Pixel Tablet: Google Made a Good Home Android Tablet

Speaker 1: Google's finally got an Android tablet again and it's good. The Pixel tablet is Google's newest stab at making a tablet for your home. The most unique feature is its dock ability. It comes with a charging doc, it pops right in. It's got a speaker in there and when it's connected, the speaker sounds nice and loud and you can also charge it easily. The one thing about this doc is that it doesn't have adjustable angles. So if you're gonna use it for video chats, and by the way, this [00:00:30] has a great camera, you'd have to make sure that you're used to that angle and you're okay with kind of leaning over a little bit. Although the Google Pixel tablet has a camera that will follow you around a bit. The pixel tablet's charge doc uses magnetic pins and it works with the case that is optional. Speaker 1: So you could take this thing, pop it on and not worry about it. But this little tablet doc is also really portable. The one thing though is that this doesn't work as a Bluetooth speaker, so this will only work when the pixel tablet is docked with it, which is a little bit of a bummer, [00:01:00] but you're probably gonna use it when it's docked with it anyway. Just means that when you disconnect it, you're not gonna be able to beam across and then play music on it. The pixel tablet charge doc does not charge with u S bbc. The charger that comes with it has its own charge plug, but the pixel tablet itself does charge with U S B C. So if you leave this behind, you could still charge this on the go with any charger that you've got. The one thing about the docking here is that because it's magnetic and it kind of hovers, it's a little hard to nail the landing sometimes. And it also, if you wanna detach [00:01:30] it, because this dock is so lightweight, you have to make sure to get the angle, otherwise you'll just take the dock with you. So a little twist like that, but sometimes attaching it can feel easy and other times it can be surprisingly hard to uh find where it docks. Speaker 1: So if you have kids, keep that in mind. Speaker 1: The Pixel tablet basically shows [00:02:00] some screen savory type things when it's docked in it's hub mode. You could also use that to control your smart home devices. Very much like you would use any of uh, Google's existing Nest hub products or home hub products. It's a disconnect home hub solution and when you take it off then it turns into a tablet. But I like the idea that this has widgets on it. Uh, even though the widgets are not as fully formed as I would like, it does allow some glance ability with this tablet. The other thing I really like about the Pixel tablet is its performance. [00:02:30] The tensor G2 chip on here is very much like the chips that are on Google's recent pixel phones and it's zippy. It performs fine for my purposes. Sometimes I can see it has a little bit of lag, but compared to your general iPad, this feels really nice for doing a lot of things and that includes multitasking. Speaker 1: Google worked some really nice multitasking features into Android 13 on this that are harbinger of also where things will go with foldable phones. It's kind of the same philosophy here in a much more tablet. [00:03:00] So you could bring up two different apps side by side similar to what you can do on the iPad and you can drag apps up and bring them into different pain modes that have a couple of different adjusting levels. And it's perfectly fine for looking at two things at once, especially on a budget tablet. It's really nice to have that. The processor also does a few extra tricks for playing games. Uh, camera looks really nice. In fact, you can also do some photo effects and abilities to screen out your background and create 360 photo backgrounds for Google Meet [00:03:30] calls. And it also has some ability to do photo editing tools, much like the Pixel phones. Speaker 1: Google's been talking about Magic Eraser quite a bit. So yes, you can erase unwanted people from your photos on this tablet. So the price on the Pixel tablet is also good. It's $500. I said also good cuz you know, I would've liked it to be less than this. Uh, considering it comes with a doc, that's a nice plus. But I feel like $300 is the price that I usually wanna spend on a budget tablet for kids. But $500 is a little bit in the mid territory [00:04:00] for a family budget tablet. A little more premium compared to what you can get for $300 and Google is banking that you're probably gonna use this for sharing. So maybe that's worked into the equation a bit. Google does some really nice sharing options on this though. I wish that Apple had the ability to swap accounts as easily as Google does on its pixel tablet. Speaker 1: You could go into kids mode and you could swap over to different guest accounts and make the sign that you could just pick up and use for anyone. And that's a great thing, especially since you'll have it charged [00:04:30] in one spot in your house. But $500 for 120 gigabytes of storage or $600 for 2 56 begins to climb into a kind of expensive territory. There's also the case which is sold separately. The Pixel tablet case has a really nice metal adjustable kick kickstand and the whole thing docks right into the charger with the case on, but that case costs $80, which is not cheap and is not included with the Pixel tablet. I would've preferred if they had found a way to work a case [00:05:00] into the package instead of the charge doc, but regardless, I would wanna get that for extra protection. The other thing that Google has not addressed here, or any other sorts of inputs or accessories like keyboards or stylus, the Speaker 2: Pixel tablet does not come with a keyboard case. If you want to type on it, you're gonna have to use the onscreen keyboard or a dictation like I'm doing now. Speaker 1: But the fact that Google doesn't have its own keyboard case or thought about any sort of a stylus here or suggest [00:05:30] that they're not thinking about this as a work device, which is a little weird because a lot of kids, including mine, work on tablets and a lot of people use them for a lot of different things. Um, maybe as a stand-in alternative to a Chromebook and Google didn't address that here. It's really more of a watch stuff, play stuff and browse stuff type of a tablet use. If you wanna think about something that's a little more of an Android work tablet, one Plus's, recent tablet entry addresses a lot of those needs and could be one that you might want to consider instead. So overall, I'm [00:06:00] really happy about the fact that there is now a Pixel tablet. I hope Google continues to evolve the Pixel tablet, but I would like to see the Pixel tablet become a little more than just a Dockable home hub type solution to become something that could really transform into being a little portable computer and do some other stuff, especially with that great processor inside. But this is version one and I'm really curious to see where it goes next. And hopefully we'll continue because Google products sometimes disappear just when you think they're getting started. Thanks a lot for watching. If you have more questions [00:06:30] or comments, make sure to leave them in the comments section below and thanks for watching.