I've spent the past few years staring at a Nest Hub Max on my desk, but now Google's new
Pixel Tablet is out. I've replaced that Nest Hub Max with it for the past few weeks. So,
which photo display should you get? And when is it worth it to
pay a little more than double to go for the Pixel Tablet over the Nest Hub Max?
Now, the killer feature that the Pixel Tablet has that no other tablet has is the charging
speaker dock. It turns the tablet into a smart photo display. This is also called hub mode on
the Pixel Tablet. And like on the Nest Hub Max, with hub mode on the Pixel Tablet,
you get this great slideshow of photos that you can set to be from an art gallery, weather,
Weather Frog, full-screen clock, and of course, there's the fantastic Google Photos integration.
You can choose specific albums you want to display photos from, or you can create a new
album that includes all the photos you have of specific people or places. You also have
the option to display a button for the smart home controls in hub mode for the Pixel Tablet.
The only thing I found that you can't do with the Pixel Tablet's hub mode that you can do
with the Nest Hub Max is set the interval for how long photos stay on the display before new
ones fade in. When you want to use the device as a tablet, you can either just tap the screen or pull
the display off the dock where it magnetically attaches to use it as a full Android tablet.
It gives you way more to do than the Nest Hub Max ever did, but it adds about twice the cost. Now,
one of the most surprising things about the Pixel Tablet that I was not expecting
when I replaced my Nest Hub Max with it is just how much crisper the display on
the Pixel Tablet looks. Its screen is 10.2 inches, but it also has double the screen
resolution with its 276 ppi display. That's compared to the 150 ppi display on the Nest
Hub Max. I don't see the pixels on this display like you can on the Nest Hub Max,
and high-resolution photos just look stunning on the Pixel Tablet's display.
The colors also look just about as good as on the Nest Hub Max, though the Pixel Tablet
doesn't seem to make as dramatic changes to its display color temperature as the Nest Hub Max
does. One other quirk with the Pixel Tablet that I didn't even think about when I was ordering it
is Android's bedtime mode. On the Nest Hub Max, there's a setting for the display to turn off
completely when the device recognizes that it's dark in a given room. With the Pixel Tablet, you
can actually just schedule the device to turn off its screen at a specific time with bedtime mode,
which I actually prefer. And if you already have an Android or Pixel device, when you set up the
Pixel Tablet, it'll automatically bring over all those settings for you, which is really nice.
Another huge difference between these two smart displays is performance. This is because the Pixel
Tablet uses Tensor 2. This is the same chip that powers Google's most powerful consumer devices
to date, the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. Even with the Pixel Tablet's 60Hz display, which does not
refresh as fast as devices like the Pixel 7 or the 7 Pro, the Pixel Tablet feels so much quicker
compared to the often laggy experience of swiping around the Nest Hub Max's interface. The Pixel
Tablet also fixes one of the most annoying parts about using the Nest Hub Max: it comes with a full
browser experience that is actually good, with no lag, and it works exactly how you'd expect.
Of course, the Pixel Tablet comes with not just a full Chrome browser,
but also apps. I asked my followers on Threads and my subscribers here on
YouTube what they wanted me to test out on the Pixel Tablet, and a lot of you wanted to know
about mainstream apps like YouTube, Yahoo Finance, Gmail, Hey, Spark, and HBO Max.
All of those apps worked fine. Unfortunately, Threads, The New York Times, Instagram, and apps
like NYT Cooking and other mobile Android apps that you'll encounter do run on the Pixel Tablet,
but they're just not optimized for larger Android screen sizes yet. Thankfully, for those looking to
put a display in their kitchen, NYT Cooking on the web works great and looks great on this tablet.
One new app update you get with the Pixel Tablet is actually the weather app. It's snappy, and yes,
the Weather Frog is still there. Overall, it looks pretty great,
though I'd say it's still not as in-depth as what you'll find with Apple's Weather app,
and it's still missing features like the radar.
Now, because you can run apps on the Pixel Tablet, that means you can, of course,
add widgets to the home screen. To get to the home screen, you'll need to unlock the tablet by using
the fingerprint sensor at the top right, which is very fast, by the way. You can add widgets
from the home screen for apps that simply weren't available to you on the Nest Hub Max.
For example, you can add a weather widget, or even widgets for media apps like Pocket Casts,
YouTube Music, and even Sonos. If you're a Sonos user, this tablet actually makes
a pretty great device for controlling your Sonos system. That is, of course,
if you're using the system through the Sonos app, because at the time of recording,
Sonos still does not support casting from Android devices to their system.
But if they ever, for whatever reason, decide to start supporting casting, I'll make sure to
let you know in our free monthly newsletter, which includes follow-ups to our reviews, plus
deal alerts, hot takes, and everything we publish each month. You can sign up for free by using the
link in the description below or by using the QR code that you've seen here on the screen.
Now, another major difference between these two smart photo displays is their sound. While I don't
think either one of them sounds particularly good—like they're definitely not a sound
device made for audiophiles—the Nest Hub Max does sound a bit better thanks to its larger speakers.
The displays have pretty similar response times, but with the Pixel Tablet,
when Google gives you a response, like "I found this on the web," and then brings
up Google web results, the experience of browsing Google and loading full
websites is just really good on the Pixel Tablet and not so good on the Nest Hub Max.
On the Nest Hub Max, cameras are another big deal. The Pixel Tablet has a slightly higher
resolution camera at 8 megapixels versus 6.5 on the Nest Hub Max, and the Pixel Tablet also
has a rear camera as well. The Nest Hub Max's camera has a wider field of view,
but both cameras can auto-frame subjects using a software crop,
and both integrate with video conferencing services like Google Meet and Zoom.
Where the Nest Hub Max really differs from the Pixel Tablet is with its security cam
capabilities. It can monitor the room you put it in and be linked to a Nest Aware subscription,
and it can be physically turned off, something the Pixel Tablet doesn't have. You also get
gesture control with the Nest Hub Max that allows you to play and pause media by just
holding up your hand, and the Nest Hub Max also has facial recognition so it
can recognize your face and you don't have to use the Google Assistant trigger word.
This is also something the Pixel Tablet, at the time of recording, does not have.
Another slight differentiation between these two smart photo displays is their overall
design. The Pixel Tablet feels just slightly more premium with its aluminum construction
and great grippy outer layer, and it's the only one of these displays to have a version
with a black border, and it can be, of course, removed from its speaker dock.
Also, because the Pixel Tablet has a battery, if for whatever reason you
have a power blip or you just want to move it around, it will keep showing photos for
a period of time while you do that, even if it isn't plugged into power.
So, which one should you go with?
Well, my overall recommendation would be to go with the Pixel
Tablet if you're looking to put it on a desk or in a kitchen. It will give you a great photo display
experience, but it can also do many other useful things, like control media through actual apps,
browse the web, control your smart home, and—for the kitchen—it's great for recipes.
So far in my experience, the two downsides you're likely to run into with the Pixel
Tablet are that some apps are not optimized for Android tablets or will not run on the
Pixel Tablet at all. The other downside is trying to read text on this display
when it's in landscape configuration. Text looks a bit truncated in that mode,
but it looks way better when you just rotate the tablet into portrait mode.
For other areas of your home where you just want a smart photo display that can connect to Google
Photos, but you don't necessarily want or need to have to interact with its screen,
then I definitely think it makes sense to save some money and go for the Nest Hub Max.
The Nest Hub Max retails for $229 USD and comes in chalk and charcoal. The
Pixel Tablet retails for $499 USD and comes in porcelain, rose, and hazel,
which is the color I have. And that's the version that comes with the black borders.
I'll leave purchase links here in this video and in the description below if you'd like to
learn more about these products and see their current price. You can also click
here to see our videos on the Nest Hub Max. We've done a six-months-later review of it,
as well as our other videos on Google devices.
Make sure you subscribe to the channel to see more reviews on Google products, our
six-months-later review of the Pixel Tablet, and more videos about how to use devices like these.
And if you like this video and found it helpful,
consider giving us a thumbs up below. It really helps the channel out. Thanks for watching!