Looking ahead: Google has completely pulled back the curtain on its replacement for the Chromebook platform, designed to tackle Windows and macOS head-on. The upcoming notebooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo aim to bring the Android software stack to a full-blown PC operating system for Arm and x86 devices.
Pre-orders are now open for the first Googlebook laptops from five manufacturers. Starting prices range from $899 to $1,299.
Google is positioning the notebooks as the ultimate companions for Android phone owners. When a user first signs into a Googlebook, it can instantly import the phone's settings, saved passwords, and Wi-Fi connections.
Similar to how Macs can access all the files and apps on a user's iPhone, a Googlebook can seamlessly summon an Android phone's files and messages. Users can start a task on a mobile app and continue on the Googlebook. The machines combine the Android and Chromebook environments by natively supporting Android apps alongside a desktop-grade Chrome experience, complete with extensions.
Unsurprisingly, Google's AI assistant, Gemini, is at the core of the OS. Wiggling the mouse summons the assistant to answer questions and complete various tasks. A dedicated button, called Rambler, also transcribes spoken words into headers, checklists, formatted takeaways, and other documents. Users can also use prompts to create custom widgets or build apps through the Antigravity AI agent platform.
Each Googlebook includes a year of Google AI Pro and three months of YouTube Premium, Adobe Photoshop, and more. Google promises to provide up to a decade of content and feature updates.
The Dell and HP Googlebooks run on Snapdragon X Elite processors, while Intel Core Ultra 5 chips serve as the baseline for the others, and all of the SoCs include NPUs that achieve up to 45 TOPs. With a 13.4-inch 2.5K LCD touchscreen, Dell's XPS Googlebook is the smallest. The others sport 14-inch 2.8K OLED panels, except Lenovo's, which measures 15.3 inches. Starting models all include 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and some are upgradeable to 32GB of memory.
Other features include backlit keyboards, haptic trackpads, and Google's Glowbar, which displays patterns in response to boot cycles, battery level, and AI actions. Google's Titan C2 security chip supports fingerprint readers on all models, while the HP and Lenovo notebooks also include facial unlock. The laptops also feature aluminum, magnesium alloy, and carbon fiber chassis.
Googlebooks will be available starting October 4 in the US and October 5 in Canada, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, and Australia.
Google's Googlebook isn't a better Chromebook, it's an attempt to rebuild the PC around Android
