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| Chromebook Pixel |
The Pixel is a niche market for sure. But to understand its existence, we must acknowledge the other benefits of Chromebooks. Namely the ease-of-use, the lack of malware, the near-instantaneous startup and shutdown times, and the great battery life. The Chromebook Pixel's keeps all of these features except one: the battery.
Overall Experience
I've never owned a high-end laptop before, so using the Chromebook Pixel is a special treat for me. I only use it for work, and 99% of the time on my work laptop, I'm in a browser. The other 1% of the time, I'm writing quick notes in gedit (a linux text editor) or in the terminal, ssh'ing to another device. Because of this, the Pixel fits my use case perfectly. For anyone who fits the use case of Google Chrome OS, it is an awesome device that is a pleasure to use.
Build
Since this is my first high-end laptop, I have little to compare it against, except for the few minutes I've spent using a Macbook Pro or Air. The build of this laptop meets that Apple-level of quality. It looks gorgeous, is light at about 3.4 lbs, has a unibody frame, is covered in a lovely anodized aluminum, has a good-looking backlit keyboard (the font is like a Macbook--or really, any high-end laptop nowadays), with the best touchpad I've touched.
I've touched Macbook touchpads and, truly, they are great. I often think of them when I'm using my crappy Lenovo laptop touchpad, wishing a PC manufacturer--any PC manufacturer--could figure out how to make that touchpad and put it in a laptop that runs Windows. While the Pixel doesn't run Windows, it seems to have the quality and responsiveness of a multitouch Mac touchpad, plus a glorious texture that I would compare to the tip of a pencil eraser. It feels the lightest touch, and handles gestures with up to three fingers (if there are any four-finger gestures, I don't know what they are). Admittedly, the Pixel would be improved with a right-click button, but using Alt + mouseclick or a two-fingered mouseclick does the same job.
The monitor swings open and closed with ease, but feels sturdy. The keyboard feels as sturdy as a desktop keyboard. The multicolor light on the back of the monitor is a delightful icing on the cake. I've never felt this on a smartphone: it feels both simultaneously expensive and durable. Like it costs a lot of money, but I could drop it a short distance and it would survive.
This laptop is damned sexy.
Hardware/Performance
The hardware seems excellent. It's difficult to accurately test how much a Chromebook can handle because of the limitations of Chrome OS (how do you load Crysis on it?), but it never lags.
The specs are not super impressive, it's just an Intel Core i5 with 64 GB of storage, and 4 GB of RAM, but the OS puts those to awesome use. Really, the 32 GB version would have been sufficient, since I don't store anything locally. But I the SSD aspect helps out with the speed of the Pixel and perhaps its battery use.
Other notes:
- The 720p webcamera is sufficient. People will be able to see what you look like in Google Hangouts.
- There is LTE included on this version, but I don't use it.
- The laptop does get pretty hot after some use, but not crotch-scorchingly so.
- There are two USB ports, but you're not going to use more than one, if that.
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| High resolution text. This is the same picture from above, just zoomed in. |
The display is pretty much perfect. The decision to make it 3:2 instead of the standard 16:9 was an odd one, but it works out. I spend much more time reading documents than I do watching video (again, it's my work laptop), so 3:2 is perfect for that and other activities that involve horizontal movement.
The resolution at 2560 × 1700 is heart-stopping. I don't know why they made the Pixel's screen so high-res. There are only two times when I use it: when watching the hi-res video that came preloaded, and when looking at my super high-resolution desktop wallpaper. It's nice to see that wallpaper every time I start the computer, but then I launch Chrome and look at stuff that would look just fine in a lower resolution. I guess it also makes the fonts look nicer, but I don't have an issue reading text on lower resolution screens.
It's hard to say whether or not the touchscreen is a gimmick. I find myself using it often, but that's probably just to justify its existence. The screen is multitouch, so that's nice, although there is no pinch to zoom. If you're not typing much, like if you're showing some webpage to someone sitting next to you, I can see using the touchscreen aspect a lot. The screen is also very responsive to touch.
The viewing angles are so wide they jumped up in the air and got stuck. But seriously, you can see the screen from any angle. Also, the IPS screen gets very bright.
Battery
Battery is the only hardware aspect that could've been improved. Regular (cheap) Chromebooks can get 6 hours and more out of the battery because of their skimpy hardware. The Pixel gets around 4 hours, which is slightly better than a high-end Windows laptop (they seem to be around 3 and less), but still not as much as you feel you deserve for such a lightweight operating system.
Operating System
The operating system is what makes the performance of this laptop excellent. I've never been very impressed with the concept of Chrome OS. I often find myself with slow or nonexistent Internet and am a big fan of local storage. To enjoy any Chromebook you need to give yourself entirely to the cloud. That doesn't necessarily mean using Google services like Drive, Docs and Play, but it does mean you have to use some online service, like Dropbox or SkyDrive. For my work, this is easy. The few times I'd use gedit for notes, I use Google Docs instead. Whenever I'd use the terminal to ssh into work, I use Chrome's Secure Shell extension instead. The OS meets 100% of my work use cases. But I cannot use the Pixel for a home computer. For home computing I need to be able to save things locally, use VLC to play mkv files, and other things like that.
However, for those of us who spend most of the time in a browser, the OS is fantastic. Mostly the speed is what stands out. This laptop starts up to the login screen in about 10 seconds (6 seconds when trying it now). Another 5 seconds to log in--mostly because of my slow typing--and then you're in. Unlike Windows, there's no waiting another 10 minutes for your computer to slowly become responsive. It's at full speed from the moment you log in.
And when you log in, Chrome OS remembers all your tabs. You don't have to worry about remembering which tabs are up and in what order because it saves everything. It's a bit like if Windows' sleep mode, except no power is used.
Just like other Chromebooks, the Pixel is as easy-to-use as the Chrome browser and is impervious to viruses, trojans and worms. The only aspect that is difficult to use with the Pixel is the keyboard. There is no Caps Lock button, you have to use Alt+Search for Caps Lock. Other keys like Page Up, Page Down, and Delete are achieved by key combinations. Luckily, you can find all these combinations with Ctrl+Alt+/.
"Everyone should want a Chromebook Pixel--I certainly do. But almost no one should buy one." -The Verge.
"Google hammered one phrase home when asked who the Pixel was for: 'the power cloud user.' [...] If you're a busy executive whose work requires you to be online and on the go, [...] you should seriously consider the Pixel." -Mashable
I'm not sure even a busy exec should get this. Even if you just need a basic computer to access the web, enjoy quality laptops and have no idea how to avoid viruses, the Chromebook Pixel is a hard sell at either $1300, or $1450 for the 64GB, LTE version. A low-end Macbook Pro or Air would look and feel just as nice, and also cost cheaper. There are a couple of Windows ultrabooks that would beat this in functionality and price. A Windows Surface might be a good alternative. The unique and peerless touchscreen and the instant startup time can't beat the functionality of a full-featured OS like Windows or OS X.
Basically, you should only get this if you require a simple, virus-free machine... and you can't stand Apple products.
Typed on my Chromebook Pixel.
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