Months after a $249 Samsung Chromebook proved the platform belonged at the bottom of the market, Google did the least logical thing possible: it built the most expensive Chromebook in history. Chapter five of our Chromebook history series is about the beautiful, baffling Chromebook Pixel.
February 21, 2013: Google builds its own laptop
Until 2013, every Chromebook came from Samsung or Acer. The Pixel was different: designed by Google, branded by Google, sold by Google. The spec sheet read like a dare:
- A 12.85-inch, 2560×1700 touchscreen, 239 pixels per inch, the sharpest laptop display in the world at launch, beating Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro.
- A 3:2 aspect ratio, taller than any mainstream laptop, chosen because web pages are vertical documents.
- An anodized aluminum unibody with invisible vents, a glass trackpad, a backlit keyboard, and a glowing lightbar on the lid that served no function except looking good.
- An Intel Core i5, 4GB of RAM — real laptop power for a browser OS.
- One terabyte of Google Drive storage for three years, worth more on paper than the laptop itself.
The price: $1,299, or $1,449 with LTE. For a machine whose critics still described it as “a browser.”
The reviews: gorgeous, and absurd
Nearly every review said the same two things: this is the best-built laptop we’ve ever touched, and we cannot recommend that anyone buy it. The web-app-only limitation that felt reasonable at $249 felt indefensible at $1,299. Battery life was mediocre. Storage was a laughable 32GB. Sales were, by all accounts, tiny.
But dismissing the Pixel as a failure misses what it was for. Google later described it as a proof of concept, a statement that Chrome OS should not be defined by cheap plastic. It gave developers and Googlers a flagship, and it told OEM partners the ceiling was higher than $300.
The ideas that outlived the sales figures
The Pixel’s fingerprints are everywhere today. The 3:2 display ratio it introduced now defines Microsoft’s Surface line, Google’s later Pixelbooks, and premium Chromebooks generally. The touchscreen, mocked in 2013 as pointless on a laptop, became essential three years later when Android apps arrived on ChromeOS. A second-generation Pixel in 2015 (the “Ludicrous Speed” LS model, $999) introduced USB-C charging on laptops the same spring Apple did. And the idea of a premium tier for ChromeOS hardware eventually became official policy with the Chromebook Plus program in 2023, a story for later in this series.
Why it still matters today
The Pixel established a pattern Google has repeated ever since: build a reference device to show the industry what the platform can be, absorb the financial loss, let partners commercialize the ideas. Pixelbook (2017), Pixel Slate (2018), and Pixelbook Go (2019) all followed that playbook, and so, arguably, does the Googlebook arriving in late 2026, which we’ll cover at the end of this series.
It also created the Chromebook world’s permanent spectrum: on one end the $199 workhorse, on the other the $1,000 flagship, with the same OS, the same instant boot, and the same security model on both. No other laptop platform stretches that far on a single software experience.
FAQ
Was the Chromebook Pixel a commercial success?
No. Google never released numbers, but analyst estimates were in the tens of thousands of units. It was a halo device, not a volume product — and by that measure it did its job.
What made the Pixel’s screen special?
At 2560×1700 and 239 PPI, it was the highest-resolution laptop display available in early 2013, and its 3:2 aspect ratio showed more of a web page than 16:9 competitors. Reviewers routinely called it the best laptop screen ever made.
How many Chromebook Pixels were made?
Two generations: the 2013 original (i5, $1,299) and the 2015 Pixel 2 (i5/i7, $999/$1,299), the latter adding USB-C. The name then migrated to Google’s phones in 2016.
Is a used Chromebook Pixel worth buying today?
As a collector’s piece, maybe; as a daily machine, no. Both generations are years past their update expiration. Check any used machine’s support window with our AUE date guide before paying for it.
Next in the series: while the tech press debated the Pixel, Chromebooks quietly walked into a million classrooms — and changed American education.
