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Google set out to build “the best laptop possible.” The result: the Chromebook Pixel. A sleek and powerful device designed specifically for life in the cloud. If the display doesn’t make your jaw drop, the price tag will.
The Pixel is the latest iteration of Google’s Chromebook series. But unlike the sub-£200 beat-around that preceded it, the Pixel focuses on high-end features like a Retina-rivaling, pixel-packed touchscreen display, and powerful Intel i5 CPU. It runs Chrome OS, Google’s browser-based operating system.
It’s certainly not for everybody. Google says that the Pixel is built “specially for power users who have fully embraced the cloud” and both its performance and price tag seem support that claim. But really, few folks beyond those already heavily invested in Google’s online services actually meet that definition. Or Google fanboys. People married to a specific program like Photoshop or Garage Band, and need the specific functionality that the program provides won’t have much use for the Pixel. However, if your normal workday is almost entirely browser and cloud based — like mine is for example — or you’ve just fully bought into the Cult of Google, the Pixel can be incredibly useful.
It’s Google’s first foray into the high-end market and a direct assault on a segment held by rivals Apple and Microsoft’s legion of manufacturing partners. Google appears to be giving Chrome a legitimate shot at establishing itself as a viable OS. Chromebooks up until this point cost sub-£200 and performed like it. They were great as secondary laptops, something to give your kids to destroy so they’d keep their grubby mitts off your MBA. But the Pixel is built as an ultrabook competitor, not merely a stand-in. This is especially significant given Google’s popularity among the huddled masses. With the meteoric rise of Android, Google’s shown what its software can do with the right hardware partners. The Pixel looks to be the company’s first steps towards doing the same with Chrome OS. By providing it with inarguably top-rate hardware, Google has freed Chrome OS to succeed or fail on its own merits.
The Pixel’s main attraction, however, has got to be its big, beautiful touchscreen. It’s 12.85 inches diagonal, running on an Intel HD Graphics 4000 card at 2560 x 1700 resolution — that’s 239 ppi, better than Apple’s 227 ppi MacBook Pro Retina display. And rather than a conventional 16:9 aspect ratio (and in order to fit the full keyboard) Google went with a 3:2, providing nearly 20 per cent more vertical space for web browsing without sacrificing the ability to display 16:9 video content.
Its exterior is minimalist without appearing completely barren; the Pixel is smaller than a Thinkpad X1. It measures 29.8cm wide, 22.5cm deep, and 1.62cm thick with the lid closed. By comparison, the MacBook Air is 1.7cm when closed. But it weighs in at 1.52kg, noticeably heftier than the MBA’s 1.34kg. The dark grey aluminium frame is squeaky clean — Google intentionally omitted the ID symbols for ports, for example — and square, lots of rounded right angles, with a thin status light running along the top of the lid. The lid itself is sturdy and shows no signs of flexing even when I’m pressing against the touchscreen — it opens smoothly and effortlessly.
Opening the lid reveals a full size keyboard, with a set of functional keys — back, forward, reload, full screen, switch screen, screen brightness, volume control, and power — running left to right across the top of the board. The ten-point touch-pad is velvety soft and responsive (adjusting its responsiveness is easy enough through the Settings menu). It also includes a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a mini-HDMI out, a front-facing 720p HD camera, an SD card reader, and a headphone/mic jack.
Internally, the Pixel features an Intel dual core i5 processor, 32 or 64GB SSD with 4GB of DDR3 RAM. The 32 GB version comes with a built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi antenna, while there’s a 64GB version that comes with Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity, but we’re not getting it in the UK, yet.
Holy hell this thing is fast. Powering on takes just 15 seconds and it wakes instantly from sleeping. But consider the fact that it’s booting up a browser, so… yeah. Both the Wi-Fi and LTE connections make short work of moving large files to and from the cloud. The LTE slurps data and should be used sparingly, of course. The keyboard is perhaps the best I’ve ever used on a laptop. The keys are well-spaced, sturdy, and responsive with a firm action. The touchscreen is incredibly accurate and responsive. Unlike the Acer S7, where I found myself secretly wishing for a stylus, I rarely had to retouch in order to make a selection on Seamless or navigating through Netflix. This allowed me to switch effortlessly between using the touchpad for navigation and the screen itself for making selections (while minimising the amount of fingerprint smudging left on the screen). The video quality was superb, with minimal chop and pixelation on streaming content from YouTube (GoT Season 3 trailer), Netflix (Ghost Protocol), and Hulu (Naruto Shipuuden). Even powering through archives of large vertical-format web comics was much less of a hassle than on a 16:9 screen thanks to the extra 18 per cent of vertical real estate.
The battery life was impressive as well, lasting about 6 hours a charge. I also liked the charging cord’s indicator ring, which glowed red, yellow, or green according to how much power remained.
This machine is put together really, really well and the attention to detail is phenomenal. Every external screw is hidden from sight, the fans are efficient and almost completely silent, porting from a tiny gap in the rear of the lower lid. From opening the lid, to swiping across the pad and screen, you get the feeling that every single aspect of the computer has been agonised over for the user’s benefit. The same goes for the software; everything fits within a Google-curated UI, so it works together seamlessly and manages the content you produce automatically. At heart, the Pixel is a basic web browsing laptop with Office functionality and an incredible screen. It picks a function and does it very, very well.
This is an awesome rig saddled with an albatross of a price tag. Even if the limited potential functionality of Chrome OS didn’t turn you off, £1,049 for it probably will. And even given as much time as I spend on the Internet, dropping £1,049 on a system that does only that, no matter how well, is extravagant. Even when you can find a decent replacement for your standalone apps — using Pixlr Editor, say, rather than Photoshop — you’ve then got to go through the whole learning curve of adapting to the new software and workflow. It’s a hassle, no two ways about it. In addition, the speakers were decent but not in any way outstanding, they tended to squeak a bit with the volume above 80 per cent.
Again, it depends on what you’re looking for in a laptop. Similarly spec’ed Windows 8 Ultrabooks retail for less, and you can pick up a refurbished MBP (or MBA) for about the same. So if you need a “full-function” workstation, or can’t stand the thought of a device not being used to its fullest potential then, no, you probably shouldn’t.
However, a lot of people also use their laptops for little more than checking email and surfing the web — your parents, for example. It’s easy to forget just how enormous the Internet is, how much there is to see and do on it. And how gorgeous it all looks under 239 ppi.
• Screen Size & Resolution:12.85 inches, 2560 x 1700, 239 ppi
• Display Type: Touchscreen LCD
• CPU: 1.8 gHz dual core Intel i5
• Memory: 4 GB DDR3 RAM
• Storage: 32GB local SSD in the UK, 3 years of included 1TB Google Drive cloud storage
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000
• Connectivity: 2 x USB 2.0, SD card Reader, mini-HDMI, 802.11n Wi-Fi, LTE, 720P Front-facing camera
• Weight: 1.52kg pounds
• Dimensions: 298mm x 225mm x 16.2mm
• Price: £1,049
• Gizrank: 3.5
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I wonder how much the cost price is. On paper with the cloud storage it is pretty much free, which says a lot either about the price of the machine or the price of the google drive storage.
I am not tempted at the moment. If it ran everything in my Play Account then I would be.
Far, far, far too much money!
By the way, typo in the second paragraph, and formatting errors above the headings (should be spacing above them, surely)
Daft move from Google.
Cheers; just corrected.
I’d hate anyone who bought one of these far more than any Apple fanboy.
Why? If people spend all there time in a web browser then this is the best computer for them.
No it’s not!! There are FAAAAR cheaper chromebooks
yes but they arn’t as good, if you want the best computer for browsing the web then this is it. Lots of poeple spend £1000 on a laptop only to use it for web browsing.
Brain Explodes
You have gotta be shitting me.
Spazturtle – you had better be bloody joking. Why wouldn’t you just buy a kitted-out Macbook Air and just run the Chrome browser on it.
Because that wouldn’t be as good, you would get a lower resolution display in a aspect ratio that is not as good for web browser. You would miss out on LTE, opening the laptop from having the lid closed would take longer and web browsing would be slower as you have similar specs but the macbook air would be running a full os.
You also need to update a macbook where as a chrome book is allways updated.
Oh my God. 1) The internet is very low-res – High res graphics look so terrible on the Retina Macbooks. 2) LTE isn’t even reasonable in England yet, and if it is, just tether your phone. 3) MBA reload immediately from opening, seriously. They’re so quick. I understand Chrome is quicker, but by half a second. Which is nothing. 4)Web browsing will be almost identical, since the browser is nearly the same. I agree some system resources will be used by OS X but, to be honest, nearly nothing. 5) Is updating really that much of a hassle?
This isn’t even allowing for the humongous advantages – full OS with apps, more storage, faster processor for the price, thinner, better battery life.
That GPU with that resolution……..
I’m guessing it uses the system memory too so such low access to memory….
Isn’t it HD4000? It runs pretty nicely, HD4000.
All that money for a laptop that loses functionality as soon as the signal drops? No thanks google, I’d rather spend money on something that isn’t cloud centric.
The Price is up at the Google Play store. A bit more than £860….
ok a lot more.
Yeah this is just a badly ported over american post.
So it’s mostly crap to us and to look at.
Sorry; we had a few issues when porting it over last night — we’ve rectified the errors now though.
I’m beginning to get the impression that Google never intended to sell many of these…
chrome os is a bit meh but the real put off here is the fact that theyre charging close to the grand mark for a laptop with a poxy 32 or 64gb ssd, i know theyre trying to go the whole cloud storage route and all but that doesnt mean people dont want to store at least some files, my usb stick has as much storage as that thing does. and its only got 4gb of ram, also not enough for its price point. this thing is “apple” expensive (heavily overpriced for no good reason at all)
Not sure if it’s just me, but it looks a lot like a MacBook Pro. It reminds me how the Galaxy S looked very similar to the iPhone 3Gs.
Surely Google must also have something insane up their sleeves with the next ChromeOS update??
That price is just ludicrous!
I would love to laugh and point at anyone who buys this piece of shit.
I’m sorry, but they’re trying to copy the MacBook. The SIM tray, looks like the iPhone SIM tray. The single button multi-touch trackpad. Even the arrow keys and the cut-out to lift the display looks like a Mac. This is such a stupid joke of a product, and it costs more than the lowest-spec’d MacBook Pro 13″, yet the specs are even lower.
This is another one of Google’s “ahead of it’s time” products – there’s no way I’d buy this, nor would most people. But that’s missing the point of it. It’s en expensive showcase for what may be coming up – most people’s objections are price related, and rightly so. But give it another couple of years, and this thing will be a third of the price, better developed and probably awesome all around. As it is, it’s a gorgeous expensive anachronism.
Agreed. Hope this is Google’s “Bugatti Veyron” experiment and it trickles down to awesome future releases.
I so want this to do well, and if it was a Windows 8 machine I’d be all over this like a fat kid on a cupcake.
But for “power users” looking to lay down over a grand would likely also have invested several hundred (if not thousands) on Photoshop, Office, Maya, Visual Studio, etc it doesn’t make sense.
Kinda like asking photographers who spent £000′s on lenses to switch a different camera body.
For <£500 subsidised by Google to increase market share of their cloud services, it'd be a done deal.
What a flaming piece of shit for the price. Who are they aiming this at? Labotomosied hipsters with more money than sense?
Google employees, by the looks of it.
“But consider the fact that it’s booting up a browser”
It is not booting up a browser. It is booting a Linux OS which in turn boots a window manager which then loads Chrome and associated apps.
Does the writer actually think its booting a browser. I wonder how he thinks the browser handles USB, drives the display, keyboard etc… Honestly…
Its called Chrome OS, an operating system, not Chrome the browser.
You could have maybe googled it if you didn’t know, Wikipedia has a page on Chrome OS for instance.
On another note, we just got a 15″ Retina in the office, top spec. It boots in around 10 seconds and launches Photoshop in another 6.
FACE PALM!
I don’t understand who would buy this, except the uneducated, with lots of cash!
Surly Google would have been better off lowering the price to try and steal a bit of Apples customers!
The 13″ Macbook Air is £50 cheaper, has 4x the SSD, lasts 2 hours longer, has far greater software support and works with every other Apple device i own!
I’m guessing that these Chrome-books will have the same integration that Apple has with there devices(like Cloud storage of files within Apps, like Number and Pages etc…) at some point.
The Cloud storage thing is a frickin crock too!
So after three years of getting heavy use out of it, they can then charge you $50(or whatever it will be in 3 years) a month to continue using it!!!!!! DOUBLE FACE(FIST) PALM!
I hate android anyway………so a pointless rant from me….i wouldn’t buy one if it was £100!
I’ve owed an S2 and a Nexus 7….hated em both.
The missus has an S3 now, constantly crashes!
So my confidence in Google is low!
PS…….Chrome is a good browser though! :/ HMMPF!
Steve….
Oh yeah….it is touch screen though…..i like that!!