Gadgetory

what's up everyone John retina from TechnoBuffalo here and today we are with the $1,300 wonder this is the Chromebook pixel Google's emphatically I'm not sure who asked this guy does bring a lot to the table as far as cloud computing modern design and a lot of pretty killer specs let's go ahead and take a first look at the Chromebook pixel and see if it should be your next laptop alright so we are here with the Chromebook pixel a fine example of Google's really impressive industrial design but those good looks actually go beneath the skin this guy's got some pretty nice specs as well so let me get this out of the way first cuz it's really gonna be the giant elephant in the room it's got a $1,300 price tag to go with it that's not the LTE version it's actually $12.99 if you want the LTE version you have to pony up an extra 200 bucks to jump to $1500 so not cheap at all this laptop is not geared to the average consumer Google's smart enough to know they're not gonna sell these guys in bulk this is a essentially a readily available developer's unit that they might want to get in hands for folks that want to start coding for Chrome OS operating system it's running there are chrome boxes there are other Chromebooks and other sort of chrome products Google's hoping to get onto the market and this is sort of the flagship product for that Google is under no disillusions that they're gonna sell a billion of these it's gonna be a mass-market item I just wanted to get that sucker out of the way so from a spec standpoint it's got a Core i5 processor clocked at 1.8 gigahertz it's got Intel's relatively capable HD graphics that's the 4000 that is integrated from a port standpoint it's got um it's not overwhelming with high power it's got two USB 2.0 ports mini DisplayPort an SD MMC card reader unlike previous Chrome OS laptops or desktops that we've seen there's one actually has a pretty decent amount of on-board storage it's got 32 gigs of SSD which is gonna result in obviously a very fast file access but also incredibly quick boot up times certainly you'd expect that from an SSD but Chrome OS is really meant for those quick boot ups and it works really this is one of the fastest boot ups I've ever seen on a laptop so the big deal here it's named the pixel it's all about this guy the screen this is probably the best screen I have ever seen on a laptop it's a twelve point eight five inch affair with 4.3 million pixels it's got a resolution of 2560 by 1700 it's actually means it has the highest pixel density of any laptop ever with 239 it is absolutely incredible it's got a 117 inch wide viewing angle as well so you can view it from really any spot augmented with four gigs of RAM as I mentioned 32 gigs on the SSD if you opt for the LT version you're gonna get an extra couple gigs and go to 64 all right so let's talk a little bit more about the screen it is beautiful it's also incredibly glossy I can pretty much wave at the camera and you could see it here in direct sunlight this is going to be borderline unusable so keep that in mind depending on how you want to use it I like most laptops coming out now this is a touchscreen and it works very well it supports multi-touch I'm pretty smooth scrolling so I'm go ahead and give an example go ahead and launch TechnoBuffalo here and you can scroll with your finger if you want to get the same desktop experience that you get anywhere else you can scroll down multi-touch is here we have not been able to get pinch-to-zoom are they working on any website where it would work ordinarily if you were on a tablet so something to bear in mind here I'm not gonna talk that much about Chrome OS we've talked about it at length but little bits will filter into this review video looks absolutely tremendous on here I'll show an example of some of the most common videos you'll probably watch YouTube and also if you can hear if it's gonna translate the speakers on this guy are pretty outstanding for a laptop this is small and this thin let me go enjoy you what its gonna sound like so like that goat would say yeah it sounds pretty good here it's very surprising what is also surprising is the battery life it's got five hours of battery life you'd expect much much much more from essentially a web of only operating system Chrome OS is essentially a Chrome browser with apps there's a decent amount of app support but not a giant amount there all the stuff that you'd want to do ordinarily on a laptop you're gonna have a hard time finding an equivalent here you have to go ahead and browse a chrome store and even then not all the apps are going to function properly Google is hoping though you can overlook that they're gonna give you a free terabyte of Google Drive storage so you know that's kind of awesome if you want to store all your files in the cloud you've got sort of a taskbar launch bar down here which is now totally touchscreen you can have go ahead and launch that up you can actually view files and have a native file explorer which is really nice addition to the newest version here of Chrome OS and go ahead and view your file just like you would so if you want to minimize something all you have to do is just tap the icon down below either with your finger or the trackpad and speaking of the trackpad it is really good it's a very large wide trackpad not sure what's made out but it's got sort of a glossy feel to it I know it works extremely well for multi-touch scrolling as you scroll up and down it is extremely smooth so Google's done a very nice job incorporating multi-touch into the trackpad alright so the keyboard here is absolutely outstanding it's a chiclet style that was really made popular by apple's keyboards but other manufacturers have been using it for years as well but there are some oddities here gone is a caps locks and got a chrome specific search button here we don't have a function road dedicated but you have a ton of function keys if you don't have a typical f1 f2 but you have some shortcuts that line the top of its keyboard and typing experience is really outstanding and it worked very well I've got a 720p front-facing camera here obviously for web chat or you might want to do for our new Google hangout I'm sure Google is hoping you will utilize pictures here also quite obviously very good-looking so I'm gonna go and give an example I will use the wallpaper here they're full HD wallpapers so you have with your quota number right you go ahead and take two fingers tap down I didn't go ahead and set wallpaper and so give us sort of a nice sense of how images look and they do look absolutely gorgeous on the screen assuming you're getting a nice high-res image oh and go to the next one things just look absolutely beautiful here we'll keep that one it looks like a Google serene Twilight so everything else here is kind of as you'd expect build quality is absolutely tremendous here it's probably one of the best feeling best-looking laptops I've ever seen I love the glowing light on the back it serves no purpose as of yet other than is looking really cool and it's something certainly unique to this laptop so the chrome badging here is really solid I like that you've got one right above the keyboard and one on the back on the piano hinge one nice thing about the hinge is well certainly going to deal with touchscreens it's pretty tight hinge so as you're touching this it's not going to move back too much it's obviously a little bit of give but certainly better than what I've seen on some other laptops and sort of Windows eight ultrabooks that also utilise touch screen or Windows eight laptops in general so the big thing here obviously is price we talked about that when we first started at thirteen hundred bucks is it clearly not geared for the mass-market you can get much better value elsewhere you've got the Microsoft Surface tablet so slew of Windows eight ultrabooks Windows 8 tablets and Windows 8 laptops and desktops you're pretty much a Macbook price here as well for a few hundred dollar difference this is not a computer you get if you want mass productivity obviously want to play games doing a service video editing who is this good for really just developers if you want to develop for Chrome OS obviously this is gonna be the flagship product to learn how to do it with alright for considering picking one of these up and you're not a developer you're gonna get a great web only experience you're gonna be able to you know browse the web using Chrome play videos doing Chrome but that's really it you're probably better suited to pick up a tablet whether you want a Nexus device is going to stay with Google or look towards an iPad but this is for media consumption this is not media creation at all but with that in mind Google's done a really nice job they're not masquerade eNOS is anything other than what it is they're not saying it's a laptop for everybody they're not saying it's a laptop for gamers or heavy video editors it doesn't pretend to be anything else then it's an unpretentious in doing it it's got a trim this green it's got a great web browser it's got one of the best keyboard and touchpad experiences I've seen but this is not a product that would ever consider using on a regular basis and you shouldn't either unless you want to start coding and creating your own apps for Google Chrome there are way less expensive options if you want to try Chrome OS very cheap Chromebooks very cheap Chrome boxes and soon we'll probably see Chrome on televisions as well this is not the one to get if you want any sort of productivity but if you want a code and you want a gorgeous screen you're gonna enjoy the Chromebook just don't go in thinking you're gonna play some games you