With its ever increasing-in-popularity Nexus line of touch devices, Google has been gaining more traction than ever in the line of consumer electronics; it appears they want more. On Thursday Google unveiled their first touch screen laptop which is powered by the Google Chrome operating system. The Chromebook Pixel will cost $1299 for a Wi-Fi only edition and $1449 for a version that includes LTE wireless – this is a large increased compared to previous Chrome based devices which have sold as little as $199.

Specifications wise, the Chromebook pixel features at 12.85” display boasting a 2560 x 1700 resolution. The laptop is only 3.35 pounds in weight yet manages to feature 4GB of DDR3 RAM with a Intel Core i4 process (Dual Core 1.8GHz). Battery life is slated to last up to five hours and storage wise the device has a 32GB SSD, but users will also get 1 terabyte of Google Drive storage for three years. There’s also wifi, Bluetooth, USB and even an SD/MMC reader.

While at first glance the specifications and price tag of this device stack up against some of Apple’s notebook market, questions have to be asked about how many users will actually be interested in this. The Google Chrome OS has been designed from the ground up to be used while connected to the Internet and most of the application support is for those which reside on the web, rather than local hard drive. Apple has been working for decades to gain market share on their computers often finding themselves set-back by lack of support from software vendors – Google Chrome OS is even less appealing to developers that OS X was when it first launched.

Although this device looks neat from videos showing the combination of a tradition laptop with the touch screen of a tablet, I think that Google shouldn’t hold their breath for capturing the market any time soon. There are many Windows 8 based touch-screen laptops currently on the market for the same price or less – many featuring similar specifications. In my opinion even those with lesser specifications would be more appealing to consumers than the Chromebook Pixel due to the bigger software support, better portability (ie. real program installation) and of course user familiarity with the OS itself. Google’s Chroombook line has potential, but for now I think the potential is the cheaper market.