Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Pixel Slate vs Apple iPad Pro – Full Comparison”.
What’S up folks how’s it going this watch hope you guys are all doing. Well now we’ve been doing some testing with the new google pixel slate and i like the ipad pro and surface pro 6. This is ushering a new era of what i’m going to call ultra tablets, where there’s a blending of the tablet form factor and the capabilities of a laptop uh, usually coupled with a nice keyboard and trackpad attachment and some sort of stylus. Now the google pixel site certainly follows that formula fairly. Well, i want to compare it against probably the best ultra tablet out there. The ipad pro 12.9 inch version we’re going to be taking a look at the key differences and similarities between the two and determine which one comes out on top all things considered. So, let’s get right into it. Now google has been developing the pixel slate for a number of years. In fact, it’s been over three years since they came out with a dedicated tablet device and what the slate delivers is. Basically, the pixel book experience, but in a tablet form and with the popularity of the microsoft surface, pro 6 and ipad pro. Not only does the pixel slate bring that level of build quality associated with those tablets, but it has a whole different operating system with chrome os. Now, firstly, when it comes to price and the model configuration, the ipad pro is fairly simple, you’re looking at 7.99 and a thousand dollars for the 11 and 12.9 inch models respectively, and you can obviously upgrade the internal memory. If you so desire.
The pixel slate is a little bit more complicated. The entry-level model coming with an intel, celeron, processor, 4, gigabytes of ram and 64 gigabytes of internal storage, which retails for about 5.99 all the way up to the intel core i7 version of that cpu, which comes with 16 gigabytes of ram and 256 gigabytes of internal Storage now the configuration that we have for this video is the 12.9 inch version of the ipad pro paired with the apple smart keyboard and pencil, which comes to a grand total of about 1330. The pixel slate setup that we have over here is with the intel.
M3 processor and with the native keyboard cover and a pixel book pen you’re looking about eleven hundred dollars for our particular setup over here, and even though this configuration of the pixel slate is slightly cheaper than the ipad pro. Keep in mind that, with the core i7 version of the slate paired with the accessories, you could be spending uh close to two grand for a setup like that which is laptop grade money. And we should expect to see that level of versatility and capabilities. But we’ll come back to performance in a little bit. Let’S talk about design first in terms of construction, both have aluminum unibody designs; they both feel very premium in the hand, but in terms of dimensions. One of the great things about the new ipad pro is the ultra thin bezels and that’s certainly a big trend of uh. This current design up of smartphones tablets and even laptops – and this is where the pixel slate uh from the front side, feels a little bit more dated uh compared to the ultra low profiles that we’re seeing on smartphone tablets and laptops, and even though the larger borders On the pixel slate, i don’t really detract too much from the display – it’s just nice to have thinner, bezels and it seems to be the way forward. Uh going into 2019 and now in terms of uh, thickness and weight. The ipad pro is also a thinner at a 5.9 millimeters versus seven millimeters on the slate, and it’s also about 100 grams lighter as well, which definitely makes a difference in the hand now saying that there are some hardware specialty features that the slate offers that you Don’T find on the ipad pro.
Firstly, you have a fingerprint scanner on the power standby button, which is a nice biometric way to unlock and to get access to your device. You also have two usbc ports on either side of the device, which is cool. If you want to plug in to charge of the tablet and then use the other port to connect, uh usb thumb drives external displays or even third-party peripherals, such as a keyboard and mouse. If you don’t want to use the native google keyboard and trackpad cover, but if you were to get the 200 keyboard attachments one of the things that’s nice about it, it actually looks and feels like a regular keyboard that you would find on a laptop with large, Proportional key configuration and spacing, and even though it has rounded keycaps, it’s still fairly comfortable to type on even for prolonged periods of time, plus at the top of the keyboard.
You’Ll find an extra row of keys, specific to chrome, os, so you’ll find functions like escape back refresh notifications, etc, and at the bottom there’s even a dedicated google assistant key, which is pretty handy as well. On the other hand, the keyboard cover on the ipad pro is certainly not as capable doesn’t feel as comfortable to type on and is generally a lot more bare bones than what we find on the pixel slight side for the more i’m also liking the slate’s multi-touch Track pad, it feels super, responsive and tactile. It even has a mechanical click, functionality which more or less makes it feel more like a laptop than a tablet. In fact, after a while of using the keyboard cover, i barely use the touchscreen, which is certainly not the case on the ipad, since ios has no cursor or mouse functionality, natively supported and since chrome os is based off a linux distribution.
You get a level of control and fine movement that is simply hard to replicate with the operating system that primarily uses touch. Now, then again, if you do want fine control of the ipad, certainly one of its highlights definitely has to be the new apple pencil. Not only does it have a greater level of sensitivity and articulation compared to the pixel book pen, but it feels a lot more responsive and there’s less issues of latency going from app to app compared to the pixel slate, which struggles with a certain applications that are Not fully optimized for pen use specifically, furthermore, apple has integrated the stylus in a lot more thoughtful way: they’ve kind of copied the microsoft surface tablets where there’s a magnetic latching system, so you won’t lose it like. You will on the pixel slate, which has no such integration, which definitely makes the integration of this pen feel more of an afterthought.
But there are some neat things you can do with it. I like the fact that you can circle and highlight words or pictures to get more information via the google assistant, which is definitely a neat feature that i found myself using from time to time now. Moving on, let’s talk about the display quality on both a tablet.
So, in terms of resolution, we’re looking at a higher native pixel count about 3000 by 2000 on the slate has a ppi pixel density count about 293, which is actually pretty insane, it’s actually higher than what we found on the ipad pro. But that being said, i think, in terms of the visual experience you don’t find a greater level of sharpness or clarity. I think past around 264 ppi.
There really doesn’t make too much of a difference in terms of how many pixels you can see unless you’re like two millimeters close to the display, but, more importantly, in terms of viewing angles: color, rendition and brightness. I think the ipad pro has the superior display in those categories. Furthermore, in terms of the audio experience, i think the pixel slate, even though it has less speakers, because the speakers are facing towards you, one of the reasons why the bezels on are a little bit.
Thicker to my ears, these speakers reproduce a little bit more presence and dynamic range in the audio quality compared to the side ways of firing. Speakers on the ipad pro, if you want to use wired headphones without an adapter you’re out of luck on both platforms, and we have three microphones on the ipad pro versus two mics on the slate now moving on. Let’S talk about the internal capabilities and performance levels of both devices, as we mentioned before, there’s a number of different processor options available on the slight ranging from the intel celeron processor, all the way up to the core i7 cpu.
All of these cpus are actually dual core, but they range uh in terms of uh turbo frequencies. Now we have the uh core m3 8100 wide chip, which has integrated uh, 615 graphics, 8 gigabytes of ram with the ipad pro you’re. Looking at the juggernaut of the mobile cpu and gpu world, the apple a12x processor, which is an octa-core cpu and has seven core graphics, we have four gigabytes of ram and this particular version of the ipad. Pro is 64 gigabytes, but you can get the one with one terabyte, which also has six gigabytes of ram.
Interestingly enough now, if you take a look at the geekbench score, uh, comparing our m3 intel processor compared to the a12x you’re gon na, see that there’s no contest over here, essentially uh. The a12x is anywhere between two and a half to three times faster. If we take a look at even the core, i seven version of the slate it’s still two and a half times slower than what we have on the apple a12x, despite costing a whole lot more than the ipad pro. So arguably, we are running different platforms. Ios versus chrome os, but you do have to consider that the level of transistors and the sheer processing, power and capabilities that we have on the apple a12x is at. This point is completely in a league of its own and unmatched by any other mobile platform, and i was actually running a video alongside running another application on the slate and it felt a little bit more sluggish compared to just running one application versus on the ipad. Pro you could be running dozens of applications in the background running out of 4k video doing anything and you’ll never find it ever slowing down. So it’s definitely a lot more capable and internally more powerful.
Furthermore, in terms of the camera configuration, we have eight megapixel front to back cameras on uh the slate. There are different sensors a little bit larger sensor on the back, with a larger aperture lens on the slate and on the ipad pro you have a 7 megapixel front facing camera and a 12 megapixel rear word facing camera. There are some limitations in terms of video capabilities on the slide. You can only record up to 1080p, so there’s no 4k video capabilities versus you have no such limitations on the ipad.
Basically, the 12 megapixel sensor is very similar to what you’ll get on iphone and in terms of video and photo quality. Based on my experience, the ipad has the superior rear facing camera and, lastly, in terms of battery performance in terms of sheer capacity, the slate actually has the larger battery size about 48 watt hours or 36.71 hours on the ipad. But we did a video playback test on the ipad and the same test on the pixel slate and we got a total run time about 12 hours, 51 minutes on the ipad pro versus about 10 hours, 14 minutes on the slate. Now, of course, as we always mentioned, a video playback is not indicative of real-world battery performance, but based on our day-to-day experience, we did find that the ipad pro lasted a couple hours longer based on our particular user profile. Now, to conclude, i think the pixel slate is certainly pretty promising, but there’s some major issues with it for sure, both in terms of hardware and software in terms of hardware, it’s definitely not as fast as the apple a12x chip as we demonstrated, and certainly right now, The ipad pro is the most fastest ultra tablet in the market.
Right now, that’s pretty much unquestionable and in terms of the software side of things, uh chrome os is pretty promising. It’S certainly very capable and has come a long way since a couple of years ago, but i think it’s still kind of premature and the uh adoption phase is fairly limited. I am a fan of the fact that you can run the entire chrome desktop app on it, and it looks very much similar to any kind of laptop that you would find across the board.
But of course it’s not running windows. So it’s not really a full laptop and it has some serious limitations there, but in certain areas, as we demonstrated it’s a little bit more flexible than the ios platform that the ipad pro is limited to right now. But besides that guys, that’s really it definitely give us a thumbs up. If you like this video – and let me know if you want to see a three-way comparison between these two and the microsoft surface, pro 6 love to do that, video for you guys, if you’re interested, of course other than that make sure you have notifications turned on So that way, you get our videos once they become available, and i want to thank you guys so much for your support. Thanks for subscribing and we’ll see you real soon take care. .