Google unveiled its first wave of Googlebook laptops this week. The pricing surprised a few people, with the laptops starting at $899 and quickly jumping over $1,000 for some models.
We have full Googlebook details here if you missed it, but essentially, they are designed to be perfect pairings with your Android phone. If you’re working in an app on your phone, you can quickly dive into the same content on the laptop, all running natively along with Gemini AI tools to make them powerful little machines.
Curious about how the internet is responding to Googlebooks? We wish we could report that it was overly positive, but people seem pretty concerned about the price, as well as support for Linux things. Below we’ve gathered a few of the comments from not just our own site, but from places like reddit.
If you haven’t dropped your own opinion yet, please do so in the comments below.
B4DS3CUR1TY – Who is this for? I have a chromebook plus, I have a pixel 11 Pro Fold, and I’m a google whore… but do I need a premium device? Macbook Neo’s are pretty premium and 1/2 the price….
Jerome Besnard – The glow bar is not for you. It’s to catch the attention of others walking by while sitting at Starbucks.
steadymobb – Limiting your customer base to Android users is certainly a business decision. Like others have said, I have no idea who this is for. I give it 2 years before these things fade away.
Joseph Rocha – I currently use a higher end Lenovo Chromebook Plus laptop as my daily driver and love it. I wouldn’t mind upgrading to one of these. I hate Windows 11 and have no interest in buying into the Apple ecosystem.
jimv1983 – So a laptop that doesn’t have a full featured laptop/desktop OS that’s way more expensive than a Chromebook. Who is the intended customer for this? I’d rather see Google release a Pixel Tablet 2.
Izcool – I’d like to know how powerful the chip on these is to make a direct comparison with competition at this price point. UI looks clean, might take sometime to have professional desktop apps but we will see how that develops and how interested devs are as nowadays laptops are not that expensive unless you want to use GPU intensive stuff like photo/video editing, CAD, renderings, etc.
Retticle – Holy does that OS look awful. Who’s buying this when the Neo exists?
JruASAP – How long until Google gives up on this and drops support for it? A year maybe?
Yash_AG_ – After pixel tablet debacle, hard to belive that this will succeed especially when you can’t even use proper desktop apps outside of that sorry attempt via terminal. it is basically a glorified android tab in the form of a laptop asking for premium prices.
PastaPandaSimon – On the official page it says it supports “millions of apps”. Then when you click to expand their examples for “productivity”, it lists Adobe Acrobat, Dropbox, and Microsoft Copilot ☠️
Takeaway: I think it’s fair to say that people want to be excited for any new hardware from a company like Google, but the $899+ price could be a tough pill to swallow, especially if support for certain programs isn’t easily available. We’re still learning about how these Googlebooks will support Linux/Linux GUI apps, so we’ll keep an eye on it.
On the other hand, things like the MacBook Neo exist, starting at $699. That’s a “real” desktop OS also capable of mirroring your iOS apps. Needless to say, consumers have choices and that we do like very much. We’re hoping to get our hands on a Googlebook at some point in the future.
