Gadgetory

I don't even know where to start with this thing this is the new pixel slate it's not quite the first Chrome OS tablet ever but it is the first one that signals Google is really trying to make Chrome OS it's big screen computing platform over the future it's a tablet that runs the full desktop Chrome web browser web apps and Android apps it can cost as little as six hundred bucks but the one that I'm testing right here costs a thousand plus 200 bucks for this keyboard right here this thing is weird it's somewhere between a tablet and a laptop and it's not great and either it feels like an experiment in the future of computing but not the actual future so in a lot of ways I do kind of love it but sometimes I really hate it let's just get into the hardware the pixel slate has a twelve point three inch three thousand by two thousand screen that Google calls a molecular display but it pretty much just looks like any other LCD to me it's good it has some fairly sizable bezels partly because there are two front-facing speakers that sound great on the front of it it is blue and it picks up fingerprints really easily but overall it's pretty nice in terms of quality you can login with your fingerprint right there on the power button there are a couple of cameras that do camera things pretty well there's no headphone jack and there are two USB C ports and I'll get to those USB C ports in a minute don't you fret anyway as tablets go it's big but it's still manageable it's sort of like that twelve point nine inch iPad pro but unlike that iPad pro this has an Intel chip inside it and that's where things start to get weird Google decided to offer four different processor options and three different RAM options in five different price points so picking out a pixel slate is complicated you can spend as little as $5.99 but it won't do much more than open up a few tabs and run the Netflix app or you can kid it out with the max specs and a keyboard and a pen and spend $2,000 I think the only one really worth considering is the core i5 model that I'm using right here but I think that because I know how chrome OS works and I know that I want to do more than just use it as a basic tablet and that's the thing you need to know a lot about what you want out of Chrome OS just to figure out which one to buy in fact you need to know a lot about Chrome OS to get the most out of the pixel sleep no matter which one you buy so let's talk about Chrome OS and more specifically let's talk about how it works on this hybrid pixel slate when you have the keyboard attached it works just like any other Chromebook you've got a mouse and resizable windows you can open up chrome tabs and chrome windows and web apps and Android apps that move them around the whole works it's all really familiar right on down to Android apps working but still feeling just a little bit different than the rest of the OS I gotta say though I don't love this folio keyboard much it's not the rounded keys they're fine they're quiet in their backlit and they're it's pretty nice and it's great that you can use it in almost any angle thanks to this really neat magnet trick that puts it up at just the right spot but the keyboard deck is connected by this floppy flap and it flexes so much that you can actually click the trackpad by accidentally resting your palms on what's on your lap just like it flexes no good bridge makes a Bluetooth keyboard specifically for the pixel slate that's way better and it's $40 cheaper anyway when you detach the keyboard or when you flip it under like this it goes into tablet mode all your windows go fullscreen but you can do some split screen by dragging down from the top and then over to the right and there are some neat touches here I really love that if you want you can have this little thumb swipe keyboard over on the right instead of having the full screen keyboard taking up half the screen it's kind of neat but the thing is in tablet mode the animation feels really kind of janky it's an elegant and it's pretty stuttery and performance overall is a mixed bag it's not bad most of the time I can have like 20 tabs and a few apps going at the same time so that's good but sometimes you get really bad lag where I feel like I shouldn't so for example in the Google keep app sometimes I pen with it it's totally fine other times it lags really bad and other times things are just kind of unstable there are bugs the first review unit that Google sent me straight up crashed into a boot loop and it had to be replaced the second one luckily hasn't had that issue but I've still had problems with bluetooth disconnecting and since there's no headphone jack that's kind of just a killer now let's say you trust Google to fix all those bugs there is a new version of Chrome OS out every six weeks after all that brings us to the next question really the most important question can you make this your main computer it's the same question we asked about the iPad pro I don't know if you notice but I started this video with the exact same line that Neal I used in his iPad pro video because in a lot of ways these devices are trying to do similar things but from different directions either you have to completely understand the limitations of iOS so well that you can make use of these little hacks all over the place to get things done or you just deal with it and accept the fact you have to go back to a real computer from time to time because it's just easier yeah it's the same thing with the pixel slave but for different reasons most people should not make this their main computer but Chrome OS experts could there are a million examples like a site here so I'm just going to pick one and yeah it's finally time to talk about those u.s. PC ports so let's just plug some stuff in check check check so the pixel slate isn't restricted like the iPad pro there's a real file browser that sees drives and if you plug a microphone in it'll work and any app can theoretically see whatever you plug in it's not really limited by the OS instead it's limited by the apps that you can get on it so for example when I plug in an SD card it just pops up the files app so far so good but the Adobe Lightroom Android app was designed to work with phones and doesn't work with Chrome OS as file browser so you have to in just the photos into the file app then go looking for them in Lightroom and then go back and delete them in the files app oh look I don't want to just pick on Adobe here because this Android app weirdness is kind of all over it's nice that you have access to the full Google Play library of Android apps but most of the stuff you're really gonna want to use instead of web apps are stuff like video streaming apps and games I mean I don't know Spotify just looks silly here for example it's just like a tacked on phone app the trade-off though is you get a real desktop class web browser you can't get that on an iPad so I am able to get more work done on this than I can on an iPad pro based on my particular needs just the thing is I got to admit this is way less fun to use so look I've been hard on this pixel slate but I think it's time to start expecting more from Chromebooks this thing is in the same price range as the iPad pro the Microsoft Surface and tons of high-end Windows and Mac laptops I honestly think the only people who should buy this are Chrome OS diehards and you know what even for them I don't think this makes sense Oh last year's pixel book is still right there and it's getting discounted all the time sure it's last year's processor and you can't attach the keyboard but otherwise it's basically the same thing and it weighs a quarter pound less than this tablet with the keyboard attached I still love my pixel book and I'm sticking with it now the pixel slate has a lot going for it but I think it's just too experimental the bummer of it all is I really do like what Google is trying to do here I just wish it was less trying and more doing hey thanks so much for watching and let me know in the comments what would it take for you to consider a full chrome OS tablet I'm really curious and you know I'm obsessed with these new kinds of computers and a video that's a good introduction to what I think about them is the very first processor episode where I try to answer the question what's a computer