Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Google's new operating system. I'm David Imel. Today we're talking to Verge laptop reviewer Antonio G. Di Benedetto about Google's new Google Book project. This is a new initiative from Google to develop a premium laptop experience that takes the best of your smartphone and integrates it deeply with a high-end laptop. Antonio recently went hands-on with some of these laptops, so I'm going to ask him about what's new, who this is for, and if he thinks Google can seriously compete with Apple this time. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. This is 90 seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 21st, 2026.
Apple Intelligence claims have officially opened. If you live in the US and purchased an iPhone 15, 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 model between June 10th, 2024 and March 29th, 2025, you can now file a claim to receive between $25 and $95 in compensation. This comes after a class action lawsuit alleged that Apple created a clear and reasonable consumer expectation that the new AI features previewed at WWDC 2024 would launch on the iPhone 16, which instead launched with a more limited set of features. If you fit that description, you can submit a claim for compensation until December 21st, 2026.
Next, our $12,300 M5 Ultra Mac Studio review is out. And as expected, it absolutely tore through our benchmark tests. Our nearly maxed-out M5 Ultra came out about 30% faster than our similarly spec'd M3 Ultra from last year in both single-core and multi-core synthetic CPU tests. On a heavier GPU rendering test, Cinebench, the M5 Ultra scored 63% higher.
And finally, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google's Gemini model broke containment in May and hacked three separate companies. The incident happened while third-party firm Irregular was testing its capabilities. The model brute-forced a password to access the company and then stopped. Google didn't disclose the hack until now because it didn't consider it an instance of misalignment. You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 21st, 2026.
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Antonio G. Di Benedetto, welcome to the Vergecast.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
3:32 ↗
Hello. Thanks for having me again.
So, we're talking about Google Books today. You recently did a hands-on of all these Google Books. I believe there are three or four of them. There's maybe five. How many are there?
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
3:44 ↗
There are five. Yeah. So there's ones from Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and ASUS.
Okay. So this is more of an OS experience, right? This is not the Chromebook that we have all known and loved. These cheap laptops that are basically Chrome in a computer. Can you explain what is a Google Book and why is Google doing this whole project?
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
4:06 ↗
Yeah. It's definitely interesting and it's something that I came to like months ago when they first teased it. I was like, why does this exist? What is the point of this? And now having seen them in person a little bit and experienced them, poked and prodded a little bit, it's like, okay, I'm maybe starting to get this and maybe this could be kind of cool. But basically, in a nutshell, this is like a new swing at Chromebooks kind of, but it's essentially kind of a blending of Chrome OS and Android, but I mean really at its core is Android. So these laptops run Android. They feel a bit like Chromebooks.
And you know, they run multiple chips. You've got options from Intel with Intel Panther Lake chips. You've got Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips. And there's supposed to be MediaTek chips coming at some point later. Five different OEMs. So it's very much like a partnership thing. And it's all united by the software. And the software experience may feel kind of Chromebook-ish, but what's actually the most appealing thing is that the way it interacts with an Android phone, right? You have certain features that if you have an Android phone and you need to have an Android phone, that you can kind of pair them together and interact with them in a way that really no one else is really doing to this level yet.
Okay. So, can you still use these computers without an Android phone? You're being very specific there.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
5:28 ↗
Yeah, you can, but I don't think there'd be much point. At least you wouldn't gain much from it like you would if you have an Android phone. Like if you have an iPhone, I asked this question, like what do you do? And there's essentially just like a link to iOS app and it helps you with some like message relaying. But it's nothing like what you can do when you have an Android phone paired, which I guess I should cut to the chase on like the things that this can do.
Yeah. What exactly does it do with your phone?
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
5:57 ↗
All right. So, it's nothing completely crazy, but it's just better integrated than what we normally see even on like macOS and iOS. So there's a few like hallmark features. The files — you open the Files app and your phone files are just there. Like it's loaded up on the sidebar just like another, you know, drive. And you can click there and all your phone files are there. So it's like someone sent you something and you downloaded it, or you downloaded something on your phone. You don't have to like email it to yourself or find some other way to like get it over to your laptop. It's just there and you can pluck it and paste it in, share it with...
Do you know exactly how that is working? Is it some sort of mirroring? Is it transferring the files? Because if you're not on Wi-Fi, is that going to go up into the cloud and you take a lot of data? Like, how does it do that?
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
6:40 ↗
That they didn't specify. So it'll be something we definitely explore. And when we review these, I should also say at any point, but I should say it now. I guess we don't have review units and it's definitely like — not to get too inside baseball — but it's whenever someone, whenever a company doesn't have like review units early and like there's like, oh, we're going to launch it on October 4th and after that is when review units will come, and it's like that doesn't always instill confidence. But you know, to digress.
This is something I find a little interesting. Google is taking pre-orders for Google Books. Is that correct?
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
7:13 ↗
Yeah, they're taking pre-orders now and they ship on the 4th or they arrive at stores on the 4th. And we'll get review units sometimes on the 4th or later. The 4th is a Sunday, so it's like the 5th really or later.
Okay. So when you go on the website to pre-order a Google Book, do you get to pick the laptop that you're pre-ordering? How do people really know about how these computers work? I mean, I've been on their site. I've seen what they're showing it as, but just like a scrollable page that kind of gives the highlights of what a Google Book is doesn't seem like it's really informing customers of what the experience they should expect is. How do you think Google's angling this?
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
7:52 ↗
Uh, it's hard to say. I think these, again, just like from what I've observed in the briefing and everything like that, this seems like it may be coming in a little hot. I mean, frankly, even like OEM reps that I was talking to on the side, like were kind of at the event, were like, oh, we just got the hardware like today or yesterday. And it's like, so I think this is all kind of coming together. It seems like maybe late or maybe whatever, but I can't speculate too much.
The point is though, like this does some cool stuff and we will need to know a lot more later. I mean, especially when we test them. And the reason I think like this is actually maybe kind of cool, even though like this is like Google — we can't always trust Google with like sticking through with things and like, you know, or whatever the direction they may take things. And Chromebooks already exist and we don't know a lot about, you know, where Chromebooks will go now Google Books are in the fold, aside from they've promised 10 years of service.
But here's what like the other features that actually seem pretty cool about this. Like again going back to you have an Android phone paired to a Google Book. You have the file structure, but then also like probably the bigger things are like, you know, you have this feature called Continue On, where if you're using an app on your phone, it just kind of like hangs out in the bottom bar on a Google Book and you can just click it and it'll just hand over to the laptop, right? You know, like whether it's from like the native app to a native app on the Google Book that's installed, or native app to a web app, you can just take over from where you left off. And that's a really cool feature that you can kind of interact with, you know, like start a task on your phone and be like, no, I need a bigger screen.
There's a laptop job as we know.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
9:39 ↗
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And like, you know, it's like that's pretty cool. You don't normally get that kind of thing. And then, but generally any app you have on your phone is kind of also available on your laptop because since it's all Android-based, if you have an app installed on your phone, it actually will live on the Google Book in like a second app drawer. Right? There's like the main app drawer which has all the stuff you've installed and then there's a second app drawer for your phone. And if you click on any of those, it'll just cast the app to your Google Book. And it's kind of like, you know, like we have a little bit of experience with this, like iPhone Mirroring on iOS and macOS, but you know that's like mirroring your whole phone screen. This is like going on like a per-app basis, right?
So it's again, it's all interesting and intriguing. But I mean we talked about like who is it for? I was still like the only answer I have so far is like someone who has like most likely a high-end Android phone because these are not cheap devices. But what I guess they don't want Windows, they don't want a Mac, so they're looking for an alternative. That's mostly all I can think of.
Yeah, I think that there was always a little bit of a tension with Chromebooks, right? Because Google sold Chromebooks in this way where there were ultra-cheap Chromebooks and those were probably the ones that moved the most. They sold them to schools. They sold them to people that just wanted a laptop for things that they did online. But then there was sort of a move towards really high-quality Chromebooks that were over $1,000, very expensive, but at the end of the day were still kind of just running Chrome. And they did evolve Chrome OS over time to be able to run Android apps natively. But at the same time, you still have to download those Android apps from the Play Store onto your Chromebook. It was a separate instance. So I can see the appeal of just like casting your phone to your laptop if you're the type of person that uses your phone for almost everything, but sometimes you want laptop tasks.
My question to you here is like it seems that Google is trying to have some sort of a barometer for quality with these laptops, right? They're all around $1,000 or over $1,000. Can you break down the different models and what are the standards that Google has for the manufacturers that want to make these laptops?
Yeah. So there don't seem to be like standards, but like there's a whole lot of like vibes-y elements to what Google's doing here. And like it even goes like — is there a base minimum spec? There is no base minimum spec for these laptops. Like they said like, you know, like they have touchscreens but there's no guarantee that they're always going to have touchscreens. They have 16 gigs of RAM. There's no guarantee that, you know, they're always going to have 16 gigs of RAM or more. Like I wouldn't be surprised if 8 GB models come later when, you know, they need to have some lower-cost options.
You don't think it's something that they're mandating?
It doesn't seem to be at least, and they haven't told us. When we asked, they didn't say there was any kind of baseline spec.
Interesting. So there's a lot of questions, but all the names sound exactly the same. Of the laptops.
Yeah. Like the lowest-cost one is the Acer Google Book 14, which is very much like an Acer Spin kind of, you know, Chromebook.
Yeah. It's the only convertible two-in-one. It starts at $900. Acer reps have told us that's like a limited-time offer, and we don't exactly know what even that means. Like, okay, how long will it be $900 for? I don't know. But, you know, Google says these Google Books start at $899.
Then there's a Dell XPS Google Book, which is basically a rehoused XPS 13 in a different color. And it's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip instead of Intel Wildcat Lake. That's a little more. It's like $1,199 starting at — again, these are all starting prices. You can configure these with more and get more expensive, of course.
There's an HP — I think this is called Google Book 14. Another Snapdragon chip again, like $1,299 I believe that one is. There's Lenovo's 12, also $1,299. Google Book 15, so it's a little bit larger. And that one has like a little — if I recall correctly, that was a little more ports. A bunch of these have OLEDs. Some of them have like haptic trackpads, but not all. So again, nothing is really — there's no threading the needle like, oh, this is it's got to have this, this, this. Like Chromebook Plus did have some minimum spec requirements.
Yeah, some and some things you expected on it. These are all nice. They're all nice laptops. The last one was the ASUS Google Book 14. Again, I think it's just his name. You know, I don't know why Google insists on all the names being the same. But again, an OLED screen, very lightweight, at least that one. Like some of them have some little standouts like their haptic trackpads or more ports or the convertible for the Acer. The ASUS is like very lightweight. It's like only weighs like 2.2 lbs, 1 kilo or something like that. But all the hardware is like it all feels familiar because they're all pretty much based on like existing — I think the ASUS for example is like an ExpertBook, right? And it's just now with Google Book OS.
One thing that I find kind of strange here is that they're only working with ODMs to make these computers. There's no Google-made Google Book. Do you know why that is? That seems a little bit weird when they pivoted a lot of Android to be sort of centered around the Pixel phone.
Yeah. Don't know why. I am kind of two minds where I would — I kind of wanted to see that like halo device, that flagship device kind of lead the charge. But I am also kind of like looking across this and it's like five somewhat even-ish laptops give or take little bits here and there and it's like maybe that's fine. You know, Google has made its own Chromebooks in the past, obviously, even like Pixel ones.
Pixelbook, the Pixelbook Go. They had the Google-made laptops and now they just are not doing that anymore.
Yeah. Who knows if that may just be the precursor to them making one of those at some point. Or I don't know, maybe they're just feeling things out and see how it goes. But you know, it's obviously easier for these OEMs to just kind of remix an existing laptop versus Google spinning up an entire new model.
Yeah, it almost reminds me of like the HTC One M8 Google Play Edition, right?
Oh man, that's a deep, deep cut. And I used to own that phone. That's awesome.
Yeah. All right. I miss those days. So yeah, maybe this can — I mean again, maybe this will be like that, like just find this niche in enthusiasts and like, you know, people who really like the idea of just not being on Windows or Mac and having something that works for them that works really well with their Android phone specifically. But who knows? We'll see. But it's an interesting premise that yeah, Google is just bowing out of the hardware side. We'll see if that holds.
Okay. Well, much like Google redesigned Android to be based around Gemini, it seems that they are also sort of redesigning Chrome OS to be around Gemini with this Google OS. Can you talk to me about this new magic cursor feature that I keep seeing? They have this banner on their site that says intelligence is the new spec, clearly pointing to Gemini, and then they have a little cursor with a rainbow around it that they shake. What exactly is happening here? What is this feature?
So you wiggle the cursor and you can pull up Gemini on pretty much anything. You know, you can just like have it look at stuff on your screen. You can just prompt it via the cursor, right? You just wiggle it and then start typing something away at it to ask a question. So it's baked further into the OS and yeah, I mean we can't avoid Gemini, right? If it's a Google thing just like kind of how it is on Android. Well, now the same on Google Books. And yeah, so you wiggle it, pull it up, and then type away. But it's not exactly clear when things are happening on device and when things are going up to the cloud. You know, obviously all the chips that they're using have NPUs, so they can do some on-device AI, but you know, there's got to be stuff happening going to the cloud almost all the time.
Yeah. Okay. So, you wiggled the cursor around. Is that on images you see? Is that on text you see? Is this like anything on your screen you can practically interact with Gemini with? Is that the idea basically?
