The 3:2 aspect ratio is unorthodox for a notebook, but it also allows for a unique and unmistakable boxy shape. The chassis of the Pixel is made almost entirely of aluminum alloy with flat sides, distinct edges and rounded corners with the sole exception of its rear, where the two round hinges are exposed and add additional volume. Its anodized surface, aside from giving the Chromebook a smooth matte surface, also benefits from detracting fingerprints much more effectively than other notebooks. The Pixel’s overall minimalistic design does not aim to be the thinnest in the world, but its characteristic approach and matte gray colors make it just as polished and professional as a high-end Ultrabook and ThinkPad, respectively.

In terms of build quality, the Pixel is one of the best for a sub 13-inch notebook. The outer lid barely distorts with applied pressure and the device as a whole is very resistant to any side-to-side twisting. Similarly, the center of the keyboard does not easily depress as can happen to notebooks made mostly of plastic materials. The lid is resistant to twisting as well, due in part to its protective layer of edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass and its thicker profile when compared to other, more fragile ultrathins. Its dual hinges, while not as stiff as we would like, is robust enough to support the display at any angle reliably with little residual vibrations whilst typing. In short, the Pixel is a near-flawless amalgamation of a thin design and strong case worthy of its high sticker price.

The Pixel does have a very dense and substantial feel to it due to the weight. At 1.52 kg, the Pixel isn't very heavy, but it is slightly heavier than many larger ultrathins like the 2012 MacBook Air 13 (1.35 kg), 14-inch ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch (1.521 kg), Zenbook Prime UX31A Touch (1.46 kg) and the superlight Samsung Series 9 900X3B (1.16 kg). The thin 16.2 mm profile rivals that of a number of notebooks listed above as well, which means that the Pixel is hefty without being bulky or inconvenient. It’s hard to find a noteworthy fault in the case.

Chrome Browser and Chrome OS

The Chrome operating system centers on its browser, but a traditional "Explorer" bar is available for displaying active windows and for users to easily pin favorited and commonly used apps for instant access. Syncing the notebook to one’s Google account will automatically port Chrome bookmarks, history, and extensions without any issues. Updates are downloaded in the background automatically and will alert users with a small icon should a restart be required. If so, the reboot will literally take seconds, and all previously opened tabs and windows are restored just as quickly. The simplicity of the software is very easy on the eyes and makes the Pixel easy to pick up and play with a very low learning curve.

Just as important as the browser is the Chrome Web Store, which allows access to Google’s major services including Books, Music, and Games, though it is not compatible with Play Android apps. This is perhaps where many users will be spending most of their time for quick entertainment and for personalizing their system. Unlike previous Chromebooks where built-in storage was as low as 4 GB, users are given much more freedom with the larger 32 GB SSD. The touchscreen is especially fun for many of the applications and games and can be surprisingly useful for navigation due to the large, touch-friendly icons and text.

Supported major video files include AVI, MP4, OGV, and WEBM; MKV and DIVX fans will be disappointed to learn that the Pixel will not natively play these file types, though this is only a minor issue as numerous apps exist for extended playback support. Opening a video file from the browser will automatically launch a pop-up video player, while opening from a local drive will launch the built-in media player. In either case, both 720p and 1080p content play flawlessly, something that previous generation Chromebooks had trouble with. Video playback via the Mini DisplayPort is smooth as well. In this mode, the internal speakers of the Pixel are automatically disabled should it detect external solutions. Playback of any high quality content will heat up the Pixel quite easily, however, as seen in our Temperature analyses below.

Playback of native 2048 x 1536 video sources on YouTube is a mixed bag. Fast moving videos, such as in the two-minute Real Racing demo, resulted in almost 800 dropped frames and slight frame skipping throughout the video. The video is still very watchable, though not as smooth as content with slower movement.

Supported major image and music files include JPEG, JPG, PNG, BMP, WEBP, GIF, MP3, M4A, and WAV. Large image files especially look truly amazing as fine details are represented much more vividly on the dense display. Any sort of editing, of course, will be limited to third party apps available on the Chrome store and are generally nowhere near as intricate as dedicated editing software for Windows and Mac platforms. In fact, the only default editing options include rotation, cropping, and brightness/contrast controls, which is unfortunate given the editing possibilities with the high resolution touchscreen. The built-in option to instantly upload pictures to Picasa is also gone, though most users will likely not miss the feature. Apps such as PicMonkey, BeFunky, and Sumo Paint offer a much advanced suite of editing options than the default.

The file manager is a no-frills, yet major portion of Chrome OS as it allows for easy drag and dropping between Google Drive, the internal SSD, and any external drives that may be connected. Google Drive in particular, which offered 5 GB of free Cloud space a year ago, now offers Pixel owners 1 TB of free Cloud space for 3 years. This may be a strong incentive for users constantly on the move who prefer to not carry around a drive of equal capacity and would rather take advantage of the tremendous amount of free Cloud space.

Opening any supported Office file, such as an Excel or Word file, will open the familiar Google Docs directly from the browser. This also means that larger Office files with macros and other intricacies will run into their usual compatibility problems, and may thus not load correctly. The Chrome Remote Desktop feature is also built-in, extremely handy, and works effortlessly. As for mail, the Pixel can quickly and easily zip files on demand for easy attachment. In short, office productivity is tied closely to Google Docs, so many of the Chromebook features revolve around providing users shortcuts to using the same Google Services that are already available to Windows and Mac platforms.

Keyboard

The Backlit Chiclet keyboard is small in size (28 cm x 11 cm), but the flat keys are surprisingly large since many of the common auxiliary keys (i.e., Home, PgUp, PgDn, Print Screen, F keys, etc.) are not present. Feedback is firm despite the soft noise and very shallow travel, so typing is still comfortable and quiet for the most part. The rectangular keys on the top row, however, do feel different as they require a harder press with a more solid feedback in return. The directional keys have unfortunately taken a backseat as they are reduced in size and softer when pressed. It may have been beneficial to extend this portion of the keyboard to make room for larger arrow keys - like how they appear on the recently reviewed Samsung Series 4 400B5C - instead of halving their size.

Touchpad

The matte touchpad is large (10.2 cm x 6.8 cm) for a notebook this size and makes multi-touch gestures much easier to use. Inputs such as scrolling and drag and dropping are responsive without any noticeable lag or delays with very low input errors. Clicking on the touchpad with a single finger results in a shallow but firm left click, while two fingers will register a right click. We find this simple approach to be intuitive and superior to splitting the touchpad into the traditional left and right click regions.

The few complaints we have about the touchpad include its native lack of pinch-to-zoom and its ability to accumulate fingerprints very easily. Fortunately, the zooming function can be done via the touchscreen or key inputs, so it is only a minor criticism. Otherwise, the keyboard and touchpad are painless to use.

Touchscreen

The Pixel lacks any special hinges or swiveling mechanisms that have made some new releases special, such as the Yoga and Twist series, Satellite U920T, and Dell XPS 12. As a result, it has more in common with notebooks like the Asus Zenbook UX31A Touch and budget Satellite P845T or Acer Aspire M5-481PT. While the touchscreen may feel rather tacked-on on both the P845T and M5, the simple UI of Chrome OS is arguably friendlier for touchscreen use, if not easier to learn, than on Windows 8. It definitely doesn’t have as many unique gestures, but its basic functions are great for games and seldom err.

The 12.85-inch glossy touchscreen is the highlight of the hardware that delivers an experience unlike any other traditional offering. The size and aspect ratio are certainly not commonplace for a notebook, but no one is going to argue against a display with over twice the pixels of a fullHD screen and an even higher DPI than Apple’s current crop of Retina MacBooks. The screen even appears to be plane to the display bezel for a greater "pop-up" effect instead of being buried under its Gorilla Glass layer. Texts are fortunately scaled to more legible sizes by default and can be zoomed out quite far if desired without losing visual quality. It’s also important to note that even though the screen size is small, its aspect ratio and high horizontal resolution make transitioning from 720p or 1080p displays to the unusual screen size of the pixel easier than initially expected.

According to measurements from the X-Rite i1 Basic Pro 2 spectral profiler, color temperature and gamma are almost perfectly at 6500K and 2.2, respectively, which are in line with both D65 and sRGB standards. Colors are generally represented more accurately the more saturated they become with the exception of blue. However, this may simply be due to the cooler color temperature of the screen as all other colors fall well below the 10 percent DeltaE 2000 deviation threshold.

Browser-based benchmarks were run on the Pixel as Chrome OS, after all, revolves around the performance of its browser. SunSpider JavaScript v0.9.1 completes in 225.2 ms, similar to the VivoBook S200E (220.1 ms) and still much faster than the Atom Z2760 in the IdeaTab Lynx (706.5 ms) and the Celeron 867 in the 2012 Samsung Chromebook (443.9 ms).

Futuremark Peacekeeper, which tests HTML5 and browser rendering abilities, returns a final score of 3613 points, much higher than recently released high-end tablets like the iPad 4 and Nexus 10 and over twice the score of the 2012 Samsung Chromebook (1601 points). 

The JavaScript performance of Chrome, according to Octane V1, returns a score of 13171 points, which trounces the recently reviewed Microsoft Surface Pro (5124 points). Subjectively, the Chrome browser feels instantaneous and doesn't disappoint in responsiveness or speed.