 Google's back in the laptop business with this, the Chromebook Pixel. As you can see, it's a beautiful, well-made aluminum laptop with a high-resolution touch screen that you can flip around into this tablet mode. The question for this review isn't, is it any good? Because it is very, very good at being a Chromebook. No, the question is, is it worth spending $1,000 on this Chromebook? And there are other questions. Can it replace a MacBook? Or can it replace a Windows laptop? Or even an iPad Pro? To answer those questions, we need to talk about the software. Chrome OS, especially with Android apps, is more capable than it's ever been. I can use it for me for my job for 90% of the stuff that I need to do. And I'm lucky enough to have other computers around for when I need to finish that last 10%. Everybody's 10% is different. For me, it's video editing. For you, it might be a great Mac app, or maybe a really powerful Excel spreadsheet, or a dope iPad game. Now, I do believe that Android apps are going to get better at filling those gaps over time. But it's going to take a while. I wouldn't go out and buy this thing in the hopes that the situation is going to get better in the next few months, or even the next year. But today, right now, this machine is much more powerful than most people think. Web apps on it are really great. You can take them out of tabs and run them as separate Windows, and even split screen them. And a lot of those web apps work offline. But then there's the Android apps. You might have heard that they've been running in beta on Chrome OS for a while, and that that beta hasn't been going, well, good at all. It's been terrible. But now they're out of beta on this machine. And I can report that they're better, but the situation is still a little bit tricky. Really, the main thing that I run into is it's weird to have two versions of the same app. So take Slack, for instance. It has a great web app. But in tablet mode, the Android app is way better. So you end up doing this awkward juggling between the two things. But the other thing to know is that not all Android apps run that well on this. Most of them don't have resizable Windows. Now, the good news is they don't bring the machine to a halt like they used to on other Chromebooks. Some of that, I'm sure, is that this is just a very powerful machine. But a lot of it is new bug fixes. But we should talk about some other Chrome OS changes. So Google Assistant is here now. You get to it by just hitting this button here. Or you can say OK Google. There's also Google Search, of course. And just like on the Pixel phone, it's integrated into the on-device search. Lastly, there's a new launcher. It does a better job of distinguishing between web apps and Android apps. And it looks nice. There's also this pen. It's the Pixelbook pen. It costs about $100. And it has a battery in it that should last about a year. You can do all the usual note-taking stuff. And it even does handwriting recognition if you don't want to type. Now, it's a full Wacom stylus. And that means that it has a bunch of angle and pressure sensitivities on it. But that stuff only works in apps that have been updated to support the pen. In those apps, the input lag is barely noticeable. But on other apps, it's actually really bad. So hopefully, the stuff you care about will get updates soon. Now, I'm not really a stylus guy. But my colleague, James Barham, is. And he says that this actually feels better to write with than the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro. The difference is that the iPad Pro and also Windows machines with its stylus have way more software. If the software support were actually here on the Chromebook, it might be a really interesting fight. As it is, the iPad Pro and Windows machines definitely have the edge when it comes to pens. The other thing the pen does is help with image searches. You can hold this button down and circle stuff. And the Google Assistant will search for the thing you circled. If you have a Pixel phone, you can turn on instant tethering. Heck, if you have any recent Android phone, you can unlock this computer with your phone's fingerprint sensor. But not everything is rosy with the software. The Files app, for example, is pretty twitchy. And tablet mode can sometimes just be annoying. It's fine for reading or watching a movie. But you can't split screen apps. And sometimes Android apps and tablet are just clumsy. It's also just not as good at managing Windows on the screen as, you know, Windows. So Google has more work to do there. Now, let's finally geek out about the hardware. You would think that there's only so many ways to make a laptop, even a convertible one like this. But Google's managed to create something that's pretty unique. Actually, more than unique, from a purely materials and build quality perspective, this laptop feels like it's worth every inch of the $1,000 that it costs. It's made out of aluminum with a glass screen and this glass shade behind the lid, which makes it look like it belongs next to the Pixel phones. It's also sturdy as hell with zero flex. It weighs just about 2 and 1 half pounds and is a little under half an inch thick. The industrial design is also unique, with these squared off edges and symmetrical elements. It's just really nice. But there are a bunch of details here that are smart, like the palm rests, which are made out of silicone and feel better than metal to rest your palms on. I'm hoping they won't get grimy. But if they do, I'm betting they're going to be easier to clean than the fabric on Microsoft's Surface devices. The clever bit about those palm rests is that when you're using it in tablet mode, they act like anti-skid feet. They also do a good job of keeping the keyboard from touching the screen when it's closed. Just look at this little gap here. Now, the keyboard is great. It's got more key travel than a MacBook without being too much thicker. And I should also point out that it's backlit, which is a really stupid thing to point out, but a lot of Chromebooks don't have that, which is super annoying. The mouse is also really great. It's made out of matted glass and it's got a nice click. But I will say that when the laptop is closed, it's annoying because if you squeeze right here, you can click the mouse. As for the screen, it's a 12.3 inch display with a 3 by 2 aspect ratio. And the resolution is 2,400 by 1,600. It's really good. It's responsive to touch and it's sharp. The bezels here, though, are a little bit bigger than I would like. There are other convertible laptops with smaller bezels. So I don't buy the standard argument that they make it easier to hold when the thing is in tablet mode. So sure, your 1,000 bucks is paying for very high end design. But it's also paying for very high end specs. It has a proper Intel Core i5 seventh generation processor, 8 gigs of RAM, and 128 gigs of storage. That's way more than normal for a Chromebook, but you'll use it for Android apps, downloaded movies and games, and so on. The other thing is that like a lot of recent machines, they've made this with its powerful processor without needing it to have a fan. Now, if you're like a crazy person, you can spend up to $650 to get a version of this with a faster processor, 16 gigs of RAM, and more storage. Now, as for performance, it's kind of a screamer. Usually with Chromebooks, I have to give this speech about how many tabs I can open up before it starts to bog down. Not the case at all with this machine. It runs Chrome better than any other computer I've used recently that isn't some $15 or $2,000 Super Pro Plus thing. Now, that's how it should be with a machine like this, but I'm really happy to report that it is. Now, Google is claiming you can get 10 hours of battery life on this thing, but I'm not quite getting that. Now, admittedly, I'm pushing this thing really hard, but I wouldn't trust it past seven or eight hours unless you're being super careful. Luckily, it charges really fast over USB-C, and speaking of USB-C, I was even able to eek out some extra time by using one of those in-seat USB ports on an airplane. Speaking of airplanes, this is what laptops should be now. Apple, good on you for refusing to put a touchscreen on your laptops, and Microsoft, good on you for making a traditional laptop, but this is just so convenient, especially when you're on an airplane, that it should be the shape of laptops from now on. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] Look, I get it. There are a million things that the Mac is better at than this thing. Same goes for Windows, same goes for the iPad Pro. They are better at hitting that last 10% of the things that you need than this, but what this is good at is being very simple. It's always up to date, and it's very good at doing Chrome things. Here's what the Pixelbook is. It's a supercomputer for web apps with a side of Android. Now, I'm not going to tell you if that's worth a thousand bucks to you, and I'm not going to tell you if it's possible for that to replace your current computer. What I am going to tell you is that Google is closer than it's ever been before even saying that it's possible, and for a platform that's only six years old, that's impressive. Hey buddy, how's it going? Good to see you. You're just going to keep on popping up while I do this video, aren't you? Shh. I can search the web for you. Thanks Google.