In this video, I get my hands on the 2015 Chromebook Pixel in all it's aluminum-clad glory. With premium everything, is this the Chromebook to rule all Chromebooks?
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Hey folks, Robbie Payne here with Chrome Unboxed. Coming at you today with something really special
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something I'm really excited about. It is the one, the only Chromebook Pixel. This is the i5 model
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eight gigs of ram 32 gigs of internal storage a lot of the same stuff on the inside that we saw
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are on the outside i'm sorry that we saw last year we'll look at some of the keys and some of the key
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differences that are a little bit different and i've already popped the top open so we didn't have
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to roach through that at least on the camera and so you see it comes in it was a bigger box than
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this as well didn't want to worry with that on the camera
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take these out and as expected the packaging is is very very attractive but
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very simple and understated nice and clean for those of you who may not run
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across one of these. Very Apple-esque. Just nice cardboard. Not a lot going on out here
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Just all white all the way around. And then the faux LED display there, which is very
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cool. So let's dig into this bad boy. And while I'm doing this, those of you who have
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been around the channel for a little while probably remember me getting my hands on the
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pixel just last year now I did the original pixel came out in 2013 so two
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years ago almost and if you remember from that video my biggest complaint
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with the pixel was battery life and the fact that you kind of lost something
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whenever you spent so much on a Chromebook in in my time with Chromebooks
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and now that I mean I'm a hundred percent in I use Linux for a little bit of stuff but I mean
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I'm completely vested in Chrome OS now it's changed my team a little bit in wanting a little
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bit better hardware and I always told myself if the pixel ever came out with again and they had
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great battery life and a lot of the same goods under the hood I might try it again and Google
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has done so. It's purported 12 hours of battery life. Same awesome build quality. We'll talk about
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the speakers. There's some stuff going around about the speakers maybe not being that great. I don't have another pixel to compare it to, but we'll see. And excuse me, I'm a little bit under
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the weather. But the battery life is amazing. They bumped it to eight gigs of RAM, and that was
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another deciding factor for me. I found, as again those of you who are around the
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channel know, my review of the Acer Chromebook 15, I just found the
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performance to be a little underwhelming. I've gotten used to a high, an 8 gigabit
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system, as far as RAM goes, using the Chromebox for an extended period of time
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that I upgraded. And so I found that my use case had changed and I was running, I
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was peeking out the four gigs of RAM and that's not normal for a lot of people but for me it was
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happening a lot so this is the only Chromebook that I know of that comes with that and most most
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Chromebooks don't have the ability to upgrade so that is why I've come back to the pixel and
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decided to invest the money in one this time and I'm very looking forward to the terabyte of storage
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for three years as well and gorgeous easily just easy to see very very much
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lighter in color than the original pixel I will set it aside for just a second
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just to see what's in the box here get started find a network login on traps
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boom done it is simple they do have some more instructions here in the back to
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walk you through a few things but it really it really is that simple and then
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And in the box, they do give you the simple charger. It is the USB Type which you probably seen around quite a bit by now But for reference it a slight bit and I talking a slight bit bigger than a standard micro USB so
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what most of you are using to charge your phone it looks very similar to it
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except it can be used in either direction you don't have to worry about it it can carry a high-def video over it can carry I think ten times is what I
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read I believe I could be wrong there the amount of power that micro USB can so
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it's actually made to charge larger devices such as the Chromebook Pixel, the MacBook that's coming
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out. And then you've got the detachable head here where you can add the length here if you're
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plugging in. And Google's pretty clear about the fact that they don't expect you to have to carry
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this thing around with you. So this is probably going to sit at home. Likely for me, it'll sit
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in my office. When I bring the Pixel home, I'll just run it on juice
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and not really have to worry about the battery very much. So I'm hoping to see that
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12-hour battery life that everybody's been talking about. I'm looking very forward
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to that. The best I've seen is some of the Haswell Chromebooks
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were getting a pretty solid 7-8 hours for me, which is still almost a day's use
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No issues there, but it'll be nice to have device that i can bring home and not really worry about at all covered completely in plastic sealed
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up if you've ever opened a macbook the packaging is very similar here everything's just top notch
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which again for the price you expect this this is definitely not like opening up the acer chromebook
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which everything's bare minimum on And so right off the bat, I think I said this in my original Chromebook Pixel review, the
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older one, that pictures online and videos even online don't seem to do this thing justice
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as far as its thinness and just how tight the package feels
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It just doesn't. It feels very futuristic, just that flat slab of metal
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It's just a gorgeous, gorgeous device. A couple differences from the original
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Across the bottom, instead of having four small feet, you have these full bars
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It is rubberized all the way across, and then it's extended kind of here at the top
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Just aluminum, fingerprint resistant, which is awesome. No fans, really no markings, nothing down here
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It's very, very clean, very gorgeous. memory serves me correct this is pretty similar to what it was first time around
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the hinge I know some of the mechanics are a little bit different as far as
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supposedly supposed to hold up a little bit better to touches and stuff so it's
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not supposed to wobble as much you get the USB C type C over here and over
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there but we'll get there to USB 3.0 combo microphone headphone the lip to
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lift it here in the front full-size SD card slot which I've seen online and I'll
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show in the review, the SD card slot holds the SD card almost completely flush there
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So you could buy a 64, 128 gig if you want and leave it in there
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No USB 3.0. So, or, sorry, USB-C, type C. So you can actually charge on either side, which is cool
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And it's nifty, but it's interesting that there's some neat charging features to a device
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that you're going to have to charge probably less than most computers you've ever had
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but I just can't get over how really really pretty this device is it's just really gorgeous
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all right and so this is one of the few Chromebooks that is weighted properly so you can just lift it
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with one finger those of you again who are around the channel goodness gracious that was fast
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um know that that to me is a sign of quality and you don't see it in many Chromebooks that's very
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nice let's talk about the inside before we uh before we get logged in here um well i might
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so log in real fast and slide this over here and punch in the password and we're back
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back So on the inside again still just brushed aluminum The display yeah that is a nice firmness especially being able to lift it with one finger but still at this point feeling really nice and firm and not wobbling You kind of hit it once and it bounces right back to where it needs to be which is kind of cool
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trackpad feels great obviously etched glass so again premium everything on this thing is premium right
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the keyboard already just in a couple presses just to type in the password
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felt really great and obviously we're dealing with the touch panel here so we
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can move through things just like that it looks like we're going to get the freshest version of chrome which is cool
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and so let's talk about some of the things on the inside here
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We'll test out the speakers real quick in just a minute. We've got chrome emblazoned here and some nice chrome
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And the thing just strikes a really awesome profile. It doesn't look like anything else, which I really love about the Pixel
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It doesn't look like a MacBook or doesn't look like it's trying to be any kind of Windows
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laptop or anything like that. It looks like a Chromebook Pixel. You see the 3 by 2 aspect ratio here, which is a little odd, more square than most 16
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by 9 screens. And from my last review, if you'll remember, when the browser bar is actually up here and your dock is down here
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the viewport you get is actually 16 by 9, which is kind of neat. It's almost like you can have all the stuff around the top and the bottom
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and you're actually seeing what it would look like on a 16 by 9 screen when you hit the full screen button
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which is, to me, for me, it's a nice touch because it helps me still see a 16 by 9 ratio when I'm designing sites and stuff like that
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So let's crank the brightness up a little bit here. go all the way and I can just tell you just as I was with the first pixel screen is it's striking
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it's so pretty to look at everything is crisp and sharp the colors are vibrant from any angle it
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doesn't change I can kind of show you that over here so as we tilt it back and you see my lights
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reflecting but beautiful IPS display trying to move it up here real close and see for the focus
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oh now it's going to restart well you can get it whenever the chrome OS comes back up
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yeah you never seen on that because that's it's downgraded give it just a second let it finish
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that as well this is the only Chromebook that you can get apart from the other pixel that actually
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a backlit keyboard and I'll have to try it out I'm not going to attempt to figure out how to make it
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work on on screen but apparently the backlighting can sense obviously it can sense it's under light
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so it it probably is not going to even turn on in here it might off the ball the light here in just
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a second but it's supposed to be able to sense your hands over it so when your hands get over the backlighting comes on and it's off when they're not. So we'll see how that works out
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I don't use my Chromebook in the dark very often, so I'll have to make sure I test that. Let me get signed in here
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Yeah, this keyboard feels awesome. Really, really great. Great travel. Obviously there's no flex in this thing. It's just solid as a rock
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Let me get rid of this. I've got the sync set up as well
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Let me put that in. All right. And obviously, they've got it set up, so you've got two-to-one scaling
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This is not running at its actual native resolution, quote-unquote. But it keeps everything proportionally sized
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Give OMG Chrome a shout-out. all kinds of chrome news happened today um asus has a foldback tablety thing uh we got chrome bits
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coming out there's all kinds of fun things happening but i just want to try my best here
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to get this thing up here into the camera and see if it will focus
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come on and you can see how crisp that text is it just looks really really great
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right up in your face, it looks awesome. And it very much feels like working on a tablet
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or something like that which is cool 720p camera up front and you can see it already kind of must gotten through install all my apps and OMG Chrome is not a heavy site they do a good job of
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keeping things pretty clean so I'm not really testing its performance here even
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though I don't know that there's even anything out there that's really gonna test it but they've enabled pinch to zoom and man perfect and just perfect
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yeah let's try it out the verge is off today heavy site and you know you see this no issues whatsoever
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some pictures are still logged in and I come just because they have a ton of
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media on their site all at one time so we're gonna scroll a little bit and stop
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consume no problem I mean just like we're not doing anything here goodness
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yeah so obviously impressed already from the get-go very very happy with the way
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things look here just out of curiosity Oh, look at that
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See, and Chrome's finally starting to optimize. You can see my beautiful family. It's my wife, my daughter, and my son's not in that picture
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We went and saw the Lion King this weekend, so it was cool. I love my coffee
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As you can see, Chrome's already, or Google's starting to already integrate some things with
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Touch, which is really neat. You can see all my stuff installing
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a lot of times some of these things take tons of time not tons I mean in
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chromo as time it takes a while but I'm blabbering on here just because I'm
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really really really impressed the way the screen looks the way this thing feels
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oh sound that's what it was click a song for you real quick we'll see I've read
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some people think that there's a kind of conspiracy like oh there's a
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You know, it shouldn't, it shouldn't sound this way. And it sounds terrible. They're all broken
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And then there are some people that think there's some that are broken and some that are working
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So, I don't have one to compare it to. Yeah, I mean, they don't sound great at all
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Um, um, they're loud. I mean, they sound thin like any other laptop speakers
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So, um, I do remember the original Pixel feeling a little more full
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I'll be honest I carry a Bose SoundLink Mini with me everywhere so I rarely ever listen to
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computer speakers or I plug earphones in so it really doesn't matter even if it's unless they
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sound just flat amazing like mind-bogglingly amazing I'm not going to use them really anyway
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unless I'm just quickly watching a trailer or something so so it looks like I mean my guess is
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the speakers just aren't as high quality. I mean, they shave 300 bucks off the price of this thing
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so let's cut off some slack somewhere. If they're going to cut anything, I'd rather them cut
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speakers out. That's me. Your all opinions may vary. Anyway, I've gone on long enough
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Thanks guys for watching. I'll have a review up probably in a week, week and a half of this guy
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Obviously, it's going to be my main computer for the foreseeable future for a while. I'm not going
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anywhere with this thing but I want to give you a review pretty quickly so so
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you guys can make a choice if it's worth spending a thousand dollars I've had a
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lot of the lower-end Chromebooks so hope you've enjoyed the video hope you've
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enjoyed kind of getting to see more stuff about the box and all the outsides it's been a little more time than I normally do in these but this is a
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special device comes out looks like once every couple years so it'll be a little
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while before we see another pixel and so we want to spend some extra time with it
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guys if you haven't already subscribed to the channel give me a thumbs up if you
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would and hang around and we'll have to review up shortly thanks for watching
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