I have loved and used my purchased pixel since it came out. It has only gotten better since the first day I got it. I also recall that Linus and is/was a fan. From a dev perspective i can only fault it for not allowing me a vms hn crouton mode. My co workers also enjoy the less expensive versions and use them as on the go dev boxes.

Basically i've come to understand chromebooks as another linux distro; maintained by google, updated very frequently and focussed on browsing.