hey everyone I'm Michael Simon and welcome back to Android confidential and
if you've been following this series at all you've heard a lot about phones
phones phones phones phones phones but today I want to talk about something a
little different Google's newest tablet the pixel slate
so when we're talking about tablets we have basically two wins in the market
the iPad pro at the top and the Amazon fire tablets at the bottom is a couple
of them down there and that leaves a massive space in the middle and that's
where Google comes into play with its pixel slate the best part of this thing
is the display Google calls it a molecular display I don't really know
what that means it's like Apple's liquid retina stuff it's it's just all
marketing jargon but whatever it is it lives up to it
mm my 3,000 resolution movies look awesome
Chris bright blacks are even good even though it's an LCD it's just it's one of
the nicest LCDs that this size you're gonna get it's compatible it's you know
if the laptops it's it's just it's a fantastic display my only real quibbles
with the device are the size and the corners of the screen if a little big
it's actually bigger than Apple's twelve point nine inch iPad pro but even beyond
that I would have liked a 11 inch or a ten and a half inch version to make it a
little more holdable a little bit more portable and the corners of the screen
they're right angles which you know it's pretty common but after seeing the iPad
pro and those rounded corners I would really like that here too so it's cool
about the slate is Google's offering it in a range of processors for different
budgets we start with the $600 Celeron at the very bottom and it goes all the
way up to a core i7 for $1600 to the top I can't imagine many people are gonna
buy that one and I think most people are gonna settle on the $800 one which is a
core m3 which is the sweet spot I think for performance I tested the
thousand-dollar Core i5 one it's really nice but it's probably a bit too much
power for what we're gonna be using these things for and 800 bucks gotta buy
a keyboard so it's a little bit more than that but I think that's a good
price I tested it that benchmarking like 14 hours real-world I'd use the hell out
of this thing and I got from all the way from morning to night with benchmarking
which battery tests with video with work with all this stuff and I didn't have
any problem reaching the end of the day so it the battery is fantastic on this
thing but now you're asking what makes it an Android review okay it's a
Chromebook but it's Play Store and Android apps are front and center on
this thing and in tablet mode it's unlike anything that chrome produces
when you turn it on for the first time you're gonna you're gonna meet this
interface that's not quite chrome and it's not really Android either kinda
looks like an iPad to be honest here you're presented with your apps and you
know whatever you've installed on a prior user and everything's right there
there's no real desktop you're you're taken right to your app drawer as if you
have a pixel phone and the app drawer is open and I really like how it kind of
like merges these two worlds we got Chrome we got Android into kind of
coming together it's really better than any Android tablet I've used it's a
smart interface Google really put some thought into how we're gonna use these
things as a tablet and what that means to touch things rather than use a
keyboard and how it's different from Android on the phone again it's not full
Android if you're looking for a full Android tablet you're not gonna want
this thing but you can run all your apps you can get to the Play Store and it's a
really nice interface now this is all new for Google and chrome so there are
quite a few bugs that I saw when I was using it specifically in tablet mode
Bluetooth just shut off sometimes the pixel 3 is supposed to unlock it when
it's near it that didn't really work a couple of times it just like restarted
cuz it felt like it like there are you know pretty major bugs that I
experienced it was it constant they were random they're constantly updating these
things so they emailed me they're pretty confident that they gotta squash all
these things and with the next update a couple updates so we're talking about
six moves six weeks maybe two months and this will all be ironed out what won't
be ironed out is the transition from tablet to keyboard Chromebook
mode so the pixel of slate is a Chromebook and the book part is Google's
pixel slate keyboard which cost 200 bucks and you pop it in it becomes a
laptop II type thing like the iPad pro it's not quite a laptop it's a little
flimsy to use in your lap but it's great on a table as soon as you pop it into
the dock it becomes a Chromebook and things change a full screen window
becomes a small window and there's multitasking this PC style stuff and if
you like Chromebooks if you use Chromebooks is very familiar this is the
interface there's a dock you know some things are new when they know they're
constantly refining this thing but you know it's a Chromebook and now we're
switching from a really true tablet interface to a PC style interface when
you take it out you go right back to that tablet interface so whatever app is
in front becomes full screen and it's just it's
it's mentally confusing I used it for about three days and I never quite got
to the point where I was picking it up and moving it in one fluid motion I
would take out of the dock and something would come up and I'd say are what am i
doing now a smarter way to do it in my mind would be to bring up the
multitasking immediately so you can pick what you want to do rather than just
assuming you want to start with the same map that you're in Google's gonna refine
all this and they'll change it and they'll work on it but right now it's
you know going from one mode to the other it's a little bit jarring well
Google is really trying to do with the pixel slate is take that mobile Android
experience and the PC style Chromebook experience and just kind of merge them
we've seen is going on for a little while now we've heard rumors of this
mythical operating system that's gonna bring everything together and maybe
that's still coming I'm sure it is it's not quite there yet if you want an
Android tablet this probably isn't the one to get there's a lot of bugs with
apps and they're not quite there with the integration of the Play Store yet
and if you want a Chromebook I don't think you really want this one either
because it's tough to use as a laptop it's really hard to use in tablet mode
you got to buy extra accessories to really kind of bring out the best parts
of it I think the pixel book last year's pixel book is still you know where we're
at with this we got a keyboard attached so it's a true laptop and if you flip it
around you can still use that tablet mode and at least try it out the pixel
slate is a really nice tablet it's more of a device from the future though where
all this is going chrome and Android and where we're gonna get to eventually
right now though I don't really think it's worth that kind of money so thanks
for watching make sure to check out my full pixel slate review on PC world
you'll find the link down below while you're down there we subscribe to our PC
world YouTube channel where you'll find all of our pc and android coverage and
if you have any comments what do you guys think of this is it an Android
tablet is it a chrome is this the future let me know down below and I'll see you
next time