHz Intel Celeron processor and 2GB of RAM, which is pretty much par for the course with these machines.

Toshiba CB30-102 Chromebook: Chrome OS

Any review of a Chromebook has to focus on Chrome OS, because whether or not you'll like the laptop depends a great deal on how well you get on with the operating system. Can you live with a platform where all your files are online? Do you spend all of your computing time inside a web browser anyway? If the answer is "yes", Chrome OS could be a good fit. If you rely on desktop applications and have a lot of local files stored on your computer then the prospect looks a lot less appealing. Starting from scratch with Chrome OS isn't too tricky, but switching to it is.

In today's always-on, web-based world — with sites such as Gmail, Office Online and YouTube available — Chrome OS makes sense for a lot of people. Services such as Spotify, Netflix and BBC iPlayer can all run in the browser. The big limitations are a very small amount of local storage (so nowhere for your movie or music collections to go) and the fact that if you lose your internet (while travelling perhaps) there's not a lot you can get done. A number of apps (including Google Drive) have some offline capabilities, but you're still going to be hampered.

Toshiba Chromebook 102 review (© Toshiba)

Toshiba

Toshiba CB30-102 Chromebook: Design

The Toshiba CB30-102 Chromebook isn't the first laptop to try and mimic the Macbook aesthetic, and it probably won't be the last. Even if it is a little derivative, it still looks the part: "premium" is perhaps the wrong word for a £250 laptop built of plastic, but it still holds its own in the appearance department. The small dotted ridges on the top and bottom of the unit are a nice touch, and we found the keyboard and trackpad smooth and responsive. As for audio, the two integrated speakers are fairly average: okay for watching a film, but you wouldn't want this as your main music player. Integrated Bluetooth is available, if you want to set up an external set of speakers.

The 13.3-inch, 1,366 x 768 pixel (16:9) display looks clear and crisp, and the extra screen space you get over most Chromebooks is welcome. It's nowhere near the quality of the high-resolution Chromebook Pixel, but then again it costs a quarter of the price.

A nominal 16GB of internal flash storage is built-in, but you'll mostly be using it for saving files temporarily. The two USB 3.0 ports are a welcome addition for external drives and the like, while the HD webcam at the top of the screen is available for video calls (as long as your video calling software runs on the Web of course). An HDMI output port completes the picture.

Toshiba CB30-102 Chromebook: In use

When you start to use the Chromebook, its benefits become more obvious. It starts up and shuts down in seconds, and there's no need to install any software or wait for any updates — everything is instantly ready to run inside your browser. Installing and updating an antivirus product is another chore that you don't have to think about here. You get 100GB of Google Drive space included with your purchase to try and convince you to keep your content on the web.

Provided you don't push the Chromebook too hard, its limited specifications aren't a problem. It's fine for watching HD YouTube videos, for example, but once you start opening dozens of tabs and running some seriously beefy Web apps (such as of Spotify and WordPress) the CB30-102 can struggle to keep up. Don't go too crazy with the multi-tasking, and you should be fine. We were impressed with the battery life, which comfortably lasted a whole working day — if pushed, you could probably get 8-9 hours out of the computer without recharging.

Toshiba CB30-102 Chromebook: Verdict

Assuming that you've decided you want a Chromebook in your life, there are two main reasons to choose the Toshiba model: its low price and its large screen. Other than that, the Toshiba Chromebook has the same advantages and drawbacks of any other machine running Google's Chrome OS. We've tried out a few Chromebooks in the past couple of years, and while the Toshiba CB30-102 isn't the most well-designed or most powerful, we reckon it's the best value for money one we've seen yet. Measure what you get against the price you pay, and it's a sensible choice for most Chromebook buyers, unless you want something really portable or really high-end.