Google Pixel Tablet Review | Tom's Guide
The Google Pixel Tablet might be portable, but it’s meant to have a place in your home. Thanks to the included speaker dock, the tablet transforms into a smart display and control center for your smart devices.
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00:00 Google Pixel tablet. It's a first of its kind device from Google. It costs $499. Let's go take a closer look.
00:07 The Pixel tablet comes in three colors, porcelain, rose, and what I have right here, hazel. It has this aluminum exterior that feels really nice in the hand. It's soft.
00:22 It's not at all a fingerprint magnet, which is great. And again, it feels really nice in the hand. We have a couple of buttons. We have a lock button. We have a volume rocker.
00:29 It also has these rubber bumpers, I guess, to offer just a bit of protection. And here's where you have the whole magnetic system, which attaches to the base.
00:42 So thanks to the split screen multitasking feature, I can listen to Billie Eilish, but also find out when her next tour is going to be in town because I'm just getting in the vibe and I want to be able to keep following along with the music while looking that up.
00:55 So now I have that open and now I want to open my mail because why not?
01:05 And there we have it. Multitasking and you can swipe back and forth depending on how you want to see your apps.
01:13 Google Home is a very big player in the smart home space, which is why something like this dock experience makes sense.
01:20 You know, I have the Google Nest Hub Max, but I think of this now as kind of like a replacement for that, because if I'm not using it as the tablet, it's here, it's charging.
01:29 But I also can open my smart home controls. I can look at my living room camera. I can look at my thermostat.
01:35 I can look at all my other smart home devices all here.
01:39 So think of it like a command center of sorts for your smartphone.
01:43 And what you could even do is if you had multiple of these or if you purchased extra stands for one hundred and twenty nine dollars, you could set them up around your home and have these stations everywhere to control your lights on this tactile device.
01:57 Google has plenty of in-house smart home devices that will play nice with this command center.
02:01 But not only that, the device and Google Home are also matter compatible.
02:05 So third party smart home apps, you'll be able to control them here.
02:08 So if you were going to use this for video chatting using Google Meet, the Pixel tablet has support for 360 backgrounds that actually move with you.
02:22 That's so cool. So I don't have to be in this crowded press lounge.
02:25 I can be on this tropical island and then I can join the meeting and they'll see that I am in paradise.
02:33 Google might not have reinvented the wheel in terms of tablets here, but that smart home functionality with the included base is kind of a game changer.
02:45 Of course, we'll have to take a look at it in a full review.
02:48 In the meantime, check out what we're doing on social at Tom's Guide.
02:51 And as always, I'm at Kate Kozich.
02:53 Thanks for watching. I'll catch you next time.
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