This beautiful piece of hardware is the Pixelbook it's been over four months
since it came out initial batch of reviews are almost outdated because there have been
a lot of software updates that have come so I wanted to pick one up revisit it
and see if it's worth the starting price of $1000 for Chrome OS
before I jump in I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to the Acorn
Collective for making this video possible if you want to give
crowdfunding you've got a new idea for something you want to crowdfund you're
going to want to stay tuned in to the end of this video they are revolutionizing the
crowdfunding platform so pricing on the Pixelbook is is ridiculous I think
anybody who bought one would even admit themselves ridiculous start at a
thousand bucks so you're getting nice specs I've got Core i5 and here at eight
gigs of ram but at a thousand bucks you are at Surface Laptop category there's a
ton of other Windows laptop so you can get you're talking about some MacBook
pricing some used MacBook Pros you can get a lot of computer for a thousand
bucks but what you're gonna get is still really nice so Google's been testing
Android apps and ChromeOS for a while and it kind of became official with the
Pixelbook and you've got close to the full breath of the Google Play apps
here which are nice some things are still weirdly letterbox you get access
to all those applications which make things really easy to use and adds to the
functionality to the Pixelbook we're also gonna have a problem with that is
you're getting duplicate apps things like slack for example there's an
awesome web app and there's the Android app and you could use Gmail tab for
Gmail and there's a myriad of other email apps you can use you're kind of
stuck with oftentimes two separate apps or two separate icons that do
essentially the same thing that took a little getting used to the Android apps
work and I haven't had much issue but they don't look made to scale obviously
for a screen of this size what surprised me about the Pixelbook
first was battery life I knew it was gonna be awesome but I'm getting upwards it's
like 10 to 12 hours of battery life which is crazy the facts in 10 days I've
had it I think I've charged it twice and didn't even need to charge it just
out of habit charged it and it'll charge via one of the two USB type-c ports
which I guess is nice to have doing work on the Pixelbook it was a little bit
frustrating doing stuff and Slack was easy I was able to download the Android
versions of Microsoft Office and that works really well did a lot of work in
the Google suite kind of stuff what I missed was having an actual desktop
experience I know there's a local storage on here there's a decent amount
of it and there's a full file explorer it's just not as elegant as a typical
laptop and I guess I shouldn't have expected it to be that I found
workarounds for everything I was able to do all of my work on the Pixelbook it
wasn't as easy as it would be on say a Windows PC or a Mac laptop and obviously
the area is where it excels is in Chrome I loved you can launch Chrome apps as
their own windows and you can pin them to the dock you get more of a desktop
experience but things in chrome obviously were awesome
watching YouTube videos watching movies browsing TechnoBuffalo any other
websites those kind of things were really good the touch screen added to
responsiveness of course the touch screen it's a really high res screen
that works well being able to scroll and just use your finger was certainly
nice to have that option there's still a decent amount of hinge wobble we'll talk
about the hinge a little bit more in a minute but it was nice to have and it
was a great Chrome experience as good as any I think I got on a Windows PC or a
Mac laptop I do want to add for extra functionality to the Chromebook and this
isn't unique to the Pixelbook but there is Chrome Remote Desktop lets you access
a Windows PC from a Chrome browsers if you need that does work pretty well
On the hardware side there's a lot of stuff to really like about this
I love the silicone a little pads on the left and right of the trackpad it's
makes for really comfortable experience the keyboard is absolutely awesome it's
one of the best laptop keyboards that I've used trackpad is glass and works
great the two-finger scrolling through websites or document is really
smooth incredibly responsive so that's nice to see here so I talked about the
the hinge I thought I could sort of bend it and I could watch movies I could put
it up in a tent mode to show my wife's some stuff that I was working on I can use it
to read scripts when I'm editing videos and working on certain things that are
coming up the added functionality of that hinge is nice it's not unique to
Pixelbook we've seen a lot of convertible laptops that have
that but each time I use a reminded of how nice it is sort of have that option
the bezels are huge on this and I know the argument is that when you're holding
it as a tablet so your fingers have someplace to go but there are other convertibles
with much smaller bezels that you can still use a tablet so I've got a hard
time buying that argument it's almost inexcusable on a laptop that cost this
much you can spec this thing up to cost about $1,700
another weird design cue so it's incredibly thin it doesn't weigh that
much its been nice to put in a bag but it's strange that when it's closed
I can still push down and click the trackpad just a weird annoyance that
I noticed there are other nice things in the keyboard we've got a button for a
Google assistant and other sort of desktop UI essentially things I become
your app drawer and settings are all here and sort of built right into the
keyboard when I bought to Pixelbook it also came at the Pixelbook Pen and
I'm sure you guys probably saw our Marques review of the Pixelbook and
when the pen first came out it was not very useful he had a ton of issues with
responsiveness it didn't work that well and evidently got some software update
because I issues like he had as far as responsiveness and moved quickly when I
was scrolling around the screen app took advantage of what it could do work
really well essentially I just use it to see if it worked I'm not a big pen guy
and besides that there's nowhere to stick this thing I was absolutely gonna
lose it it's about a hundred bucks you want to buy it separately if it's not
bundled I don't see they use with it I'm not an artist it's cool you can serve
circle stuff and I'll do Google searches with it but you know so when I got this
I initially figured I was gonna use it for like a two weeks and kind of return
it like I was it was fun to try it is an extravagance and there's a lot of other
lower priced Chromebook option Samsung's got some awesome choices it's hard to
say yeah you should spend a thousand bucks on a Chromebook it is like I said
not a necessity for anybody's world and the crazy extravagance but I think I'm
gonna keep it I like having a computer that boots up really fast
I like not having to take out you know another computer at home have this just
always be at home it's able to do almost what I need it to do for me boil down to
Chrome OS is good at a lot but it's not really great at anything what I've
needed to do I found workarounds I liked having it but it's nice and it's worked
well for me so I'm gonna chalk this up to something I certainly don't need
something I'm really glad to have so I want to thank the folks at Acorn
Collective for making this video possible if you've ever liked
crowdfunded something you back something you probably know about crowdfunding
maybe you try to use it yourself crowdfunding are quickly sort of
supplanting venture capital firms as the way entrepreneurs are getting money but
the big VC firms there's some like dirty secrets behind it the big one is that
they're all equity backed so that's gonna mean that they focus on projects
that sort of give them the best return and the barriers to entry are stupid high and
their policies make it next to impossible for people from developing
countries to get their ideas on there potentially get their ideas to turn into
something real Acorn Collective is sort of turning that entire thing on its head
so the platform is backed by blockchain technology so you know it's going to be
secure and reliable and then one of my favorite things about it's gonna be
completely free for use in any country so matter where in the world you are if
you have an idea you could get it funded it's totally awesome the early backers
aren't equity holders they're token holders surging some of the cool stuff
about blockchain with cryptocurrency their token is OAK they're in a presale
right now but time you watch this video they'll probably be already available
link to it down below if you want to learn more about crowdfunding you've had
an awesome idea for crowdfunding you haven't found a platform to bring that
idea to life Acorn Collective is a really sweet way to do it again it will
link to it down below you should definitely check it out so that that's a
Pixelbook it's well-designed hardware it's a beautiful screen for like an
unnecessary amount of money you guys really interested through Google's core
of products did you guys pick all these up did you try one in the store I'd like
to know what you think about it it's definitely a polarizing computer yes you
can even call it a better one don't you guys think leave a comments down below
of course subscribe it's a little bell icon next to it we got more Pixelbook
videos coming up until next time i'm Jon Rettinger from TechnoBuffalo