Google Announces $1300 Touchscreen Chrome Laptop
The rumors were true!
Just today we heard rumors that Google was planning a touchscreen Chrome notebook to add to its Chrome OS line of computers. The rumors, stemming from a Wall Street Journal report, offered no indication beyond 'this year' as far as a release date was concerned. However, we now know exactly when this laptop is going to launch, because Google itself has let the cat out of the bag.
The company announced the Chromebook Pixel via the official Chrome blog this afternoon and the touchscreen functionality is not the only difference. While previous iterations of the Chromebook have been very competitively priced, this one costs quite a bit. Priced at just under $1,300, the Chromebook Pixel packs 4.3 million pixels into a 12.85-inch 2560 x 1700 display for a PPI of 239. Google boasts that this is the highest pixel density of any laptop on the market today.
Display aside, the laptop runs on an Intel Core i5 processor (dual core, clocked to 1.8GHz) with integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, 4 GB DDR3 RAM
32 GB Solid State Drive with 1TB of free cloud storage (though it's only good for three years), 2 x USB 2.0 ports, HD Webcam, a clickable glass trackpad, a backlit keyboard, dual band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n 2x2, Bluetooth 3.0 and optional LTE.
Though it's nice to see the Chrome product line evolving, we're not sure the public opinion of the cloud has reached the point where people are willing to spend $1300-$1500 on a laptop that more or less requires a constant internet connection. That said, if you're all about the cloud, the Pixel is available to buy today on Google Play and will hit BestBuy.com in the near future. The WiFi version will cost $1,299 and will start shipping next week. The LTE version will ship in the U.S. in April and is priced at $1,449.
Check out the Pixel in action in the video below:
I agree that $1300 seems a bit much even with the nice display considering how small the ssd is and only having 4 GB of ram. I'm guessing it is an ultrabook and has mostly ultrabook parts though I didn't see any thunderbolt connector nor USB3. I'm not sure why you would want a discrete GPU for a chromebook. It would add little to the product except cutting your battery life by a 1/3.
Those are both 17" laptops, these are ~13... You cant compare them
To everyone complaining about the price, even at that cost its actually not too bad considering that you all seem to be missing the part of the article where they stated "Touch Screen." This is the highest resolution touchscreen in production.
With two USB 3 ports and mini display port, as long as the XenApp receiver works properly, this would be an outstanding business machine. I would certainly need a large sd card for media storage though.
And you guys think Apple over charges? ROFL
Even the Core2Duo has enough processing power to decode 1080p h264 without hardware acceleration so this should be a breeze for i5 and QuickSync decode.
But $1300 for an ultrabook-like device with cloud-based OS? No thanks.
Vortigaunt: the point is to push the industry forward. I am sick of 1024x 768 resolution web pages.
- High screen resolution
Bad points:-
- Only 32Gb SSD
- No USB 3.0
The video says they started on the project 2 years ago and apart from the screen the technology predates the start of the project, even if it was competatively priced it would enter into the low-to-mid range at best and certainly not the "best product they could make"
...
A computer is a means to an end and if Google think that offering something that runs Chrome that doesn't have the integrated products of Windows or Apple, but charging an obscene premium for yesterdays hardware, they must think we are as stupid as their hardware team
So there is one more thing not to buy the chromebook. Thank you for spotting it.
Both of them are in the mobile pc segment that can be used for fun or work. Both of them want your (same amount of) money. Yes we can compare them.