Clover SunBook netbook with Pixel Qi display now available

The SunBook from Clover Systems is the first 10 inch netbook to ship with a Pixel Qi transflective display. That means you can use the netbook in full color mode for viewing pictures, watching movies, or doing just about anything else you’d expect to do on a netbook. But you can also kill the backlight to view the display in a sunlight-readable high contrast, low power mode. That lets you use the netbook outdoors or simply save energy when you don’t need color or backlighting.

I got a chance to see the SunBook at CES earlier this month, and for the most part it looks like a typical netbook — until you shut off the backlight, when it looks like a netbook with an E Ink-style display.

Unfortunately that Pixel Qi screen comes at a cost. The SunBook went on sale this weekend for $795. That’s actually a bit less than the price the company was advertising a few weeks ago, but the high price tag is clearly going to turn off some potential customers.

The rest of the specs are pretty much standard netbook fare including a 10.1 inch 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. The computer runs Windows 7 Starter and has a touchpad with multitouch gesture support, 3G and 4G options, and a battery which Clover Systems says is good for 8 to 12 hours of run time.

You can find my brief hands-on video from CES after the break.