Gadgetory

this is the new Chromebook pixel it looks just like the old Chromebook pixel but it's better way better and you're probably going to want one but you probably shouldn't buy one two years ago Google introduced a ridiculous laptop the original pixel it had a gorgeous screen incredible hardware mediocre battery life and it only did one thing ran the Chrome browser oh and the pixel was also expensive crazy expensive this time around Google is fixing most of what was broken with the first model but let's get that price out of the way first it starts at $999 that's still crazy expensive for a Chromebook it's more than twice as expensive as most other Chromebooks and it's the same price as a really good PC or Mac it's really hard to justify spending this much on a machine that only runs chrome and a precious few Android apps the design is almost completely unchanged from the original and I'm totally fine with that it's all boxy corners and clean lines metal and glass like something out of a high-concept sci-fi movie the pixel is its own thing not a Mac clone not a PC clone everything feels well built and even dense at 3.3 pounds most of all the design feels considered the keyboard has been tweaked the trackpad improved and you can even knock on top of the laptop to check the battery life which is a nice touch Google is sticking with a three by two aspect ratio on this 13 inch touchscreen and it's a choice I'm fine with even though I know a lot of people aren't fond of it but it's still a great screen with a slightly wider color gamut and 239 pixels per inch but if we're talking hardware the biggest deal here are the two little oval-shaped ports you'll find where the power jack usually goes those are USB type-c ports and they're a very big deal yes just like Apple Google is jumping on board with USB type-c these fancy new ports can be used for basically anything power display connecting to a camera whatever the idea of being able to use the same plug for everything has been a crazy dream for basically as long as people have been making plugs Google uses it mainly for charging and I should say that having a power jack on both sides of your laptop is surprisingly convenient and yes the old-style USB plugs and SD card slot are still here so you don't have to carry around a rat's nest of adapters battery life on the pixel is stupendous Google rates it at 12 hours our battery test clocked it at 14 real-world use over a few days bears those numbers out the thing just lasts and lasts google says it wants you to charge the pixel at night and just use it all day without bothering to plug it in I don't know if I really think anybody should do that but the fact that it's not patently ridiculous to suggest that you could do that is pretty amazing and it's fast really fast stupid crazy why is it my laptop as fast as this fast the only thing that comes close is Safari on a top-of-the-line Mac italo's pages fast it Scrolls fast heck even pinch-to-zoom is fast the $999 model comes with a core i5 processor 8 gigs of ram and 32 gigs of storage you can also spend $300 more to get an i7 processor and double the RAM and storage Google calls that the pixel LS which stands for ludicrous speed and no it doesn't come in plaid if you haven't used Chrome OS in a while you might not know that it's come a long way in the past year or so no most people shouldn't use it as their only laptop and no it's not to the point where you can really do a ton of multimedia work easily but I have a dozen or so ABS that I depend on and all of them have either web or Android versions that work great on the pixel and you can work offline with most of them open Microsoft Office and even play a few games look the Chromebook pixel is great but at a thousand bucks it had better be and Chrome OS has come a long way but it still has a long way to go before it makes sense as most people's primary operating system so after all that I don't think buying the Chromebook pixel is a good idea unless you think $999 impulse purchase territory but I also think that the speedy long lasting beautiful machine is one of my favorite laptops of the year Google should have called it the Chromebook paradox