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"  The Toshiba Kirabook is about as direct a frontal assault as a company could make on Apple&amp;#039;s MacBook Air. It&amp;#039;s got a featherweight (2.9-pound), slim, 0.7-inch-thin magnesium frame with tapered edges that make it seem even thinner. It&amp;#039;s even got an L-shaped hinge and backlit keys like Apple&amp;#039;s laptops do.  In fact, it&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;t necessarily a bad thing, as the MacBook Air has ideal design and construction. Really, it&amp;#039;s a bit surprising that there aren&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;s 2560 x 1440 display rivals the pixel density of Apple&amp;#039;s 2560 x 1600 Retina screen (honestly, though, at a certain point the pixels are so small that the differences are imperceptible), yet Toshiba&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;s featherweight computer.  The reason the Kirabook can still have a 13.3-inch screen is that Toshiba&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;s thin bezel gives scant real estate at the edges. Also, the Kirabook&amp;#039;s capacitive display is a bit heftier than the thin screen on Apple&amp;#039;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&amp;#039;s unbelievably high resolution has its drawbacks. Menu items, fonts, and icons are tiny and unreadable at Windows&amp;#039; 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&amp;#039;s the price: A baseline i5 Kirabook with no touchscreen starts at $1600\u2014that&amp;#039;s $200 more than the priciest MacBook Air. And a top-tier i7 Kirabook with touchscreen costs $2000\u2014a $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\u2014it ships with copies of Adobe Premier Elements 11 and Photoshop Elements 11\u2014and 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&amp;#039;s worth mentioning again.  Were it not for the price, this would be a totally reasonable alternative to Apple&amp;#039;s premium lineup. But here&amp;#039;s our advice to anyone looking for a high-quality option that isn&amp;#039;t an Apple laptop: Wait out Toshiba on this one. When the company drops the prices on Kirabooks by 10 percent, snatch one up. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/reviews/a8960/toshiba-kirabook-hands-on-review-15437037/>