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I'm not really a tablet guy. If you've been around Chrome Unboxed for a little while, you likely know that already. I easily get confused with the best way to utilize a tablet in my daily workflow, and though I like the form factor just fine, tablets tend to get lost on me between my large-screen phone and my far-more-productive Chromebook. And while my time with the Pixel Tablet did little to change my mind on this point, it did at least help me at least appreciate the unique angle Google was attempting to take with their latest in-house tablet.
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0:00
I'm not really a tablet guy
0:01
If you've been around Chrome Unboxed for any amount of time, you likely know this already
0:06
I get kind of confused with the best way to utilize a tablet. Though I like the form factor just fine, tablets tend to kind of get lost for me between my large
0:14
screen smartphone and my far more productive Chromebook. And my time with the pixel tablet has done little to change this, but it did at least
0:22
help me start to appreciate the unique angle Google was attempting to take with their latest in-house tablet
0:30
Though the pixel tablet or any Android tablet for that matter isn't really for me right now
0:39
I have to applaud Google for at least trying to do something different. Rather than slapping a keyboard case on this thing and letting it parade around like a real laptop
0:47
Google has steered clear completely of that lane, instead opting to let this really good Android tablet at the end of the day feel great to use
0:55
and have an interesting trick up its sleeve. As you've likely seen by now, the pixel tablet
0:59
can be dropped onto its included speaker dock to charge and become a casting target and generally
1:05
be just this quick glance screen, kind of like a smart display
1:09
And while it definitely isn't the same experience you would get with a dedicated nest hub
1:14
I don't think that's really a bad thing. We'll get into that here in a second
1:18
Generally, as an accessory, the dock is pretty fun. You can drop the pixel tablet on there with relative ease and get a much improved sound
1:26
experience pretty much immediately as soon as you drop it on there. And then it charges up while it's there too
1:31
And as a picture frame or something like that, it's nice. And your smart home controls are just a single button press away at any given time
1:38
And it's also great for video calls when it's docked as well. And it gives most people what they're looking for in a smart display from Google
1:46
It also supports multiple accounts. So regardless of who snatches it off that dock there are custom setups for everyone in the family You just got to log in And when you do pick it up off the dock which again is pretty easy to do it a perfectly good tablet for reading content consumption checking email social media I did try hooking up a
2:04
Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse. And while technically all of that worked, Android is just
2:09
inferior to even the most basic Chromebook on the market when it comes down to actually getting
2:14
productive and getting things done. The 8 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of internal
2:19
storage pair up nice with the tensor g2 inside and everything moves around nice and smooth it all feels
2:25
buttery it's all pixely and nicely animated and battery life was pretty solid too got me through
2:30
minimal off and on daily use and i tracked basically eight to nine hours of screen on time at any point
2:37
so i just i don't know i didn't really worry about the battery too much at all and yeah the screen is
2:41
only 60 hertz but again that just didn't bother me too much the colors are good the viewing angles are
2:46
really good. It's 500 nits of brightness. So it just handled every environment I was in just fine
2:51
I would imagine it would struggle outside and sunlight, but I just didn't use it that way
2:56
And the 8 megapixel cameras on the front and back are really good for video calls, but
3:00
not a whole lot else. And that kind of felt weird to me being on a pixel product
3:04
if I'm just being perfectly honest. I don't have the desire to pick up my tablet and take
3:08
photos very often, but it is strange to hold a Google-made gadget with a camera on the front
3:12
back and not feel confident in taking photos. Now, it does come with a pretty unique feature with
3:17
support for USA pins, and I'm really excited to finally see an Android device get the pen standard
3:23
that we've gotten used to on ChromeOS for years at this point. And just like we've used on tons of
3:28
Chromebooks, you can use any USI 2.0 pen to jot your notes, make sketches, navigate the UI
3:33
all that stuff on the pixel tablet. But not all USA2.0 pens are made the same, and that brings me
3:39
to our sponsor for this video, Penoval. Penoval makes fantastic. US iPens for Android tablets and Chromebooks styluses for iPads and surface devices that are all well stylish and come with a really reasonable price tag Their latest model the USI 2 stylus pin
3:55
comes with some really awesome features like fast USBC charging, a solid, replaceable cone-like pin tip
4:01
and enhanced palm rejection. With an all-aluminum build, this pen will hold up over time to making it a constant
4:07
companion between your pixel tablet and save your Chromebook for years to come
4:11
And with a USI pen, there's no pairing or setup needed. You just touch your Penovel U.S.I.2.0 pin to the pixel tablet screen and off you go
4:20
Bottom line, if you need a stylus for your pixel tablet, we'd recommend checking out Penoval
4:25
But now we have to talk about that Nest Hub Google Assistant thing
4:29
Look, this is a nice tablet if you like tablets. But Google's aim here was clearly a play at a bit of differentiation from the rest of the crew
4:38
and the timing of all of it is simply off. Docking this tablet and having a fully functional Nest Hub
4:43
style device was supposed to be its key feature. And now that Google Assistant is failing at nearly
4:49
everything it was supposed to assist us with, that docked use case feels a little more like a parlor
4:56
trick. In my time with the pixel tablet, the dock served basically just to prop up the device
5:01
as a photo frame, a task that can simply be done by a stand. And the speaker in the dock isn't on
5:07
like Nest audio level, so it's not this big room-filling sound when you want to play music with it
5:13
So I just didn't think about it that often. And for video calls, when you do remember to dock it first
5:19
it is a nice hands-free option that enhances your audio pretty nicely
5:23
But it sure feels like this whole setup was engineered for a lot more
5:27
For the time being, however, we're in a smart home digital assistant limbo of sorts
5:33
And for better or worse chat GPT and Bard have come along during the pixel tablet too long development cycle And we right in the middle of this upheaval of the way that we going to talk to digital assistants the way we expect AI to impact all of our experiences and even how we leverage general search moving forward And that abrupt change in the digital assistant space has left the
5:53
Google Assistant in this real precarious position. While not fully abandoned, the Google Assistant
5:58
feels like a shell of its former self, so much so that I've found I'm better off simply not
6:04
relying on it for basically anything these days. While I'm hoping that Google
6:08
Google will eventually roll Bards AI smarts into the assistant and bring back the glory days of
6:13
smart displays and smart speakers. I'm just not sure that's going to happen
6:17
And with matter becoming more prevalent as the go-to smart home standard
6:21
smart displays and smart home software in general are both in this state of readjustment to all
6:27
these new norms. And until all that stuff sorted out, the key differentiating feature of this, the pixel tablet
6:34
kind of remains in limbo with all of it. I think as a smart home controller and a content consumption device, the pixel tablet can find a seat at the table
6:42
As a smart display or a nest hub sort of device, though, a lot of that stuff rides on what Google does with the assistant in the coming months
6:50
If it all shakes out and the Google assistant is helpful once again and Google continues to integrate, it's stuff better with this new matter standard, the pixel tablet could end up being really useful doing what it was actually designed to do
7:03
But until then, I think it's better to think of the pixel tablet. simply as a solid Android tablet that many of you might enjoy if you like tablets
7:12
But guys, that's it for this one. If you enjoyed this video, give us a thumbs up. Head down there, hit that subscribe button, and be sure to ring the notification icon as well
7:19
if you'd like to be alerted when we make future videos just like this one. Until next time, we'll see you
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