Toshiba Chromebook 2: A Feast for the Eyes
by Jarred Walton on February 11, 2015 10:00 AM ESTToshiba Chromebook 2 Battery Life
After looking at performance, I was hoping that battery life might be a saving grace for the Celeron N2840. Unfortunately, the rated battery life of “up to” nine hours is pretty much spot on. The battery capacity is slightly lower than on the Acer C720 and CB13, but there’s just no getting around the fact that they beat the Toshiba CB35 by a decent amount. Here are the charts:
In our Internet battery life test, which is the same as our tablet WiFi battery life test, the Toshiba Chromebook 2 delivers just shy of eight hours of mobility. That would be great in the world of Windows laptops, but competing Chromebooks are now delivering closer to 10 hours of battery life. Video Playback (again, with the same 720p video we use for tablet testing) is likewise quite a bit worse than competing Chromebooks, coming in 0.9 hours short of the C720 result (though that has a smaller 11.6” display) and 1.8 hours less than the Acer CB13.
There’s another way to look at things, which is the amount of power being consumed by the device. With a 44Wh battery, in our Internet test at 200 nits the Toshiba CB2 is only drawing around 5.5W for WiFi and 7.1W for 720p video, but that’s almost a full 1W more than the Acer CB13 and C720 for WiFi and 1.5-2.0W more for video decoding. And then there are the tablets; the Apple iPad Air 2 draws about 2.8W in our WiFi test and the Nexus 9 just 2.4W; for video decoding, tablets (or at least, Android and iOS) fare even better, as they use even less power than in our WiFi testing – 2.3W for the Nexus 9 and 2.2W for the iPad Air 2. Both of course have significantly smaller displays, which helps tremendously, but if you’re just looking for long battery life they’ll win every time.
Battery life still ends up being respectable, however, as there are few times where people need an uninterrupted 8+ hours of battery life with no chance to plug in. If you’re on a long flight it might be nice to get 10+, but otherwise there’s usually some chance to recharge, and whether we’re talking about eight, nine, or ten hours it’s all still “all day battery life” at some level.
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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.