Info: So this new Pixel tablet is really interesting. I got to spend about an hour with it before this announcement and I've come away both knowing that I don't need one, But liking it anyway, So welcome to this first hands-on and first impressions video. Also, feel free to check out the Pixel Fold impressions which also has gone live today. It's a $1,800 folding phone from Google. Pretty crazy, I'll link it below, but also make sure to get subscribed and stay tuned because we have a video
of something a little more exclusive coming up also from Google that you probably haven't seen yet. But this tablet, this tablet is $499, so really competitively priced and it has one killer feature. You kind of probably already know where I'm going with this. So design-wise, it's pretty simple. Pretty basic with this aluminum enclosure, but fully coded in this soft-touch finish That's nice. It almost doesn't even feel like metal anymore, which is funny. It's also pretty lightweight. There's a single eight-megapixel camera on the back
and a power button that doubles as the fingerprint reader in the corner. Overall, it looks like a pretty normal tablet, right? So what's the killer feature? Is it a software trick? Is it the screen? Is it a stylist? Well, you see those four pins down at the bottom of the tablet right below that Google logo on the back? Those are power and data pins that line up with these four pins on this dock that's included in the box, sick. So with the power of magnets, this tablet slaps onto the back
and becomes a Google Nest Hub Max more or less. So this is the thing they gave us a teaser of at the last IO and honestly, it's as awesome as it looks. It works great. There's enough magnets that there's like a pretty firm pressure needed to take the tablet off of the dock, but when you put it back on, it grabs it and holds it firmly in place and through those pins, It instantly starts charging at 15 watts and connects to the larger speaker inside the dock. So that's upgraded audio over the tablet's built-in speakers. So a couple of things on this. First of all, I'm kind of surprised
that we hadn't seen this earlier. We have seen a couple more basic versions of this. There was a Lenovo tablet a while ago that would like to dock into a speaker, but I'm glad to see Google flushing out this idea and doubling up on its use. They told me something like 80 plus percent of tablet use happens in the home. So for those other 20% When it's just sitting around your home, It makes sense to just like pop it onto a dock And now it's this nice polished nest hub display. But then also I'm pretty pumped about the dock being included in the box, but do note it is the only charger included in the box.
So there is a USBC port on the side of the tablet but there isn't any like the USBC cable or wall brick to plug straight into the wall. So the only charger is the dock, which is fine, but if you have another USBC cable, it will charge via wire, but then the dock itself does not charge via USBC, It charges with a wall wart to this like a barrel charger So just so you know. Also theoretically, I guess you could go out and buy a couple more of these docks and put them in other places around your home if you just wanted to. I'm not sure what the price of just the dock would be yet if they're gonna sell that individually.
I'll ask, I'll put a little update up here if Google's able to answer by the time I post this video. But it seems like, yeah, one in the living room, One in the bedroom could be a thing, but then when you pop the tablet onto the dock and lock it, It activates what's called hub mode and it just becomes a Google Nest Hub. And so it can do any of the things that a nest hub would do. It can be a digital photo frame if you want it to be. It can be of course a smart home control panel, which is what most people want a home hub to do. There are also some smart settings in here about not letting you into all of your other apps when it is your family's screen.
That's why you lock it to enable this mode, but then when you're using it as your tablet, you unlock it and have access to everything. Oh also, they made this pretty unique case that has a wire stand that holds it up surprisingly firmly. But since it's just a big circular wire, it has enough room to slap it onto the dock and not be interrupted. There are no extra magnets needed so they don't have to take the case off to dock it, pretty smart. Either way, I'm just thinking like This is doubling up the functionality of the tablet.
The Nest Hub Max that's on sale right now is like $230. So hey, if you're gonna spend 500 bucks on a tablet and you also get that device out of it, it's kind of cool. The rest of the tablet honestly, is pretty mid. It's just very average like there's not too much crazy other stuff going on with the specs. I think the spec for the display probably tells the whole story about the rest of the tablet. This is an 11-inch 60-hertz LCD. It's 2560 by 1600 which is pretty solid and very reasonable brightness for use around the house and indoors. Nothing too crazy, 500 nits. It's gonna be perfectly fine for watching videos
or movies on the couch or even handing it to a kid, which is what a lot of people do with tablets nowadays, but it's not trying to compete at the high-end like a workstation high refresh rate iPad type of thing. Fun fact too though, You can also get one with a black bezel. They've shown all these teasers of the ones with white bezels and I was always commenting on that on the podcast, but turns out the porcelain color and rose color have white bezels, but the hazel-colored one has black bezels so you at least have that choice. There is also a Tensor G2 chip inside So the same chip we've had
for half a year in the Pixel Seven line. There are eight gigs of RAM and either 128 or 256 gigs of storage and a 27-watt-hour battery which I believe will translate to right around 7,000 milliamp hours. The eight-megapixel camera on the back, it's super basic. It doesn't even have a portrait mode. That's not the focus of this device. The cameras are more just for being able to do simple photos and video calls like you'd find on a nest hub. I do wonder if you could use this tablet while docked as a security camera. I'm not sure, I didn't get to try that or find that during my demo time,
but I'll be digging around for that sort of stuff in the full review. But I also said this In the Pixel fold impressions video, which is it's an Android tablet still And it's been a minute since we've had a real hit of an Android tablet probably for Google, It's been since the Nexus Seven. And so this one has a pretty clear value proposition of the killer feature of it being two devices in one, but then you still have the software question which is like What are you gonna do on this tablet? Now, I think with a middle-tier media tablet like this,
People probably won't be asking that question as much but still for me, I just wonder what about multitasking? What about split-screen apps And all the other things you expect out of a big screen? So I think Google's smart about intentionally not starting with some crazy $800 premium tablet because that's what people will be asking and immediately starting to try to do with a powerful high-end tablet. But with this one, you just cover the basics like side-by-side split-screen multitasking is here and even optimizing Google's 50-plus apps for tablets,
They've talked a big game about this so they have multi-column layouts and they don't just look like stretched-out smartphone apps, which is good. They're responsive to the size of the screen. So this tablet will benefit from all the improvements that also went into the $1,800 Pixel Fold, which is pretty cool, But yeah, I think for a $499 tablet, It settles nicely into the mid-range. Oh, here we go, a quick little update. I just got an email back saying Google will be selling the dock separately from the tablet if you want another one for $130.
If you think about it like that, it's pretty good value. 500 bucks for the tablet and the dock means you get about 370 for the tablet and 130 for the dock. That's pretty cheap, it's pretty good. I'm curious about what you guys are thinking. Let me know in the comments if you think you'd be interested in getting one of these, but more importantly, What do you wanna see in the full review When we get one here and test everything cause we're gonna do it. Okay, that's been it.