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Google Chromebook Pixel review

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Verdict:

With its beautiful retina display, this would be a serious MacBook rival if it wasn’t for Chrome OS

Review Date: 28 Feb 2013

Price when reviewed: £1,049

Buy it now for: £1199
(see more store prices)

Supplier: http://www.play.google.com

Reviewed By: Katharine Byrne

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

The Chromebook Pixel is the best Chromebook we’ve ever seen – but then it should be given it costs three times what the competition does. You can see where your money has gone, though; from the outside, it’s a minimalist work of art. Its smooth, grey industrial lines are accented solely by a thin LED light on the back of the lid that flashes briefly with Google’s quartet of red, blue, yellow and green when opened and then glows a pale blue.

Mixing modern engineering with a retro shape, the Chromebook Pixel looks fantastic

It measures a svelte 16.2mm thick and weighs just 1.5kg, but the main highlight is its beautiful 12.85in touchscreen. It’s made of Gorilla Glass and has a razor sharp 2,560x1,700 retina display, giving everything an astounding level of detail. Perhaps its best feature, though, is that it’s all packed into a square-ish 3:2 aspect ratio. This is a world away from the 16:9 widescreen configurations we’ve become accustomed to, and is far better suited to the web as it exists today.

It’s incredibly bright and responsive too, and while Chrome OS isn’t quite as touch-orientated as Windows 8, swiping through its app-style menu and scrolling through the Chrome WebStore has never been so simple.

It look great from any angle, though the lid doesn't fold back any further than this

We preferred using the touchscreen to the all-in-one touchpad, but that certainly wasn’t through any fault in the touchpad’s design. Rather, the touchpad’s smooth surface was a joy to use, and it provided a solid amount of click from almost anywhere on its surface. Multi-touch gestures like pinch-zooming were a little temperamental, but two-finger scrolling worked perfectly.

Typing on the Pixel was even more comfortable, as all its Chiclet-style keys were very well-spaced and provided plenty of tactile feedback. It’s lost its Function key labels in favour of a row of media buttons across the top of the keyboard, but all of the unique web-related buttons from previous Chromebooks make an appearance here. It also retains a single Search key to help pinpoint your favourite apps and web pages without taking your hands away from the keyboard; that's at the expense of the Caps Lock key though, which is annoyingly relegated to Alt+Search.

The keyboard is great, even is the layout is a little eccentric

It’s not just a fancy screen that sets the Pixel apart from other Chromebooks, as there’s some fast hardware squeezed into its tiny chassis to try and justify that price. Unlike previous Chromebooks which economised on hardware to help keep their sub-£250 price, the Pixel has 4GB of RAM and a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor. Google has been vague on the exact details of its processor, but it looks to be a Core i5-3427U, the same processor we believe powers Apple’s 13in MacBook Air.

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User comments

Expert Review?!?

There is nothing expert in this review. The fact that you've utterly missed the whole point of Chrome OS proves that very succinctly. This machine will happily run Microsoft Office 365. It will happily remote in to any desktop machine using the Chrome browser extremely easily. It will do a great many things you have not bothered to mention. Claiming that you cannot do anything other than browse the web with this machine is utter rubbish, and the shockingly clumsy written English used to illustrate your lack of expertise doesn't help either.

By dcinscotland on 28 Feb 2013

Thanks for your comment, dcinscotland. The Pixel can indeed do the things you mentioned, but any laptop that you can install Chrome on can do exactly the same things and a lot more besides. Many of them also don't cost over £1000. As mentioned in the review, there were plenty of things we liked about the Pixel, but ultimately it's too expensive for what it is.

By Katharine_Byrne on 28 Feb 2013

Perhaps - but that's opinion, not fact. Chrome OS is also updated frequently, for free, and is very clearly soon to be updated to allow a lot more to be done with the Pixel. Also, there's quite a major distinction between the Chrome browser on another machine, and Chrome OS itself. No, many laptops don't cost over £1000. Many cars still have 4 wheels and are relatively cheap, but will fall apart quickly and require a lot of expensive repair. See the parallel?

By dcinscotland on 28 Feb 2013

When Chrome OS has a major update, we'll revisit our Pixel review to take these changes into account. However, we can't review products based on potential future updates.

By Katharine_Byrne on 28 Feb 2013

I look forward to it...but in the meantime there's a lovely "you're" where there shouldn't be at the start of your article.

By dcinscotland on 4 Mar 2013

Thanks! That should be fixed when the site next updates.

By Katharine_Byrne on 4 Mar 2013

Chromebooks and Windows

I like the idea behind Chromebooks in general. They are easy to use, easy to manage and start up very fast. They are a great option for education and casual home use, especially as a second laptop. I'm not even so bothered by the fact that they rely on having an Internet connection, because for many users, that's what they use anyway.

I'm not sure about the Pixel, however. It looks great, but Google still needs to win more "hearts and minds" before they can introduce such a high-priced model. On the other hand, this announcement has generated a lot of buzz about Chromebooks.

I do think that Chromebooks will be successful. And there are even solutions for accessing Windows applications. For example, Ericom AccessNow is an HTML5 RDP client that enables Chromebook users to connect to Terminal Server or VDI virtual desktops, and run Windows applications (like MS Office) or even full desktops in a browser tab. So even if you purchase a Chromebook for casual home use, you can also use it to connect to your work applications if necessary.

Click here for more information:
http://www.ericom.com/RDPChromebook.asp?URL_ID=708

Please note that I work for Ericom

By EC4AN on 4 Mar 2013

Chromebook - Google spyware

Would I pay £1049 for a piece of very limited Google spyware that relies on the web and specifically on Google's web. Pull the other one. If someone gave me one, I would sell it to someone else with a health warning.

By ericlegge on 5 Mar 2013

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