Who said that Chromebooks can’t be expensive? Specifically talking about the $1500 Google i7 Chromebook, it might be an overpriced product, yet it is the best Chromebook you can get.

To those who are opposed to the notion of Chromebooks that they can’t do as much as they can on a MacBook or Windows PC laptop, they are quite wrong. Google’s i7 Pixelbook when connected to the internet, can do most of these tasks, and even do them better. Almost everyone has an internet connection these days, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Design

It is without doubt one of the most stylish Chromebooks ever with its all aluminum body. This makes for a quite thin and sleek laptop. Although an aspect ratio of 3:2 might put you off, but this means that there would be less scrolling. The wrist rests and accents are made from silicon which provides comfort during all those long typing hours.

To be honest, you can easily compare this PixelBook with an actual notebook found in stationery stops, since it is extremely thin. With a 0.4 inches thinness (yes, you heard that right) and a weight of just 2.5 pounds, it is indeed extremely portable. Even the 13.9-inch Lenovo Yoga 920 weighs 3.1 pounds and is 0.6 inches thick and the 12.9 inch iPad Pro stands at 2.3 pounds in mass and 0.7 inches in thickness.

Ports

There are dual power-drawing USB Type-C ports on either side of the Chromebook. There is also a traditional headphone jack on the left. There isn’t any USB 3.0 port though, nor is there an SD Card Reader.

Display

Pixelbook’s display panel isn’t like any other laptop display. Its display matches quite close to a quad HD one measuring 2400 x 1600 pixels. The screen thus is quite vibrant and full of colors. Perhaps, the best thing is that the 12.3 inches screen boasts 235 PPI (pixels per inch) resolution. Thus, it makes things easier to read with less strain on your eyes.

The display covers 117 percent of the sRGB spectrum where the industry average of a portable notebook is 101 percent. Not only this, but the brightness level is also high since the Chromebook recorded 421 nits on the light meter when the usual laptops offer only 291 nits. Only the iPad Pro’s display brightness is higher.

Keyboard and Touchpad

As you would expect, the Keyboard is back-lit and is extremely comfortable for long-term typing. The travel isn’t that much at 0.9 mm, yet its keys are surprisingly comfy even more than iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard which is prone to noises. Maybe the factor here is the actuation force required since you would require 68-gram force to press a key instead of 60-gram average, thus making the typing experience smooth even with a shorter travel.

Moreover, with a silicon palm rest, it offers more grip and a smooth feeling. In between the palm rest, a 4 x 2.6-inch edge-to-edge touchpad is centered. The touchpad is spacious enough for you to move the cursor from one edge of the screen to the other. The tracking is quite accurate, and you would feel the solid click as you do with conventional keys. Gestures are quick and perform smoothly too.

Pixelbook Pen

Perhaps the major selling point of this Chromebook would be the Google-Assistant Powered Pen. Though you would have to spend $99 extra for this, believe us your productivity could increase three-fold. You can simply circle something along with pressing the button on the pen, and you would get more detail about the thing you circled courtesy information sent and received from the Google Assistant.

The pen also features pressure sensitivity and tilt support, though this might suffer from some latency while working.

Audio

The audio is large and of an acceptable quality, yet is isn’t quite clear as you would like it to be.

Battery Life

Chromebooks are meant to last longer in terms of battery life, but sadly this Chromebook will disappoint you in that area. The Chromebook lasts 7 hours and 43 minutes if you continuously search on the Internet using Wi-Fi on the laptop. The industry average of notebooks is 8 hours and 34 minutes, so the battery life is even below par.

Though, Google makes up for this by offering fast-charging. This means that you can get up to a maximum of two hours of battery life by charging for just 15 minutes.

Price and Configurations

The Chromebook is available for a base price of $999 which has a 128 GB of SSD storage with a Core i5-7Y57 CPU and 8GB of RAM. With the $1,199 model, you can bump the storage to 256 GB. The Core i7 model can be bought for $1,649 which offers a whopping 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB of SSD Storage.

Nevertheless, we wouldn’t really advise you to spend this much on a Chromebook when you can easily get a machine with much better specifications than this.