ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Google has a new lineup of Googlebook laptops from five major brands.
- They run GooglebookOS, which allows users to run Android apps natively.
- Googlebooks have up to 64GB of RAM, OLED displays, and haptic touchpads.
When Google first announced the Googlebook back in May, details were sparse, except that it would run a new operating system that’s an offshoot of Android OS, bringing new smartphone integrations to the laptop user experience.
Also: First look at Googlebook: A premium Chromebook alternative for Android users
Chromebooks already had some integrations and could run most Android apps, but the experience was hit or miss, as ChromeOS is not Android. That will change with the Googlebook, which is built on the Android stack and paired with desktop foundations from ChromeOS, combining them into an entirely new device designed to work alongside your Android phone right out of the box.
Googlebooks enter the market as a unified front with products from all five major laptop brands. Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo announced new devices spanning the typical range of form factors, from 13 inches up to 15.3 inches (plus one convertible from Acer), with starting prices ranging from $899 to $1,299.
The new Googlebooks are a big step up from most Chromebooks, with a baseline of 16GB of RAM, going up to 32GB, OLED displays, more premium keyboards and materials, and beefier hardware: Intel Core Ultra 3, 5, or 7 “Panther Lake” chips or up to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X1 Elite.
Also: Chromebook vs. Googlebook: How I’m deciding which laptop to upgrade to next
As far as the operating system goes, GooglebookOS looks and feels similar to an Android tablet, but with a more sophisticated desktop, including customizable widgets, visual appearance settings, and a taskbar. It sort of looks like a mix of Windows 11 and the Pixel 11 Pro home screen.
Device continuity – finally
But the Googlebook is engineered around one big selling point: device continuity. One of the Googlebook’s most compelling features is its ability to serve as an extension of your Android smartphone by natively running all Google Play Store apps on day one and leveraging new features to bring the smartphone and laptop much closer (something Apple has been doing for years).
For example, the Continue on feature brings apps you have open on your phone directly to the Googlebook by accessing them from the taskbar. Files, apps, and ongoing tasks exist in both places at once, with seamless transitions between the two and the ability to search across both devices.
It comes very close to Apple’s level of Mac/iPhone integration, but doesn’t quite have a dedicated “mirroring” app like MacOS. The Cast my apps feature is the next best thing, however, letting you project an app from your phone directly onto its own desktop window on the Googlebook.
What’s the deal with the Glowbar? Yes, it’s a bit of a gimmick, but a harmless one that serves as a signature element to distinguish the new product category. Google made a big deal of it when the devices were first announced, but it has since become a supporting feature (similar to the “HiLight” that debuted on the Google Pixel 11 Pro series, which received mixed reviews for its limited usefulness). Here, the Glowbar can visually indicate battery level, and it glows when you interact with Gemini.
Speaking of which, Gemini Intelligence, Google’s agentic multimodal AI, is a key catalyst for additional phone-to-laptop features, with AI built into the desktop. We first reported Google’s announcement of these features for Android, but they make even more sense on a laptop. Magic pointer, for example, invokes the AI at whatever you shake your pointer at on-screen, and Rambler takes natural speech, including filler words like “uh,” and turns it into a more concise message.
Particularly suitable for a laptop desktop environment is Create a widget, which lets you use natural language to describe what kind of widget you want to create and allows Gemini Intelligence to build it for you. During previous demos, Google showed off examples of this, including a meal-prep widget and highly detailed weather stats like rain and wind speed — something you might be interested in if you’re an avid biker, for example.
Also: Googlebook looks promising, but one big laptop brand is conspicuously absent
The biggest draw for me, however, is the fact that Googlebooks will run millions of Android apps available now in the Play Store natively — without (hopefully) the weird UI bugs and stretched resolutions you’d often encounter on ChromeOS. During a recent demo I attended in New York, we ran a variety of mobile games on different Googlebooks with some impressive performance, especially on the 2.8K OLED displays.
For developers, Googlebooks come with Antigravity, Google’s agentic AI development system that allows you to build, test, and deploy Android apps directly to the device. This includes a full terminal environment to run tools like Claude CLI or Antigravity CLI.
Meet the Googlebooks, by brand
1. Acer Googlebook 14
- Starting price: $899
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 3, 5 “Panther Lake”
- RAM/Storage: 16GB | 256GB+
- Display: 14-inch 2.8K OLED touch display, 500 nits, 120Hz refresh
- Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6
- Dimensions: 13.9mm, 2.7lbs.
The sole convertible of the lineup, Acer’s Googlebook 14, is also the most affordable, starting at just $899, but with a similar overall build to the other devices. It forgoes some of the more premium elements, like a haptic touchpad, for slightly lighter processing power, but still has a 500-nit, 2.8K OLED display.
2. Asus Googlebook 14
- Starting price: $1,299
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5, 7 “Panther Lake”
- RAM/Storage: 16GB | 256GB+
- Display: 14-inch 3K OLED touch display, 1,000 nits, 120Hz refresh
- Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6
- Dimensions: 14.0mm, 2.2lbs.
The Asus Googlebook features the brand’s signature “ceraluminum” build, with a massive haptic touchpad, 3K display, and fingerprint sensor, at just 2.2lbs — the lightest of the lineup. It also scales up to a whopping 64GB of RAM, firmly removing it from any comparisons to its Chromebook cousins and enabling a swath of new creative, gaming, and development use cases.
3. Dell XPS Googlebook
- Starting price: $1,199
- CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite
- RAM/Storage: 16GB | 512GB+
- Display: 13-inch 2.5K touch display, 500 nits
- Dimensions: 12.5mm, 2.5lbs.
Dell debuted its Googlebook as part of the XPS lineup, which has undergone its own evolution this year with fantastic laptops like the XPS 13, one of my favorite laptops of 2026 for its combination of price and features.
The Googlebook looks and feels physically similar, but comes with more memory, a haptic touchpad, and a more powerful Snapdragon X Elite chip. With GooglebookOS and the aforementioned Android integrations, this is a totally new XPS.
4. HP Googlebook 14
- Starting price: $1,299
- CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite
- RAM/Storage: 16GB | 256GB+
- Display: 14-inch 2.8K OLED touch display, 500 nits
- Dimensions: 14mm, 2.7lbs.
HP’s Googlebook 14 looks and feels similar to its OmniBook X laptops I tested earlier this year, with the same premium keyboard, haptic touchpad, and fingerprint sensor.
5. Lenovo Googlebook 15
- Starting price: $1,299
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 3, 5 “Panther Lake”
- RAM/Storage: 16GB | 256GB+
- Display: 15.3-inch 2.8K OLED touch display, 500 nits
- Dimensions: 15.95mm, 2.68lbs.
The largest Googlebook from the first wave of devices, Lenovo’s 15.3-inch laptop features a matte white colorway and a large haptic touchpad and supports both face authentication and a fingerprint sensor. Of all the Googlebooks I tried, this one feels the most optimal for creative power users.
All five Googlebook models are available for preorder now in the Google Store and at Best Buy, with devices on shelves starting Oct. 4 in the US. They also come with a pretty competitive package of add-ons: Every Googlebook includes 12 months of Google AI Pro, which offers 5TB of cloud storage and the Gemini Advanced toolkit. You also get three months of YouTube Premium, Adobe Photoshop, and CapCut.
