Review: New Chromebook Pixel is still lovely hardware with limited appeal
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
Andrew Cunningham's verdict on the new Chromebook Pixel — lovely hardware, limited appeal — turns out to be the template for the entire Pixel Chromebook line. Two years later, Google's Pixelbook draws nearly the same split verdict from The Verge: beautiful hardware, but average battery life and Android apps that still need updating for screen and pen.
What makes 'limited appeal' concrete is the competition below it: months after this review, Ars found the Asus Chromebook Flip delivering genuinely good design and build at $250, even with keyboard and performance compromises. By the time the Pixel Slate arrives in 2018 with buggy Chrome OS software, the pattern is entrenched — Google keeps building the best-made Chromebooks, and keeps struggling to say who they're for.
First-order effects
- Premium-priced Chromebook buyers get best-in-class build quality paired with a software ecosystem — thin Chrome apps, unpolished Android support — that doesn't yet justify the price over $250-tier machines like the Asus Flip.
Second-order effects
- Asus and other OEMs compete on the price floor rather than chasing Google's premium tier, pushing the Chromebook market toward volume at low margins while Google's own devices shrink into a niche reference design.
Third-order effects
- If the recurring hardware-praise/software-criticism pattern holds across Pixelbook, Slate, and Pixelbook Go, the fate of premium Chromebooks rests less on Google's industrial design than on whether Android app integration on Chrome OS finally matures — the same unresolved question in every one of these reviews.
The trend: Google's Pixel Chromebooks keep proving the hardware ceiling of Chrome OS while budget OEMs capture the market's growth, leaving Android-app maturity as the swing factor for the premium tier.