It may be a while longer before the Pixelbook gets its overdue reprise. Photo: Alex Cranz / Gizmodo
If you’ve been holding out for a new Chromebook made by Google, you’ll have to keep waiting. A Chromebook team member just indicated there is no updated Pixelbook planned for 2022.
Trusted Reviews reports that while attending a London-based event for Qualcomm, Google’s Chrys Tsolaki, retail partner manager for Chromebooks, commented on the future of Pixelbooks: “Next year there won’t be anything coming,” Tsolaki said. “In the future, I don’t know.”
There were no other details provided, but if true, this means the Google Pixelbook, which the company launched in 2017, won’t be seeing an overhaul until 2023 at the earliest.
Arguably Google’s best Chromebook offering to date, the 2-in-1 convertible laptop was a deal. It offered Intel processors, stylus support, a responsive trackpad, a vibrant touchscreen display, and a comfortable keyboard that yours truly has typed out thousands of words on over the years. It’s a very good laptop.
Google’s Pixelbook is undoubtedly still going strong for some folks, as it still has two years left in its update cycle. But four years later, there have been a lot of other Chromebooks.
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Google’s last two laptops were the Pixel Slate and Pixelbook Go, both geared for a school-focused kind of user. The Pixel Slate was for folks looking for a powerful tablet with the dual-app capabilities of Chrome OS, while the Pixelbook Go was the spec-stuffed Pixelbook reimagined for a college student. They were both capable devices in their own right, but they didn’t quite pack the punch of the original Pixelbook.
The Chromebook market is ultra-competitive right now, which might explain why Google isn’t exactly racing to drop a new one. Acer offers a wide range of Chromebooks, from the massive $380 Chromebook 317 to 14-inch models delivering PC-like performance (the $630 Chromebook Spin 713). Asus, Samsung, HP, and Lenovo also continue to offer compelling Chromebooks for every type of user.
The demand for Chromebooks also isn’t what it used to be. The pandemic spurred Chromebook sales out of sheer necessity, but that started trailing off as kids began returning to in-person classrooms. And with Microsoft making an (extremely late) play for the market with its $250 education-centric Surface Laptop SE, things may be a little oversaturated.
Google may have decided to focus its immediate hardware efforts on its flagship smartphone lineup, plus the chips that go inside its products. Perhaps the company may find some inspiration to launch a Chromebook running on homegrown silicon by 2023.
We’ve reached out to Google to confirm the Pixelbook report and will update this story if/when we hear back.
