Nobody likes being a guinea pig in some grand experiment, especially when you have to pay for the privilege. Anybody who buys a Googlebook at launch is essentially signing themselves up for an expensive trial where headaches and heartache are the price of entry on top of a near-$1,000 asking price. You are buying into an ecosystem in the hopes it may become the Android-centric Mac-like experience you’ve dreamed of. It’s certainly not there right now.

The $1,150 Lenovo Googlebook 15 would be a fine laptop with any other operating system. But I don’t review products based on what-ifs or what-may-bes. This is an awkward laptop that becomes more or less annoying depending on whether you want to use it for more than browsing or checking emails (spoiler, it’s rather limited). Lenovo’s beefy machine is currently the largest Googlebook of the five options available at launch. That pretty 15.3-inch OLED display means this is a great device for watching content without hefting around some thicker and heavier laptop in your bag.

Lenovo's Googlebook may offer a better experience than some others of its kind. Googlebook OS is still more annoying to use than any other laptop OS.

Couldn’t I have said the same thing about a Chromebook, Googlebooks’ predecessor? Yes, but I can at least remark that the new laptop format may be an upgrade over what came before. Or, if you’re a developer who used to enjoy getting Linux apps on your low-cost laptop, it’s a definitive downgrade.

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