Google has by now notched a significant history of hardware just as good as its namesake search engine, including the Pixel 7 smartphone and its industry-leading camera. The company’s hardware efforts have, however, struggled when it comes to tablets, taking what we’ve previously described as a “try, try again” approach. The Pixel Tablet, available today, is the company’s latest attempt to challenge the iPad by once again putting Android on a big-screen mobile device. Its most compelling feature, though, isn’t sitting between its bezels. The Pixel Tablet’s best feature is a dock that turns it into a better version of Google’s smart home hubs.
Back in the aught-teens, we were big fans of Google’s Nexus devices, like the Asus-built Nexus 7 in 2012, which brought the flexibility of Android OS to a compact tablet device a bit larger than a smartphone. We weren’t as impressed with the HTC-built Nexus 9 two years later, and the last Google tablet to use Android would end up being 2015's Pixel C, which was positioned as a productivity tool. It failed to deliver much productivity, however, because of the limits of its mobile-focused OS.
Google eventually switched gears on its tablet pursuits with the excellent Pixel Slate in 2018, which ran Chrome OS, the same operating system that Chromebooks use, which translated perfectly to the tablet. Unfortunately, Google also has a weird history of cancelling even successful products, and less than a year after the Pixel Slate debuted, Google’s hardware team announced it was abandoning tablets altogether. But as companies like Samsung have shown, there’s still a demand for Android tablets, so three years after the death of the Pixel Slate, Google’s tablet aspirations have risen from the dead with the Pixel Tablet. Android OS has likewise matured in the meantime, adapting to smartphones with ever-growing screens.
Although I have long-preferred Android-based tablets over the iPad, that’s not why the Pixel Tablet, which Google has been teasing since last year, piqued my curiosity. My family uses Google’s Nest Hub devices all over our house—as nightstand alarm clocks, as desktop digital picture frames, and as an assistant in the kitchen where the larger Nest Hub Max, the control center, sits perched on the counter. We all love it, but when we find ourselves awkwardly hunched over it while searching for a recipe, we also frequently wish the Nest Hub Max was more portable, and that’s how I think the new Pixel Tablet is going to Trojan Horse its way into many households.
The Pixel Tablet doesn't break any new ground when it comes to tablet design or performance, but with its included dock, it becomes a welcome upgrade to the Google Nest Hub Max and your smarthome.
The Pixel Tablet doesn't break any new ground when it comes to tablet design or performance, but with its included dock, it becomes a welcome upgrade to the Google Nest Hub Max and your smarthome.
The Pixel Tablet is definitely going to appeal to Android users who are looking for a cheaper alternative to Samsung’s offerings but who still want hardware that feels like corners haven’t been cut. Remember, you can find an Android tablet at Walmart for less than $100, but you get what you pay for. Where the Pixel Dock could potentially woo users away from Apple’s iPads is with the included dock accessory that expands the tablet’s usefulness when not in hand, so let’s start there.
When more details about the teased Pixel Tablet were revealed at the Made by Google event in Brooklyn last October, everyone was quick to compare images of it attached to its dock to Google’s Nest Hub devices, which is what my family immediately assumed it was once I got it up and running. Sitting on its dock, the Pixel Tablet is comparable in size to the Google Nest Hub Max, because while its 10.95-inch screen is an inch larger than the Max, the Pixel Tablet also features smaller bezels. They’re not as small as Apple has managed to shrink them on various iPad models, but they’re on par with other premium Android tablets.
The Pixel Tablet, seen here in the subtle green “Hazel” option that’s the only one featuring a black bezel around the screen, attaches to the dock the same way Macs do to MagSafe accessories: through the use of strong magnets. Four metal pins make contact with the Pixel Tablet when attached to the dock to facilitate charging and connectivity. When connected, music or videos will immediately switch to playing through the hub’s speaker, while also automatically activating a Hub Mode that emulates some of the functionality of the Nest Hub devices.
Removing the Pixel Tablet from the dock is easy enough; grabbing its top edge provides enough leverage to pry it away even one-handed, although it would be much easier if the dock had more weight to it. But putting it back on, and consistently lining up the magnets so they properly grab the tablet and securely hold onto it, was still a challenge after a week of use. On several occasions, it felt like the dock’s magnets had a strong enough hold on the tablet that I could let it go, only to have it fall off, resulting in a few scuff marks on the back panel already.
Part of the struggle to attach it has to do with how low the Pixel Tablet sits on the dock, much lower than the Nest Hub screens appear to. My brain assumes the bottom edge of the tablet needs to align with the bottom edge of the dock’s flat face, but that’s not the case. If the Pixel Tablet survives to a second iteration, I think a lip or a shelf added to the dock for the tablet to sit on, in addition to the magnets, would help make the docking process much easier and more intuitive. (And if we’re talking about wish list features for the Pixel Tablet’s dock, I’ve long struggled with the fact that the Nest Hub devices don’t have a base that swivels. It’s less of an issue here, since the Pixel Tablet can be physically removed and used separately, but being able to simply turn either a Nest Hub or the Pixel Tablet from side-to-side when docked would be another welcome improvement.)
Where I find the Pixel Tablet’s dock most disappointing is with its sound quality. The Nest Hub Max has long been the device we rely on for playing music in our kitchen and dining room. With a pair of stereo speakers in the front and a three-inch woofer in the back, the Max’s sound has always been surprisingly good for its size. By comparison, the Pixel Tablet’s dock uses just a single 1.7-inch “full-range speaker,” which sounds more on par with the smaller Google Nest mini devices. The audio experience here is disappointing, and the Pixel Tablet will not be replacing the Nest Hub Max as one of the devices we listen to music on.
When docked, the Pixel Tablet immediately starts charging at 15W to 90% capacity to help prolong its battery life, although if you plan to grab it every morning when you head out the door, you can instead have it charge to full capacity each time. Despite the weak sound, I did really like how the tablet would immediately pipe music through the dock’s speakers when attached, and automatically activate Android’s new Hub Mode. The automated switch over wasn’t always immediate, though, and sometimes took as long as several minutes, which I’ve chalked up to some pre-release bugs.
As the name implies, Hub Mode makes the Pixel Tablet function more like Google’s Nest Hub products while it’s docked. Users can set up a screensaver that displays art, satellite imagery, or random shots from a Google Photos album, while also displaying the time, weather, as well as other information like notifications, unless you’ve locked that info away from prying eyes. We mostly use the rest of our Nest Hubs around the house for making Google Assistant queries, setting timers and alarms, or for controlling smart home devices through Google Home. The Pixel Tablet’s Hub Mode replicates all of that functionality, including smart home controls that can be made accessible even while the tablet is protected with a password. Yes, that means an intruder in the middle of the night could turn off our air conditioning using the tablet, but sometimes you have to accept a few risks when using technology.
Measuring in at 7.62 millimeters thick—which is a bit thicker than Apple’s thinnest iPads—the Pixel Tablet is powered by the Google Tensor G2 processor paired with the company’s Titan M2 security coprocessor, with 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of non-expandable storage. Unfortunately, there’s no microSD card slot here. At 493 grams, the Pixel Tablet is also heavier than even the 11-inch iPad Pro, even with a rear panel made of plastic. It’s bulky by comparison.
The Pixel Tablet’s 10.95-inch screen has a 2,560x1,600 resolution, which sits somewhere between 2K and 4K, and while that gives it a PPI of 276 (much less than the Pixel 7's 416 PPI display) everything on screen, even small text, looks sharp and crisp. Color saturation and black levels both look very good, and while it’s a huge improvement over the LCD displays Google uses for its Nest Hub products, the Pixel Tablet not using an OLED panel is quite noticeable. HDR10 content is supported, but in bright, blown out areas, details are almost completely lost. Using an LCD has helped keep the price of the Pixel Tablet down, but tablets are, first and foremost, still media consumption devices, and watching movies or TV on the Pixel Tablet could be a much better experience.
With four built-in speakers—two on each side when used in landscape mode—the sound on the undocked Pixel Tablet is surprisingly okay. I expected worse. It’s more than adequate for making video calls with a group of people Source: Gizmodo