Google has re-entered the tablet market. The Pixel Tablet, which was first teased a year ago, has finally been launched by Google. The $499 tablet may be preordered as of today, May 10th, and will start arriving on June 20th.
When it comes to tablets, Google has a checkered past. Its cheapest and most popular tablet to date is the Nexus 7, which was released in 2012. The next years saw the business experiment with numerous concepts for handheld touchscreen computers, releasing new tablets running Android or ChromeOS and quickly discarding them. The success of the Nexus 7 was never duplicated by another device. In fact, Google’s head of hardware announced in January 2019 that the company would cease production of new tablet computers.
It’s 2023 now, so obviously things have changed, as Google is once again peddling a tablet-ass device. The Pixel Tablet was created from the ground up to excel at the activities most commonly performed on tablets by their owners: entertainment in the living room. However, no predictions regarding the future of computing are being made.
The Pixel Tablet has an unremarkable design. It sports an 11-inch LCD with a 16:10 aspect ratio, a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels, uniform bezels on both sides, and a matte back. The dark green version has a black bezel and is one of three available hues (the others being white and light pink). The Pixel Tablet, like the Pixel 5, has an aluminum frame with a nanotexture coating, making it look like plastic from a distance.
The Pixel Tablet includes a magnetic speaker dock as part of the package. As a charging dock, a place to store the Pixel Tablet when it’s not in use, and a speaker with more bass and volume than the tablet’s internal speakers, this accessory is designed to reduce the likelihood of the dreaded “dead tablet in a drawer” scenario. When docking a tablet, any music or video playing on the tablet will automatically switch to the dock’s speaker. If you remove the tablet from the dock while it’s playing, the audio will immediately transition to the tablet’s internal speakers.