14 DAY TRIAL // The Chromebook Pixel, it turns out, is real and is here. It's also a radical departure from the Chromebooks built until now.
The new device may have the best screen ever fit to a laptop and may rival Apple's in build quality, but the first thing that pops out is the price, you can buy five Samsung Chromebooks for the price of one Chromebook Pixel and still have some money left.
The Chromebook Pixel comes with a 12.85 inch, 2560 x 1700 pixels touchscreen, the pièce de résistance of the device. This works out at 239 pixels per inch, pixel density.
The strange resolution creates a 3:2 aspect ratio, rare on a laptop, but great for web content, Google says.
It's also powered by a powerful 1.8 GHz i5 processor, has 4 GB of RAM and comes with 32 GB of SSD storage, 64 GB for the LTE version which is coming out later.
Specs wise, it's well and above anything Google has put in a Chromebook until now.
But that's not all, the device is built from anodized aluminum, not the cheap plastic the regular Chromebooks are made out of. All in all, it's a top-of-the-line device, but so is the price, at $1,299 (EUR984) in the US and £1,049 (EUR1,212) in the UK, it's not cheap.
We've been hearing about the Chromebook Pixel for a while now, there were clear signs that a Chromebook with a Retina-glass display and touch input was coming.
The biggest surprise then is the price, it's more than six times more expensive than the cheapest Chromebook and well in the range of MacBook Airs and Pros.
Quite obviously, the Retina display MacBook Pro is the device that's the most comparable to the Chromebook Pixel, hardware wise.
But there's a big difference, the MacBook Pro comes with a full-blown OS, the Chromebook Pixel doesn't.
It's obvious Google is going for a different buyer for the Chromebook Pixel than the regular Chromebooks, but the question is, does this buyer exist?
Google says the device is aimed at advanced users who already live in the cloud. While there's no doubt that these people do exist, it's still unclear what the Chromebook Pixel would bring to the table.
It's just as good and as expensive as a regular laptop, so why not buy a regular laptop.
