 This is David with The Verge and we're taking a look at the Chromebook Pixel, which is actually one of the more confusing devices I've seen in a while. So Google's been building Chrome OS for a while and until now there's been kind of a race to see how cheap a Chromebook companies could build. They were $249 or $199. But now from Google itself comes the Pixel, an incredibly high-end laptop that costs $1,299. It's something completely different. This is Google trying to position Chrome OS next to Windows and OS X as a legitimate third-desktop operating system. The OS is one thing and might be a harder sell, but the Pixel's hardware is definitely on par with the best laptops out there. It really starts with the screen, the 12.85-inch 2560x1700 touchscreen display. That's insanely high resolution, even more so than the MacBook Pro with Retina display. And the screen looks incredible. This really is probably the best screen I've ever seen on a laptop. It has a 3-2 aspect ratio, which means it's a little taller than a lot of laptops. It's really good for web browsing, but it does mean movies get letterboxes above and below. The touchscreen works well enough. The real limiting factor is Chrome OS. There just aren't a lot of apps that are particularly touch-optimized, though Google has shown they're changing that a little. The rest of the hardware is just as good, too. The all-metal body is a little thicker and heavier than a MacBook Air, and it doesn't taper so it feels much bigger. But it's sleek, sturdy, and looks almost kind of futuristic, especially the light bar on the back, which really serves no purpose other than to glow and look awesome, but it looks really awesome. It's a really basic, simple body. The keyboard and trackpad are both pretty excellent. The trackpad is smooth and glassy, and it works great for two-finger scrolling or pinch-to-zoom. It's kind of limited, though. It doesn't have a lot of gestures available, and it really doesn't do much other than just scroll and work as a cursor. But it's smooth and responsive and does everything it does perfectly. The keyboard is really good, too. It clacks nicely, and the keys are really well spaced out. It actually feels a lot like a MacBook keyboard with the chiclet keys. There are a bunch of Chrome-specific tweaks, like the search key instead of caps lock and a whole row of function keys above the number row. Those top keys are a little stiff and kind of hard to find with your finger, which is a little awkward, but overall, I really like the keyboard. So the Pixel's hardware stands up to any laptop on the market. It's beautiful, well-made, and basically flawless in its design. But making the case for a $1,300 computer that's really only a web browser gets kind of difficult. Chrome OS does some really smart things to disguise the fact that it's basically just a web browser. You can open websites in separate windows that kind of feel like apps, and there's even a new app launcher that I actually like better than the OS X dock. But the thing is, you're still mostly just using a web browser. Not only do you not get access to all the native apps you'd get on OS X or Windows, you don't get a lot of the functionality, either. RDO is totally useless offline, for instance, and even little things like switching between apps gets a lot harder. There's a file browser, but it's incredibly basic, and Google pushes you constantly to use Google Drive. And actually, you should. The Pixel comes with just 32 or 64 gigs of internal storage, but you do get a terabyte of drive storage, and the Chrome OS file manager is the best way I've seen to manage your drive files. The Pixel oddly doesn't do a great job of playing back local files for some reason, despite the fact that it's powered by an Intel Core i5 processor. A 1080p video looks great and sounds great, the Pixel's speakers push sound through the keyboard and it's pretty loud and clear, but it stuttered a lot throughout the whole movie. Weirdly, streaming YouTube videos at 1080p worked much better. For the most part, though, the Pixel just worked like any other Chromebook. It's smooth and fast without a lot of problems. But of course, most Chromebooks work about the same. We didn't really have issues with $200 Chromebooks, so I'm not surprised that you'd get good performance for $1,000 more than that. One thing Chromebooks should have over Windows or OS X is battery life, but that's not really the case here. We only got four and a half hours on our battery test, which isn't necessarily surprising given the high-res screen, but still seems like less than such a simple browser-based OS should get. I'm pretty convinced that a certain kind of person could do just fine with a Chromebook as a primary machine, especially if you don't travel a lot and you don't have a lot of need for offline use, it works really well. It's the most stable browser I've ever used by far, and almost never lags or crashes. I wish Chrome was this good on Windows or OS X. It's also just a simpler and sometimes smarter OS. But unless you're comfortable using web services for absolutely everything, and don't need something as powerful as Photoshop or Word, and don't want to play games, it's still pretty hard to say that your $1,300 is better spent on any Chromebook over a MacBook or a Windows Ultrabook. You can also get an LTE-capable Pixel for $1,449, and you even get some free data from Verizon, but that's, again, an extra price. From a pure hardware standpoint, I like the Pixel better than any laptop I've ever used, but it just has some limitations its competitors don't. Even for $100 less, you can get a MacBook Air.