Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Pixel Tablet Impressions: A New Bargain?”.
Hey what’s up MKBHD here, okay, so this new pixel tablet is really interesting. I got to spend about an hour with it before this announcement and I’ve Come Away both knowing that I don’t need one but really liking it anyway. So welcome to this first Hands-On and first impressions. Video also feel free to check out the pixel fold, Impressions which also has gone live today. It’S an eighteen hundred dollar folding phone from Google, pretty crazy, I’ll link it below, but also make sure to get subscribed and stay tuned because we have a video of something a little more exclusive, coming up, also from Google that you probably haven’t seen yet. But this tablet, this tablet is 499, so really competitively priced and it basically has one killer feature.
You kind of probably already know where I’m going with this so design wise. It’S pretty simple right, pretty basic with this aluminum enclosure, but fully coated in this soft touch. Finish: that’s really nice. It almost doesn’t even feel like metal anymore, which is funny it’s also pretty lightweight.
There’S a single eight megapixel camera on the back and a power button that doubles as the fingerprint reader at the corner overall looks like a pretty normal tablet right. So what’s the killer feature, is it a software trick? Is it the screen? Is it a stylus? Well you see those four pins down at the bottom of the tablet right below that Google logo on the back. Those are power and data pins.
That line up with these four pins on this dock, that’s included in the Box sick. So with the power of magnets, this tablet slaps onto the back and basically becomes a Google Nest Hub Max more or less so. This is the thing they gave us a teaser of at the last i o and honestly it’s as awesome as it looks.
It works great, there’s enough magnets that there’s like a pretty firm pressure needed to take the tablet off of the dock, but when you put it back on it grabs it and holds it firmly in place and through those pins, it instantly starts charging at 15 watts And connects to the larger speaker inside the dock, so that’s upgraded audio over the tablet’s built-in speakers. So a couple things on this. First of all, I’m kind of surprised that we hadn’t seen this earlier. We have seen a couple more basic versions of this. There was a Lenovo tablet a while ago that would like dock into a speaker, but I’m glad to see Google actually fleshing out this idea and doubling up on its use.
They told me something like 80 plus percent of tablet. Use happens in the home, so for those other 20, when it’s just sitting around your home, it makes sense to just like pop it onto a dock. And now it’s this nice polished Nest Hub display, but then also I’m pretty pumped about the the dock actually being included in the box. But do note it is the only charger included in the box.
So there is a usb-c port on the side of the tablet, but there isn’t any like USBC, cable or wall brick to plug straight into the wall. So the only charger is the dock, which is fine. But if you have another USBC cable, it will charge via a wire, but then the dock itself. It does not charge via USBC it charges with a wall wart to this like Barrel charger.
So just so you know also, theoretically, I guess you could go out and buy a couple more of these docks and put them in other places around your home. If you just wanted to, I’m not actually sure what the price of just the dock would be. Yet if they’re going to sell that individually, I’ll ask I’ll put a little update up here if Google’s able to answer by the time I post this video, but it seems like yeah one in the living room. One in the bedroom could be a thing, but then, when you pop the tablet onto the dock and lock it it activates, what’s called Hub mode and basically it just becomes a Google Nest Hub, and so it can do any of the things that a nest Hub Would do it can be a digital photo frame if you want it to be, it can be, of course, a smart home control panel, which is what most people want home hub to do.
There’S also some smart settings in here about not letting you into all of your other apps when it is your family’s screen. That’S why you lock it to enable this mode, but then, when you’re using it as your personal tablet, you unlock it and have access to everything. Oh also, they made this a pretty unique case that has a wire stand.
That holds it up like surprisingly firmly, but since it’s just a big circular wire, it has enough room to slap it onto the dock and not be interrupted. There’S no extra magnets needed, so I don’t have to take the case off to dock it pretty smart either way. I’M just thinking like this is basically double pulling up the functionality of the tablet. The nest Hub Max that’s on sale right now is like 230 dollars. So hey, if you’re gon na spend 500 bucks on a tablet, and you also get that device out of it. It’S kind of cool the rest of the tablet, honestly pretty mid. It’S just very average, like there’s not too much crazy, other stuff going on with the specs.
I think the the spec for the display probably tells the whole story about the rest of the tablet. This is a an 11 inch 60 hertz LCD display yeah it’s 2560 by 1600, which is pretty solid and very reasonable brightness for using it around the house and indoors nothing too crazy. 500 nits.
It’S going to be perfectly fine for watching videos or movies on the couch or even handing it to a kid, which is what a lot of people do with tablets nowadays. But it’s not trying to compete at the high end, like a workstation, High, refresh rate, iPad type of thing fun. Fact too, though, you can also get one with a black bezel they’ve showed all these teasers of the ones with white bezels, and I was always commenting on that on the podcast, but turns out the porcelain, color and rose color have white bezels, but the Hazel colored One has black bezels, so you at least have that choice.
There is also a tensor G2 chip inside so the same chip we’ve had for half a year in the pixel 7 line, there’s eight gigs of RAM and either 128 or 256 gigs of storage and a 27 watt hour battery, which I believe will translate to right Around 7 000 milliamp hours, the 8 megapixel camera on the back, it’s super basic. It doesn’t even have a portrait mode, that’s not really the focus of this device. The cameras are more just for being able to do simple photos and video calls like you’d, find on a nest Hub. I do wonder if you could use this tablet wall docked as a security camera. I’M not sure I didn’t get to try that or find that during my demo time, but I’ll definitely be digging around for that sort of stuff in the full review. But I also said this in the in the pixel fold: Impressions video, which is it’s an Android tablet still and it’s been a minute since we’ve had a real hit of an Android tablet, probably for Google, it’s been since the Nexus 7., and so this one has A pretty clear value proposition of the killer feature of it being two devices in one, but then you still have the software question, which is like what are you actually going to do on this tablet? Now I think, with a with a middle tier media tablet like this people probably won’t be asking that question as much, but still for me. I just wonder like what about multitasking, what about split screen, apps and all the other things you expect out of a big screen. So I think, Google’s being smart about intentionally, not starting with some crazy 800 premium tablet, because that’s what people will be asking and immediately starting to try to do with a powerful high-end tablet. But with this one, you just cover the basics like side by side. Split screen, multitasking is here and even optimizing: Google’s 50 plus apps for tablets. They’Ve talked a big game about this, so they have multi-column layouts and they don’t just look like stretched out smartphone apps, which is good, they’re, really responsive to the size of the screen. So so this tablet will benefit from all the improvements that also went into the eighteen hundred dollar pixel fold, which is pretty cool but yeah.
I think for a 499 tablet. It settles nicely into the mid-range well. Actually, here we go quick little update. I just got an email back saying: Google will be selling the dock separately from the tablet.
If you want another one for 130 dollars, think about it like that, it’s pretty good value. 500, bucks for the tablet and the dock means you get about 370 for the tablet and 130 for the dock. That’S pretty cheap! It’S pretty good! I’M curious what you guys are thinking. Let me know in the comments, if you think you’d be interested in getting one of these. But more importantly, what do you want to see in the full review when we get one here and test everything, because we’re gon na? Do it? Okay, that’s been it thanks for watching peace, .