Gadgetory

let me tell you two true things about Chromebooks the state of them right now is both amazing and kind of terrible here's what's amazing in the education market you can get really cheap Chromebooks that do way more than you expect but in the terrible camp Google's been trying to push the state of the art for with partners and the hardware hasn't gone that well Google is also trying to get Android apps to work well on Chrome OS and that also is it working most of all we haven't had a true flagship spare no expense Chromebook since the Chromebook pixel - which was two years ago spare no expense you say how about a Google made Chromebook that starts at a thousand bucks and can go all the way up to 1650 it's this the pixel book and I can't tell if it's taking in Windows or the iPad or what but I can tell you it's a pretty incredible piece of hardware now this is a laptop and laptops mean specs and so we have to start there basically if you're hoping for a high-end laptop spec there's actually a pretty good chance that it's here the base thousand dollar model comes with an Intel i5 processor the seventh-generation KB link that's paired to eight gigs of ram which is quite a lot for a Chromebook and there's also 128 gigs of storage which is also a lot for a Chromebook the touch screen is twelve point three inches in a three by two aspect ratio which works out to 2400 by 1600 pixels there's two USB C ports a headphone jack a backlit keyboard and a battery that Google says is good for around 10 hours of mixed use there is no SD card slot though if you want you can drop money on a faster processor more RAM and more storage all the way up to that 1650 for an i7 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage you can also spend an extra 99 bucks on this all new pixel pen which is a Wacom style stylus with pressure and angle sensitivity it lasts for about a year on a simple quad a battery the pixel book weighs just under two and a half pounds and it's only ten millimeters thick and get this there are no fans even on the top tier processor those are the specs which are important because if $1,000 chromebook didn't have top dollar specs that would be bad now let's talk about design damn if this isn't one very good-looking well-made laptop it's entirely aluminium and it shares some of the design with the pixel phones because it has this glass shade on the back for the Wi-Fi antennas when you have it closed it looks pretty much like a solid hunk of aluminum except for the hinge and this indentation for the keyboard the palm rests are made out of as Google calls it advanced silicone but they're comfortable to rest on and they also protect the screen from the keyboard when you flip it around they also double as anti skid feet the trackpad is glass and it feels just right the keyboard has 0.8 millimeters of key travel which isn't very much but it feels much more like a traditional keyboard than what you'd get on say a MacBook or the surface pro tablet and really I just dig the aesthetics there's this symmetry between the pad on the keyboard deck and the shade on the lid this is a kind of design that I think Google could stick with for a very long time and I kind of hope it does because it's great Google is also introducing some big changes to how chrome OS works on the pixel book there's a new launcher that looks a little bit nicer and it makes it easier to distinguish between Android apps and Chrome apps you still launch it with the same key it's the one where your caps lock usually is and it still has a good old Google search field on it but there's a whole new button on the keyboard well okay technically there's two but I'm not counting the hamburger menu button that new button is the Google assistant key Google assistant on the pixel book works pretty much the same as it does everywhere else you can speak to it or you can type to it and the assistant will respond audibly or not depending on how you ask your question one clever thing it doesn't the pixel book though is it automatically offers search suggestions based on what's on your screen when you hit the button but if you want you can opt out of that you can also use the pixel pen to circle stuff on your screen and then the assistant can search for stuff based on that too but for me the bigger deal is that Android apps on Chrome OS are finally finally coming out of beta they're supposed to be a lot faster and more stable now especially on this very fast machine you can resize Android app windows and generally just use them like desktop apps and some companies like Adobe and Microsoft are working really hard to release versions of their Android apps that work on Chrome OS it has a 360 hinge so you can put it into tablet mode but unfortunately tablet mode still doesn't support split screen apps and I'm gonna have to test all of this to see if it works as well as google claims but if nothing else I'm glad that I finally actually get to judge the quality of Android apps on Chromebooks without having to put a beta asterisk at the end of it oh one more thing if you have a pixel phone you can turn on tethering automatically from the Chromebook just like it works on Apple laptops with iPhones I don't have quite as much to say about the pixel pen I do think it's need but it's another thing I want to test before I can give it any sort of final judgement one nice thing about the pixel pen is you don't have to pair it at all and you don't have to plug it into any weird ports in the side of your device to charge it I'm just not sure if it's worth 99 bucks and I know you're waiting for you to talk about the price so let's address it I get the feeling that Google is sorry not sorry about the price if smart phones cost a thousand bucks now why shouldn't a Chromebook especially one that's this good Google is confident in this thing and it's gonna be selling it in stores in the US everywhere starting October 31st so who on earth is this thing for well it's the people that just want the best thing and this is very clearly the best Chromebook that you can get but Google will also tell you that this is about the future all your most important apps are made for phones and the web hopefully isn't going away anytime soon and this device is built for that future and if Google can make Android apps work better on Chrome OS then that future might actually come to pass