- This video is brought to you by Skillshare.
I have a confession to make.
I have been putting off this video for weeks,
and I have plenty of excuses for that,
from holidays to travel, but at the end of the day,
the reason this review has been delayed so many times
is because every time I pick up the Pixel Slate,
all I really wanna do is put it back down.
(upbeat music)
Folks, I don't like to dog pile,
and I genuinely thought that waiting a little bit longer
would give Google time to smooth out the rough edges here
or expose some unseen magic everyone else had missed,
but after two months, it seems to me
that all the other reviews are spot on.
The Pixel Slate is trying to be both tablet and laptop,
and it's really not great at either one.
First off, it's just too big to be a workable tablet.
With a 12.3-inch display, it's smaller
than the supersized iPad Pro, but it feels just
as awkwardly huge in the hand.
The fingerprint sensor on the top is a great use
of otherwise wasted space on paper,
but in practice, it makes it awkward to unlock the tablet
while you're holding it.
The hardware itself is well-balanced.
It feels good and looks sleek, but you know,
it reminds me of the Microsoft Surface Book 2.
By which I mean, yeah, you can pop off the clipboard,
but the second you do, you realize
that this thing really wants to be attached to a keyboard.
But where the Surface Book 2 comes with a keyboard,
the Pixel Slate charges you extra for the privilege.
Two keyboards came with my review unit,
Google's own Folio-Style and a third party model
from Bridge, and I didn't really like either one.
Google's Folio is slim, and despite what some
are saying about its curious round keys,
I find them very comfortable to type on,
but the way this thing folds out,
it takes up so much acreage that you can pretty much
forget about using it on a lap unless you're very tall.
Maybe it's no surprise that the person
who first pointed this out to me
was Pocketnow's Jaime Rivera.
Short guy, solidarity, my friend.
Plus, the keyboard doesn't anchor to the bottom
of the screen like a Surface, so it kinda flops around
in a lap, and even when you close it,
it kind of squirms around like a half-melted Oreo.
Would you look at this?
I hate this. (upbeat music)
Now, the Bridge keyboard doesn't have that issue,
but it is much heavier, adding one and a half pounds
to an already weighty package.
It's also got these oversized hinges in the corners.
I remember these from the iPad model,
and I had the same complaint there.
Now, it does last six months on a charge,
and it really makes the Pixel Slate feel laptop-y.
But is that worth another $160?
Not while the Pixel Book still exists, if you ask me.
On top of that stuff, performance is a mixed bag.
I have the Core i5 model with eight gigs of RAM,
and while it's not slow per se, it definitely doesn't
feel as fluid as most Android tablets,
to say nothing of the iPad.
I'm not the biggest fan of iOS, but in a world
where the iPad dominates the tablet space,
you've gotta at least approach that device's smoothness
if you wanna compete, and the Pixel Slate
doesn't even get close.
Animations have dropped frames, the system
feels much more jittery than it should given the power,
and even after many updates, little details
like rounded corners on notification windows here,
they pop in and out with each animation.
Android apps also break with surprising regularity,
and even basic things like the software keyboard
are fidgety and unreliable.
Now, I knew there were people out there
who really enjoyed their Pixel Slate,
so I went to Reddit to see the bright points
of owning ones, and those bright points do exist.
The way it tightly integrates with the Pixel smartphone,
having the desktop version of Chrome on a tablet,
loud, front firing speakers, seamless automatic updates,
and the sheer number of available Android apps,
reliability aside. (upbeat music)
Battery life, in my experience, has also been great,
easily getting me through a full day of writing
with a lot of tabs open, and the developers
in the crowd really like that you can run Line-X and Chrome
on the same device,
but you know where you can also get most of these?
On last year's Google Pixelbook.
It doesn't pack the battery life,
and it's a generation behind in the processor,
but it's also cheaper.
And in my opinion, a much more focused
and generally just better product.
My final thoughts on the Pixel Slate
after a quick word from that sponsor I talked about
at the top, and I think a lot of you will find it useful.
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Happy learning, and thanks to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video. (upbeat music)
For all its foibles, I do think Pixel Slate
is a glimpse of the future of tablets.
To bring back the Microsoft analogy one more time,
remember how that first Microsoft Surface
about six years was basically a joke?
Well, now, the Surface defines the convertible category
on the Windows side. (upbeat music)
There's similar potential here.
Chrome OS is a simple and secure operating system
that millions already know how to use,
and when the Slate is docked to the keyboard,
it handles inputs from the touchscreen
and the track pad with alacrity.
That, among other things,
is what makes it feel so much better suited
to real work than an iPad, and that's what gives me hope
for the future of devices like this.
In optimized form, this could be the perfect blend
of mobile and desktop computing.
If Chrome OS was better refined
and if the Slate came in a smaller form factor
and if it had a better keyboard case
and if it weren't so expensive,
I'd feel differently about it.
But that's a lot of if's, and they're not all fixable
through updates. (upbeat music)
While I'm still looking forward to trying what's next
from Google, the company that brought us such trailblazers
as the Nexus 7, the end of this review
brings me back to where I started.
The Pixel Slate feels, to me, like an unfortunate misstep,
and I won't miss it when I move on.
(upbeat music)
Pixel Slate owners, I know you're out there,
and I do want to hear from you.
Do you love your device, or did you ditch it
for something else, or are you somewhere in between?
Sound off in the comments, and folks, please subscribe
to TheMrMobile on YouTube and Instagram.
Up next, a Windows laptop
that I feel substantially better about.
Until next time, thanks for watching,
and stay mobile, my friends. (upbeat music)