The Chromebook Pixel’s 3 Biggest Shortcomings

It isn’t often that you see a gadget that’s so beautiful, and yet so profoundly useless. But Google’s new Chromebook Pixel is both. Marketed to digital natives who spend all their time on the web, it may be one of the worst devices even for them to get. And while it has its strengths as a secondary computer or backup traveling laptop, its $1,299 price tag puts it well into the realm of “your only device” for most people (if they can afford it at all).

Add in an extra $150 for the always-on Internet connection, and you’re looking at a laptop that costs almost as much as a Retina Display equipped MacBook Pro but has …

No apps

For all intents and purposes, anyway. The Chrome Web Store does feature some well-known games and apps, like Angry Birds and even The Old Republic. But these tend to be either Flash or web games to start out with, or links to download them for Windows — which the Chromebook doesn’t come with.

As a general rule, anything Google makes can be found in the Web Store (obviously). There are also a bunch of other things in the store. But either way, it’s mostly just the same websites you can go to on your existing computer. Only a handful of the store’s “apps” have truly app-like features, like the offline version of Gmail. And if you’re looking for Photoshop, Office, or most non-casual PC or console games, you’re out of luck.

A touchscreen that you can’t touch

Tablets like the iPad are easy to hold in one hand and use their touchscreen. The same goes for many of today’s Windows 8 laptops, which have a top screen that swivels around to turn it from a laptop into a tablet.

The Chromebook Pixel has a gorgeous, extremely high-resolution touchscreen. But it doesn’t fold around and convert to a tablet. Rather, it’s stuck in laptop mode all the time, which means you have to reach up over the keyboard to use it. On top of that, most of the apps aren’t even designed for touchscreens (since, you know, they’re web sites).

Storage space

The Chromebook Pixel comes with 1 terabyte of storage. It’s just all on Google Drive, which is Google’s answer to Dropbox.

In some ways, that’s really convenient. You always have access to your files, no matter where you are. It’ll just take you forever and a day to upload a terabyte’s worth of stuff, unless your Internet connection is a lot better than mine is. You can visit a site like Speedtest to find out what kind of upload speed you have, at any rate, but on a home Internet connection your speed for uploading stuff to the web is usually a lot slower than your speed for normal web browsing and downloading.

On top of that, the free online storage offer only lasts for 3 years. After that, you’ll be paying like $50 a month in order to keep your files, unless you get another Chromebook which has the same offer or something.