Google Launches the Bugatti of Laptops

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I'm typing this review on the coolest piece of hardware in the market today, the Google Pixel. If you can afford to spend $1,299 or $1,449 on a laptop, this should be your next productivity device.

Google's (GOOG) other current laptops are among the least expensive in the market: $199, $249 and $449, respectively. But just like Volkswagen makes $19,000 cars, it also owns Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti, enabling you to spend well over $200,000 on a car.

This Google Pixel, as it is called, is the Bugatti of laptops. Let me tell you what it does that no Apple (AAPL) MacBook or Microsoft (MSFT)Windows 8 laptop does at ANY price, often well above $1,449.

Let's start with the screen. The pixel density is relatively similar to a MacBook with Retina display. However, the screen differs in two ways: First, the aspect ratio.

It was at the iPad introduction in January 2010 that Steve Jobs proclaimed that your computing device isn't a TV, and therefore shouldn't have the TV's 16:9 aspect ratio. Apple then proceeded to make their laptops with 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratios to this day. Whoops.

Apple's laptop department may not have paid any attention to what Steve Jobs said about aspect ratio, but Google's laptop skunkworks department did. The Google Pixel has a display as wide as a typical 12.1 inch laptop, but it's taller, forming a 3:2 aspect ratio just like the iPad, therefore yielding a screen size of 12.9 inches. You have to see this in person how superior this makes your typing/web experience. I'm in heaven typing this very page!

Unlike ANY MacBook -- retina display or otherwise -- the Google Pixel is touchscreen. You may not want to use this for most tasks, but it does come in handy in all sorts of situations: Zooming in and out on a map, moving something around, etc.

Many Windows 8 laptops and tablets are also touchscreen, but unlike them, the Google Pixel is not an epic disaster in the interface department. Windows 8 has an interface experience that has been almost universally panned, and the mediocre sales results (no lift from Windows 7) reflects this disaster.

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