First look at what appears to be the Pixelbook tablet, aka: Nocturne

I recently discovered two Chrome OS tablet keyboards from Brydge and perhaps more interesting than the keyboards themselves is the image of a Chrome tablet attached to one of them. While this could be a simple render, I believe this is the first image of what I’d call the Pixelbook tablet, also known as Nocturne, which should debut on October 9.

Why do I think that? Take a real close look at the tablet. Aside from the Chrome OS screen rendering, I first thought this was an iPad Pro with rounded corners and a thin design. But the device is shown with Chrome OS, although I’m sure the screen is rendered on the display. Second, you can see what appears to be a USB Type-C port on the bottom left of the tablet. Nocturne will have two USB Type-C ports, likely one on each side.

Dive into the sides of the tablet in the image and you’ll see elongated speakers; it’s easier to see the one the left but if your boost the brightness of your device, you’ll see a duplicate speaker on the right. I don’t know of another tablet that has speakers with such long speaker grilles.

Lastly, let’s take a look at the tablet in the keyboard from above:

Do you see the same flat power button that I see? Does it remind you of anything? It should. That looks just like the rendering of the fingerprint sensor enrollment image for Chrome OS found by Chrome Unboxed earlier this month:

Again, this could be a render. But I don’t think so. I think it’s at least a dummy shell for Nocturne and it debuts in a few weeks as the flagship Google tablet for Chrome OS. The fact that there’s no company logo on the bottom bezel is another indicator that this is a Google device.

Just a reminder, we already know that from early on Nocturne would support a fingerprint sensor. And that it won’t likely have an SD card slot, which I don’t see, although we can only view four of the tablet’s two sides. Nocturne will also have AEC, or acoustic echo cancellation and I do see multiple microphone holes on the above tablet, which would be needed for that feature. I’d expect this device to have fanless 8th-generation Intel processors as well. And Nocturne was first revealed to have pogo pin support. Even though we can’t see them here with this Bluetooth keyboard, I suspect there are pins on the “bottom” of it. That would mean it should work with other keyboards as well.

Of course, if this is Nocturne, I was completely off with the HP Chromebook X2-like device I found earlier this week. Perhaps that’s just a redesigned X2 with LTE, which is also appealing. But I have to say: If the above images are a Pixelbook tablet or PixelTab (who knows?), I’m already leaning towards buying it over any upgraded Chromebook X2.

Update: Chrome OS code shows that Nocturne will have a 3000×2000 resolution display, up from the original plan of 2400×1600.

About the author

Kevin C. Tofel has covered technology since 2004. He's used ChromeOS since Google debuted the CR-48 in 2010, reviewing dozens of Chromebooks since then. He worked for Google's Chrome Enterprise team from 2016 to 2017, supporting the launch of Android app support. In his free time, he uses Chromebooks to learn software engineering at Launch School. In 2019, Kevin joined the CS Curriculum Committee at his local community college.