Google Pixelbook.............
Hand on heart, this is the best Chromebook to date that Joe Osborne has ever used – or indeed paid for.
Do you have a spare £1,000 burning a hole in your pocket? Then we’ve got just the thing for you! A Chromebook that’s no faster than the Asus, but twice the price.
The Google Pixelbook is the best Chromebook ever made, but getting on the ground floor of this revolution is going to cost you dearly. Yet thanks to the Pixelbook’s 100 per cent Android app support, Google’s new Chrome launcher and a breathtaking new stylus experience – the price to entry is worth it. Oh, and the keyboard is stellar, too.
Inside you’re getting a seventhgeneration Kaby Lake Intel Core i5 CPU on both the entry-level 128GB and midrange 256GB options, each paired with 8GB of memory. A top-end 512GB option comes packing a Core i7 processor with 16GB of memory. All of these options are Intel’s low-power, lowheat Y series chips, which means all of the Pixelbook models are fanless.
The Pixelbook is the beautiful result of years of work on Google’s part in refining a unified design across its hardware offerings, and could be seen as a coming of age for Google’s Chromebook design philosophy. From the brushed aluminium frame with flush edges to the rubberised palm rest and underside, every design element has achieved style and substance in equal measure.
Sadly, the same can’t be said of the audio performance. As has become the growing trend in the thinnest and lightest laptops, Google crammed the speakers beneath the keyboard, and the result is awfully tinny sound. At least there’s a 3.5mm audio jack.
On the upside, the glass trackpad is a delight to use, tracking super smoothly and accurately both with single- and multi-touch gestures. Likewise, the Pixelbook keyboard is among the best we’ve ever tested. The backlit keyboard’s keys are well-spaced, and the 0.8mm travel is a delight with forceful feedback. The ‘Pixel’ in Google’s eponymous laptop
earns its name when it comes to the 3:2 Pixelbook display. At 235 pixelsper-inch (ppi) and accurate colour reproduction, this display rivals some of the best devices around.
Pixelbook Pen
It’s a real shame that the Pixelbook Pen isn’t included in the price. The Pixelbook Pen works excellently as a stylus, offering plenty of pressure response as well as tilt support. The display’s snappy response helps the digital ink follow close enough behind the pen that any delay is imperceivable.
A single button on the pen is essentially a Google Assistant button. Pressing the button while inking turns that ink into a thick blue, but doesn’t actually draw anything. Anything captured inside this blue ink is sent to Google Assistant for analysis, which in turn presents anything and everything Google’s servers can muster about whatever you encircled. Circle a picture of a hippopotamus, and Google Assistant will hit you with a Wikipedia page on the animal.
The one flaw in the Pixelbook Pen is that it doesn’t attach to the laptop in any way, not even via magnets, making the damn thing so easy to lose. It also runs on AAAA batteries, whereas a rechargeable solution would’ve been much more worthy of the price tag.
To say that the Google Pixelbook is a strong performer isn’t going to surprise anyone. Here’s how the Pixelbook performed: MozillaKraken, 1,202ms;
Octane, 27,554; JetStream, 136. Results that smash anything else we’ve seen –although Asus’s Chromebook Flip 320 isn’t too far behind.
Google promises up to 10 hours on a single charge, a number that was reached based on “a mix of standby, web browsing and other use,” according to its product page. Our battery test, looping a locally stored 1080p movie at 50 per cent screen brightness, the Pixelbook lasted for seven hours and 40 minutes, which isn’t the best. We chalk up the shorter runtime to the super-high resolution display.
Most importantly, we’re now at last at the point where there are little to no compromises for almost anyone to switch from a Windows or Mac machine to a Chromebook, thanks to Android. If you’ve got the cash, then that possibility starts with the Pixelbook.