Googlebooks now up for pre-order powered by Intel Panther Lake and Snapdragon X Elite chips starting $899
Google announced back in May that it will re-enter the laptop market under the Googlebook branding. While initial information from the company has been scarce, we've seen several Googlebooks from the likes of Lenovo, Asus, and Acer leak over the past few weeks. Now, Google is officially beginning pre-orders for the Googlebook starting today.
The hallmark of the Googlebook experience is the shared Android foundation between the laptop and the smartphone. Features like Continue On allow picking up work on the Googlebook from exactly where you left off on your phone.
Android phone apps can also be cast directly to the Googlebook for a more desktop-like experience. Google said that the native Files app can be used to browse files both locally and on the phone.
A first-class Android experience with Gemini at the forefront
While Google does not exactly market the Googlebook's operating system, these laptops essentially run a variant of Android that Google internally refers to as Aluminium OS.
Therefore, unlike ChromeOS that ran Android apps inside a virtualized container via App Runtime for Chrome Virtual Machine (ARCVM), Android apps on Googlebooks run as first-class citizens with zero emulation overhead and direct-to-the-metal access.
Users will be able to run both web apps and also those from the Google Play Store, together with support for Chrome extensions. Google also said that all Googlebooks get a one-year complimentary cloud gaming subscription to Nvidia GeForce Now.
According to Google, Aluminium OS leverages the same security architecture as ChromeOS, with Google Titan providing hardware root-of-trust and on-device malware detection.
Googlebooks also address a major pain point with ChromeOS. Previously, accessing the Linux terminal in ChromeOS required enabling the Linux environment called Crostini via Developer Mode.
Now, Aluminium OS provides a Level 5 security-certified pKVM hypervisor that offers a built-in isolated Linux environment with full terminal access to run any Linux developer tool or AI agent.
Then there's the whole smorgasbord of Gemini Intelligence features strewn across the OS. With Magic Pointer, simply wiggle the mouse to invoke Gemini on whatever is on the screen. Or create your own custom desktop widgets with simple natural language prompts.
Googlebooks also include the Rambler voice dictation feature that debuted with the Pixel 11 series, via a dedicated key. Rambler is a helpful AI tool for structuring spoken thought into a coherent document.
Google's AI agent development platform, Antigravity, comes built into every Googlebook. Developers can leverage AI agentic workflows via Antigravity CLI and Claude Code in a proper terminal environment.
Intel Panther Lake and Snapdragon X Elite power the first Googlebooks
Google's silicon partners include Intel, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, although today we're seeing offerings powered by Intel Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 and Snapdragon X Elite SoCs.
All Googlebooks are built to offer a baseline 16 GB of RAM (and can go up to 32 GB), a 45 TOPS NPU, and up to 14 hours of video playback (or 16 hours of web browsing).
Pre-orders for Googlebooks begin today at Google, Best Buy, and other retailers starting at $899, with availability from October 4 in the US and October 5 in Canada, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, and Australia.
OEMs on board for the first launch wave include premium offerings from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo.
All Googlebooks come with 12 months of Google AI Pro with 5 TB of cloud storage together with three months of YouTube Premium, Adobe Photoshop, and more.
Google promises regular feature drops and security updates for up to 10 years.
Source(s)
Google Press Release
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