48 Hours With a Googlebook: Why the Hype Didn't Hold Up

Sarah Johnson · 2026-10-07

I've been quietly excited about Googlebooks since Google first teased the new operating system back in May. This week, I finally got my hands on one. As a mostly Android user for the past few years, I've missed how seamlessly my old iPhone and MacBook worked together. Notifications, shared documents, phone screen access—all of it, without third-party apps or frustrating workarounds. Windows offers some of that with Android phones, but support is hit-or-miss and depends on the manufacturer. The Googlebook promised to unify phone and laptop in new ways, a Gemini-powered hybrid of ChromeOS and Android wrapped in premium hardware. After spending a few days using it as my main work machine, I'm left frustrated and more than a little disappointed. ### Most Apps Aren't Really Desktop Apps I won't bury the lede. Google claims it worked with popular app makers to get their apps ready for desktop, but there's a surprising lack of support for the apps I use every day. You'll find apps like Microsoft Word and CapCut Pad that are genuinely built for desktop, and Google Play flags them as such. But most of the storefront isn't that. It's blown-up mobile apps or web apps, the same stuff you'd get on a much cheaper Chromebook. Take Slack. I use it every day—it's how our team communicates remotely. On the Googlebook, I'm stuck with the mobile app. That might sound fine, and the concept does work for apps like Netflix. But the mobile UI has no split-pane view, so flicking between channels and DMs takes longer, and I miss messages as they come in. Photoshop is another example. It's a far cry from the feature-packed desktop version on Windows and Mac. Instead, it's a stretched-out mobile app with the same comparatively basic editing tools and AI assistant. I was looking forward to proper desktop-style Google apps like Docs, hoping Google would elevate the native experience. But like on cheaper ChromeOS devices, the app just opens a Docs sheet in the Chrome browser. At least Gmail and Calendar run in their own web app wrappers, pretending to be dedicated apps. ### The Weird In-Between Apps Some apps, like Canva, straddle an even stranger line—part web app, part Android app. Opening Canva on the laptop takes me to its web interface in a wrapper. That's not a huge complaint, since I usually use Canva in my browser on Windows anyway. The problem is saving images. It uses the Android mobile share sheet, making it nearly impossible to save files to the laptop instead of sharing them to another app the way I would on my phone. Even Chrome, which thankfully is closer to the desktop version than the mobile one and supports extensions, isn't as capable as what you get on Windows and Mac. It's missing a lot of recent features, including the Gemini sidebar, vertical browsing, and split-screen tabs. ### The Bottom Line > If you were using a tablet with a desktop mode to get some work done on the fly, these would be acceptable compromises. But if you're paying for a fully-fledged laptop to do serious work, you want an experience similar to competing laptops. That's just not the case here yet. Here's what I'd weigh before buying: - **Check your daily apps first.** Confirm the ones you rely on are true desktop versions, not mobile ports. - **Test the browser.** If Chrome features matter to you, see what's missing before you commit. - **Set realistic expectations.** Treat it as a tablet-plus rather than a MacBook or Windows replacement. The hardware looks premium, and the phone-laptop integration is genuinely appealing. But a laptop lives or dies by its software, and right now the Googlebook feels like a promising first draft—not a finished product you'd want to spend a full workday on.