MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google on Tuesday un­veiled Googlebook, a new pre­mium lap­top cat­e­gory it said would bring a Gemini-first com­put­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to con­sumers through hard­ware from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. While the com­pany stopped short of call­ing it a Chromebook re­place­ment, ex­ec­u­tives de­scribed Googlebook as a blend of ChromeOS, Android, and sev­eral pre­vi­ous Google promises, with fea­tures in­clud­ing an AI-powered “Magic Pointer,” Android app cast­ing, cus­tom wid­gets, and a lid-mounted “glowbar” to sig­nal the de­vice is def­i­nitely not a Chromebook.

Google said the cat­e­gory is aimed at users who want pre­mium ma­te­ri­als, seam­less phone in­te­gra­tion, and a more up­scale ver­sion of buy­ing a prod­uct with an un­clear fu­ture. “We’ve learned a lot from the Chromebook jour­ney about tran­si­tion plan­ning and how to com­mu­ni­cate sup­port win­dows in a calm, con­fi­dence-build­ing way,” a spokesper­son said, adding that Googlebook own­ers could ex­pect “up to 18 months of vi­sion.” Early buy­ers said they were ex­cited to own what one called “a beau­ti­fully ma­chined beta test,” pro­vided they could fin­ish pay­ing it off be­fore the roadmap changed.

Industry an­a­lysts noted that Googlebook would re­tail above a com­pa­ra­ble MacBook, but said the pric­ing made sense for buy­ers who have long felt Apple hard­ware was sim­ply too sup­ported.