The Vergecast - Good Pixels, better Watches, great Chromebooks

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Today on the flagship podcast of AI-generated wallpapers: 03:22 - The Verge's David Pierce chats with Allison Johnson about her review of the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. Pixel 8 and 8 Pro review: in Google we trust? 29:18 - Victoria Song joins the show to discuss her review of the updated Pixel Watch 2. Google Pixel Watch 2 review: better battery, better watch 56:02 - Monica Chin stops by to explain the new "Chromebook Plus" certification on higher-end Chromebooks. Chromebook Plus is Google’s new certification for premium Chromebooks 1:22:42 - Keep listening for the Vergecast Hotline question all about music playlists. Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of AI generated wallpapers. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am currently wandering around my house redoing, I guess what you would call my charging strategy. If you hear that and you think, David, who has a charging strategy? That's ridiculous. A, I agree with you. And B, you're totally wrong. So the way I've set it up is that basically, instead of just like having a charger that I use, I have a bunch of like charging stations around the house.

There's one in the kitchen where a couple of things are plugged in. There's one upstairs. We've one in the basement. There's one right next to the couch. And basically, the idea is, like, where you are most of the time, you should be able to charge things. This is great now because my wife and I both have phones that use USBC. She's on a pixel. I'm on an iPhone right now.

And so I get to just redo some things. The most annoying part of this process has been Apple Watch chargers because actually I need to charge the Apple Watch probably more than I need to charge my phone. but having a bunch of those like pucks sitting around is sort of stupid. So I'm reworking the whole system. I bought a bunch of those big anchor wall warts that have a couple of plugs in them that look really nice. It works great. Cannot recommend enough spending way too much time overthinking where all of your charging kibbles are in your house.

Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We're going to talk all about Google gadgets. We're going to talk about the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro reviews that are coming out. We're going to talk about the Pixel Watch 2, which I think is sneakily kind of fascinating and maybe very good. And then we're going to talk about this new Chromebook plus designation that Google just put out, where it thinks it can help make better Chromebooks and convince you to buy better, slightly more expensive Chromebooks. All of that is coming up in just a second, but I have this one 10 foot long USBC cable somewhere. It's braided. It's awesome.

It was really unnecessarily expensive. But it makes it so that you can sit anywhere on the couch and charge your phone. It's the dream, except I don't know where it is anymore. So I'm going to go find it. Wish me luck. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And,

Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with Enterprise Security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. Great news. I found the cable. All my stuff is going to be so charged. I really, by the way, cannot recommend enough having one wildly long charging cable.

It's the kind of thing that just like makes a bunch of things in life easier when you're traveling or sitting on the couch or whatever. We love a 10-foot charger in this house. All right. Let's get into today's show. The first thing I want to talk about is the pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. Google's latest phones. They came out last week. Reviews are hitting now. Lock on on. As far as we can tell, these phones are really about two things. The cameras and

the AI. We've been hearing about these phones for months. And I've been wondering over the last week if that's the reason I was left a little, not disappointed, but I guess underwhelmed by the stuff Google announced. If not underwhelmed, then like, whelmed, you know? But as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Allison Johnson has been using and reviewing the two to see if all that camera and AI stuff adds up to a winner in the Android world. So let's find out. Allison's here. Hi, Allison.

Hello. We have the pixel 8 and the pixel 8 pro. And one of the things I feel like you have to do in this process is like figure out how to explain kind of which is which and which is for what. Where have you landed? How do you sort of explain the difference between the pixel 8 and the pixel 8 pro? I think the thing I landed on like literally five minutes ago is that it feels like with the main pixel 8, Google is trying to position it as like the mainstream phone, like the one I

would recommend my mom or dad when their pixel 7A or 6A like gives out in X number of years, whatever. And then if you're a pixel nerd, which I love the pixel nerds, but, you know, they're nerds. That's the 8 pro. And that's where you get like all the extra things. And it's, it's a more of a distance between the two of them than there's been in previous years, which I think. was a little, like, not everybody felt great about that. Sort of felt like pixel 8 was missing out on a bunch of stuff that 8 pro was suddenly getting. I was like, why?

And they both got more expensive this year. So that's sort of made it harder to swallow. But that's where I've landed. I think it's making sense as like pixel 8 is just kind of might be the phone for everybody. Okay. And that's, I mean, that's a little bit like what Samsung has been doing with the S's and the ultras. Like, it's kind of landed in that same place, I would say.

think that works like the alternative would be like the iPhone where there are four models and I feel like I have no idea how to explain to people which iPhone to buy. So the idea of like there's one that is one price and then for like a few hundred dollars more and a whole bunch of extra stuff you get this other one. Yeah. The Normie phone. Yeah. It works. I think so. Okay. So we got it. We should just talk about the camera first because that's the thing. Right. I feel like the two stories of this phone are camera and AI and there's kind of an overlapping Venn diagram there. I have a bunch of. I have a bunch of. of specific questions, but give me just some overall impressions of the pixel 8 and pro cameras. So it's so weird. You have to kind of think of it as like a three part thing because there's the hardware, which there have been some upgrades on both models to the hardware. There's like a new main camera sensor, new lens, like some little upgrades here and there. Nothing earth shattering, but there's that. There's all the software stuff that the camera app itself does. And then there's of things in Google Photos, which is the whole Pandora's box of what is a photo. We'll do that last because I do want to talk about that.

And I'm very curious, like, how all of that actually works in practice. But I agree that that is kind of a separate thing. So let's come back to that. But like just the actual photos coming out of the camera, what have you seen so far? It's very pixel to me. I think it's kind of settled into this, like, you sometimes get like a cooler tone in your photos. I feel like that was more pronounced in like preview.

years on the pixel and I still see some of that creeping in on some of my shots but overall I'm just like happy with them skin tones can kind of look like a little waxy sometimes but like there's sort of like outliers but I think I'm just overall happy with it and if when it fails it kind of does so in a predictable way it's not kind of just like throwing a purple shade into a sunset like other phone will do so yeah. I think it's kind of reliable. It's occasionally, like, very good. And most of the time, it's like just pretty good at everything.

Okay. If I'm remembering this, right, the big spec difference between the 8 and the 8 pro is the telephoto camera, right? Yeah. Have you noticed the difference? Like, when you're using the 8, do you find yourself being like, oh, I wish I had the pro for this so I could use the zoom? A little bit.

Yeah. And that's the thing with the, with like an iPhone 15. and then the 15 Pro Max, like a five-time telephoto zoom, which is what is on the 8 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro Max, is like, it feels like a real zoom lens. You can actually get quite a bit closer to something. You can do a real kind of like compression shot. My husband was running in a race like for Funzies 5K this weekend.

You can get that like cool shot of like the starting line and a bunch of people in the foreground. You just can't do that with a three-time lens or no telephoto lens. It's just what you get on the pixel-ate. You do get that like two-times lossless crop zoom on both of them. And that was introduced last year. It's good most of the time. I have like notes on it.

That is one thing that is like I think a lot of people would appreciate having that. And you just kind of have to make a call whether you're going to shell out quite a bit more money, carry around a bigger phone, or just sort of settle for what you get. Yeah, it seems sort of silly to say that the difference between like 2 and 3x and 5x is so big, but it really is. Like it goes from I'm taking the photo slightly closer to I'm actually taking a different looking photo. Yeah. Which is a bigger deal than I think I've given it credit for. Like I, in the iPhone cycle this year got a 15 Pro instead of a 15 Pro Max and just noodling around with other people's.

I kind of regret it. I don't want the bigger screen normally. And this is why, like, I just wish for more feature parity in general because I want the smaller screen, but all the camera stuff. And you just kind of can't have that in life right now. Why can't we have it all? Right? I just want all the things. Yeah.

But in general, you think that we've settled into kind of knowing what a pixel is. Like, I feel like at this point, if you show me a photo, I can tell you 10 times out of 10, whether it's a Samsung photo or an Apple photo. And I feel like pixel has been kind of increasingly that way too. Do you think it's as distinct a vibe as Samsung and Apple are at this point? I think so. I think it's like it's inoffensive. That's kind of how I would describe it. Samsung has a look.

iPhone kind of has a look and pixels sort of somewhere in the middle and occasionally like kind of goes off in one direction or another. And I'm annoyed with portrait mode. I really want that to be better. like next time. It's like it's fine. It's inoffensive. Wait, but no, tell me more. Because I, so the single biggest technology change for me that happened with having a kid this year is that all I care about is portrait mode. Like, yeah, I just, all I do, I just run around shooting in portrait mode. Yeah. So is it not, it's not great? It's okay. I mean, you have a wide portrait shot and then you can do the 2X on either of the phones. And the two times portrait mode just doesn't look very good. I'm not really

sure what it's doing. It looks kind of crunchy. And that's like, I like that little bit of extra reach when you're taking the portrait photo. So the wide shots still kind of have that like hardboard cutout look where your subject is like super in focus and everything else is super not, you know. It's just full. There's no, like, gradation at all. Yeah. It's just like, it's blur more than it is like Boca in general. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I get that. It'll do that sometimes. I've taken some really lovely portrait photos with it and they tend to not be the two times lens. Okay. Yeah, it's not my absolute favorite. I think it could be better, but it's, it's not terrible. Okay. Fair enough.

What about the pro controls on the, on the pro where you actually get some of that manual controls in the camera app? Have you enjoyed having that? Yeah. I'm not one like when you're chasing a toddler around. I'm not one to get in there and be like, let me dial up the ISO or, you know, I tend to like just trust the phone camera to do its thing. But going in there, you actually get, you can turn on like picture and a picture like focusing and you can turn, which has focus peaking attached to it. Oh, nice. Okay.

It actually makes the macro mode like worth anything because you can actually see if you're. pictures in focus, which is cool. What a world. Yeah, you can see like what part of your subject is actually in focus. So that was kind of a revelation. I was like, oh, I would actually use the macro mode now. But it's nice. The controls are nice.

It's cool having it there. It's not in your way if you don't want it. It's not going to hurt you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. Okay. I'm glad to hear that. All right.

So let's talk about the AI stuff. The two things in Google Photos, and you should tell me if there are more that I should be interested in, but the two that I have found myself obsessively wondering how you have found them are Best Take, which is the one that takes a bunch of photos and then lets you sort of pick and choose the parts of each photo that you like best and combine them all into one photo. And then the Magic Editor, which lets you like move stuff around to frame the shot better. Let's just start with Best Take because we spent like, dear God, like two hours on the Vergecast last week talking about this. How has it been so far? What do you make of it? Is it like as cool a feature

enough to like change the world and make us all terrified about the truth of photography forever? It's somewhere in there. Like it's I don't I don't know how afraid we should be of it. It's like occasionally really good at what it's supposed to do, especially when there's really good lighting, like the demo we did at the Google event. It's like a horror movie almost where you switch the face on someone and like nothing else moves except their expression. and sometimes it looks really seamless and you're like, oh my God, this is terrifying.

What does this mean for humanity? Sometimes it looks pretty bad. And like my toddler like suddenly has another arm. Here's like gesturing. I'm like, okay, well, this is not going to end society as we know it. And so it's like somewhere in the middle. Like I took some group shots with it and there's you can sort of feel like, all right, this is just, this is just a tool.

Someone had their eyes shut. I can change it so their eyes are open. This is fine. This is great. I enjoy having it. But then you can kind of get in there and like there's just totally change the expression on someone's face. And it sort of feels like I don't think I like it. Even if it's not, I'm not like doing an evil deed with it.

I'm just like changing the expression on my toddler's face. I still feel sort of weird about it. I'm like, well, I know he wasn't making that face when he was doing that exactly. thing. And I think we're all going to have to kind of find where we're comfortable with it. And for me personally, I'm like, like, also with Magic Editor, you can do some wacky stuff with it. And like, there was a picture of my son and one of his friends, you know, at a baseball game. And they're like hanging on the fence. And I can just like cut him out and move him over so he's next to his friend. And it looks like that's exactly how I took the photo. and nothing evil has happened there, but I feel strange about it.

And I don't really like it. Do you go and look at that photo then the next day or whatever and feel differently about it? Like this is one of the things I keep thinking about with this is like if I do that to a photo, will I always remember that I did that to that photo or the, you know, the fifth time I look at it, I will have forgotten and it's just a cool photo. But does the fact that I've done something to it change my relationship to that photo? And I feel like with best take in particular, I think I would. You know what I mean?

Right. But it does sound like you're having that experience a little bit with all of this stuff. Yeah. I think it's just a question of like how far you want to take it and like where your comfort level is. Like I have no problem like taking some minor thing out of the background of a photo that's like, you know, I take a picture and there's something like on the counter behind my kid. And I'm like, that's garbage. Let's pretend it was never there.

or yeah with best take when someone's eyes are closed you open their eyes like this is fine but where's the line for you and where you're going to look at that photo and feel icky about it after you make the edit is like maybe it's a little different for everybody i'm learning for myself totally fair yeah have you seen any sort of guardrails that google is putting on that experience like is there a limit to what it'll let you do kind of in the name of a improving your photo or is it pretty much the sky is the limit inside of the tool? It'll put the brakes on if you try and do too much. The UI is pretty limiting, like, to start with. You basically have the options of, like, you are selecting things in the scene to either, like, erase or you have a little magic wand you can tap and it'll suggest, like, change the sky or change of lighting, I think. And so you can't, it's not like a generative, like anything you want. Do you want unicorns, rainbows, like throw them all in there kind of experience. So that's a good thing, I think. And it sort of, it limits how you approach a photo of like, okay, I know I can only do so much here.

It's, it's not a free for all. That's fair. So when you're when you're done testing all this stuff, Are these still features you think you'll use? Like in your day-to-day life as like a regular person, if you remember life as a regular person, before you had 700 phones in your room at all times. Yeah. Is this the kind of thing that like every time you, you know, take a bunch of family photos?

Like I had this experience over the weekend, and I was thinking about this all the time. We went to a pumpkin patch, as you do in October. And it was five adults and three kids under two years old. So the idea of getting all of us in a photo where we're all going to be looking at the kids, camera smiling at once, impossible. Just literally never going to happen.

And so what I have on my phone is 200 pictures. I just stood there for five minutes and just took pictures constantly. And literally zero out of 200. Everyone is making the face you'd want them to make. And I had this moment of thinking like, oh, this is what this is for. Between these 200 photos, there is one perfect photo. And if I could make it, I could share it with my whole family and everybody would go, oh, and then move on with their lives and everything would be great.

But I also, like, I don't know if I'm going to have. an existential crisis every time I open up my camera from now. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, what do you think? When you stop sort of thinking about this in like a reviewer, what does this mean for the world mindset and just start taking pictures of your family and life? Do you think this is the kind of thing that'll end up sort of in your day-to-day workflow? Yeah, I think it would. Like in those exact situations where I am always finding that situation where I look back at the photos I took of some particular, like, moment. And, you know, if it's a toddler and an adult, like, it's hard to, even with two people, get, like, you know, the right moment and the right

expression. I'm like, oh, well, this photo has this. And yeah, it's the kind of thing you find yourself wishing for. And in testing, you just kind of want to do the most ridiculous things and break it. So we've did like normal faces and then silly faces and then you're swapping in someone's like ridiculous face when everyone else is making a normal face and you're like, that's kind of weird and creepy. But I think in just a day to day, like I am so used to taking those 200 photos. And now, yeah, I think I would just have something to do with them now rather than just kind of settle on like, well, I'm going to like weird in this one. and everyone else looks fine.

Yeah. The other AI feature I'm very curious about and is one I am personally invested in is the audio magic eraser, which is supposed to cut out, what is it, background noise and just kind of all unwanted audio from the video you're taking. Is that essentially the idea? Yeah, you just record your video like usual and then you go into the editing tools and Google photos and there's a little audio tab and it separates into some different like very basic channels that are labeled like speech and noise and wind.

Super exciting if it works. Does it work? It works. Yeah. This is another one. I'm like, I would use this all the time if this is actually on my phone. So I recorded a little test clip just walking down the busy street near where I live. It's like raining a little bit. There's all kinds of unwanted noise going on and you can hear what it does. Let's hear the before with no touching. This is just what the phone. itself picks up. I'm just taking the pixel 8 out for a stroll in the rain. And something I've noticed is that audio magic eraser really does best with constant kind of

background noise, something like a crowd or traffic like you're hearing right now. Sort of comes in and out. It's a little bit harder to control for. But still, I don't know. It's pretty impressive. Okay. And here is the after with the audio magic eraser. done. Just taking the pixel 8 out for a stroll in the rain and something I've noticed is that

audio magic eraser really does best with constant kind of background noise, something like a crowd or traffic like you're hearing right now. Sort of comes in and out. It's a little bit harder to control for, but still, I don't know. It's pretty impressive. Okay, that's really impressive. It definitely like clips and compresses your voice a bit. But it just, I mean, it gets, it got rid of all of the background noise. That's wild. And you have like a degree of control over. That was like turning everything all the way down. So you could leave a little bit in if you didn't want to sound. You can definitely hear those moments when it's like kind of juttering and trying to figure things out. But yeah, it's super impressive. Yeah. For everyone on the birchcast who has had to listen to

me like shout into my phone over traffic, uh, this is going to be a huge win. There you All right, three more things I'm curious about, and then I'm going to let you go. The first one is the new tensor processor, which the last pixel performance was kind of, at times. It got hot. It just wasn't the best. What's the verdict this time? And I got to say personally, I never had too much trouble with the last tensor, but I've seen the reports of, like, you know, the overheating. And I did notice on this one, I was out standing outside on like a pretty hot day.

and the screens will get a little bit brighter this year. Like the high brightness mode on the 8 Pro actually goes up to 2,400 Nits, which is super bright. I saw that kick in. I was like, this is great. I can read what's on my phone now. And a couple of minutes in, like the phone got pretty hot and it just went back down. Oh, wow.

Okay. Yeah, which is usually the case on iPhones too. Not uncommon, but with the device kind of in that state, I flipped into the video recording. And it gave me a little warning like, eh, if it's too hot, it's probably not going to record it the highest quality. So if that is a concern, this is, it was a warm day, but I live in Seattle. I don't live in the tropics. If that's a concern for you, then I'm sorry to say that it might be a little bit more of the same on TensorFlow G3.

Okay. So the problems maybe not totally solved, but in general, the pixel 7, other than when it was sort of at its, threshold did pretty well, and I would assume the same is true this year. Like, I can't imagine you're having sort of day-to-day performance issues on this phone. Yeah. No, it handles everything fine. It says those little edge cases where you're really pushing it, like I'm trying to take a whole bunch of portrait mode shots really fast, and it's just kind of like, slow down, lady. But overall, it's fine. Okay. And then temperature sensor, which it has, is that useful for anything? This is like, this strikes me so much as a thing that like Google just happened to have a bunch of these lying around a factory somewhere.

So they put them in. Have you found it valuable at all to have in these funds? No, not not at all. Like I have a moment where I'm like, oh, I'm drinking. This is a hot cup of coffee. I'll get the phone and see what the temperature is. And it gives you, you know, degrees or whatever. It's just like, but there's text on it just says hot.

I'm like, uh, yeah. right. I knew that actually. I didn't need a sensor to tell me that. Yeah. Thanks, Google. That's AI at work right there. That's our AI dollars at work. I don't know. And then last thing is battery life. How did the pixel eights stand up? Yeah, it seems to be fine. I think like Google very smartly doesn't make any particular claims of like better battery life or better power efficiency. And I'm finding that both of the phones will get through a full day with varying degrees of like a comfortable percentage left at the end of the day. Sure.

Yeah. Presumably the pro does a bit better just by virtue of being larger. Yeah. That one you could, if you're just kind of a moderate user, you can push into the next day. But yeah, full day of use is just a kind of a blanket. Like, yeah, you'll, you'll get that. Okay. That's good.

So overall, it seems like there's no kind of one. mind-blowing earth-shattering new thing here, which in a smartphone in 20203 is not entirely unexpected. But I do think Google has been on this grind of like we can do a lot of little AI things. There's a bunch of that in here where they're doing the summaries of webpages in the browser with AI and the better spam call filtering and all that kind of stuff. Does that all add up too much for you? Like does the full sort of AI story make the pixels more compelling than what you're getting from Samsung or Apple or any of these other companies? at this point? It's starting to. And I feel like that's kind of been Google's pitch with the pixels

for the past couple of years. It's like it's so smart. It's going to do these things for you. It's going to make your life easier. And, you know, the pixel six and pixel seven, like, they're good phones. I don't feel like there was anything it was doing that was just really making my life easier. I think that promise is like could start to come true in the pixel eight. And some of it depends on assistant with Bard, which is cool. going to come at some point in the future. Potentially. Yes.

This is Google. So take that as you will. But that could really make Google Assistant very useful to be able to ask it like questions that require checking multiple sources or looking in your email. And I think there's a lot of potential there. There's also you get seven years of OS updates. Which is a big deal. It really is. I remain, as we've talked about, unconvinced that Google is even going to make phones still in seven years. So who knows? But I do think that's a real promise and that's a big deal if that is actually true. And seven years from now your phone is still good and functional and up to date. Like that's huge. And that's a real reason to buy these phones. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems like there's potentially like really useful things coming to it. The assistant voice typing is quite a bit better.

in the pixel 8, it actually will like understand your sort of inflection and pauses and it'll put punctuation in rather than like an entire long string of text, which is like, God bless my mother, but that is what I get from her every time you text me and you kind of seem like a sociopath when you do that. But I'm like, I would actually maybe use voice texting on this phone and that's not a thing I consider. So there's a lot of potential. I think there's more potential for the pixel 8 and the 8 pro to be this phone of like it actually does make your life a little easier but it's you got to put your trust in google to get there yeah as there's so many things i just reviewed the meta quest three and it's the same thing it's like look no wrong answers if you feel good about it

knock yourself out if you don't i totally understand but like let's all be clear-eyed about what you're signing up for here and it all means somebody is going to see a lot of what you do in your life all the time Oh, yeah, yeah, you got to be good with that too. Yeah, no big deal. All right, well, I should let you get back to deciding which score you're going to give it to piss off everybody on Theverge.com. But thank you. As always, really appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thanks.

All right, let's switch gears and talk about the Pixel Watch, too. Last year's Pixel Watch had a bunch of good ideas and nice designs, but it felt very much like a first generation product. It had all the kind of stupid mistakes and weird build issues and all the stuff you do when you've never done this before. So I've been looking forward to this one, the second one, ever since, super curious what the second gen watch might fix or improve upon and rethink after a year of doing this. Victoria's Hong on our team has been reviewing it, and I am desperately curious to hear how it's going. So let's hear how it's going.

Hi, V. Hello. You were just telling me right before we started recording that the Pixel Watch 2 currently on your wrist is not the first Pixel Watch 2. My first question was going to be, is the Pixel Watch 2 less breakable than the original Pixel Watch? And suddenly I am nervous. Tell me what's going on. Yeah. So day two, I was on Day 2 with the Pixel Watch 2. I 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. And we were just standing there in a circle for a bit being like, what could have possibly caused this? And so 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.

Scrashes all over the place. Okay. 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 two. Because my main thing with the Pixel Watch one was like they did a lot of things. things right and 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 like 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. I'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 class properly, and it went flying, almost flew into the East River. And it was fine, no scratches, and it was like skitting 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. Okay. I'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 smart watch companies have moved on to 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 too. 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 was 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? Yes, 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 wrist, 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 too. Like we talk about the three, we talk about the original, we talk about the four, five, six, for whatever reasons. We never talk about the series two. Samsung legitimately skipped a Galaxy Watch two. It didn't even bother with two.

It just went from the original to the three. 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 it to. 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. And 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. Sure. But you are going to get 24 hours with always on display enabled.

Last year, you could get 24 hours if you turned off till it'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 little exercise duty doughties, 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 at full. I 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. It'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 6 to 15%. And that's in a bunch of various like situations. Sometimes 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. That's what you're going to do. And I had some really active days where I was getting a much of 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 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, right? 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. And 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 dangley 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. That'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 one 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, I 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, dut-dutting, 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? This 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 sites, 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 run so that I could use the pixel watches 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. Like, 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

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 smart watch 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. I never do just 1.3 miles on a run. Too minimum is my thing. 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, this is bullhunky. So I'm trying to update it. Wouldn't update. date 24 hours later, it's like you did 2.1 miles. So I feel like I've been gaslit with GPS. I had this problem last year. Yeah. The maps were a lot less accurate last year. So there is some mild improvement there. I just think there's something wonky going on in the back end.

And I've reached up 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. And, 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, the 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. Stress, 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 smart watches.

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 smart watches, it was very confusing and there was no real honest way to differentiate them in a way that made sense. This 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, too, 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. and spot checks, you get the stress tracking, which they introduced with the sense to last year. You 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. You're going to get a delay, which it comes with its own tradeoffs 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 compartmentalized 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. That's what it was. But, you know, it does take, it does, like, 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. There 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 like as an everyday fitness tracker. It is like unambiguously much better than last year.

It seems like Google's kind of right there now, right? It's surprising because, you know, 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. So do I think that the Pixel Watch, too, 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 sick. 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. And, you know, I don't have an LTE plan on the watch, but I was still able to sign 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. Yeah, I do think that's cool. There is some little wonkiness there, though, because safety signal is basically you being able

to access emergency features without having an LT, plan, but you still need to have the LTE watch. So that is a little ineligent, 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. 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. So 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 in question with the Pixel Watch too, 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 gatekeep 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 too, 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 because 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 sinks 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, and 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 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. But 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, like, I get if you don't want a pixel phone, especially if you're in the US, like Android users tend to have Samsung phones. that totally makes sense. I really hate how it seems companies are using smart watches as cudgels to keep you in an ecosystem. Like,

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. And 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 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 think it gives me hope that Google might actually know how to build a good smartwatch 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. But 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 at? So 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. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome 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, obviously a big win for the company. But is that it? Or does Google really want to compete with Windows and MacOS 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. Monica, welcome back to the Vergecast. 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. Look, you don't have to tell me twice.

I could talk for days and days about Chromebooks. This could 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.

And 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. it's certainly a lot of money. Like no one's like, oh, $1,000 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 have had Samsung, which has tried the Galsh, which has tried the Gavook. Galaxy Chromebook, which was beautiful and gorgeous at 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. They tried the Galaxy Chromebook 2. It was a little less expensive, still, like, very red. That was like one of the big things about the Galaxy Chromebook line is you get a red one.

I love the red. Love 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. H.P. has tried like a dragonfly Chromebook. They started out putting out like this gorgeous like remnant of the actual HP Dragonfly line, which is a very big famous business line. Yeah. 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. Price is more closer to $1,000. 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. And 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.

very successful like Acer's Chromebooks bin 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 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 ChromeOS, Could you sell that to people for $1,000? Yeah.

So it's tough because the number of like full-fledged apps you can use on ChromeOS, 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-a-premium Windows apps on ChromeOS. 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, there's a version of it you can use on ChromeOS. 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-free gears. Like, literally, I could say it today and tomorrow we could come back or ago, right? I turned to know. You know, PWA's 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 leveraged 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. And 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 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 something like Windows or MacOS.

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. A 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, you know, business executives, whatever job they have, but you prefer ChromeOS to Windows or a MacOS because of these other benefits that it has, but 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, there are co-workers in the C-suite are all on think pads or HP Dragonflies, and they want a laptop that runs ChromeOS, 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. And if that ChromeWest 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, that Chromebook is perfect. But for most people, that can't be the only computer you own. Yeah. And when you get above $1,000, that just starts becoming expensive for most people, you know, 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 blah, blah, blah, program. If you just get on Linux and do blah, blah, blah, it's like, yeah, 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, and so there is certainly contingent. There are in my comment section is full of people who, you know, 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. So 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 Ultra book 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, it will have a big sticker that has 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, Hs use 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 without label will be more likely to be purchased.

That's the idea of programs like this. Which I think is fine. 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. But 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. I get that. What's on the list of things you have to do to be?

a Chromebook plus computer. 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 particular extensive list. So you have to have an Intel CoreI3 or a Ryson 7,000 processor. Which is basically just like a quality class PC processor. Yeah, so if you have a Cellar on 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 1208 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. I mean, I don't know that I think a Chromebook needs to have a Windows laptop, yes.

Sure. Okay. Chromebook, I think these are, some of these to me would be like, okay, 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 to storage. Like, there's a time when I would have said that was a little high, higher than it's a server Chromebook. Just ChromeOS doesn't take up as much space as Windows does. The RAM similarly. But I think they are sort of bent to signal like this is a Chromebook that has like some pretty solid specs for the category. Two 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 like looking at the list. They put the list up on the big screen when they were like giving the speech or whatever. And I immediately said, why is battery life not on there? So, you know, 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 like, we 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, you know, a couple days. Press release comes out. There's no battery life requirement in there.

I email him back. I'm like, hey, so, you know, you said there was a battery life requirement in the press release. There's not. You know, is there a battery life requirement? What's going on? A couple 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. Well, not a new requirement for Chromebook Plus.

Dot, 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. So that's not really safe. 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 were 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. Like, 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 Wi-Fi and you put the screen at like 100 nits and you turn off the speakers and you play a local video file. Right. 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 going to 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 good ones. You actually get some more stuff.

Like from a software perspective, these things are going to be better than the low. lower end Chromebooks, right? That surprised me a little bit. Actually, part of the appeal of ChromeOS has been that it's this 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 going to, 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.

Okay. 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. Yeah. 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. download stuff from drive onto the device, which we also got to see in action. Suddenly 128 gigs seems like not enough. That was in my reaction. I was like, oh, I have a lot of stuff in drive. I don't know. But 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, and 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. Right. And there are lots of people who still think that. Right. And on the one hand, I think that's like a face. 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 and shit. 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. Yeah. Your computer will be okay. So doing the offline stuff makes a lot of sense to me. That seems smart. Yeah. And then they're going to be like AI generated wallpapers, which you like type in a text prompt and it like generates a wallpaper. That'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 assistant 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 G-force now's priority tier. There's like a couple things like that where you get some free trials of some stuff. I mean, that's a decent amount of stuff. 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. Yeah, 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 hoax 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 a $1,000 Chromebook can actually be a really good idea. I think the pixel book is like one of the all-time best laptops. I still believe that.

It was a good one. Most people didn't. Like 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. And now Google's out here saying, again, sell high-end Chromebooks that's totally going to work this time. Do you think they're going to try? Are we going to get a real pushback 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 is highly curated by Google. They 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. Okay. The ones that have been announced, the cheapest one I think is it's $399.99, which is the Acer Chromebook Plus line. Okay. And then a bunch of the other ones that were announced were sort of in the like $500, $800 range. So these are high-end, quote-unquote high-end Chromebooks and 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 like consumer things that you might buy rather than like, We're shoving this at the enthusiasts and the enterprise customers.

Okay. So, yeah, it seems like what we're going to get is likely a lot of things that are right at that minimum spec range, which, like you said, for a Chromebook, it's fine. My initial reaction as soon as you said, I3 is to be like, ah, that's not enough. But for a lot of Chromebook uses, it probably is. So is 8 gigs of RAMs. 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 like the really beautiful, perfect, spectacular Chromebook that I want. There certainly are some you can try. They get pretty pricey. What's like the best one out there? If I want like America's fanciest Chromebook. In my opinion, which is just my opinion, is the Asus Chromebook CX5, flip CX5. But that is not, it's 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 nice. computers you can buy. It is a business laptop. It is like $4,000. It's some crazy price. The Dragonfly 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. It's like, it's like black on black on black. It's super simple. It reminds me of like the CR 48, the very first Chromebook from a million years ago,

where they just sort of made a black prototype and then shipped it. And I mean that in like the best possible way. The Dragonfly kind of reminds me of that. It's just like, 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. Okay. 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? Like, 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 buying Chromebooks to instead buy Chromebook pluses is sort of hard for. for me to judge at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if it's like somewhere in the middle there. That's a good point. And I think Google in this case is probably smart to look at that sort of

four to $600 price range and be like we can make some real noise there. Because right now, even on the window 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. Yeah. 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 $1,800. And you walk in and they just suddenly just, 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 Adel XPS 13. Like, what are we doing here?

Yeah, I'm still sad that I'm not going to 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 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. If you wanted me to take the side of like a bet here, no, I think that 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 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'm not holding my breath. Make one just for you and bring it to your house. That's all I want. If there's a prototype lying around somewhere that nobody wants anymore, just sell it to me. I'll take it. I will happily, happily take whatever Pixelbook 2 exists somewhere in Mountain View.

All right, I can talk to you about this forever. Sometimes 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've got to take a break. Monica, thank you as always. Thank you very much. Support for this show comes from Whatnot.

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in today's episode. Claude.aI. slash vergecast. All 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 1-1, 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 you about. And if you don't want to call, you can always email us, Vergecast at theverge.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. Hey, I was just thinking back to this maybe blog post or something that went viral in the late 2000s.

And it was all about how to use iTunes to create custom playlist. You know, we sort of forget about this, but iTunes had so much data baked into it. And just so many fields where we could add our own data to it. I feel like me and everybody else I knew we all raided 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. And 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 Vergecast 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. I 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. There are people out there who do it and there are lots of great apps out there, particularly on iOS. There are 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. I 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 is 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. I 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 that 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.

And 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. So 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.

Last time I went through a breakup, what songs did I listen to, right? Like, 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. That'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 I am sort of fascinated by that. And also, my interview with Gustav is going to be on the Vergecast 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 Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who came on. And thank you, as always, for listening.

There's lots more about everything we talked about at the verge.com. We're covering all of the pixel stuff where 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 the verge. And as always, if you have thoughts, feelings, questions, or other wacky things you think you can do with the pixels AI stuff, please let us know. Call the hotline 866, Vorge11, 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. It'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. Nelai, 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.