This isn't the first time Google has asked you to spend a grand or more for one of its own cloud and browser-based Chrome OS laptops. The Pixelbook, though, might just be the first pricey Google-branded Chromebook to legitimately tempt you to part with such a lofty sum. Chromebooks are their own breed of computer, of course, distinct from the Mac or Windows PCs. They rely on Google's Chrome operating system and--most of the time-- an Internet connection where the files and apps, several but not all from Google, typically reside. Pixelbook is a beautiful, thin and well-constructed 2 ½ pound aluminum and glass piece of hardware, with a 360-degree hinge that lets you fold the thing into a tablet, prop it up to watch a movie, or use more conventionally like any laptop.

When Google released the first Chromebook Pixel in 2013, many tech journalists (myself included) saw the Chrome OS-based laptop as more of a fanciful intellectual proposition than a viable consumer product. It was a halo device that illustrated what a Chromebook could be--in a broad, sweeping romantic sense--if designed with complete disregard for consumer pricing sensitivity. Indeed, would anyone spend almost $1,500 on a computer that can't even run Windows applications? The world generally scoffed--and then scoffed again when Google updated the Pixel in 2015. But now we have the Google Pixelbook, which starts at $999 for a Core i5/8GB RAM/128GB SSD config, and goes up to $1,649 for a Core i7/16GB RAM/512GB SSD config.

Last time Google made the best Chromebook ever, it was the Chromebook Pixel. The boxy, beautiful $1,000 laptop wasn't designed to go everywhere with you so much as to be so outrageously impressive that it might prompt someone to ask, "Wait, that's a Chromebook?" Google made it to prove a point, not take over the market. This time, Google went a different way. For the Pixel Book, which the company announced today at an event in San Francisco, Google tried instead to build a thoroughly modern laptop, one that you'll hardly even notice in your bag. It has a 12.3-inch screen that rotates a full 360 degrees, so you can use the Pixel Book like either a laptop or a tablet.