Toshiba intros NB520 series netbooks featuring Harman Kardon speakers

by Calvin February 17, 2011

written by Calvin February 17, 2011

If you think there’s nothing exciting left to expect in the world of netbooks, think again. Toshiba came up with the first netbook to ever feature Harman Kardon speakers, audio that is usually reserved for high-end entertainment laptops and luxury cars.

Toshiba N520

The new Toshiba N520 series netbooks has the latest Intel Atom processor, the dual-core N550 clocking at 1.5GHz along with 1GB or 2GB DDR3 RAM. Aside from that, specs are pretty much vanilla for a netbook but the highlight of the N520 is the Harman/Kardon Stereo Speakers located on both ends of the palm rest.

The Harman/Kardon speakers are nice alright but it’s only rated at 2W so don’t expect you’ll get the same experience when watching a movie in your home theater. Upon trying it out, it sounds like the small but powerful x-Mini speakers. Audio is not clangy like normal laptop speakers but it’s not as smooth and clear as compared to using a nice pair of high-performance earphones. What it does is replace your external speakers that you’ve been connecting to your laptop every time you listen to some tunes.

It also has the Sleep and Charge feature that makes it a portable USB charger for your other gadgets when needed. No need to turn it on, just connect your device via USB and it will charge it if there’s juice left on your netbooks battery.

The Toshiba N520 series comes in 5 colors (Striking Lime Green, Warm Brown, Daring Sunlight Copper, Joyful Blue, Sophisticated Turqoise) with engraved dot patterns and a rubber textured feeling. Don’t ask me how they came up with those names but the netbooks look awfully nice and would really appeal to the hip youngsters out there.