Toshiba outs NB520 and NB500 netbooks

The Gadget Show  Friday 03 December 2010

Toshiba's music-loving NB520

Netbooks are far from dead – no matter what those tablet disciples would have you believe. Witness Toshiba’s brand new NB500 and NB520, offering a new take on the cut-size laptop concept fresh for 2011.

And if Toshiba is to be believed, the new netbook frontier is all about sound – or at least on the NB520 anyway, which comes packing plenty of audio street cred courtesy of a pair of 2W Harmon Kardon speakers – the smallest H-K has ever shoehorned into a laptop’s case.

Heading up the rest of the spec is an Intel Atom N550 processor, which is backed up by 2GB of DDR3 memory, a quarter of a terabyte of storage and a 10.1in LED-backlit display running at a respectable 1024×600 resolution.

The NB500 offers a more affordable alternative (though neither new model has actually been priced as yet) by ditching the fancy speakers and stepping down to a slower Intel Atom N455 CPU, but otherwise shares the rest of the NB520’s credentials.

Both new arrivals should be hitting the shelves in the first quarter of next year, by which time we’ll hopefully have the all-important price tag.