Most Chromebook hardware can be described as "only OK." The need to compete with others requires OEMs to cut costs, and this leads to laptops with only OK processors, or only OK keyboards, or only OK screens. The aging Chromebook Pixel hit most of the right notes, but had a price tag that was hard to swallow (and at this point, it doesn't look like Google has a Haswell update planned to improve its mediocre battery life). The quest continues for a Chromebook that does better than OK in multiple areas without being compromised in other areas.

Toshiba's Chromebook 2 may come close. The entry-level $249.99 model falls more into the "only OK" camp, with a 13.3-inch 1366×768 display and 2GB of RAM—it's mostly a streamlined version of the Haswell Chromebook Toshiba released earlier this year, processor aside. The $329.99 model is the interesting one: it bumps your RAM to 4GB and uses a good-looking 1080p IPS display, increasing your pixel density and your panel quality drastically. Chromebooks have offered 13.3-inch, 1080p screens before, but those display panels have been non-IPS versions with inferior colors, contrast, and viewing angles.

The only downside is that Toshiba's Chromebook 2 doesn't use one of Intel's Haswell chips, as its predecessor did. It steps sideways to a dual-core Bay Trail-based Atom chip, the Celeron N2840, which should be adequate for most basic tasks but includes a weaker GPU and can execute fewer instructions-per-clock than Haswell. Hopefully the higher 2.16GHz (2.58GHz Turbo) clock speed can close the performance gap, and in any case the laptop should feel a fair bit faster than older ARM-based systems like the original Samsung Chromebook and the HP Chromebook 11. Battery life is rated by Toshiba at about 11 hours.

Both the entry-level and upgraded Chromebooks come in a more streamlined chassis that weighs 2.95 pounds and is 0.76 inches thick. In person, it looks a lot like a plastic version of the high-end Kirabook, which is generally a good thing. Ports include one full-size HDMI output, a headphone jack, one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, and an SD card slot that can accept cards up to 2TB in size (no, that's not a typo, though you aren't going to find SD cards in that capacity just yet). Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi support are also included. It comes in three colors ("Charcoal, Aqua, and Rose"), and goes on sale October 5.