I never did throughout the show, and once I uninstalled a bunch of old Chrome extensions and Android apps I didn't use (something was causing the CPU to spin up unpredictably), I never really paid much attention to the Pixelbook's charge level. I didn't even bring the charging brick with me when we'd leave our Airbnb because I find I can get well over seven hours of fairly intensive use from the Pixelbook, and probably can eke out nine or ten if I really need to. I stuffed it in my Timbuk2 messenger along with my camera. It did take some trial and error, but once I got into a groove, the Pixelbook proved itself a truly excellent mobile platform for my job.ĬES is a fairly gear-heavy show, which makes the Pixelbook nice - it's extremely thin and light, and the battery lasts a long time. The big hurdle for me has always been image processing, and with the Pixelbook I finally think I'm ready to say Chrome OS can handle it, at least once you get a workflow figured out. Slack, our project manager (Basecamp), and Wordpress (for publishing) all work perfectly well in Chrome. But my laptop still gets its fair share of use, from coordinating with the team in Slack to writing up news posts and notes during briefings, it does have to work as a 'real' computer.The benefit to working for Android Police is that basically all of my work can be accomplished in a browser. The number of smartphones announced at the show is tiny, and much of our work stems from various briefings and meetings rather than rubbing shoulders with attendees on the show floor.

As someone who frequently travels and has to be mobile as part of my job, I thought I'd put Google's laptop to the test in a live environment: CES.Now, CES isn't quite the on-the-ground reporting slog it once was for Android Police. The refrain so often heard about Chromebooks, though, is that Chrome OS's limited application ecosystem prevents it from being a 'serious' laptop operating system. The Google Pixelbook is a truly excellent piece of hardware, as I stated in my review of it over two months ago.

Slack for chrome os