Hands on with the Retina-like Toshiba Kirabook

-I'm Dan Ackerman and we are here taking a look at Toshiba's new Kirabook. This is part of the new Kira line of products from Toshiba. It's their super top-end line, above the Satellite, the Portégé, the Tecra, the Qosmio, whatever else they have. The only product in that Kira line right now is this -- the Kirabook. It is a 13-inch laptop, looks and feels a lot like other 13-inch Ultrabook-style laptops including some that Toshiba makes. The big difference here is that this guy has a very, very high-resolution screen. Toshiba calls it PixelPure and it's about 2560 x 1440. That's the screen resolution. It's very similar to what you would get in an Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display laptop. Even though, obviously, Toshiba does not want you to make that comparison, they really do want you to kind of make that comparison. Another great comparison between the Retina MacBook Pros and the Kirabook is in price. This guy starts out at $1599 and that's for a 13-inch, you know, Core i5 laptop and it goes up to $1999. That's actually the version we have here because this thing adds a Core i7 processor and it adds a touchscreen. That's right the $1599 base model does not have a touchscreen. On MacBooks, you expect that, but for Windows laptop, that's actually kind of crazy for that price. Adding touchscreen is actually $200 more. So, $1599, $1699-- $1799 just to get the Core i5 version with a touchscreen. Now, Toshiba is hoping that the super high-resolution screen is gonna be worth that to you. In addition to the very, very nice materials and construction, this thing is made of a magnesium alloy that's actually lighter and stronger than aluminum. This is actually lighter than a comparable 13-inch MacBook. It's got a smaller footprint. It's a little bit thicker, however. As a laptop, this performs great. It's got a nice big touchpad. It's got a keyboard that's better than the keyboards on the other Toshiba Ultrabooks that we've tested. The question is, "Is $2000 nice when you can get a perfectly good Ultrabook from Toshiba for $800?" And that's why I think this is what misses the mark a little bit. You want a $1600 or $2000 laptop to really wow you and the design here is very nice, but it doesn't look like a $2000 laptop. I think we need just to go a little bit more out there with the design to really pull you in. Some other guys have done that with the expensive laptops whether it's the Retina MacBook Pros or the Samsung Series 9 or the Acer Aspire S7. You know, these systems may not have been worth what they were asking for, but they certainly took the [unk] to look different enough, so you really felt like it was something that was in a regular laptop. Anyway, I'm Dan Ackerman and that is the Toshiba Kirabook.