Google announces Chromebook Pixel

Google today unveiled its the very first Chrome OS laptop named Chromebook Pixel, a laptop that brings together the best in hardware, software, and design to inspire future innovation. It's unmistakably a premium product. It also just so happens to be aiming directly at Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

The 12.85-inch, 2,560x1,700-pixel display has a taller-than-usual 3:2 aspect ratio, which offers more vertical screen space than today's typical laptops. It's covered with a layer of Gorilla Glass for protection and has an unusually high 400-nit brightness.

The linear resolution of 239 pixels per inch means it edges past the 13-inch MacBook Pro's Retina Display at 227ppi, making fonts smooth and graphics sharp. As with Retina Display devices, though, a lot of software and Web pages must be updated before graphics will look their best, but text is a pleasure, and going back to ordinary-resolution displays is no fun.

While it's a hair thicker than the MacBook Air, it shares many of the design elements that Apple popularized there, too: invisible speakers that fire upwards through the keyboard, vents hidden in the hinge, and a very thin yet responsive LED-backlit rack of keys custom-made for the machine.

For the first time in a Chromebook, specs have been seriously improved: with a Core i5 processor — rather than an ARM or Intel Atom chip — as well as Intel HD 4000 graphics and 4GB of RAM, this Chromebook should have a similar amount of performance to existing Windows ultrabooks. Google says it can play multiple 1080p MP4 videos simultaneously. Therefore, you need to make sure the videos you want to play on Chromebook Pixel is in 1080P MP4 files, otherwise, you will need a Video Converter or Mac Video Converter to convert videos to 1080P MP4 for Chrome Pixel on Windows and Mac.

Unfortunately, that processing power and the high-res screen means lower battery life: the company quotes a five-hour runtime. Like other Chromebooks, the Pixel still has a fairly sparse array of ports, with two USB 2.0 jacks, a Mini DisplayPort, a combo 3.5mm headset jack, and an SD card slot. There's dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and a 720p webcam flanked by dual microphones up top.

While it admittedly doesn't have the same software ecosystem as a Windows ultrabook, Google says developers are on board, showing a new UI for photography website 500px, and a version of Quickoffice that will let you open Word and Excel documents natively in a web browser. The company also demoed a new Google+ app that should arrive in a few weeks: it allows Chromebooks to take photos right off an SD card and upload them directly to Google Drive

Google will ship two versions of the Pixel, one with Wi-Fi only and one with an integrated Verizon LTE modem. You'll be able to purchase a unlimited day pass, or add the Pixel to a existing Verizon shared data plan for $10 a month.

The Wi-Fi model will come with 32GB of storage, and is on sale today for $1,299 in the United States and £1,049 in the UK. It will ship next week. The LTE model will have 64GB of storage for $1,449 in early April. Google's also including a full 1TB of Google Drive storage, per user, for three years, in the Chromebook Pixel's price.

Like we wrote in the beginning, the Chromebook Pixel is clearly a premium laptop, but that's also an incredibly steep price for a device that primarily runs just the web and web applications on a relatively new OS... particularly when it also has a screen with an unfamiliar resolution and aspect ratio that developers will need to target. When you can get a similarly premium laptop that does far more in the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display for $1,499, it could be a hard sell.

Chrome boss Sundar Pichai defended the laptop's unique screen as a bet on the future. "Everyone needs to accomodate to high-res screens and touch... we have an opinion on that and are putting it out there."

Why so expensive, though? "For a user who lives in the cloud, what is the best computing experience we can design?" That's the question Pichai says the Pixel team asked of itself. "We want to provide an option for those who demand premium hardware, those who are writing the next generation of applications," he said.

"I think people want to live in this world."

Reference: Google Introduces the Chromebook Pixel to Compete With the MacBook Air

Google announces Chromebook Pixel: a premium Chrome OS laptop shipping next week for $1,299