New Chromebook won't break with 365-pound person standing on it

CTL claims its NL6x Extra-Rugged Chromebook for Education won't break if a 365-pound (165 kilogram) person stands on it. It can also withstand drops of 70 centimeters, more than 2 feet.

That makes the US$269 laptop ideal for classrooms, where clumsy children can drop and rough up laptops. The device has the look of a small briefcase, with a retractable handle on the top to carry it.

The laptop has been reinforced to ensure it doesn't break. At the top is a protective cover that can double as a whiteboard. The lower layer has a shock absorber in case of drops. The hinges and open ports are also reinforced.

The extra layers have made the laptop slightly heavy at 1.38 kilograms (3 pounds), about the same weight as other rugged Chromebooks like Lenovo's Chromebook 11e.

The laptop is otherwise similar to many Chromebooks available today. It has an 11.6-inch screen that displays images at a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, 16GB of storage, 4GB of memory, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and an Intel Celeron 2940 dual-core processor.

The laptop can run for nine hours on a single battery charge. External hard drives can be attached to the USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 ports. The laptop also has a 2.0-pixel webcam and an SD card reader.

The extra-rugged Chromebook has Chrome OS, which is designed for computing on the Internet. Chromebooks are popular for installations in places like schools as bare-bones laptops accessing applications on internal clouds.

Chromebook shipments are expected to continue growing this year, according to IDC. Shipments of Chrome OS hardware in education has surpassed Apple, according to Futuresource Consulting.