Gadgetory

Google's back in the laptop business with this the Chromebook pixel as you can see it's a beautiful well made aluminum laptop with a high resolution touch screen that you can flip around into this tablet mode the question for this review isn't is it any good because it is very very good at being a Chromebook no the question is is it worth spending $1,000 on this chroma and there are other questions can it replace a MacBook or can it replace a Windows laptop or even an iPad pro to answer those questions we need to talk about the software Chrome OS especially with Android apps is more capable than it's ever been I can use it for me for my job from 90% of the stuff that I need to do and I'm lucky enough to have other computers around for what I need to finish that last 10% everybody's 10% is different for me it's video editing for you it might be a great Mac app or maybe a really powerful Excel spreadsheet or a dope iPad game now I do believe that Android apps are going to get better at filling those gaps over time but it's gonna take a while I wouldn't go out and buy this thing in the hopes that the situation is gonna get better in the next few months or even the next year but today right now this machine is much more powerful than most people think web apps on it are really great you can take them out of tabs and run them as separate windows and even split screen them and a lot of those web apps work offline but then there's the Android apps you might have heard that they've been running in beta on Chrome OS for a while and that that beta hasn't been going well good at all it's been terrible but now they're out of beta on this machine and I can report that they're better but the situation is still a little bit tricky really the main thing that I run into is it's weird to have two versions of the same app so take slack for instance it has a great web app but in tablet mode the Android app is way better so you end up doing this awkward juggling between the two things but the other thing to know is that not all Android apps run that well on this most of them don't have resizable windows now the good news is they don't bring the machine to a halt like they used to on other chromebooks some of that I'm sure is that this is just a very powerful machine but a lot of it is new bug fixes but we should talk about some other Chrome OS changes so Google assistance is here now you get to it by just hitting this button here or you can say okay Google there's also Google search of course and just like on the pixel phone it's integrated into the on device search lastly there's a new launcher it does a better job of distinguishing between web apps and Android apps and it looks nice there's also this pen it's the pixel book pen it cost about a hundred bucks and it has a battery in it that should last about a year you can do all the usual note-taking stuff and it even does handwriting recognition if you don't want to type now it's a full walk column stylus and that means that it has a bunch of angle and pressure sensitivities on it but that stuff only works in apps that have been updated to support the pen in those apps the input lag is barely noticeable but on other apps it's actually really bad so hopefully the stuff you care about will get updates soon now I'm not really a stylus guy but my colleague James bærum is and he says that this actually feels better to write with than the Apple pencil on the iPad pro the difference is that the iPad pro and also Windows machines with its stylus have way more software if the software support were actually here on the Chromebook it might be a really interesting fight as it is the iPad pro and Windows machines definitely have the edge when it comes to pens the other thing the pen does is help with image searches you can hold this button down and circle stuff and the Google assistant will search for the thing you circled if you have a pixel phone you could turn on instant tethering heck if you have any recent Android phone you can unlock this computer with your phone's fingerprint sensor but not everything is rosy with the software the files app for example is pretty twitchy and tablet mode can sometimes just be annoying it's fine for reading or watching a movie but you can't split screen apps and sometimes Android apps and tablet are just clumsy it's also just not as good at managing windows on the screen as you know windows so Google has some more work to do there now let's finally geek out about the hardware you would think that there's only so many ways to make a laptop even a convertible one like this but Google's managed to create something that's pretty unique actually more than unique from a purely materials and build quality perspective this laptop feels like it's worth every inch of the thousand dollars that it costs it's made out of aluminum with a glass screen and this glass shade behind the lid which makes it look like it belongs next to the pixel phones it's also sturdy as hell with zero flex it weighs just about two and a half pounds and is a little under half an inch thick the industrial design is also unique with these squared off edges and symmetrical elements it's just really nice but there are a bunch of details here that are smart like the palm wrists which are made of silicone and feel better than metal to rest your palms on I'm hoping they won't get grimy but if they do I'm betting they're gonna be easier to clean than the fabric on Microsoft Surface devices the clever bit about those palm rests is that when you're using it in tablet mode they act like anti skid feet they also do a good job of keeping the keyboard from touching the screen when it's closed just look at this little gap here now the keyboard is great it's got more key travel than a MacBook without being too much thicker and I should also point out that it's backlit which is a really stupid thing to point out but a lot of Chromebooks don't have that which is super annoying the mouse is also really great it's made out of metal and it's got a nice click but I will say that when the laptop is closed it's annoying because if you squeeze right here and click the mouse as for the screen it's a twelve point three inch display with a three by two aspect ratio and the resolution is 2400 by 1600 it's really good it's responsive to touch and it's sharp the bezels here though are a little bit bigger than I would like there are other convertible laptops with smaller bezels so I don't buy the standard argument that they make it easier to hold on the things in tablet mode so sure your thousand bucks is paying for very high-end design but it's also paying for very high-end specs it has a proper Intel Core i5 seventh generation processor eight gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage that's way more than normal for a Chromebook but you'll use it for Android apps downloaded movies and games and so on the other thing is that like a lot of recent machines they've made this with its powerful processor without needing it to have a fan now if you're like a crazy person you can spend up to six hundred and fifty dollars to get a version of this with a faster processor 16 gigs of RAM and more storage now as for performance it's kind of a screamer usually with Chromebooks I have to give this speech about how many tabs I can open up before it starts to bog down not the case of Paul with this machine it runs chrome better than any other computer I've used recently that isn't some 15 or $2,000 super or pro plus thing now that's how it should be with a machine like this but I'm really happy to report that it is now Google is claiming you can get 10 hours of battery life on this thing but I'm not quite getting that now admittedly I'm pushing this thing really hard but I wouldn't trust it past seven or eight hours unless you're being super careful luckily it charges really fast over USB C and speaking of USB C I was even able to eke out some extra time by using one of those in-seat USB ports on an airplane speaking of airplanes this is what laptop should be now Apple good on you for refusing to put a touchscreen on your laptops and Microsoft good on you for making a traditional laptop but this is just so convenient especially when you're on an airplane that it should be the shape of laptops from now on look I get it there are a million things that the Mac is better at than this thing same goes for Windows same goes for the iPad pro they are better at hitting that last 10 percent of the things that you need than this but what this is good at is being very simple it's always up to date and it's very good at doing chrome things here's what the pixel book is it's a supercomputer for web apps with a side of Android now I'm not going to tell you if that's worth a thousand bucks to you and I'm not going to tell you if it's possible for that to replace your current computer but I am going to tell you is that Google is closer than it's ever been before even saying that it's possible and for a platform that's only six years old that's impressive good to see you you're just gonna keep on popping up while I do this video aren't you