Good Pixels, better Watches, great Chromebooks

29:49I wake up and I look down several deep scratches, like all over the Pixel Watch at like, you know, it was dark, it was rainy. So I was having a hard time telling if it was a crack or scratches. So I was like, oh my God, I've had this for like two days. I'm racking my brain to be like, what did I do to do this to the watch? And I couldn't remember anything. So, you know, I had to go up to Google and be like, hey guys, this is not going to work. We need review photos. So can you get me a new watch? And they actually did hand deliver a new watch. And they had a guy take a look at my scratched up Pixel watch.

30:28And we were just standing there in a circle for a bit being like, what could have possibly caused this? And so I I stopped and heard back. They said they would get back to me with like if there were any trace materials and the scratches that might indicate what caused the scratches. But as far as I know, I went to bed. It was fine. Woke up. Scratches all over the place. OK, so one of two things is happening here. Either you encountered Wolverine, but like tiny, tiny Wolverine or two. This is a really bad sign for the Pixel Watch 2, because my main thing with the Pixel Watch 1 was like they did a lot of things right.

31:03and we're just missing kind of the like fit and finish and structure of the thing that often you get right with the second one first one you're like learning how to make these things it's hard work watches are hard it's a circle i get all that stuff but the second one is like we had this problem with the first one the things got scratched this feels like a very bad sign does this strike you as a very bad sign so my main concern is that and i like ran this story a couple weeks ago is that there's no current repair option for the Pixel Watch. And, you know, if you drop your watch and you crack it, if you scratch your watch yourself, technically that's not covered under a warranty.

31:41I'm not gentle with these watches, just in case people are wondering. I'm very klutzy. I fall down constantly. The original Pixel Watch, I was running once and I didn't do the clasp properly and it went flying. Almost flew into the East River and it was fine. No scratches. And it was like skidding across asphalt. So I really think you have to be quite unlucky in some respects. So, you know, I want to say I had the original for a year and nothing bad happened to it. I had the new one for two days and something bad happened to it. So the second one I've had for about five days now and nothing has happened to it.

32:16I've also been a lot more conscious of where I put it down because that happened to me. But like, I'm hesitant to say that the Pixel Watch is like bad for that reason. But just because of the curved display and the way it looks, it is a little more prone to it. And other smartwatch companies have moved on to like either Sapphire Crystal or stronger materials. So that is just like a thing to keep in mind. You just kind of have to be a little more careful with this one, I think. That's the lesson I learned with the Pixel Watch 2. All right. So let's talk about the rest of this watch because I think where you and I landed last year was basically like pretty good first start really excited to see the second one because there were a lot of things like we're talking about that felt like a company's first wearable the fitbit thing was still relatively new the integration was kind of messy the processor was old and not good enough they did some wonky stuff with the straps so it's like this was going to be the one where it was like okay if google is serious about this and going to do it well it's going to start to put the pieces together so i have a bunch of specific questions for you but like big picture does it feel like a big step in that direction this time?

33:25Yes. Aside from the fact that it's one size, usually it's like one gigantic size and the small wristed among us are complaining, it's the opposite problem here. If you have big wrists, this is going to look very small and dainty on you. Aside from that and the issues with the screens that I just mentioned, in every other way, this is a pretty sizable step forward. So that's like what stuck out to me the most, that usually the sequel isn't good. And I talk about this in my review, but we never talk about the Apple Watch Series 2. Like we talk about the 3, we talk about the original, we talk about the 4, 5, 6 for whatever reasons.

33:59We never talk about the Series 2. Samsung legitimately skipped a Galaxy Watch 2. It didn't even bother with 2. It just went from the original to the 3. So, you know, generally the second is either something that the first should have been, or it's just like the forgotten middle child of gadgets that we just don't ever talk about. And I think this is the rare sequel that is definitively better than the original. With a few caveats and exceptions, which we'll get into. Okay, so let's run down some of it. Because I went back to your review last year and pulled out some of the things you liked and disliked.

34:33And I think the one that jumped out to me the most was battery life. Because you had, I would say, like, middling battery life last year, sort of in normal use. It wasn't, like, dramatically worse than any other smartwatch, but it also wasn't particularly impressive. But then as soon as you started doing stuff, especially exercising, the battery life was kind of a mess. How is it this year? It is a massive improvement. So like people asking for multi-day battery life, like Garmin levels or like truly Fitbit levels. Stop. You're going to be disappointed because you still have to charge this every day.

35:06Sure. But you are going to get 24 hours with always on display enabled. Last year, you could get 24 hours if you turned off Tilt's Awake and you turned off the AOD and you were just like super babying the watch, being very intentional with how you're using it when you're using it. You don't have to do that as much this year because one, it charges a hell of a lot faster. Like this morning, I went on a run. I did all my like little exercise doody-dotties, whatever. After a whole night of charging, I had about 100 % at like 11 a.m. yesterday. So I'm here at 10 a.m. with 15 % left. And here we are about an hour later, I'm up full.

35:48I just went about my like shower, putting on clothes, becoming a human again ritual. And it was done. That's fast charge. Like I think 45 minutes to an hour is what most people will need if you're not getting it down to zero. So that's pretty great. And then just in terms of general usage, I was writing down statistics left and right just because last year was so bad. Like I went, I think on a 30 minute to 45 minute run last year and it drained 41%, 41%, which is absurd. That's terrible for such a short period of time. And subsequent software updates fixed that so that it was less bad, but it's actually good now.

36:28It's on par with Samsung in terms of battery drain now. So I went on a bunch of two mile runs. I went on a bunch of walks with the GPS enabled. And I want to say that in general, I was not losing anything more than six to 15%. And that's in a bunch of various like situations. Sometimes when I'm streaming music offline, sometimes I am actually using safety check while I'm doing my workout. So that's enabling cellular the entire time kind of. So, you know, there's just a lot of different scenarios. I never lost more than 15 % in a 30 to 45 minute time period, which for most people, that's like a solid workout.

37:08That's what you're going to do. And I had some really active days where I was getting a bunch of auto, auto workout tracking, which was a big issue with last year as well. So, you know, I'm going about my day. I never really had to worry about the battery. And I just so everyone knows, I did not use a single battery saving feature this entire week, which is good. And you shouldn't have to write like I think what you're describing to me is like what a smartwatch should be, which is basically like I should take it off and charge it when I shower and get ready in the morning. And then I should never, ever, ever think about its battery otherwise.

37:44And it sounds like what you're describing is basically that, right? Like it charges pretty quickly so that you can shower and get ready while it charges. and then once again we're coming around to I need to put a watch charger in my bathroom and I hate this and I still people sent me a bunch of pictures of like dangly Apple watch chargers in their bathroom when I talked about this on the Vergecast a while back and I hate it and it makes me so angry and yet this is the life I have to live but it sounds like it's as good as it needs to be for you to like live your life and not be annoyed by the battery and that feels like a huge win over last year yeah it's a huge win and I think for the average person it's going to be great if you're a Garmin head and you're wondering whether this is going to last you a 14 hour hike with GPS on, I don't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bet all my chickens on that.

38:30That's not like what, you're not going to be happy. This is not enough of an improvement, but for the average person, the person who's looking at a flagship smartwatch because they want all the Google services or because they want to do something other than track fitness, but also track, you know, a reasonable walk every day or something like that. This is this is finally good enough. So you mentioned two things in that description that were also issues that the Pixel Watch 1 had, which was the GPS, which was sort of wacky and weird on the first watch and automatic workout tracking, which was a thing it didn't do at all.

39:07I don't think, despite the fact that this is like a thing Fitbit's pretty good at. It did a version of it, but not what people were wanting. Okay, fair enough. Again, both of those better this year, hopefully, supposedly better this year. What have you found so far? So the auto tracking is definitely better. I went on several walks and, you know, not starting a walk on purpose. And I did get notifications that were like, hey, it looks like you're doing a walk. Would you like to record? And I was like, oh, here we go. Great. On the other side, they also have reminders to stop your workout. So if you're the type of person that's just like, you get home, you lie down on the couch and you're like, why did I exercise?

39:47This was a terrible mistake. And you forget to turn off your activity. After about five minutes, it will be like, yeah, you want to stop? And, you know, it did that for me. Like a couple of times when I was just like sitting on a park bench, taking in the sights or just forgetting to turn off my walk. It did remind me to do that. So on that front, yes, it is better. GPS is a mixed bag. I basically tested it without my Pixel phone when I went on runs so that I could use the Pixel Watch's built-in GPS. It takes a while to find a signal. You know, I've got an Ultra 2 on the other hand, and the Ultra 2 will find a signal like, boom, done.

40:27Like, I have to wait a second for it to find a signal. This, sometimes I have to wait around and I have to walk like 10 feet before it finds a signal. Sometimes it's a little longer. And I live in an area that's very challenging for GPS. I'm surrounded by water. I'm surrounded by tall buildings. That's understandable. This is not necessarily a thing that's limited to Google. A bunch of smartwatch companies, even those with good GPS, have this issue where I live. It's just something that I clocked. And I had a weird instance where I went on a run. The GPS map was only half right. And it said I only did 1.3 miles, which is wrong.

41:05I never do just 1.3 miles on a run. Two minimum is my thing. Like, I feel like I need to do two miles to feel like I got at least some sort of cardio release going on. So I had done about a two-mile run, feeling like really good, wanting to check my stats after. And it's like 1.3 miles in the app. On my wrist, it was like 2.1. And then I was like, this is bull honky. So I'm trying to update it. Wouldn't update. 24 hours later, it's like you did 2.1 miles. So I feel like I've been gaslit with GPS. And I had this problem last year. The maps were a lot less accurate last year. So there is some mild improvement there.

41:45I just think there's something wonky going on in the back end. And I've reached out to Google, like, what's up? Why is it doing this for this particular run? But I also have to mention that I went on four runs total. And it only did that for one of them. And I went on, according to this watch, like several walks this weekend. And those were all generally pretty accurate. So just on this one run, it had a 24-hour meltdown as to how far I actually ran. And so my stats were wrong, which if you're like me, that's unacceptable. It drives, it ruins your whole day. You get no credit for anything. So, you know, if that's you, you might not be happy with that because there is some wonky back end going on.

42:27And, you know, I've had that issue with Fitbit over the years off and on. So that just might be a thing that they're still kind of working out. Speaking of the Fitbit thing, last year we had a lot of questions about Fitbit and Pixel and whether these two companies that are now one company kind of understood how they work together. And then just before the Pixel Watch 2 came out, Fitbit launched a new Fitbit. Does this ecosystem make more sense to you than it did? Like, it seems like they did a bunch of new Fitbit stuff in the Pixel Watch 2. There's new sensors, skin temperature and stress and heart rate.

43:02Stress, I think, is one of the things that Fitbit itself has been really, really, you know, promoting and spending a lot of time talking about over the last year or so. Does the integration work better for you? Like, do you kind of understand where Pixel ends and Fitbit begins now? Yes. So last year was a total shit show. Like, it was three smartwatches. They nerfed the Google smartwatch in terms of fitness features and health features. and they took the Fitbit watches and went, we will take everything that mildly made you slightly smarter and take it all away. And so that's less of a problem this year because I think last year, by the nature of having three smartwatches, it was very confusing and there was no real honest way to differentiate them in a way that made sense.

43:43This year you have the Charge 6, which is a fitness band and you have the Pixel watch and the delineation between these two and what features they offer is a lot clearer. And thank the freaking Lord that it is, because when you have the Pixel Watch 2, you're not wondering like, well, Fitbits can do this. So why can't this do that? Don't you have a Fitbit integration? What's the deal? So yeah, there's none of that this year. You get all the abnormal high, low heart rate notifications. You get all the EKG, AFib notifications, both passive and spot checks. You get the stress tracking, which they introduced with the Sense 2 last year.

44:22you get the continuous stress tracking, which is hilarious in many different ways. Yeah. Speaking of making you feel feelings like there's nothing quite like a notification being like, are you stressed when you're stressed? And you're like, yes, thank you, Fitbit. I am stressed. Thanks so much for asking. Fitbit actually has the best implementation of stress tracking of anybody out there, in my humble opinion. It's just a lot more thoughtful. You could tell a lot of like thinking went into this because you are not going to get notified when the stress is happening. Right. Yeah, they try to do it after, which I appreciate.

44:54You're going to get a delay, which it comes with its own trade-offs, because I'll get notifications and I'll be like, what was I doing three hours ago when I was having this bodily stress response? Was I happy? Was I sad? I don't know. But sometimes it is very relevant. Like, I actually got some bad personal news last week. My grandma died. and like in the moment I was just like I'm going to shut down and compartmentalize because I have work to do and also Korea is a different time zone so we'll deal with this later and then later when I actually did get to deal with it about an hour after I had processed all the feelings it was like hey we found a stress response would you like to log your mood and I was like sure sad That's what it was.

45:41But it does give you a second to kind of think and log the mood. And if you're in a place where you can whip out your phone and write a sentence or two, there's at least a prompt there. I don't think that mood journaling is a natural human impulse. So when we saw this with watchOS 10, where Apple's like, you have these abstract moods that you can log on your watch, I never used it because I'm not going to be like in a moment where I'm stressed and like, wow, this was really stressful. I should log this for posterity. Yeah, that never did anything for me. That never did anything. So this is actually, it's not perfect.

46:21There is a delay. You have to remember how you were feeling, when you were feeling, and be in a position to be able to log the mood. But there's context for it. Okay. I like it. Anything else about the watch that jumps out to you? It strikes me as an everyday fitness tracker. It is unambiguously much better than last year. It seems like Google's kind of right there now, right? It's surprising because when you have the Pixel phones, you're just kind of like, why are you making this Google? With this, you kind of get why they're making it. And they actually have a shot to be the best at something.

46:53So I don't, do I think that the Pixel Watch 2 is the best Android smartwatch out there right now? I'm still kind of like, no, I still think Samsung is slightly better, but the gap is a lot, lot smaller. It is a lot smaller. They did a lot better than I thought they were going to do. And some of that actually is because I think they were pretty unique in the safety features this year with safety check and safety signal. So I actually just used safety signal this morning because I was like, I'm leaving this watch at home, but I'm going to like see how this affects my battery to use safety signal.

47:26And, you know, I don't have an LTE plan on the watch, but I was still able to send notifications about where my location was to my husband while I was out there. And, you know, if you ever see any girl with her girlfriends when they're leaving, they're like, text me when you get home. So that's sort of like an acknowledgement that that is a cultural thing that I have to do. And it's kind of nice that I can just set a timer and it gives the reason why I'm setting that timer and my location. Now, my husband was just like, oh, she's just testing something. Ignore. So if something had happened to me, I don't know that it would have been particularly useful for that particular use case.

48:06Yeah, I do think that's cool. There's some little wonkiness there, though, because safety signal is basically you being able to access emergency features without having an LTE plan, but you still need to have the LTE watch. So that is a little inelegant, if you ask me. And you also have to have a Fitbit premium subscription in order to have the safety signal. So it's just like kind of saving maybe$10 a month max in order to have the emergency features. features, it's kind of a nice option to have, but also doesn't fully make sense. And you would think that why not just also offer that to non-LTE models, but it's not on the non-LTE models.

48:50So there's like a lot of stuff like that, small things that are just kind of like, well, why did you do it this way? And it leads into my other kind of quandary and question with the Pixel Watch 2 is that are we heading towards more ecosystem fragmentation? Because the thing about the original Pixel Watch that I was just like, yes, was that it was for everyone who had an Android phone. Samsung gatekeeps health features. Samsung gatekeeps certain things to Samsung phones. And that wasn't a thing that you had to think about with the Pixel Watch, but it is something you have to think about now with the Pixel Watch 2 in that, like, do you want this to automatically recognize that it's bedtime and turn on low power mode so you get an extra 10 to 15 % battery when you wake up in the morning?

49:34Because it does save about that much. cool if you have a Pixel phone, you can go into the digital wellness settings and make it so that it auto syncs with your watch and will automatically go into bedtime mode, which the original does not do. You have to manually do it. And who falls asleep going, must put bedtime mode into my watch? I never did that. So that was a huge problem. I don't have to do that with this because I've paired it to a Pixel phone. I'm still going to have to do this manually if I pair it to a Samsung phone. So like we're starting to have instances like that where I'm just like, hey, you guys were supposed to be the ecosystem like agnostic watch.

50:14And now you are kind of putting some things in there that make it better with Pixel phones. So like it's not available now, but they were saying that it could screen your calls and a future software drop. So that is also going to be limited to Pixel phones only. So I'm like, aha, I see we are introducing some ecosystem nonsense into the mix. There was a lot of that this year. I think in the in the phones, too, there's a definite sense that Google is getting more comfortable keeping stuff for itself. And it's like it's still probably like if you don't own a Samsung phone or a Google phone, it seems like the Pixel Watch is probably the more ecosystem friendly of the two if you're going to pair it to some other Android device.

50:56But it is, I agree with you, it's still a little concerning to see Google sort of slowly start to close the doors. And they're like, we just mostly want to sell you Pixel stuff. Because I get if you don't want a Pixel phone, especially if you're in the US, Android users tend to have Samsung phones. That totally makes sense. I really hate how it seems companies are using smartwatches as cudgels to keep you in an ecosystem. I occasionally want to switch to an Android phone just because my iPhone is pissing me off, but I'll never do it because I have an Apple Watch. So like, that's very annoying to me.

51:29And I see Google doing this here and it was just sort of like, ah, you guys, I was rooting for you to keep it platform agnostic. And Garmin is still the only truly platform agnostic thing. Yeah, I agree. But I think in general, the story you're telling about the Pixel Watch 2 makes me excited. I feel like, I think you're right that Google has a lot of incentive to keep building this thing, not least because it's spent a hell of a lot of money on Fitbit. and the fact that it is sort of systematically improving the things that weren't great give me hope that like as it keeps working on this stuff i think the the form factor ideas it has are right i think some of the assistant stuff especially as they start incorporating the large language model stuff is going to start to be very cool there are a lot of interesting places this could go and i i think it gives me hope that google might actually know how to build a good smart watch over time which i was not sure of last year i was not sure of that either but i really do think that if they get their shit together and they really stay on top of the Fitbit integration, which is kind of rocky at this point, not a lot of people are loving the Fitbit app redesign, which I can kind of understand having played with it for a few days more deeply.

52:35But it's just like, if you can stay on top of that, if you can manage to not piss every Fitbit user who's been there for the last 20 years or however off, if you can continue to innovate. And I really do think Samsung should be worried. They should start not resting on their laurels because the Galaxy Watch 6 was incredibly iterative. I almost fell asleep writing the review, even though it's a great watch. I was just like, it's the same as last year, kind of. Oh my God. So by nature of being new, even if it's not perfect, it's still more exciting than the existing Android options. And because it's Google and because they own the software platform, I don't know, they have the chance to be the best at something, which besides search engines, what can you say that Google is the best app?

53:22So I don't know. It's very interesting. And maybe not even search engines, but that's a different podcast. We will come back to that. All right. We should take a break. But V, thank you as always. If you figure out your tiny Wolverine problem, come back on and let us know. Okay. I will. Thank you. All right. We got to take a break and then we're going to come back. We're going to talk about Chromebooks.

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56:08Welcome back. A couple of weeks ago, Google announced a new program called Chromebook Plus. Basically, a designation for computers that meet a certain set of criteria for processors, screens, webcams, that sort of thing. And thus, all in should be up to a slightly higher standard as a PC. As a person who loves Chromebooks and hasn't frankly seen one that I actually want to buy in a few years, this makes me happy. But it's also kind of confusing. I've sincerely never been able to tell exactly how much Google cares about Chromebooks. They're hugely successful in schools, which is obviously great for Google because it gets young users using Google products.

56:46Obviously a big win for the company. But is that it? Or does Google really want to compete with Windows and Mac OS and Dell and HP and whoever else and be a serious player in the PC market? It honestly feels like some days it does and goes all in on this idea. And then it cancels a bunch of products and changes its mind like four months later. And then four months after that decides to go all in again. I just sincerely don't understand. Anyway, Monica Chin on our team has been covering Chromebook Plus over the last couple of weeks and has been reviewing Chromebooks for years. So I brought her in to help me figure out what this actually means for the future of Chromebooks.

57:23Monica, welcome back to The Verge Cast. Thank you very much. Thank you for allowing me to drag you here to talk about Chromebooks, which is a thing I think I care about more than possibly any other person. Well, you don't have to tell me twice. I could talk for days and days about Chromebooks. This is going to be the Chromebook podcast. I'm in. But the reason we're here is because of Chromebook Plus. Chromebook Plus. I feel like the Chromebook world is forever whipsawing in Google's mind between like, we want to make this good and make great computers and Chromebooks can be competitive. We think they're laptops of the future.

57:55And swinging back the other way of just like Chromebooks are for kids in school and they're designed to be as cheap as possible. And who cares? And then they just sort of swing back and forth between those two. Where do you feel like we've been on that pendulum for, let's say, like the last 12 months? Yeah. So companies have been trying to make the quote unquote premium Chromebook into a thing for like quite some time now. Like a decade. Yeah. And by premium, I mean like a Chromebook that you could charge more than$1 ,000 for and like people would buy it. that in the Windows laptop world, we're at a point where that is not like a super, super high price.

58:35It's certainly a lot of money. Like no one's like, oh,$1 ,000 is super cheap. But we're at a point where like that is a price that like is not only reserved for super expensive gaming laptops. Like that is something you would pay for maybe a Dell XPS 13 or a Galaxy Book, like something like that. But for Chromebooks, that is still very much like, you know, you put a Chromebook out that costs that much. That is not that much less than the MacBook Air. You know, it needs to be really well built. And the question is, like, can we convince people to pay that much for Chromebooks? So we've had Samsung, which has tried the Galaxy Chromebook, which was beautiful and gorgeous.

59:09Had an OLED screen. Just honestly, one of the prettiest computers I've ever used. Battery lasted like four hours. Was not a good time to actually use. We tried the Galaxy Chromebook 2. It was a little less expensive. Still, like, very red. Like, one of the big things about the Galaxy Chromebook line is you get a red one. I loved the red. Loved the red. It's really gorgeous. Galaxy Chromebook 2 was like not as beautiful. Screen was like not as premium, but it was a little bit less expensive. That I think everyone kind of agreed was a better way to go about it. HP has tried like a Dragonfly Chromebook.

59:42They started out putting out like this gorgeous like remness of the actual HP Dragonfly line, which is a very big famous business line. Like something that they were trying to push on like, oh, this is for the C-suite. They also kind of ended up knocking that down to something that to the HP Dragonfly Pro is like one they put out now, which is like more of a again, more of a modest, like not quite as OLED, gorgeous, beautiful, but it has an RGB keyboard. It's still kind of cool. Prices more closer to$1 ,000. Like they've also sort of bumps down to sort of more of a mid range tier. So, you know, you see companies here and there sort of try this thing.

1:00:18And then I haven't really seen an example of one that has become so successful that they've continued putting out tons and tons more versions of it, which is what you do see with some Chromebooks that do become very successful, like Acer's Chromebook Spin 713 or, you know, stuff that's in that tier. So do you think it's even possible, this is a thought experiment I have been through many times over the years, that if you could get everything else right, like I think we agree that the MacBook Air is probably the closest to doing all of the laptop things right as anyone at this moment. If you just took a MacBook Air and all of the things that it does very well, battery life and performance and the way it looks and the keyboard and all this stuff, took out macOS and put in Chrome OS, could you sell that to people for$1 ,000?

1:01:03Yeah, so it's tough because the number of like full-fledged apps you can use on Chrome OS, the options you have are not as many at this point. Now, there are ways to use lots of the big Windows apps, the big like a quote-unquote premium Windows apps on Chrome OS. Like there are versions of like Photoshop for web and like the different Adobe apps. Office is on there in some form. And then there are of course Android apps, which like, you know, that is a whole separate conversation about like how well Android apps on Chromebook are or are not going. But like there are versions of things like Spotify.

1:01:44There's a version of it you can use on Chrome OS. Slack, as far as I know, there is not still. Although it's always hard to know because that one has been like coming and going from the store for years. Like literally I could say it today and tomorrow we could come back or go. It's hard to know. You know, PWAs are like things that you can use. So there are options, but it is still a little bit more complicated. Like if you are on Windows and you want to use a professional app that leverages your GPU or, you know, play a game, whatever it is, you go on Steam, you go on the Microsoft Store, you just download it, and then it's there.

1:02:19And on Chrome OS, it is still more complicated to figure out, like, okay, do I have to use this on the web? Is the Android app the best option? Maybe there is an Android app option, but maybe instead I should be using the PWA. Like, there's just, it's a little bit more complicated and not as robust of a software ecosystem. That said, there certainly are other benefits to Chrome OS over like something like Windows or Mac OS. People love how quick it is to boot. I mean, it boots like almost instantly. That's like a big draw of it. Background security updates. Those are like a thing that people really like.

1:02:50A lot of people like to run Linux on their Chromebooks. That is a thing you can do. The crowd that these quote-unquote premium Chromebooks have sort of been targeting is a crowd of people that, you know, Chrome OS for ages and ages, many people associated with like this is for students, this is for like kids or budget shoppers. The contingent of people that the premium Chromebook has sort of been trying to target is people who are not students, people who are like – who have some deep pockets, who are your engineers or creators or business executives, whatever job they have. But you prefer Chrome OS to Windows or Mac OS because of these other benefits that it has.

1:03:31But they don't want to be limited to like cheap devices that are built for students. They want the kind of premium hardware that, you know, their co-workers in the C-suite are all on ThinkPads or HP Dragonflies and they want a laptop that runs Chrome OS but has that same kind of, you know, really nice build. I think you just described like the perfect second device, right? Like the thing you're describing where it's like you can do almost everything but some of it is going to be kind of hacky is also kind of the way the iPad works. And so I think if you like want to be the person who uses an iPad for work, like you can do it, but you're going to do a bunch of things in these really wacky, hacky ways that aren't as easy as on some other systems.

1:04:11And I feel like Chrome OS has a handful of those, which I guess has always been the problem because it's like if you want a light, thin, simple computer that boots really fast and you just like want to send a bunch of emails while you're on a plane, like Chromebook is perfect. But for most people, that can't be the only computer you own. Yeah. And when you get above a thousand dollars, that just starts becoming expensive for most people as a second device. And, you know, I write about Chromebooks. Every time I write something like this, the comment section is full of people who are just like, well, actually, it's really easy to use a program if you just get on Linux and do blah, blah, blah.

1:04:44And it's like, yeah, that's that's great. But it is like a slightly more of a hiccup than it is to just download on Windows. Yeah, if your answer to a problem is download Linux, like you're telling on yourself in a way that I don't think you understand. Yeah, there is certainly contingent. There are, in my comment section, it's full of people who are in that group. The question is really how big is that group and is that group big enough to really sustain a rigorous ecosystem of these products that goes on for years and years and years? Yeah. So Google, I guess to its either detriment or credit, seems committed to this idea that it is going to figure out how to sell high end Chromebooks.

1:05:22So tell me about the Chromebook Plus program that was just announced. Yeah, so the Chromebook Plus is a certification. And if you're familiar with what Intel Evo is, it's kind of a similar idea. Evo was previously Project Athena and previously before that was the Ultrabook label. It's kind of like companies will roll out these certifications. They have like a list of requirements. And if your computer meets that list of requirements, you can put that label, you can license that brand and you can put it on your product. And then, you know, in this case, if your laptop qualifies for the Chromebook Plus branding, you can then put your laptop on the Best Buy shelf.

1:06:01It will have a big sticker that says like Chromebook Plus or whatever it is. You can have Chromebook Plus in the name, you know, in the Best Buy listing. It might say like Asus Chromebook Plus. And then, you know, the idea is they'll promote this Chromebook Plus label. You know, these are the Plus laptops. I mean, these are the good ones is what it's saying. Yeah. And then Chromebooks with that label will be more likely to be purchased. That's the idea of programs like this. Which I think is fine. Like part of me wants to make fun of Google for essentially having to come up with a label that says these are our good computers, which implies that most of your computers are not good computers.

1:06:33But I also understand that there's a gigantic portion of the Chromebook world that is incredibly price sensitive and is just like is buying these things in bulk, is buying these things for schools. Like I get that. What's on the list of things you have to do to be a Chromebook plus computer? Yeah. Yeah, so compared to the Intel Evo standard, which is this kind of thing that Intel runs, or something like AMD Advantage, which AMD runs for gaming stuff, it is not a particularly extensive list. So you have to have an Intel Core i3 or a Ryzen 7000 processor. Which is basically just like a quality class PC processor.

1:07:08Yeah, so if you have a Celeron like that, that's not a Core i3 or higher. That doesn't count. an IPS panel with at least 1080p resolution, a 1080p webcam, 8 gigabytes of RAM, and 128 gigabytes of storage. That is pretty much all we were given in terms of what the requirements are. That seems like, I mean, I guess maybe this is the idea, but that is like bare minimum decent laptop specs. Anyone who is like, I want a laptop that is pretty good, I would tell everyone to not get anything less than any of those things. Like you're just sabotaging yourself if you get anything lower than those specs?

1:07:42I mean, I don't know that I think a Chromebook needs to have a Windows laptop. Yes. Sure. OK. Chromebook. I think these are some of these to me would be like, OK, this is a quote unquote good Chromebook that you're shopping for. In particular, I mean, the 1080p webcam like that's fair. Yeah. 128 gigabytes of storage. Like there's a time when I would have said that was a little high, higher than necessary for Chromebook. Just Chromebook doesn't take up as much space as Windows does the RAM similarly. But I think they are sort of been to signal like this is a Chromebook that has like some pretty solid specs for the category.

1:08:13Two things I noticed missing in those specs. One, anything having to do with design or materials or fit and finish or weight or whatever. No sense of like what this thing is supposed to look like. Yeah, no sense of that. The other one is battery life, which I would argue for a Chromebook is maybe the single most important spec that exists on a device like that. You asked them about the battery life omission, right? What did they tell you? So I tried very hard to find out about this and it was a little bit of an adventure. So at the Chromebook Plus event that we were all at, where they announced it, we were looking at the list.

1:08:48They put the list up on the big screen when they were giving the speech or whatever. And I immediately said, why is battery life not on there? So after the talk gets out, I hunt down one of the Google people and I'm like, hey, so why isn't there a battery life requirement? And he's like, oh, there totally is. There's definitely a battery life requirement. We just didn't announce it on stage. And I was like... I feel like lead with that. I was like, what's the battery life requirement? And he was like, oh, I don't know, but it'll be in the press release. So we wait a couple of days. Press release comes out.

1:09:13There's no battery life requirement in there. I email him back. I'm like, hey, so you said there was a battery life requirement in the press release. There's not. Is there a battery life requirement? What's going on? A couple of days later, to my recollection, Google gets back to me and they say the following. All Chromebooks are required to meet a 10 hour battery life requirement based on internal testing standards. While not a new requirement for Chromebook Plus, dot, dot, dot, Chromebook Plus laptops must also adhere to this. So that's their claim. Now, I have no idea what their internal testing standards are for that 10-hour battery life requirement in the first place.

1:09:51So that's not really saying that means much to me. Can you remember the last Chromebook you tested that got 10 hours of battery life? No, there has certainly been some, but I don't remember. I think it's been a while. Well, and to your point, I mean, some of the ones that we've liked in the past, even the high end ones have been crushed by their battery life. The Galaxy Chromebooks are a really good example of this, that like beautiful machines did a lot of things right. Really short battery life. Yeah. And I mean, it's worth noting that, well, you know, my battery life that I get is only my battery life because I'm testing with my workload.

1:10:20Like you might get something totally different, but I don't know what Google I'm, I don't know if they're doing video playback. Like, I don't know. I just don't know how they're, if they're doing one of those things where it's like you turn off the wifi and you put the screen at like a hundred nits and you turn off the speakers and you play a local video file and that also to me is not a good reflection of how much better you can expect so i think my results is probably a little bit better but i don't claim that it's identical what you're gonna get that's fair so one thing i thought was interesting about the way google is approaching this is that if you qualify for the chromebook plus certification not only do you get the sticker that says this is one of the stuff like from a software perspective these things are going to be better than the lower end chromebooks right that surprised me a little bit actually part of the appeal of chrome os has been that it's this like very simple straightforward thing you can kind of log in anywhere and all of your stuff appears but now it seems like google is starting to say like we're gonna especially with ai stuff right give you more to do on these more powerful machines yeah so the main thing is that there are some ai powered features which we were told are as of now going to be exclusive to Chromebook Plus devices, it seems to me plausible that they will end up on all Chromebooks eventually.

1:11:38Okay. It's like what they're doing with the pixels. Like the stuff starts there and then kind of works its way down through the ecosystem. Just based on like how I see that they do this kind of thing with Android, like I don't know that I would assume like this will never leave the Plus line. But yeah, there's a magic eraser tool in Google Photos. There are improvements to lighting and noise cancellation in video conferencing, which we got a demonstration of and then there's like an offline file sync thing which automatically downloads stuff from drive onto the device which we also got to see in action suddenly 128 gigs seems like not enough that that was my reaction i was like oh i have a lot of stuff in drive i don't but i assume it's theoretically supposed to like save you from having to do that if you are someone who would be you know going on and doing that manually well it's smart because google has fought against this thing for years where the perception of the Chromebook is still, it only works when you're online.

1:12:32Right. And there are lots of people who still think that. Right. And on the one hand, I think that's like a fake fear because like my MacBook is more or less useless when I'm not online anymore. Like I don't. It turns out there is very little you can do without the internet. Yeah, exactly. But also Google, I think is smart too. And I remember they did this with docs and stuff back in the day. They were like, no, you can do this stuff offline. your computer will be okay. So doing the offline stuff makes a lot of sense to me. That seems smart. Yeah. And then there are going to be like AI generated wallpapers, which you like type in a text prompt and it like generates a wallpaper.

1:13:05That's the idea. We didn't get to see that. That wasn't ready at the time. There's a quote unquote personal writing assistant. Oh Lord. Very curious, excited to try that out. I love to be assisted with my writing. So, you know, I welcome that tool. and then there's like a three-month subscription to photoshop on the web and there's like three months of geforce now's priority tier there's like a couple things like that where you get some free trials of some stuff and i mean that's a decent amount of stuff that's a that's a pretty strong push to buy the better chromebook it certainly is it will be interesting to see how long all of those things remain you know plus exclusive before it becomes less before they sort of trickle down.

1:13:45Yeah, that's very fair. So I'm curious what you think the manufacturers of Chromebooks are going to do. Because like you were saying at the beginning, all of these hooks have been burned by trying to charge a lot of money, even for a very good Chromebook. It just, it has been hard. I've been out here banging the drum of like, $1 ,000 Chromebook can actually be a really good idea. I think the Pixelbook is like one of the all time best laptops. I still believe that. It was a good one. Most people didn't. Like I I grant that I am not most people in that particular way. And so if I'm, I don't know, Asus or Samsung or Lenovo or HP or whoever, I have a lot of experience not selling high-end Chromebooks.

1:14:22And now Google's out here saying, again, sell high-end Chromebooks. It's totally going to work this time. Do you think they're going to try? Are we going to get a real push back to the premium in the Chromebook space here? Or has everybody been burned too much by now? From what the evidence that we have so far, and again, this is evidence that's highly curated by Google. So, like, they, you know, have decided which ones they are going to announce on stage. It seems like a lot of these are pretty solidly mid-range so far. The ones that have been announced, the cheapest one, I think, is$399.99, which is the Acer Chromebook Plus line.

1:14:54And then a bunch of the other ones that were announced were sort of in the, like,$500,$800 range. So these are high-ends, quote-unquote high-end Chromebooks in that they're not—they're above the, like, school laptop cart tier. But these are not HP Dragonfly Pro, like$2 ,000 executive devices. That does not seem to be, I think, who they're going for with this label. It seems to me they are more looking for these are like parents shopping for their kids or something, and they don't necessarily know anything about specs. But they see plus and they're like, oh, plus. That must mean it's good. And I actually think that is similar to how if you look at like what tends to get certified as Intel Evo, they sort of have very specifically targeted that label towards like these are the best.

1:15:38best like consumer things that you might buy rather than like we're shoving this at the enthusiasts and the the enterprise customers okay so yeah it seems like what we're gonna get is likely a lot of things that are right at that minimum spec range which like you said for a chromebook is fine my initial reaction as soon as you said i3 was to be like uh that's not enough but for a lot of chromebook uses it probably is so is 8 gigs of ram so is 128 gigs of storage like that's a pretty good Chromebook. Yeah, in my experience, a Core i3 often flies on Chrome OS. I think maybe what I need to do is just let go of the idea that I'm ever going to get the really beautiful, perfect, spectacular Chromebook that I want.

1:16:21There certainly are some you can try. They get pretty pricey. What's the best one out there? If I want America's fanciest Chromebook. In my opinion, which is just my opinion, is the asus chromebook cx5 flip cx5 but that is not that is actually not a super super fancy one that is just one that i think is really good oh this thing looks nice i just googled this i'm into this okay it is really really nice and the battery life is so good that was my experience with that one but in terms of like one that's actually super like quote-unquote luxury what you want to try is the hp elite dragonfly chromebook or something that's in that line dragonfly pro i think that's like more of a consumer version of the elite dragonfly chromebook but the elite dragonfly windows laptop is like one of the absolute nicest computers you can buy it is a business laptop it is like four thousand dollars like it's some crazy price the drive like chromebook is kind of the chromebook version of that and it is really really nice yeah i love the dragonfly because it's another one of those like it's like black on black on black it's super simple It reminds me of like the CR48, the very first Chromebook from a million years ago, where they just sort of made a black prototype and then shipped it.

1:17:35And I mean that in like the best possible way. The Dragonfly kind of reminds me of that. It's just like, yeah, they didn't try too hard. They're just like, here's a cool. It's like a thing a spy would use in a movie. And I appreciate that. It's very nice. It's really expensive. But if you're looking for that, that's kind of the one that's currently floating around. OK. Do you think we're going to get a good push here? Like Chromebooks had this gigantic spike during the pandemic because everybody bought them for school, kind of crashed back to earth over the last couple of years. Is the plus thing going to work, do you think?

1:18:04Like, does it have a real chance of convincing some more people to get Chromebooks? I imagine that this year it seems like everyone's kind of doing it. Like Asus is doing some, HP is doing some, Acer is doing some. Whether that, like, pushes Chromebook purchases back to where they were in 2020, I think that's probably unlikely because that was a pretty specific event that pushed the sales that high. Whether it brings in new customers or whether it just drives the people who would already be buying Chromebooks to instead buy Chromebook pluses is sort of hard for me to judge at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if it's like somewhere in the middle there.

1:18:41That's a good point. And I think Google in this case is probably smart to look at that sort of four to six hundred dollar price range and be like, we can make some real noise there. because right now, even on the Windows side, I feel like I start to get really nervous recommending people computers in that price range because odds are you're making some sort of catastrophic sacrifice. But Chromebooks in most cases are like cheaper than that, like substantially cheaper than that in a lot of ways that people are buying and using and mostly being okay with. So if Google can make like the best$500 laptop and not worry about being the best$1 ,000 laptop, like I'll be sad, but that's probably better for the actual future of Chromebooks in the long run.

1:19:21Yeah, and I think it probably will have the impact of making it easier for some people to shop without paying more than they need to, is what I'm seeing right now. That to me seems like a good thing. Yeah, I think that's right. Like the laptop world right now is just one sort of relentless upsell until you get to about 1800 bucks. And you walk in and they just suddenly, everything goes up$100 at a time until you're like, how did I buy a MacBook Pro? Like that's not, I came here for a Dell XPS 13. Like what are we doing here? yeah i'm i'm still sad that i'm not gonna get the like kick-ass chromebook i'm just mad at google really for canceling the pixel book do you think that'll ever come back based on nothing this is based on nothing just make me feel better no i mean anything's possible you know there's there's always a possibility that in the infinite expanse that it's time something will happen so i don't want to say no it won't happen i mean if you wanted me to take the side of a of like a bet here no i think that when when you look at where they went with the pixel book go and how much better response it seems like that got i think if there's another pixel book it's closer to the pixel book go than it is to like the funky convertible thing the pixel book was but i that was a very cool product and at the time i remember when it was like trying to figure out oh what's the best chromebook like that was the obvious because there had been nothing like it before yeah but that wouldn't really be the case i think if it came out today yeah no i think that's right i hope google makes another one but i i'm not holding my breath make one just for you and bring it to your house.

1:20:43That's all I want. If there's a prototype lying around somewhere that nobody wants anymore, just just sell it to me. I'll take it. I will happily, happily take whatever Pixel Book 2 exists somewhere in Mountain View. All right. I could talk to you about this forever. Sometime you're going to come back on and we're just going to talk about Windows apps and Android apps and the connect to phone thing and like all the ways the Chrome OS almost gets it right and doesn't quite get there. Oh, yeah. But for now, we got to take a break. Monica, thank you as always. Thank you very much.

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1:23:39All right, we're back. Let's get to a question from the Vergecast hotline, as we do on the show every week. As a reminder, the hotline number is 866-VERGE-11. And truly, I love all of the weird questions you've been sending us. We've been getting some really fun, really wonky ones recently. thank you for everything you've been calling and asking about. And if you don't want to call, you can always email us vergecast at the verge.com. That works just as well. Thank you again to everyone who's been emailing and calling super fun times on the hotline. Our question today comes from Tyler. Hey, David, this is Tyler.

1:24:12Hey, I was just thinking back to this, um, maybe blog post or something that went viral in the late 2000s. Uh, and it was all about how to use iTunes to create custom playlists. You know, we sort of forget about this, but iTunes had so much data baked into it and so many fields where we could add our own data to it. I feel like me and everybody else I knew, we all rated our songs. We had custom genres and you could tell iTunes, hey, please make me a playlist with everything I've rated three stars or higher that I've not listened to in the past four months. And then maybe mix in with that music that I have bought in the past two months that I have not rated yet.

1:24:51And it was just this great way to kind of control what you're listening to. And I just feel so sad that, you know, with most of the streaming services, like none of that control is there anymore. And I'm just so curious if anybody in that streaming world thinks that there's an appetite for people that care about organizing their music and being kind of a music nerd about it. Anyway, thank you so much. Love the show. Bye. Okay. I love this question because I think Tyler, like a lot of us at The Verge and also all the Verge cast family, we're a lot of like music nerds and metadata nerds. And so the idea of like, I would like to go in and type in a lot of information about all of my songs so that I can do things with it just feels right to me.

1:25:33I have two things to say about this. The first is just a frankly hard truth about the way that the world works. Most people, Tyler, do not want the thing that you described. I agree that that's unfortunate. I agree that there are lots of people out there who do want that and would like to have more control over their music. But we've been in this phase really for the last decade where the idea of having your own music collection with, you know, things that you've ripped from CDs and stuff that you've downloaded and this sort of carefully curated, beautiful library of stuff is just a dying art.

1:26:06There are people out there who do it and there are lots of great apps out there, particularly on iOS. There's some really good local music playing apps that actually give you some of the stuff that you're talking about. But in general, that's a dying behavior. People want these algorithmically generated playlists. They want to use things like New Music Friday and Release Radar to discover new music. People want to find all the stuff without all the work. And that is what I've been hearing from streaming services for years, that the idea of building a library of music is just a dying art. I think that's sad.

1:26:37I wonder if it'll come back around. But I think asking any of these streaming services to invest in that is just probably not going to happen, at least for the next few years. Maybe that'll change. Vinyl is coming back in a big way. This sense of ownership is coming back in a lot of ways in media, I think, because things move around a lot and things come and go. And the idea of like, I want to have a collection that is mine, I think it's kind of coming back. So maybe it'll get better. But for now, I would not hold my breath. But I have better news, which is that I think AI is going to go a long way towards solving part of what you're asking for.

1:27:12I think being able to say, I have input all this data about what I like and what these songs are and stuff, probably not going to happen. But the thing about a service like Spotify is that it has a ton of that metadata about these songs. It knows the style of the songs, the style of the singing, how much guitar there is, how much piano there is, what the BPM is. And what Spotify, it has been reported and revealed is working on is basically a way to use AI prompts to generate these kinds of playlists. So you could say, I want music with, you know, this genre and this kind of singer and a twangy guitar that is under four minutes and 108 beats per minute.

1:27:53That is also good to listen to by the pool. And it will just make you that playlist. I have no idea how good it will be, as we've seen with a lot of these chatbots. It's kind of iffy in a lot of ways. And I actually just recently talked to Gustav Soderstrom, who's the president at Spotify and has been working on all of this stuff for years. He's very into the idea that AI can be a way to filter and sort and search through and discover new music. That's a big thing Spotify is investing in. You see it already with things like the Daylist playlist, which is this sort of endlessly changing set of songs depending on what time of day it is and what mood you're in and what you like to listen to at certain times.

1:28:30So not only does Spotify have this access to this sort of huge corpus of music, but also it knows what you listen to and when and what you like and when you listened to it. And for me in particular, I've been a Spotify user for like 12 years now, and it knows more about my music taste, frankly, than I do, especially how it's changed over time. So the idea that not only could it take all of its knowledge about music, but all of its knowledge about me and put it into this system where I can just query like, play me songs that I really liked in 2006. Like last time I went through a breakup, what songs did I listen to, right?

1:29:07Like all this stuff is out there and findable. And one of the cool things about a lot of the AI tools that we've seen is when you really constrain it down. And instead of just saying all of the information in the world, you say music or movie recommendations or whatever, it won't always be perfect, but it's much more likely to actually put you in sort of a useful, interesting place with some of these tools. So I think that is potentially very exciting. I know it doesn't solve your whole problem of being able to say, play me everything that I've rated three stars, but maybe we get to a point where you can say, make me a playlist of songs I've listened to more than 25 times.

1:29:40That's a cool idea and would essentially gin up all of the things you've been obsessed with over the years. So I'm hopeful that we're actually going to get a lot of what you're talking about, even though we the users are not going to have quite as much control over it as i think you would like tyler and i would like also we'll see what spotify launches and i think a lot of other companies are going to follow but uh i am sort of fascinated by that and also my interview with gustav is going to be on the verge cast sometime in the next couple of weeks and we talk about ai and playlists and lots of other stuff so keep an eye out for that one all right that's enough for the verge cast today thanks to everybody who came on and thank you as always for listening.

1:30:18There's lots more about everything we talked about at theverge.com. We're covering all of the Pixel stuff. Our reviews are up. The Chromebook Plus stuff is up. There are new devices coming out. A lot going on in Google land right now. So keep it locked on theverge.com. And as always, if you have thoughts, feelings, questions, or other wacky things you think you can do with the Pixel's AI stuff, please let us know. Call the hotline 866-VERGE11, email vergecast at theverge.com. Super fun to hear from you all the time. Please keep it all coming. I'm Sorry we don't answer emails in particular as quickly as we'd like to sometimes.

1:30:50It's been a busy few weeks, but we read them all. We love them all. And we're going to get back to as many of you as we can. Thank you, as always, for emailing. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nilay, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about the Quest review, all the trials going on, and a whole bunch more in tech news. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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