Remember when you saw a Chromebook at the mall and didn’t buy one because $300 seemed expensive for a cloud-only computer? Well, Google is taking a page out of Apple’s ridiculously effective tactics to push their Chromebooks this time around, bringing superbly sleek design, stunning display quality and annoyingly expensive price to the table with the Google Chromebook Pixel.
Clearly aiming straight at the Macbook crowd, the high-end Chromebook is undeniably gorgeous.
From the general design to the sleek details to the upscale hardware components, it, pretty much, defeats the idea what many thought Chrome OS was going to be about — a cloud OS that can run on the simplest of machines. Still, if you like your gadgets pretty and packing the spiffiest hardware available, we guess this is a valid attempt to get you on that ChromeOS bandwagon.
The centerpiee of the Google Chromebook Pixel is the 12.85-inch display: 3:2 aspect ratio (for 18 percent more vertical space than 16:9 — ideal for browsing web pages and documents), 2,560 x 1,700 resolution, and 400 nits of brightness. It’s also a multi-touch screen, allowing you to tap and swipe your way around the browser OS if using the glass trackpad isn’t your thing. Details include a dual-core 1.8GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM, two storage options (32GB or 64GB — both SSDs), an HD webcam, stereo speakers, three mics, WiFi, Buetooth, optional LTE, a 59Wh battery (rated at 5 hours of usage) and a gaggle of ports (USB, mini-displayport, audio inputs). In case the storage is a bit light for your needs, Google is throwing in a three free years of 1TB cloud storage with Google Drive, as well as an SD card slot. Surprisingly, there’s no Ethernet port.
More than anything else, the Google Chromebook Pixel is another one of Google’s many hardware experiments — one that will likely help refine the direction of the cloud platform, rather than bring it squarely into the mainstream. If you want one, you can order from either Best Buy or the Play Store, priced at $1,299 for the WiFi-only model and $1,499 for the LTE version.