Toshiba has revealed plans to take on Apple’sMacBook Pro with Retina Display with the Kirabook, a touch-screen Windows 8 laptop with a high-resolution display.

The Kirabook is designed to sit at the very top end of Intel’s Ultrabook specifications: while thin and light, its high-resolution 13.3in display has a 2,560×1,440 resolution – just slightly lower than the 2,560×1,600 resolution of Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro. Unlike Apple’s device, however, the Kirabook will include an optional touch-screen module, designed for use with Microsoft’s touch-centric Windows 8 operating system.

Due to launch next month, the Kirabook is less than 18mm thick and weighs 1.18kg – making it both thinner and lighter than Apple’s equivalent. Beneath the chassis is some reasonably impressive hardware, too: the base model includes an Intel Core i5 processor based on Intel’s Ivy Bridge platform, a 256GB solid-state storage drive, 8GB of DDR3 memory and a backlit, Chicklet-style keyboard. Toshiba will also launch a premium edition, which adds the aforementioned touch-screen and upgrades the internals to include a more powerful Intel Core i7 processor.

Toshiba’s entry into the high-resolution laptop market is hardly the first: as well as Apple’s retina-class MacBook Pro, Google surprised the market earlier this year with the unveiling of the Chromebook Pixel, a high resolution laptop designed around its cloud-based Chrome OS operating system. While the hardware impressed, it was the somewhat limited software which let the device down during our review – and so it will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s Windows 8 can make of the high-resolution Kirabook, especially when equipped with the optional touch-screen upgrade.

Toshiba has yet to confirm UK pricing or availability for the Kirabook, but says it plans to launch the device in the US in May priced at $1,599 for the Core i5 version or $1,999 for the Core i7 touch-screen model (around £1,048 and £1,311 respectively, excluding taxes.)