High-res screen and 1TB of cloud storage could appeal to power users, photographers.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Today Google announced the Chromebook Pixel, a touchscreen laptop running Chrome OS. The laptop is meant to be a high-end device "for power users"—as Google made sure to note over and over throughout its presentation.

The Pixel is built by Google, but the company declined to mention the names of the various ODMs it worked with. It comes in a Wi-Fi version for $1,299 or a Verizon LTE-equipped version starting at $1,449 (the latter is US-only). The high price elicited some surprise from reporters, but Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of Chromebook and Apps, said the company's mission is to build "a Chromebook for everyone," including people who are on their laptops all day—especially photographers.

“Never see another pixel in your life”

The Chromebook Pixel comes with an impressive pedigree of specs—a distinct departure from the $249 Samsung Chromebook announced in October 2012. "We want the computer to disappear for users" Pichai said. “We call it Pixel because we don’t want users to see pixels... you’ll never see another pixel in your life."

While that seems like muddy logic to us, the screen is quite impressive. It's built with Gorilla Glass and measures out a bit longer than most laptop screens at 12.85 inches. Google said it's using a 3:2 aspect ratio rather than the traditional 16:9 or 16:10 to give more vertical height to the touchscreen. "When you think about the Web, the Web has a lot more vertical height because you’re scrolling down. We used 3:2 photographic format to give it about 18 percent more vertical height," Pichai told the crowd.

The screen is high resolution as well, at 2560×1700 with 239 PPI. Google said it has a 178 degree viewing angle and 400 nit brightness, which Pichai claimed was "25 percent more bright than any other laptop screen on the market."

The aluminum-bodied laptop is powered by a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor with integrated graphics, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of flash storage for the Wi-Fi only model. The LTE model comes with 64GB of flash storage. With the purchase of a Chromebook Pixel, Google said users also get 1TB of Google Drive storage for three years. "The lifetime of the laptop," Pichai noted.

Google engineered the Chromebook Pixel to be sleek and minimalist, hiding the screws, tucking the speakers under the keyboard, even erasing the icons from the ports on the side of the laptop (the company said users identify ports by their shape, rarely looking for the icon). Those ports include two USB 2.0 ports, one mini-DisplayPort, and a 2-in-1 card reader supporting SD and MMC cards.

The laptop also employs three microphones—two in 0.1 millimeter pinholes near the camera and one underneath the keyboard. The two mics near the camera use beam-forming technology to cancel out surrounding noise, and the mic under the keyboard is used to cancel noise from the user no doubt pounding away at the keyboard.

Google said the Chromebook Pixel will deliver "over five hours of battery life." Rest assured we'll have a full review in a few weeks to find out how realistic that is with the processor powering so many pixels.

Chrome OS grows up

Google said it optimized Chrome OS for touchscreen use, and it's working with third-party developers to create applications for the laptop. Kan Liu, product manager at Google, told Ars the company built the laptop's firmware to track users' fingers and react to the keyboard from the ground up.

In our limited use, we found the touchscreen to be quite responsive. The screen is drop-dead gorgeous (and at Google's price point, it better be). Google showed the audience demos using swiping through Google Maps, as well as the third-party Pulse app and 500 Px. Besides the three years of 1TB of Drive storage, Google is also offering 24/7 phone support for the laptop in case something breaks.

Whither Chromebook?

"You should think of it as the equivalent of a MacBook Pro," one Google representative said as he was circulating through the crowd after the event (A Google representative later clarified that this comment was probably made about a specific part of the laptop, rather than the Pixel as a whole, which the company does not see as analogous). But creating a touchscreen tablet also puts Google in competition with Windows 8 and OEMs making hybrid laptop/tablets with Microsoft's operating system.

The Pixel also pits Chromebooks against Google's tablet hardware like the Nexus 7, which runs on Android, not on Chrome OS. That said, Google executives have stated publicly that pushing Google content—on whatever platform—makes the development of two operating systems and many devices worthwhile for Google.

Earlier this month, Ars reported on widespread rumors of “a fancy new high-end laptop called the 'Chromebook Pixel,' a Chrome OS laptop with a high-resolution 2560×1700 touchscreen.” At the time, the 'Chromebook Pixel' seemed like an outrageous idea to us. The browser-based OS seemed to do better as Google was able to lower hardware prices to a $249 bargain. Indeed, at the event today, Sundar Pichai said the Samsung Chromebook occupied the number one spot every day in Amazon's laptop category since launch. But it appears the company is confident users will buy a high-end device in the league of computers with similar form factors, such as IdeaPad's Yoga 11, which starts at $800.

$1,299 is a bit pricey for a chromebook, but the specs are impressive, especially that screen.

If Samsung could take that basic design and add large SSD or traditional spinning HDD, double the RAM, and install Windows, they'd have an awesome general purpose laptop, and it would be a great bargain even if they had to charge $2,000 for it.

(checks). OK, for a $200 difference in base price, the Mac has a about 30% faster CPU, twice as much RAM, 4 times the local storage, and USB 3. Screens seem about the same.

I'd really worry about the local storage issue; uploading gigabytes worth of photos or whatever to the cloud isn't trivial for a lot of internet connections.

Indeed. I see no point to this very limited machine at that price. I'm trying out Chromium OS in a VM right now, the thing is woefully inadequate for anything but using a browser. It can't even see my dlna server nor network shares.

$1,299 is a bit pricey for a chromebook, but the specs are impressive, especially that screen.

If Samsung could take that basic design and add large SSD or traditional spinning HDD, double the RAM, and install Windows, they'd have an awesome general purpose laptop, and it would be a great bargain even if they had to charge $2,000 for it.

Adding the additional storage (64GB is not sufficient) and a Windows license probably scoots the price up a bit though.

This is for the people who want a Macbook Pro with a Retina screen, with the look of a Macbook Pro without an Apple logo on it??? And paying similar prices, considering the Retina Macbook Pro is pretty much the same price after the Apple resellers marked down the 13 inch Retina Macbook Pro. So basically the market is Apple-haters, because the Macbook Pro has this beat on specs and functionality...

I'm baffled by this product and price, but at least the 3 years of 1tb of google drive is worth more than the $1200 asking price. Having said that, how many people really need that much online storage? Maybe they have some amazing research data that certain photographers are dying for this type of product, but I really think google is just a bit bonkers, given their recent consumer product history.

I mean, I hope they never change, this was one announcement I thought was a mistake when it appeared on cnet with no corroboration. Who else but MS can make almost random announcements like this?

Hmm all you Mac users commenting above me; looks like everyone else can now have a touchscreen laptop ... except you.

At this price it may not be a huge *seller*, but the big story here is that Chrome OS is now in the big leagues with serious hardware support. I bet the next couple iterations of Chrome OS are going to have lots of surprises which take advantage of this form factor. Let's see what they do!

This would be intriguing at $899 or something but at the price point a 13" Retina MBP seems like a strictly better purchase. You get USB 3.0, more storage and the option to do so much more with the machine.

This seems like a product targeted at rabid Apple haters more than anything else, because any kind of rational evaluation has to conclude this is a worse deal.

Google is betting that tablet/smartphone style Apps or web-based applications will be the future and this configuration lines up with that vision.

If that 32 or 64 GB of storage is just a recent cache of documents on your cloud storage, synced in either real-time or close, then the size of the hard drive doesn't matter.

But I can't imagine 3G or even 4G is a fast enough or reliable enough to support such a platform.

If you are always in range of a fast a WiFi network, it could work. So, perhaps this is aimed at secondary schools or college/university levels, whereas the cheaper Chromebooks are aimed at primary and consumers.

The average selling price of Windows-based PC notebooks is barely above $400. Do you know what the ASP is for Apple’s Macbook line? It’s $1419. A full $1000 more than that of a typical Windows notebook. $1000!

Quote:

Netbooks didn’t just rejuvenate the market just as Windows 7 appeared, they also destroyed it from within: Now consumers expect to pay next to nothing for a Windows PC. Most of them simply refuse to pay for more expensive Windows PCs.

I think Google is interested in making sure that the low end isn't all that Chrome OS is known for. This piece of kit, aspirational though it may be for most, and the other higher that $249 Chromebooks are out there to make sure consumers interested in Chrome OS have a good selection of hardware to pick from...and that it's partners know they can make some money on the OS as well.

If you are always in range of a fast a WiFi network, it could work. So, perhaps this is aimed at secondary schools or college/university levels, whereas the cheaper Chromebooks are aimed at primary and consumers.

Hmm all you Mac users commenting above me; looks like everyone else can now have a touchscreen laptop ... except you.

At this price it may not be a huge *seller*, but the big story here is that Chrome OS is now in the big leagues with serious hardware support. I bet the next couple iterations of Chrome OS are going to have lots of surprises which take advantage of this form factor. Let's see what they do!

I don't use a Mac, and I still think this pointless for the vast majority of users. Sure, the hardware is there, but ChromeOS isn't. That’s the problem.

ChromeOS really only works for people who live in a browser, and browsers alone don't justify this price. A chromebook at less than $300? Maybe, if you only live in a browser and a tablet doesn't work for some reason. At this price? Buy a real computer; running Windows if you want the touch screen.

That big, a web/cloud-based OS, and still only 5 hours of battery life?

The screen concept could have maybe worked for a high-end Chromebook if it got decent battery life. i.e., stick with an ARM/Atom CPU and devote the saved internal space to bigger batteries. I wouldn't have bought one personally, but there's at least a narrative for the user who does everything in a browser, just wants a big, pretty screen to see everything on, and can use it all day.