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1080P IPS in low cost ($330) chromebook - Bay Trail Celeron N2840

Vesku

Vesku

Diamond Member
Toshiba announced their chromebook 2 with a 13 inch 1080P screen for $330. Shame it's not using a Haswell celeron but a dual core BayTrail one but still nice to see a decent display on a budget offering. An USB 3 port, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11ac wifi are nice touches.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/...splay-for-330/

Is the Celeron N2840 good enough for something like this?
Bay Trail dual core 2.16GHz base 2.58GHz boost Just 4 Gen7 EU graphic units with a max clock of 792MHz. Judging by the ~$250 Haswell Celeron Chromebooks I think they could offer a Haswell version for ~$360-380 if they wanted to. I feel they must assume budget notebook users don't care about their CPU too much.

http://ark.intel.com/products/82103/...up-to-2_58-GHz
 
What really bugs me is, if a 13" Chromebook can ship with a 1080P display, for $330 (assuming that's the cost of the hardware, because ChromeOS is free), then why can't we have budget 15.6" (or even 13") Windows laptops with 1080P displays for $400?
 
For Windows 8.1 they'd want to add touch and more drive space so probably $450. However, even with the anemic APU and being a Chromebook it's nice to see a company finally sell a budget notebook with a nice IPS screen. Hopefully installing a regular Linux build on this Toshiba won't be a headache will make a good replacement for my Acer C710 running Fedora.
 
I still have my MSI Wind12 U230 laying around that I installed Linux on, I'm a bit surprised that there's such a 1080p in a small screen laptop, I wonder how well this'll sell. And if it had an N2920/2930 I'd probably bother to check it out, dual-cores are so last decade now.
 
Yes, it's a shame Toshiba hasn't announced a Haswell Celeron or even quad core Bay Trail version. I'll still get one just to show companies there is a demand for 1080P+ IPS panels in budget offerings and as I said it will be an OK replacement for my current 11.6" TN Acer C710 even if it will be a bit slower in CPU. I prefer the 13 inch form factor and having better connectivity (USB 3, 802.11ac) will be more useful to me.
 
Picked one of these up today after our Zenbook (UX31A) took a shit. Pretty nice and the screen is superb. Good touchpad, no discernable flex in the keyboard. All plastic, but that's to be expected. Still the fit and finish looks good.

Haswell and/or more cores might be nice, but I'm not noticing any significant lag in anything that one would expect a Chromebook to do. It certainly wouldn't justify the extra expense to me. Honestly, for $330, this is great. All my wife ever did on the Zenbook was surf the web anyway...problem was the Zenbook spoiled her on the screen.

I might miss some of the stuff I use to do, but I can get by with remote desktop solutions for the short term, and save up for my own retina MBP or surface pro in the meantime.
 
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Gooberlx2 said:
Picked one of these up today after our Zenbook (UX31A) took a shit. Pretty nice and the screen is superb. Good touchpad, no discernable flex in the keyboard. All plastic, but that's to be expected. Still the fit and finish looks good.

Haswell and/or more cores might be nice, but I'm not noticing any significant lag in anything that one would expect a Chromebook to do. It certainly wouldn't justify the extra expense to me. Honestly, for $330, this is great. All my wife ever did on the Zenbook was surf the web anyway...problem was the Zenbook spoiled her on the screen.

I might miss some of the stuff I use to do, but I can get by with remote desktop solutions for the short term, and save up for my own retina MBP or surface pro in the meantime.
Click to expand...

Are you using the Chrome Desktop Remote extension? I found it to be almost unusable, specifically with multiple monitors. If only they could use Android apps, like Teamviewer, I would be all over one of these chromebooks.
 
Capt Caveman said:
Are you using the Chrome Desktop Remote extension? I found it to be almost unusable, specifically with multiple monitors. If only they could use Android apps, like Teamviewer, I would be all over one of these chromebooks.
Click to expand...


I've used both the VNC viewer and Chrome Remote Desktop. They seemed to work fine. I agree neither is as good as teamviewer. At least TV has the web option.
 
Gooberlx2 said:
I dunno, but the Acer's screen is not IPS. I just can't go back to TN.
Click to expand...

Does the screen look good overall? Colors, brightness, contrast, glow/consistency? Gloss/Mild Gloss/Matte?

Thinking about getting one as long as it allows a regular Linux installation.
 
Vesku said:
Does the screen look good overall? Colors, brightness, contrast, glow/consistency? Gloss/Mild Gloss/Matte?
Click to expand...

I'm no expert, but it looks excellent to me. Better, imo, than my ux31a had. I think it can be set almost painfully bright in a dim room; blacks remain deep. Colors look good. Mild gloss. A bright light right over your shoulder will make a reflection. Good viewing angles, as one would expect with IPS.
 
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