Gadgetory

hey what is up guys I'm KB HD here and this is the Chromebook pixel easily one of the most confusing products of the first half of 2013 and one of the most difficult to review because so many of the products we look at all the time are geared for consumers this one is not anyway in terms of pure aesthetics this thing is awesome it's made of an aluminum chassis and has a very squared off design in fact it bears some resemblance to the 13-inch retina MacBook Pro in more ways than one but that's probably a good thing because they both look pretty good and the design is all topped off with this sweet light bar that Google says is included simply because it looks cool and it does the design is so understated otherwise that the light bar is an awesome but subtle lighting effect that brings the other the whole Google design like a boss it's a nice looking accessory and outside of that it's a very handsome notebook again we like the aluminum unibody stuff and the port layout is also pretty basic we have some USB ports we have an SD card reader but all that is to be expected from a basic laptop now if I were to recommend a Chromebook to anyone I recommend the 64 gig LTE model but this here is a Wi-Fi only version so it's a 32 gigabyte pixel even so if I spend $1300 on a laptop any laptop it better have a nice keyboard a nice trackpad and nice display might better heat you know nice build quality the whole nine I expected the most when you go over $1,000 and the Chromebook pixel actually does deliver that so this Chiklis style keyboard is very comfortable to type on with you know big hands small hands it has just a tiny bit of flex in the center but it's not too bad and the speakers are incredible like mind-blowing ly good they happen to be invisible because they're hidden beneath the keyboard but they are really really loud so you can watch a movie literally in a loud environment with them and they'll be loud and crisp and clear they're awesome and the trackpad is also magnificent this large smooth matte black trackpad is pleasing to the eye and very pleasing to use it's nice and smooth and it completes the laptop experience and then of course it's called the Chromebook pixel because of that display so this guy is rocking a pretty noteworthy display it's a twelve point eight five inch 2560 by seventeen hundred display which makes it noteworthy for a couple of reasons 1 this is the highest pixel density display on any laptop at 239 PPI it also is noteworthy because of the brightness 400 nits very bright display it's extremely sharp and crisp and clear it's also noteworthy because it's a 3 by 2 aspect ratio which makes it taller than your typical 16 by 9 net laptops that were used to but then again you're building a machine for the web so every single web page Scrolls vertically so you're actually getting some generous extra vertical pixels in there even if you do get some letterboxing with movies so that extra screen real estate is welcome and it's noteworthy because it's a touchscreen now I have very mixed opinions about touch screens on laptops my number one problem with them is usually how much the hinge wobbles when I try to touch the screen on the pixel is no exception so I found myself holding the back of the display in place while I use the other hand on the touchscreen but I can still use the keyboard to type regular things but the other problem is the lack of anything touchscreen optimized and Chrome OS is no exception at least right now a lot of people express the desire for this device to run Android in one of my previous videos in the comments section and that seems to make sense but I'll get to that in a second so speaking of Chrome OS how is the operating system well it's very similar to what we've seen on those cheaper 200 and 250 dollar Chromebooks and probably the web browser you're watching this in right now this is a pretty advanced version of Chrome OS though and it has some neat tricks to make it feel like a little bit more than just a web browser first of all multiple window action is always nice and window management is now built-in and it works well there's also this bar at the bottom that feels like the dock in Windows 7 where you can pin and launch your applications and you can also auto hide it too with just a swipe so that's nice there's also a setting strafe floating at the bottom right hand corner and this gives you quick access to settings and things like volume Bluetooth etc kind of like Android was for tablets and I can see this going further into that direction in the future as a performer the pixel was pretty solid in fact it felt like it was overall a bit more stable than the Chrome Beta is for my desktop and a few benchmarks pretty much confirm that it scored a lot higher on browser mark than the cheaper Chromebooks but still less powerful than the hackintosh pro that runs Google Chrome also of course since its Chrome OS and boots superfast and it wakes from sleep instantaneously and all that stuff you can go pretty much from a cold boot to surfing internet in a matter of seconds battery life is again very average for a laptop of this size coming in at about five-and-a-half hours from my use but watching a movie on that display could kill it a bit faster at maximum brightness but honestly this is like the ultimate grandma surf the web machine though it feels very much like a beta product pinch-to-zoom for example is buried in the settings in chrome flags but once it's enabled you can start playing around with it you can see it works pretty well on a lot of sites scrolling is 100% smooth all the time it's actually common to see that core i5 and its integrated graphics hiccup a little bit when trying to scroll down really big sites but for the most part websites loaded quickly and scrolling and zooming was a pleasure so you can tell it really you can tell really easily which parts of websites aren't Retina display optimized with certain graphics and things like that but text always looks good whenever you zoom in on text on this display it looks extremely crisp and sharp from any viewing distance so really my only complaint about the Chromebook itself would be that it gets a bit warm sometimes when using it for a long period of time and sometimes that display is just a bit too glossy the reflections might get annoying and daylight but outside of that it's arguably the best hardware in the business right now but not Google now Google has like a really massive task ahead of them to get chrome OS up to speed and to get the Chrome OS webstore up to speed even though Google Drive can replace Microsoft Office and a lot of the webstore apps are really well done right now apps like Photoshop and video editing apps for example and native software are really irreplaceable still and most people would opt for something running Windows or OS 10 over a Chromebook every time because the ability to run native apps but Google I'll tell you something right now if you want to make a little money yeah I'll let you in on a secret if you give the Chromebook pixel the ability to run Android apps prepare yourself to sell out because that would be a real unlocker of the potential of this machine but in the end it is really difficult to summarize the Chromebook pixel in any sort of concise way but basically I would say it goes back to the explained video that I did a couple of days ago I'll have a link right below the like button on this video or you can click the annotation right there but this is basically the definition of a a lo product and I would say as a summary this is a beautiful piece of engineering a really good-looking solidly built piece of hardware that you should never buy that being said definitely go watch the explained video because this is the real definition of a halo product right here and it's something that will basically be a beacon of light and shine the way forward as a sort of an inspiration for where Google wants their partners to go now so like we said we've seen lots of very cheap $250 $200 Chromebooks now that have proven that Chrome OS can be great for a basic cheap computer but Google is trying to shine the way for high-end Chromebooks and basically we'll just see how it goes from here so that's the Chromebook pixel guys thanks for watching definitely be sure to subscribe if you want to see more videos like this it's definitely helps out a lot and if you leave a thumbs up that's also very helpful either way thanks for watching and I'll talk to you guys the next one you