There are a few things about using a Googlebook that immediately feel just right. The hardware is polished (since it’s based on current laptops). The OS is familiar (if you’ve ever used a Chromebook). But most impressive, it integrates your Android phone with your PC so they feel more like one device. It’s the culmination of a series of new ideas that blur the two devices together. After my first look, I went from doubtful to excited by the prospect of Google pulling it all off.

So what are Googlebooks? In a nutshell, they’re laptops running a new operating system that’s a blend of Chromebooks and Android — with a whole lot of Gemini AI stuff built in. They look quite like Chromebooks, but with Android’s Material Three Expressive UI stylings on the software side and higher-end materials for hardware. There doesn’t seem to be a baseline spec for Googlebooks, but at launch they’re all thin-and-light laptops ranging from 13 inches to 15 inches with 16GB of RAM or more, touchscreen displays (most of them OLED), metal chassis, backlit keyboards, either fingerprint or facial recognition unlocking (or both), and a Google-y Glowbar light strip on their lids.

Powering the initial lineup of Googlebooks are Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips, with MediaTek options expected to come later. While the first wave of Googlebooks are similarly sized and all have “Googlebook” in their name, there are some variations: haptic or mechanical trackpads, port offerings, even a 2-in-1 convertible. Each one felt pretty nice, with unique qualities: the Asus was incredibly lightweight, the Lenovo has plenty of ports and an optional mouse with a matching Glowbar light, the Acer’s convertible form factor allows some tablet-like use (and it’s pretty affordable for a Panther Lake laptop). The HP had a great looking screen and a latticeless keyboard I surprisingly didn’t hate, and the Dell is basically a gold XPS 13 (which is excellent) but with a different chip.

But everything really special about Googlebooks comes down to software. They run Googlebook OS, which is built with the native Android stack atop a Linux kernel and supports both x86 and Arm architectures (as implied by the chip offerings). It’s an Android desktop interface that runs Android apps and feels much like ChromeOS, but it’s got some handy features when paired with an Android phone. You can cast apps from an Android phone directly to a Googlebook, even without touching your phone. Googlebooks essentially have two app drawers: a G-logo start menu for installed Googlebook apps and a second one beside it that pulls up mobile apps from your phone. Click a phone app and you can fully use that app with the mouse and keyboard or the Googlebook’s touchscreen. It’s a bit like iPhone Mirroring on macOS, but the apps are individually extracted to the desktop OS instead of showing your whole phone interface.

The other big way Googlebooks interact with an Android phone is Quick Access, allowing you to see and access all the files stored on your phone right in the desktop Files app. The paired Android phone is listed in the sidebar of a Googlebook’s Files window, just like any other drive or home folder, and you can directly search it and share files from it without physically picking up your phone. This is pretty handy stuff, but of course it all requires you running an Android phone. If you have an iPhone then you’re limited to a Link to iOS app that just does some message syncing and replying.