Google has finally unveiled the Googlebook, a new class of premium devices that very much follow the Chromebook formula.

The company confirmed last summer that it was working on a successor to ChromeOS, codenamed Aluminium OS, which would be a fusion of its Android and ChromeOS operating systems.

That has now come to fruition in the form of the Googlebook, a “new category of laptops” that offer tight integration with Android smartphones and all manner of AI tools. Much like ChromeOS, the new Googlebook OS is very much driven around the Chrome web browser and Android apps.

Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo will all be launching Googlebook laptops this fall, with prices starting from $899. Google is pitching these as upmarket alternatives to Chromebooks, which generally have much cheaper price tags. New Chromebooks will continue to appear on the market, Google insists.

The Googlebook hardware spec is a cut above those of Chromebooks, which are generally filled with relatively low-end components.

They will have have at least 16GB of RAM, with some models offering 32GB. They will support both ARM-based and x86 processors, with chips from Qualcomm and Intel appearing in the launch line-up. And early models are listed with either 256 or 512GB of SSD storage.

Plastic chassis are left to the Chromebooks, with the Googlebooks either using aluminium, magnesium or carbon fiber bodywork. Displays are also premium, with the majority of the launch line-up using touchscreen OLED technology.

Acer’s 14in convertible Googlebook 14 is the cheapest of the first wave of Googlebooks, starting at $899 for a 14.2in device with an Intel Core Ultra 5 or 7 processor, 16GB of RAM and 256GB storage.

All of the others are priced at either $1,199 or $1,299. Lenovo’s Googlebook 15 bumps the screen size to 15.3in to help justify the $400 extra it’s charging over the Acer, as well as extras such as Dolby Atmos speakers, face recognition when logging in and a haptic touchpad.

Googlebook OS vs ChromeOS

At first inspection, it’s not all that easy to find substantive differences between the new Googlebook OS and ChromeOS. Both are very much based around the browser and both support the installation of Android apps (albeit only on selected Chromebooks).

However, Google insists that the Googlebook OS has been written from the ground up and is optimized for large screens and multitasking. What’s more, the Googlebook is built natively on Android technologies, it’s not offering Android app support in a virtualized layer on top of the operating system like ChromeOS does, which suggests that Android app performance should be better on the Googlebooks.

Googlebooks will also offer unique features that aren’t supported on Chromebooks. For example, Continue On, which allows you to pick up tasks on a Googlebook that you’ve started on a Android smartphone. To be clear, that’s not the phone mirroring offered by macOS and iOS, but apps handing off uncompleted tasks to the desktop, as long as it’s supported by app developers.

AI inevitably rears its head in Googlebooks too. A feature called Magic Pointer lets you wiggle the mouse cursor to call on Gemini to help with whatever’s on screen at the time. Google gives the example of adding the dates from a training calendar displayed in the browser to your Google Calendar.

Rambler is another AI feature that theoretically makes it easier to reply to emails or dictate documents with voice, automatically omitting filler words such as umms and ahs, and correcting mistakes such as saying “let’s meet on Monday… I mean Tuesday," before they appear in the transcribed text.

Create My Widget, meanwhile, lets users to tell Googlebook OS what they want to appear in desktop widgets. So, for example, you could ask it to create a widget displaying the upcoming fixtures for your favorite NFL team.

Pre-orders for the new Googlebooks will be available from today on the Google Store, with devices shipping on October 4 in the U.S. and a day later in the U.K., Canada and selected other European countries.

Google is sweetening the deal with a bunch of freebies for new Googlebook owners. Each gets 12 months of Google AI Pro, which comes with 5TB of cloud storage, and three months of YouTube Premium, Adobe Photoshop and CapCut. Gamers also benefit from a year of free cloud gaming via Nvidia’s GeForce Now.

Googlebook OS will be updated for up to ten years on the new devices, Google claims.