Google Pixelbook - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
In recent years - I've stated that for many use cases - alternative OS like ChromeOS make a viable alternative to Windows or MacOS PCs.
So I decided to put my money where my mouth is and purchased a Google Pixelbook.
I took advantage of a promotion and was able to purchase the Core i5 unit with 8GB RAM, 128GB NVMe drive for $749 a $250 discount from the normal $999. It also comes with a 2400 x 1600 display, 2 x USB-C ports. I also purchased the pen for a very unreasonable $99 (should be more like $40).
Here is the Good, Bad and Ugly I've experienced - under the use case of making this the primary daily driver for work..
The Good...
The Pixelbook is an extremely solid device and while incredibly thin, it has substance and weight. There are no fans - so it is extremely quiet. It boots in less than 10 seconds.
The keyboard is a chiclet style and a bit firmer with less key travel than normal but it works okay. But you have to re-learn some things - more on that later.
I was able to connect a Logitech MK520 keyboard and mouse via USB and they worked great.
Screen is excellent for a 12.3" and if you connect a USB-C to Display Port or HDMI - it will automatically extends screen to that monitor. It also understands foreign file systems like NTFS - I connected a SanDisk USB Drive and it saw Windows 10 install files no problem. So it's an easy way to transfer files from an old machine. I have not tried to attach a large external drive yet - but I expect it to work as well.
The Pen works well and even has a laser pointer feature. It also works with apps like MS OneNote, but not Word.
When compared to the OOBE of a Windows 10 device, setup is night and day. You select language, enter your Google login and your done. it takes about 1 minute. There is no elongated wizards, no downloading of all sorts of crap from the Store and waiting for Windows to finish setup.
One of the reasons I chose a Pixelbook over a Dell, HP, Samsung ChromeOS device was the Android support. This means that a great deal - but not all of the Play Store apps I run on my Pixel 2 XL phone are available. This means you can run MS Office apps including Outlook. Also many other Android apps - from Spotify, Box, Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn, WebEx, etc all install and work fine. I could even use HP Smart to attach to and scan from my HP AIO printer.
You also get Google Assistant. Not as cool an implementation as on my phone - but still there.
There is a gorilla glass panel across the top 3" or so of the screen back and so it will be interesting to see how well it handles travel.
Performance is excellent - the apps & browser loads quickly and overall browsing performance is excellent. From a storage perspective - after initial setup I had nearly 120GB of the 128GB available. WiFi performance is also very good and Bluetooth is available. - It found and attached my Bose AE2 headphones in heartbeat. Sound and Video playback is excellent.
Battery life is great. I ran 10+ hours with both an external keyboard/mouse and 2nd monitor running while being active all day in email, office, etc and still had power left. It also charges very quickly and the cool thing is you can plug the power into either USB-C. I can easily see this under average conditions going a day or more between charges. Just not possible with most laptops.
The Bad...
The big adjustment is the keyboard and especially keyboard shortcuts that any long time Windows user would utilize. So for example there is no Insert or Delete key - and so you have to learn new shortcuts to make simple things like highlight, cut and paste work smoothly.
Similarly with the touchpad - Right click = two fingers click - not the left or right side of the pad - so you have to get used to that.
Google calls their "taskbar" the "shelf" and there is a "laucher" key much like the Windows Key. But the launcher is a bit crude. The cool news is you can go to a web site in Chrome then easily add it to the Shelf like a favorite - including the sites icon.
While the screen supports 2400 x 1600 - it defaults to like 800 x 600 and when you up the resolution for clarity - many apps don't scale correctly and all of a sudden fonts become unreadable. I adjusted to 1800 x 1200 as my base which is still compact.
So while you can install apps like Office - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneDrive, etc., some don't work -i.e. MS Teams is not compatible. Also these are the "Mobile" editions of these apps. One cool thing I noticed is that my O365 settings and direct access to both my corporate and personal OneDrives was there. So I could easily open docs and save them back.
So the Mobile editions of Office apps do have some limitations - but you can do much of the normal editing you would do and they do support full screen mode. You can always use the Web based versions is you feel you need additional capabilities.
I did notice however that the OneDrive app appears to be limited to my business account. When I tried to add my personal O365 account I kept getting login failures. What's odd is that is works correctly on my Pixel 2 phone running the same app - so some work there to figure out why.
One area that is painful however is attachments. Since the apps are Android they think you are using a phone and so they really only support looking at files on your device or maybe Google Drive.
This is true even with Outlook - so you can't easily look into OneDrive and grab/attach files. What you end up doing is going into the app - i.e. Word, Powerpoint whatever and then "sharing" the file from there. That approach then allows you to choose the sharing mode - so messages or Outlook whatever which then opens that app with the file attached. So that's an okay work around for 1 attachment - but if your doing multiple - not so good.
The Ugly
For me most of this actually has to do with the way my company has implemented MS Exchange and device security. So while we do have Office365 - we have NOT moved our Exchange there yet. And this is what makes things ugly.
So I can easily go to our Outlook Web Access page and in fact created a icon on the shelf for access. But that means web only - which is to be honest "normal" operation for a ChomeOS device. But that means no offline support and again the ability to easily go to OneDrive for example to do a simple attachment. But again this is a limitation of our Exchange implementation and NOT Pixelbook itself.
If we did have O365 Exchange - I could have easily used the Android version of Outlook to connect and might have a little less pain. I would still most like have the attachment limitation - but without the ability to test I can't say 100%.
But with Android support - and the ability to run apps - including some Linux apps - there are some adjustments.
So you have to treat your "laptop" kind of like a phone. So in my case that meant two things - first I had to install/run an Mobile Device Mgmt software from VMware called Agent. The goal of Agent is to encrypt the device and ensure compliance.
So the good news is it installed correctly - but added some overhead I didn't want. Next I had to install VMWare's Boxer app to actually get to Exchange. And while it also worked - Boxer is a horrible product compared to Outlook and all the limitations I mentioned regarding attachments, etc are still there. And while it does support an Outlook like UI really isn't that great.
The impact of all of this is you have to them make a choice. Either A) live in OWA or B) use the App and live with the extra overhead and app limitations.
Now I could have decided to copy all of my files located in OneDrive down to my Pixelbook which would help with the attachment thing.. but then there's a rub there...
While there is a files app that gives you a view of your device storage, it has limitations on of all things what you can delete. For example I did a test scan of a photo and it was placed in the "downloads/images" folder - and while I can see it and highlight it in the Files App - I can't delete it. Just stupid.
So you do need to be careful on what you do decide to keep on your device. While my corp documents is only about 10GB and could easily fit on my Pixelbook, I wanted to avoid keeping any data there at all. Same with Music/Photo/Movies, etc. So be forewarned if you plan on going there.
Bottom Line
I think the Pixelbook is first and foremost an excellent device. It's well built, fast, quiet and runs all day on battery. The UI is brain-dead simple and it just works. The Android app support makes it really easy to run many apps that you just can't on Windows or MacOS - because they don't exist there. Plus they update they same way your phone does.
You have to make some adjustments to your keyboard and trackpad navigation and you also have to be prepared to buy new USB-C cables if you don't have them to support peripherals.
As a pure replacement for a corporate laptop - in my use case is about 80% of the way there. As I stated - the pain for me was around corp Exchange and attachments. My hope is that in the coming months we will move to O365 Exchange and that will relieve some of that pain.
At $999 The Pixelbook is a little harder sell in my opinion as there are some excellent laptops in that price range. But when compared to a Surface device or entry Macbook - I think it holds its own very nicely.
At $749 it was a no brainer. And yes I recommend buying the stupidly overpriced pen. I've bought 3 laptops in the last year - two Dell Inspiron and the Pixelbook. And while the Inspirons are also a 2-in-1 design with touch and pen support I'll take the Pixelbook all day.
So I decided to put my money where my mouth is and purchased a Google Pixelbook.
I took advantage of a promotion and was able to purchase the Core i5 unit with 8GB RAM, 128GB NVMe drive for $749 a $250 discount from the normal $999. It also comes with a 2400 x 1600 display, 2 x USB-C ports. I also purchased the pen for a very unreasonable $99 (should be more like $40).
Here is the Good, Bad and Ugly I've experienced - under the use case of making this the primary daily driver for work..
The Good...
The Pixelbook is an extremely solid device and while incredibly thin, it has substance and weight. There are no fans - so it is extremely quiet. It boots in less than 10 seconds.
The keyboard is a chiclet style and a bit firmer with less key travel than normal but it works okay. But you have to re-learn some things - more on that later.
I was able to connect a Logitech MK520 keyboard and mouse via USB and they worked great.
Screen is excellent for a 12.3" and if you connect a USB-C to Display Port or HDMI - it will automatically extends screen to that monitor. It also understands foreign file systems like NTFS - I connected a SanDisk USB Drive and it saw Windows 10 install files no problem. So it's an easy way to transfer files from an old machine. I have not tried to attach a large external drive yet - but I expect it to work as well.
The Pen works well and even has a laser pointer feature. It also works with apps like MS OneNote, but not Word.
When compared to the OOBE of a Windows 10 device, setup is night and day. You select language, enter your Google login and your done. it takes about 1 minute. There is no elongated wizards, no downloading of all sorts of crap from the Store and waiting for Windows to finish setup.
One of the reasons I chose a Pixelbook over a Dell, HP, Samsung ChromeOS device was the Android support. This means that a great deal - but not all of the Play Store apps I run on my Pixel 2 XL phone are available. This means you can run MS Office apps including Outlook. Also many other Android apps - from Spotify, Box, Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn, WebEx, etc all install and work fine. I could even use HP Smart to attach to and scan from my HP AIO printer.
You also get Google Assistant. Not as cool an implementation as on my phone - but still there.
There is a gorilla glass panel across the top 3" or so of the screen back and so it will be interesting to see how well it handles travel.
Performance is excellent - the apps & browser loads quickly and overall browsing performance is excellent. From a storage perspective - after initial setup I had nearly 120GB of the 128GB available. WiFi performance is also very good and Bluetooth is available. - It found and attached my Bose AE2 headphones in heartbeat. Sound and Video playback is excellent.
Battery life is great. I ran 10+ hours with both an external keyboard/mouse and 2nd monitor running while being active all day in email, office, etc and still had power left. It also charges very quickly and the cool thing is you can plug the power into either USB-C. I can easily see this under average conditions going a day or more between charges. Just not possible with most laptops.
The Bad...
The big adjustment is the keyboard and especially keyboard shortcuts that any long time Windows user would utilize. So for example there is no Insert or Delete key - and so you have to learn new shortcuts to make simple things like highlight, cut and paste work smoothly.
Similarly with the touchpad - Right click = two fingers click - not the left or right side of the pad - so you have to get used to that.
Google calls their "taskbar" the "shelf" and there is a "laucher" key much like the Windows Key. But the launcher is a bit crude. The cool news is you can go to a web site in Chrome then easily add it to the Shelf like a favorite - including the sites icon.
While the screen supports 2400 x 1600 - it defaults to like 800 x 600 and when you up the resolution for clarity - many apps don't scale correctly and all of a sudden fonts become unreadable. I adjusted to 1800 x 1200 as my base which is still compact.
So while you can install apps like Office - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneDrive, etc., some don't work -i.e. MS Teams is not compatible. Also these are the "Mobile" editions of these apps. One cool thing I noticed is that my O365 settings and direct access to both my corporate and personal OneDrives was there. So I could easily open docs and save them back.
So the Mobile editions of Office apps do have some limitations - but you can do much of the normal editing you would do and they do support full screen mode. You can always use the Web based versions is you feel you need additional capabilities.
I did notice however that the OneDrive app appears to be limited to my business account. When I tried to add my personal O365 account I kept getting login failures. What's odd is that is works correctly on my Pixel 2 phone running the same app - so some work there to figure out why.
One area that is painful however is attachments. Since the apps are Android they think you are using a phone and so they really only support looking at files on your device or maybe Google Drive.
This is true even with Outlook - so you can't easily look into OneDrive and grab/attach files. What you end up doing is going into the app - i.e. Word, Powerpoint whatever and then "sharing" the file from there. That approach then allows you to choose the sharing mode - so messages or Outlook whatever which then opens that app with the file attached. So that's an okay work around for 1 attachment - but if your doing multiple - not so good.
The Ugly
For me most of this actually has to do with the way my company has implemented MS Exchange and device security. So while we do have Office365 - we have NOT moved our Exchange there yet. And this is what makes things ugly.
So I can easily go to our Outlook Web Access page and in fact created a icon on the shelf for access. But that means web only - which is to be honest "normal" operation for a ChomeOS device. But that means no offline support and again the ability to easily go to OneDrive for example to do a simple attachment. But again this is a limitation of our Exchange implementation and NOT Pixelbook itself.
If we did have O365 Exchange - I could have easily used the Android version of Outlook to connect and might have a little less pain. I would still most like have the attachment limitation - but without the ability to test I can't say 100%.
But with Android support - and the ability to run apps - including some Linux apps - there are some adjustments.
So you have to treat your "laptop" kind of like a phone. So in my case that meant two things - first I had to install/run an Mobile Device Mgmt software from VMware called Agent. The goal of Agent is to encrypt the device and ensure compliance.
So the good news is it installed correctly - but added some overhead I didn't want. Next I had to install VMWare's Boxer app to actually get to Exchange. And while it also worked - Boxer is a horrible product compared to Outlook and all the limitations I mentioned regarding attachments, etc are still there. And while it does support an Outlook like UI really isn't that great.
The impact of all of this is you have to them make a choice. Either A) live in OWA or B) use the App and live with the extra overhead and app limitations.
Now I could have decided to copy all of my files located in OneDrive down to my Pixelbook which would help with the attachment thing.. but then there's a rub there...
While there is a files app that gives you a view of your device storage, it has limitations on of all things what you can delete. For example I did a test scan of a photo and it was placed in the "downloads/images" folder - and while I can see it and highlight it in the Files App - I can't delete it. Just stupid.
So you do need to be careful on what you do decide to keep on your device. While my corp documents is only about 10GB and could easily fit on my Pixelbook, I wanted to avoid keeping any data there at all. Same with Music/Photo/Movies, etc. So be forewarned if you plan on going there.
Bottom Line
I think the Pixelbook is first and foremost an excellent device. It's well built, fast, quiet and runs all day on battery. The UI is brain-dead simple and it just works. The Android app support makes it really easy to run many apps that you just can't on Windows or MacOS - because they don't exist there. Plus they update they same way your phone does.
You have to make some adjustments to your keyboard and trackpad navigation and you also have to be prepared to buy new USB-C cables if you don't have them to support peripherals.
As a pure replacement for a corporate laptop - in my use case is about 80% of the way there. As I stated - the pain for me was around corp Exchange and attachments. My hope is that in the coming months we will move to O365 Exchange and that will relieve some of that pain.
At $999 The Pixelbook is a little harder sell in my opinion as there are some excellent laptops in that price range. But when compared to a Surface device or entry Macbook - I think it holds its own very nicely.
At $749 it was a no brainer. And yes I recommend buying the stupidly overpriced pen. I've bought 3 laptops in the last year - two Dell Inspiron and the Pixelbook. And while the Inspirons are also a 2-in-1 design with touch and pen support I'll take the Pixelbook all day.
Comments
Post a Comment