Most Chromebooks we see at PC Pro are fairly similar devices, but the Samsung Chromebook 2 13.3in is a product that bucks the trend. With a Full HD screen and a chassis inspired by Samsung’s Ultrabook range, it offers a touch of luxury in a sector all too often associated with no-frills, back-to-basics products. Read on for our in-depth Samsung Chromebook 2 review.This wide expanse of LCD means it’s notably larger than the 11.6in version we reviewed recently, but Samsung has managed to keep both the weight and thickness down to manageable levels. The Chromebook 2 13.3in tips the scales at 1.4kg, a mere 200g heftier than its smaller sibling, and it’s exactly the same thickness: 20mm including the rubber feet. The design of the 13.3in model is also much like that of its smaller cousin. It has a leather-effect texture covering the lid, replete with fake stitching around the edge, and a slick of shiny, semi-matte plastic surrounds the screen, keyboard and underside. Only the colour is different: where the 11.6in is black, the 13.3in version comes in what Samsung calls Luminous Titan; that’s grey, with a very slight brown tint, to anyone else.On the edges are two USB sockets (one USB 2, one USB 3), an HDMI output, a Kensington Lock attachment, a 3.5mm headset jack and a single microSD slot, allowing you to expand on the 16GB of internal storage.

The screen is what this Chromebook is all about, though, and it’s a step up from what you’ll find on most Chromebooks. Brightness reaches a maximum of 247cd/m2 and contrast peaks at 476:1 – figures that translate to reasonably bright, punchy images. The 13.3in, Full HD screen is significantly better than the display on the 11.6in model, too, which only reached a brightness of 210cd/m2 and dropped behind with a contrast ratio of 334:1.There’s only one Chromebook that gives the Samsung’s Full HD display a real run for its money: the HP Chromebook 11 (web ID: 384781), the 1,366 x 768 IPS panel of which sacrifices pixel density for wider viewing angles and richer colour reproduction. It’s noticeable that the Samsung’s colour temperature is on the cold side, with grey tones taking on a bluish tint, but it’s the extra resolution of the Full HD panel that makes the biggest difference. Text, graphics, photos and videos all look extra-crisp, and there’s much more room to spread out, allowing you to view a Google Drive document and a website comfortably side by side, for example.

In fact, the screen on the Chromebook 2 has a higher pixel density than many significantly more expensive laptops. Whichever way you look at it, it's quite an achievement for a laptop that costs only £329.Samsung hasn’t sacrificed the essentials to keep the price down, either. The spacious Scrabble-tile keyboard makes touch-typing very comfortable indeed, and the large touchpad beneath doesn’t throw a spanner in the works. There’s a reasonable specification elsewhere, too, with 2x2 stream 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4 and, as mentioned, 16GB of internal storage. The end result is a highly usable, affordable portable that’s ideal for carrying out basic office tasks and browsing the web.As with its smaller cousin, the Chromebook 2 13.3in’s main weakness lies in its performance. Under the hood, it’s powered by an ARM-based, eight-core Samsung Exynos Octa 5800 SoC with four cores running at 2.1GHz and four running at 1.3GHz. There’s 4GB of RAM to go with this, and a Mali-T628 MP6 GPU. On paper, this is an impressive-looking piece of silicon, but, once again, the Samsung doesn’t feel as snappy in general use as Chromebooks we’ve used running Intel Celeron processors. Scrolling up and down hefty web pages and navigating around Google Docs and Google Sheets files is far from smooth, and we didn’t have to look hard in the Chrome Web Store to find games with which it struggled; even Angry Birds is juddery. In both the SunSpider and Peacekeeper benchmarks, the Chromebook 2's results were mediocre, with results of 1,052ms and 1,287 respectively.

On the plus side, it wakes up from sleep a touch quicker than its smaller sibling, and the light demands of Chrome OS means that it boots from cold in only eight seconds. Battery life, as with the 11.6in version, is solid, too. Looping a cached video at 720p, with Wi-Fi off and the screen set to a brightness of 120cd/m2, saw the Chromebook 2 13.3in last for 6hrs 56mins - longer than most rivals, although shorter than its stablemate.Performance isn’t brilliant, then, but there’s little doubt that the Samsung Chromebook 2 13.3in represents a good deal. You’ll find it hard to match the combination of portability and battery life in any Windows laptop at this price, let alone the inclusion of high-end treats such as a Full HD display and 802.11ac wireless.Also, bear in mind that Google’s OS has come on a lot in recent times: it allows documents and spreadsheets to be edited offline, for example, and some apps and games can be installed locally. At the same time, the amount you can get done online has increased. If you haven’t considered a Chromebook before, the Samsung Chromebook 2 13.3in might make you think again.

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As Windows devices cram ever more performance into portable packages, the plus-sized likes of the Toshiba Satellite S70-B are becoming an increasingly rare breed. If you're looking for a no-compromise desktop replacement, though, you should be paying attention. With 17.3in of Full HD display powered by one of the latest AMD Radeon R9 graphics chips, this £1,199 laptop delivers a serious amount of power.The Toshiba Satellite S70-B makes few concessions to design or portability. Indeed, it looks just like the desktop replacements of yore, and although Toshiba has attempted to inject a dash of razzmatazz with a metal lid and wristrest, the thick, predominantly plastic chassis and frumpy curves are unlikely to fire anyone's desires. Nor is this a laptop anyone will relish carrying about on a regular basis: it weighs a portly 2.8kg on its own, and a considerable 3.3kg once you factor in the power supply.

Fire up a demanding application or one of the latest gaming titles, however, and the Satellite S70-B is in its element. Its quad-core Core i7-4700HQ is the CPU of choice for most high-end laptops, and Toshiba has partnered it with one of its own 1TB hybrid hard disks and 16GB of DDR3 RAM.In our Real World Benchmarks, the Toshiba sped to an Overall result of 0.87. That's a little behind other laptops we've seen with the same CPU, but we suspect this is down to the Satellite's lack of an SSD. Despite having a mere hybrid hard disk, however, the Satellite S70-B feels surprisingly responsive in all but the most strenuous of multitasking situations. Toshiba's SSHD definitely plays its part here, and in our tests the drive's 8GB of NAND flash was clearly being put to good use. Even demanding applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Sony Vegas Pro sprang into action with SSD-like haste.

Gaming performance is decent, thanks to the presence of AMD's new mid-range GPU, the Radeon R9 M265X. In our Crysis tests, the Toshiba's average frame rates only dropped below the 40fps mark once we cranked the resolution up to 1,920 x 1,080. At Full HD resolution and High quality settings, the Toshiba recorded an average of 36fps; with the detail levels cranked right up to the maximum Very High quality settings, the frame rate sank to 21fps. Disappointingly, AMD's GPU is off the pace of Nvidia's 8 Series mobile family. The MSI GE70 2PE Apache Pro, equipped with an Intel Core i7-4700HQ and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M, was twice as fast in the Full HD Very High quality tests.Battery life isn't great, but this is par for the course with a laptop of this type. In our light-use test, the Satellite S70-B clung on for 5hrs 14mins. With the screen brightness cranked to maximum and the CPU working flat out, the Toshiba lasted only 1hr 14mins.The huge 17.3in, Full HD display ought to be a highlight, but this is where the Satellite S70-B begins to lose its lustre. Rather than the IPS panel technology found on most high-end laptops, Toshiba has saved money by opting for a low-quality TN panel. Colours look cold and unnatural even to the naked eye, and our X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter gave the display a damning report.

The panel's high 362cd/m² brightness is the only plus point. Contrast is low, at 492:1, and the panel covers only 86% of the sRGB colour gamut, so colours aren't as rich and saturated as they should be. Colour accuracy is woeful – everything from games to photographs is dogged with an unnatural tint – and vertical viewing angles are infuriatingly narrow.Sales of Chromebooks are expected to leap by 79% this year – but most of the total 5.2 million devices will be sold to US schools.Chromebooks first arrived in 2011, with Samsung and Acer each launching a low-cost cloud-based notebook running Google's Chrome OS.Since then, Chromebook sales have gradually accelerated, with the vast majority of devices going to schools in the US. Last year, 85% of the 2.9 million Chromebooks sold were in the US, and 82% were to the education sector.Google reported earlier this year that a fifth of US school districts were using Chromebooks, which represents about 5,000 schools – up from 2,000 at the beginning of 2013.School sales are more limited in the UK, however: Samsung told PC Pro that it had shipped between 15,000 to 20,000 Chromebooks to British schools in 2013. British PC maker Novatech said it's seen "slow and steady growth in Chromebook sales to schools, but they still account for a tiny proportion of our overall turnover".

"Microsoft has been quite innovative in protecting their share of the education market and we've seen the benefit with sales of our Windows machines," said head of marketing Tim LeRoy. Novatech said that Chromebooks have proved less popular in business. "So far, very few businesses have been requesting Chromebooks, but the popularity of Google apps is definitely increasing," LeRoy said.Gartner said companies are considering the platform, but not yet making the move from Microsoft. "So far, businesses have looked at Chromebooks, but not bought many," said Gartner analyst Isabelle Durand. "By adopting Chromebooks and cloud computing, businesses can benefit; they can shift their focus from managing devices to managing something much more important — their data."She suggested that companies such as Acer and Samsung – the first to launch Chromebooks, and the market leaders for the devices – see Chrome OS as a way to shift focus from consumer laptops into the more lucrative business market."While there is less presence in the business market, and a limited product portfolio for mid-size businesses, Chromebooks could open doors to the business market," said Durand.

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Gartner predicts that sales will triple to 14.4 million by 2017, but that Chromebooks will remain "niche" for at least the next five years. Chromebook shipments of 5.2 million this year represent a tiny slice of the 308 million desktops and laptops that Gartner predicts will be sold.What can Chromebook makers - and Google - do to draw in more users? Durand suggests they need more solid-state storage, faster memory and better user support. "Making a competitive Chromebook is not just a matter of hardware and price; what is most important is to show how the device's cloud-based architecture provides genuine advantages to users," she added.Globally, Samsung nabbed 65% of the Chromebook market in 2013, selling 1.5 million devices last year. Acer is in second place with 21%, while HP ranked third.In the UK, Google lists eight models for sale, including its own Chromebook Pixel, and that doesn't include Dell's budget version or Lenovo's devices."Lenovo's Chromebooks are very rugged, compared with the competition, and therefore ideal for primary and secondary school pupils," Gartner said. "However, Lenovo needs to manage its devices portfolio in such a way as to avoid selling so many Chromebooks that it undermines sales of its other ThinkPads — which provide better margins."

All four of the UK’s mobile networks are now well into their 4G rollouts, and prices have fallen dramatically since EE first launched 4G in 2012. Is now the time to upgrade your smartphone?Fourth-generation mobile technology is referred to by the umbrella term 4G. All of the UK’s mobile networks run on the same 4G standard: Long-Term Evolution (LTE), which offers a significant speed increase over the 3G technologies we’ve been using for the past decade or so.It has a theoretical maximum download speed of around 300Mbits/sec and uploads at up to 75Mbits/sec, although actual network speeds are considerably slower than those headline figures.EE’s "double speed” 4G, which is available in around 20 cities at the time of writing, offers maximum download speeds of 60Mbits/sec and maximum uploads of 11Mbits/sec, although EE admits that the average download speed will be around 20Mbits/sec.At those speeds, 4G becomes a viable alternative to fixed-line connectionsAt those speeds, 4G becomes a viable alternative to fixed-line connectionsThat’s still faster than what most people get on a fixed-line ADSL connection, and only about 12Mbits/sec slower than the average BT fibre-to-the-cabinet connection.

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