Google Pixel Tablet Review | Tom's Guide

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The Google Pixel Tablet might be portable, but it’s meant to have a place in your home. Thanks to the included speaker dock, the tablet transforms into a smart display and control center for your smart devices.
We go hands-on with the $499 Google Pixel Tablet at Google I/O 2023.

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Transcript
00:00 I'm here at Google I/O 2023 with the brand-new Google Pixel tablet. It's a
00:06 first-of-its-kind device from Google. It costs $499. Let's go take a closer look.
00:13 The Pixel tablet comes in three colors - porcelain, rose, and what I have right
00:21 here, hazel. It has this aluminum exterior that feels really nice in the hand. It's
00:25 soft. It's not at all a fingerprint magnet, which is great. And again, it feels
00:30 really nice in the hand. We have a couple of buttons. We have a lock button. We have
00:33 a volume rocker. It also has these rubber bumpers, I guess, to offer just a bit of
00:38 protection. And here's where you have the whole magnetic system, which attaches to
00:44 the base. So thanks to the split-screen multitasking feature, I can listen to
00:51 Billie Eilish, but also find out when her next tour is gonna be in town, because
00:55 I'm just getting in the vibe and I want to be able to keep following along with
00:58 the music while looking that up.
01:02 So now I have that open and now I want to open my mail, because why not? And there
01:10 we have it. Multitasking, and you can swipe back and forth depending on how
01:16 you want to see your apps. Google Home is a very big player in the smart home
01:22 space, which is why something like this dock experience makes sense. You know, I
01:26 have the Google Nest Hub Max, but I think of this now as kind of like a
01:29 replacement for that, because if I'm not using it as the tablet, it's here, it's
01:33 charging, but I also can open my smart home controls. I can look at my living
01:38 room camera. I can look at my thermostat. I can look at all my other smart home
01:42 devices all here. So think of it like a command center of sorts for your
01:47 smartphone. And what you could even do is if you had multiple of these, or if you
01:51 purchased extra stands for $129, you can set them up around your home and have
01:56 these stations everywhere to control your lights on this tactile device.
02:01 Google has plenty of in-house smart home devices that will play nice with this
02:05 command center, but not only that, the device and Google Home are also matter
02:09 compatible. So third-party smart home apps, you'll be able to control them here.
02:16 So if you were going to use this for video chatting, using Google Meet, this
02:21 Pixel tablet has support for 360 backgrounds. It actually moves with you.
02:26 That's so cool. So I don't have to be in this crowded press lounge. I can be
02:30 on this tropical island, and then I can join the meeting, and they'll see that I
02:36 am in paradise.
02:40 Google might not have reinvented the wheel in terms of tablets here, but that
02:46 smart home functionality with the included base is kind of a game-changer.
02:50 Of course, we'll have to take a look at it in a full review. In the meantime,
02:53 check out what we're doing on social @tomsguide, and as always, I'm @katekosich.
02:58 Thanks for watching. I'll catch you next time.
03:01 (whooshing)