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Jul 22, 2023

Google Pixel Tablet Review

Starting at $499, the Pixel Tablet is Google's reentry into the Android tablet market, but with a twist: Paired with its included Speaker Dock, it also takes aim at smart displays like the Amazon Echo

Starting at $499, the Pixel Tablet is Google's reentry into the Android tablet market, but with a twist: Paired with its included Speaker Dock, it also takes aim at smart displays like the Amazon Echo Show 10 and the Google Nest Hub Max. The new Pixel is a tablet first and a smart display second, and it runs a full version of Android rather than a limited platform as the Nest Hub does. It handles multitasking with ease, is a great media slate, and does a fine job serving as an oversize smart display. It's compelling if you want one device that serves two purposes, and if you've ever been frustrated that your smart display can't run full apps, this is the device for you.

It also supports casting, multi-room audio, and smart speaker functionality when docked—something even the best tablets, including the $699 Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 and $449 Apple iPad (10th Generation) cannot. These two slates, however, are superior at being tablets.

When the Pixel Tablet is charging on the Speaker Dock, it looks similar to the Nest Hub Max, but with an even larger screen and smaller bezels. The undocked tablet measures 10.2 by 6.7 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs approximately 1.09 pounds. That's a tiny bit heavier than the base iPad. No matter how you hold the Pixel Tablet, it feels well-balanced and is comfortable in the hand. It's made from an aluminum shell that's been covered in a ceramic-like finish. It comes in Porcelain, Hazel, and Rose finishes with a matching Dock. (We received the Porcelain color for testing.)

Strong magnets hold the tablet in place on the Dock. It's sticky enough to feel secure, but not too strong that removing the tablet requires you to hold down the Dock to remove it. The speaker base measures 6.6 by 3.7 by 2.7 inches (HWD), weighs approximately 0.89 pounds, and is wrapped in a nice-looking fabric made of 90% recycled plastic. Inside is a single 43.5mm full-range speaker that topped out at 97.5dB when blasting Metallica's Enter Sandman at full volume.

The tablet features a 10.95-inch LCD screen, which has a resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels, a pixel density of 267ppi, and a 60Hz refresh rate. Videos and images look good on this screen, thanks to its 24-bit color support, and the touch-screen response is excellent. The display reaches 500 nits typical brightness and is easily visible in direct sunlight. There's a front-facing camera centered in the bezel above the display with a volume rocker and a combo power button/fingerprint sensor on the top right. The volume rocker felt a bit mushy but does its job. The fingerprint sensor is slightly recessed, so you know when your finger is completely on it, and the sensor worked very well each time we used it.

The bottom edge features two thin rubber bumpers which help keep the bottom of the tablet from being scuffed. The short sides feature four slits for the four internal speakers. Those speakers can get loud, topping out at 90dB in testing, but the audio is pretty light on bass. There is no distortion even when the volume is maxed out on either the tablet or the speaker dock.

There is one USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 port on the left side, which means you can charge the tablet on its own apart from the Speaker Dock when necessary. The rear panel features a small 8MP camera in the top left corner, a shiny Google G logo, and four contacts to connect to the Speaker Dock's pogo pins.

The Google Pixel Tablet is powered by Google's own Tensor G2 SoC, the same as the Pixel 7 line and the Pixel Fold. It has four 1.8GHz efficiency cores, two 2.35GHz midrange cores, and two 2.8GHz performance cores. The base model of the Pixel Tablet comes with 128GB of internal storage. It'll cost you another $100 to double that to 256GB; both versions come with 8GB of RAM.

When it comes to benchmarks, the Pixel Tablet would not run Geekbench 5. The Play Store wouldn't allow us to install it, and it crashed when we side-loaded it. Since the Pixel Tablet is using the exact same SoC as the Pixel phones, we can offer those scores as a frame of reference. For example, the Pixel 7's Tensor G2 scored 1,032 on the Geekbench 5 single-core test and 2,749 on the multi-core test. The iPad beat the Pixel with scores of 1,573 and 4,097 on the single- and multi-core tests, respectfully.

On the PCMark Work 3.0 test, the Pixel Tablet garnered a score of 10,386. That score is just a bit lower than the Pixel 7's 10,571, which suggests that the internals of the Pixel Tablet and Pixel 7 are tuned a little differently from each other. For comparison, the Snapdragon-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 scored 13,807 on that same test. In real-world usage, the Pixel Tablet managed apps very well. Running a dozen open apps concurrently did not slow the Pixel Tablet's responsiveness. Google says it made sure to target this type of usage scenario as it tweaked its software for the Tensor G2.

Gaming was very good on the Pixel Tablet. Genshin Impact averaged 58.48fps when played on medium settings, which is great. When we pushed the settings to high, a warning appeared saying, "Current performance load is too high, which can lead to overheating and serious lagging." In my gaming sessions, I did not experience much lag, but the back of the Pixel Tablet did get a bit warm after about 20 minutes. Alto's Odyssey, a much less resource-intensive game, worked perfectly on the device.

In our battery test, in which we stream HD video over Wi-Fi with the screen at full brightness, the Pixel Tablet's 7,020mAh battery survived just 5 hours and 25 minutes before being fully drained, well below the 12 hours that Google claims. For comparison, the iPad lasted a bit longer at 5 hours and 59 minutes. The Tab S8 ran for much longer at 7 hours and 25 minutes.

The Pixel Tablet can be charged two different ways: directly through the USB-C port, or through the Speaker Dock. Using the included charger, the Pixel Tablet recharged from 0 to 100% in 2 hours and 40 minutes. The Dock took a little longer, at 2 hours and 50 minutes. Typically, the Dock will not charge the tablet up to 100%. It often shows a message explaining that charging is optimized to protect the battery. You can override that protection in the settings, but the protection feature will return once the tablet is docked again.

For connectivity, the Pixel Tablet supports Wi-Fi 6 and hit peak download speeds of 380Mbps when tested on a Wi-Fi 6 access point. Uploads hit a peak of 15.9Mbps. (That slow upload speed is more a function of the ISP than the tablet.) For comparison, the Lenovo Tab Extreme scored 489Mpbs down and 16.8Mbps when tested in the same spot. When taking the tablet as far away as I could from the access point in my New York City apartment, the numbers dropped to 128Mbps down and 14.4Mbps up and the Lenovo reached 110Mbps down and 13.7Mbps up. That is plenty of bandwidth for video streaming and video calls, and the relative parity between the results says the tablet is doing the best it can with the signal it's got.

The tablet also supports Bluetooth 5.2, which worked fine in our tests; wireless headphones and keyboards paired quickly and consistently.

There are two identical cameras on the Pixel Tablet. The front and rear cameras both capture 8MP pictures with an f/2.0 aperture, have an 84-degree field of view, and capture 1080p video at 30fps. The front-facing camera allows you to take portrait images with a blurry background, but that function is not available on the rear. Portrait mode shots were not perfect but looked good enough, with sharp edges on the areas around the subject, including messy hair.

Both cameras performed pretty much the same, which makes sense. Well-lit subjects looked clear, with good color accuracy, while darker areas became noisy. Taking pictures of trees from across the street led to lost detail in the leaves, which took on an almost painted look when zoomed in. Needless to say, the Pixel Tablet should not be your main camera for capturing life in its most vivid details. (You'll be much better off with a Pixel 7 Pro.)

The Pixel Tablet is more about video chats than photos. Video conferencing using Google Meet worked well using the front-facing camera with good color and detail. The three-microphone array captured my audio quite well. The caller's audio sounded good through the tablet's speakers, but fuller when attached to its base.

Google includes a continuous-framing feature in the Pixel Tablet, which means the tablet will try to keep you centered in the frame by zooming in and cropping the video. The camera gets overwhelmed and gives up if you briskly pace around a room while video chatting. Instead, the video reframing gets to work when you position yourself in one spot for a few seconds. The person on the call will see your video framing change in slow, smooth movements. The 84-degree field of view worked well here, as you can move quite a bit before the automatic framing stops responding. The continuous-framing feature turns on automatically when the tablet is docked; otherwise, you'll have to engage it manually.

Even though the docked Pixel Tablet's appearance resembles a Nest Hub device, that is not what this device is. The Pixel Tablet is an Android 13 tablet that happens to have a dock that allows it to behave more like a Google smart home product. When setting up the Pixel Tablet, it is like setting up any other Android device. You can even copy over your settings from another Android, if you want. Google says it will provide a minimum of five years of security updates to the tablet and the base.

Google touted that a whole bunch of apps are "optimized for Pixel Tablet." It targeted the top 100 apps in the Google Play store, specifically, and others more broadly. I tried out many, including Netflix, ESPN, and Google's own apps like Messages, Meet, and YouTube. All of those apps looked good on the nearly 11-inch screen in both portrait and landscape orientations. Messages, for example, gets a left panel to show you a list of who's messaged you and a right panel to show the full conversations just like your email inbox. For the most part, you are not looking at badly stretched phone apps. Most important, apps installed through the Play Store worked without any hiccups. Multitasking works the same as many other Android tablets, with split-screening and a floating YouTube player. However, you cannot load up your screen with a bunch of floating apps. When you've tiled two apps together, they appear as a pair when you are in the task switcher.

Since this is a full-fledged Android tablet, you can pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard if you want to type in Google Docs or Microsoft Word. The built-in software keyboard offers several intelligent options, including a split keyboard that is available in both portrait and landscape modes. There is a voice-to-type feature that is accessible by tapping the mic icon on the top of the software keyboard, and it is outstanding. You just talk to the tablet as much as you want, and it will handle your dictation with no problem. It even adds punctuation without you explicitly saying something like "period" or "comma." This feature works offline as well. This is the Tensor G2 and its machine learning algorithms at work. Voice input is not just for dictation, as you can also use commands like "Send" when you are done writing an email. I tried to trick the Pixel Tablet several times by using the word "send" at the end of a sentence, but the tricks did not work. It was not until I finished my message and then said send did the email finally hit the outbox.

The Pixel Tablet supports multiple users (a feature still not available on the iPad) and includes a child-friendly Kids Space app that lets parents have full control over what young children get to access. User-switching worked well, but it should be noted that the Hub Mode setting was accessible only by the first user account that was used to set up the device. If a secondary or child account is active when the tablet is docked, the tablet will go dark without a screensaver and revert to the first user's account after about a minute of inactivity, then display Hub Mode.

When the Pixel Tablet is docked and inactive, a screensaver of your choice appears, such as the weather or a Google Photos album. The time, the weather, and a Google Home icon are always visible in the lower left corner. Tapping that icon brings up a customized version of the Google Home app. That same version of the Home app is also accessible by pulling down from the top bezel to the screen and tapping the Home quick setting. Privacy settings are accessible here, too, and you can easily turn the camera or microphones off without unlocking the device. That same pull-down shade will reveal notifications on the right side if you have any. While in Hub Mode, the Pixel Tablet will listen to people beyond its main user. Swiping from the bottom will bring up a screen to enter your specific user PIN to unlock the device.

The Hub Mode is a very light app on top here. If you want to do anything beyond basic voice questions, commands, and home controls, you'll need to unlock the tablet and go into the full OS. Popping the tablet off the dock becomes second nature as you tinker with whatever you need to, then slap it back on the charger for later.

When the Pixel Tablet was introduced, Google mentioned that this was the first tablet that could be a Chromecast receiver. What this means: If you have an app on your phone such as Netflix or Spotify, you could cast that video or audio directly to the Pixel Tablet. That particular feature works only when the tablet is docked and powered. By default, a notification will appear on the screen that asks you if you want to allow casting on your device each time a casting session begins. Those notifications can be turned off in settings if you choose.

If you begin casting to the tablet while it is docked, and then remove the tablet from the dock, the tablet continues playing your media and can be controlled by the device casting the content. Once the sender ends the session, the tablet must return to the dock if you want to use it as a Chromecast receiver again. We would have appreciated an option to cast to the tablet without the dock, since this seems to be just a software setting. However, because you can download media streaming apps directly to the Pixel Tablet, casting is often not necessary.

One of the more impressive features is the handoff of audio from the tablet to the speaker dock, and vice versa. When the two devices are paired, an unobtrusive animation plays on the screen, along with a pleasant chime to let you know they are connected. If you are watching something on the tablet and then dock it, the audio automatically switches to the more bass-heavy Speaker Dock. Pull the tablet away, and the speaker dock goes silent, and the audio continues on the tablet. It would be maddening if this feature had any sort of a delay, but we found the experience to be instantaneous. You never have to go into settings to make sure the audio output is set to the correct device. It just works.

The docked Pixel Tablet supports multi-room audio, so it can join your Google army of smart speakers. If you start a multi-speaker casting session, then remove the Pixel Tablet from the dock, the audio continues on the tablet and can resume on the dock. You cannot cast audio directly to the speaker dock without the Pixel Tablet attached, and it will not show up as a casting destination on other devices. This seems like a missed opportunity. If the dock itself were a semi-autonomous smart speaker, the pricing on this package deal may be a little easier to swallow.

A Google spokesperson said more features may come to Hub Mode over time.

If Google wanted a way to familiarize people with Android on the big screen, the Pixel Tablet is it. It's a great device that can sneak into your home as a tablet and double as a smart display. At $499, however, the competition is fierce. If you're mostly interested in a smart display, the aging Google Nest Hub Max costs $229, and the Amazon Echo Show 10 costs $249.99. Both work with plenty of smart home devices and leave room in your budget to also pick up an inexpensive tablet.

The Editors' Choice-winning Apple iPad ($449) remains the tablet we recommend to most buyers. However, if you want a device that can act as both a tablet and a smart display, the Google Pixel Tablet is an interesting take on the concept.

The Google Pixel Tablet bridges the gap between tablet and smart display surprisingly well, but it costs more than the entry-level iPad.

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