Google takes aim at Apple with £1,049 Chromebook Pixel touch laptop

Google has moved to take on Apple in the high end laptop market with a new own-brand touch-enabled Chromebook device called the Pixel that will cost £1,049.

The device will go on order from Thursday in both the UK and the US and ship in April, but is priced far higher than previous models which were around $200-300 and built by firms such as Samsung, Asus, HP and Lenovo.

However, Google has built the Pixel itself, only using OEMs for guidance, and Google senior vice president for Chrome, Sundar Pichai said the firm is confident it can challenge Apple with the device.

"It will stand up very well against a MacBook Air," he said speaking via a live stream in the US on launch of the device on Thursday.

"It [The MacBook Air] doesn't have a high resolution screen, it doesn't have touch, so what you're getting from a hardware perspective is far superior [on the Pixel]," he said.

Google was also keen to tout the unique screen size of the device, which has an increased vertical screen with a 3:2 ratio, unlike the 16x9 or 16x10 screens more commonly seen.

"Because the web is about vertical content we wanted to give the device more screen size in this direction, so it has 18 percent more vertical height," added Pichai.

Furthermore, the Pixel has a 239ppi display quality, which Pichai claimed is higher than most Windows 8 laptops, and has better brightness too with a 400nit display.

It's powered by an Intel iCore 5 processor and has 4GB of RAM. It has just 32GB of storage for the Wi-Fi version but buyers will be given 1TB of Google Drive data for three ears.

For US customers there's the ability the sign up to a 4G plan with Verizon to access high speed networks when on the move, and this device will cost $1,499, but this option is not available in the UK as yet. This version will also come with 64GB of storage.