Toshiba kirabook

The Toshiba Kirabook is about as direct a
frontal assault as a company could make on
Apple's MacBook Air. It's got a featherweight
(2.9-pound), slim, 0.7-inch-thin magnesium
frame with tapered edges that make it seem
even thinner. It's even got an L-shaped hinge
and backlit keys like Apple's laptops do.

In fact, it's pretty easy to mistake the
Kirabook for a 13-inch MacBook Air when
you first look at it, or even when you first
pick it up. This isn't necessarily a bad thing,
as the MacBook Air has ideal design and
construction. Really, it's a bit surprising that
there aren't more imitators out there. There
are plenty of ultrabooks , but until the
Kirabook came along, the Samsung Series 9
was the closest thing you could get to the
form and function of a MacBook Air.

But while the Kirabook may look and feel like
a MacBook Air, it sports the spec sheet of the
more powerful 13-inch MacBook Pro with
Retina display . The Kirabook's 2560 x 1440
display rivals the pixel density of Apple's
2560 x 1600 Retina screen (honestly, though,
at a certain point the pixels are so small that
the differences are imperceptible), yet
Toshiba's machine comes with an optional
touchscreen as well. Ditch the touchscreen
and the weight falls to 2.6 pounds. Kirabook
also can be outfitted with either a 2.7-GHz
Intel Core i5 chip or a blisteringly fast 3.1-
GHz i7. In short, this is a ludicrously
powerful Windows 8 laptop in a compact,
lightweight, sturdy frame.

We've spent a weekend with an i7 Kirabook
and found it to be one of the better Windows
laptops out there. Battery life was admirable;
Toshiba claims 6 hours on a charge, which is
slightly less than Apple claims for its 13-inch
MacBook Air. The Kirabook is surprisingly
light and easy to carry around, even for
someone used to toting a MacBook Air,
because the Kirabook is actually a smaller
package than Apple's featherweight
computer.

The reason the Kirabook can still have a
13.3-inch screen is that Toshiba's screen has
a thinner bezel. However, that thin bezel has
some drawbacks on a Win 8 touchscreen
device. Touchscreen navigation on Windows
8 requires swipe-ins from all sides, and the
Kirabook's thin bezel gives scant real estate
at the edges. Also, the Kirabook's capacitive
display is a bit heftier than the thin screen on
Apple's MacBooks. The overall weight of the
Kirabook is low, and the weight distribution
still favors the keyboard, at least enough to
keep the device from tipping backward. But
the keyboard section is light enough and the
display heavy enough to make opening the
thing a bit awkward.

Even the screen's unbelievably high
resolution has its drawbacks. Menu items,
fonts, and icons are tiny and unreadable at
Windows' native scale. We suggest a trip into
the Control Panel to blow up the point sizes
and scale of pretty much every UI element.

And then there's the price: A baseline i5
Kirabook with no touchscreen starts at $1600
—that's $200 more than the priciest
MacBook Air. And a top-tier i7 Kirabook with
touchscreen costs $2000—a $100 premium
over a MacBook Pro with Retina outfitted
with an i7 processor.

That kind of price premium over the
computers Toshiba is aiming to compete
against is going to be a problem. Which is a
shame, because, performance-wise, the
Kirabook is a stunner. It can handle video
editing with ease—it ships with copies of
Adobe Premier Elements 11 and Photoshop
Elements 11—and it handles games and
tasks like video encode/decode with no
hiccups. Aside from the small caveats
mentioned above about display weight and
bezel size, the Kirabook is a genuine pleasure
to use. The keyboard is comfortable; the
frame is sturdy and high-quality. The port
configuration is useful and generous for a
machine of this size, including three USB 3.0
ports, an SD card reader, and a full-size
HDMI port. And did we mention how
stunningly sharp the screen is? It's worth
mentioning again.

Were it not for the price, this would be a
totally reasonable alternative to Apple's
premium lineup. But here's our advice to
anyone looking for a high-quality option that
isn't an Apple laptop: Wait out Toshiba on
this one. When the company drops the prices
on Kirabooks by 10 percent, snatch one up.

Source:popularmechanics