Would you pay $1299 for a laptop that only runs Web apps but has a high-quality, touchscreen display? Google sure hopes so. On Thursday the company announced the Chromebook Pixel, a pricey slab of hardware that runs Google’s Web-centric Chrome OS, but defies conventional Chromebook wisdom.
This compact laptop features a 12.85-inch, 2560-by-1700 touchscreen display, a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor, an Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics chipset, 4GB of memory, and 32GB of solid-state storage—all in a 3.35-pound package that’s about 0.64 inches thick.
The Pixel also comes clad in anodized aluminum and has a back-lit keyboard and 720p webcam. All in all, it looks to be a premium piece of hardware that bears very little resemblance to Chromebook devices, which emphasize low, low pricing and bargain-basement components.
Take the new Pixel’s display. Its screen resolution equates to roughly 239 pixels per inch, which is slightly greater than the 227 pixels per inch on the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display. The Pixel also comes with 1TB of free cloud storage via Google Drive for three years.
And for an even spendier $1449, you can get a model with twice the storage (64GB instead of 32GB) and Verizon 4G LTE support. That’s right: $1449. For a Chromebook.
Why buy a Pixel?
The $1299 price tag on the base model Pixel is almost as much as the prices of all the other Chromebooks available now combined (earlier Chromebook models start at around $200). So why in the world would anyone buy this thing? We’ll answer that question definitively as soon as we get our hands on the flesh-and-blood hardware. But for now we can only surmise that Google is looking to wow the world with a “flagship” Chromebook that demonstrates the platform’s potential…
Read More: pcworld.com
