Google Pixel Tablet Review - Nest Hub Max Replacement?

The Google Pixel Tablet has become a natural part of my daily life, in a way that I didn’t expect. When I preordered it from the Google Store, my preconceived notion is that I would put this thing in my living room and use it in the evenings to keep up on news, check twitter, or watch Youtube videos. In reality, I ended up sticking this thing on my editing desk and using it as a third display to leave my calendar up, to play videos or music in the background thanks to the dock that doubles as a speaker, or let it go to sleep with an always on display to show me a calming and consistent view of the weather outside, which, doesn’t distract me from my work, but gives me that tidbit of information that my brain often wanders to and would usually make me pick up my phone and get distracted by social media. So I’m using the tablet as a problem solver to keep me on task instead of an entertainment device.

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We already had a good sense of how this thing would be built based on spec rumors and Google’s Pixel phones and smarthome devices. But the tablet isn’t a home hub, though you can control your home from it using the Home App and you can add it to the App as a smarthome product inside your home. Does that make sense?

It’s packin a decent display on a 10.2 in x 6.7 in casing at only .3 in thick, keeping it really slim. I chose the Rose color because duh and I appreciate how the Rose colorway kinda peeks out at you from around the edges when viewing front facing. It’s slightly over a pound in weight but distributed evenly, and it’s made out of recycled aluminum with a nano-ceramic coating on the back, giving it that matte finish that doesn’t pick up fingerprints.

I treated it gingerly when I took it out of the box but I’ve become more comfortable when moving around with it. I haven’t dropped it at all so I’m still careful, and I’m treating the magnets on the back with care since those are how it docks on the speaker. I did order the Google Pixel Tablet case for it as well, but that isn’t shipping til mid July.

It’s got a pair of rubber bumpers on the bottom edge, and I still don’t know why they’re there. Maybe to rest on a surface, but it’s an odd choice since this product “floats” on it’s dock and doesn't touch the table. There are 3 onboard mics, 4 onboard speakers, and a front facing and back facing pair of 8 MP cameras. Audio from those speakers is comparible to other mobile devices, but if you hold this thing in landscape mode you’re bound to cover up one or two of the speakers.

The magnets are really strong. Like I straight up had a friend put his Pixel Tablet on his fridge. But because of it’s strength that also means it’s a little awkward to remove from the dock. You’ll either bang it against the table its on - hey maybe that’s why those rubber bumpers exist - or you gotta remove it with both hands, otherwise you’ll pick up the dock with the tablet.

The dock speaker thing (it’s called the charging speaker dock) is 3.7” tall x 6.6” wide, has four connection pogo pins on the front and charges your tablet at 15W max, but also packs in a 43.5mm full range speaker. The speaker is acceptable, but nowhere as good as the Home Max or a Sonos speaker, though it does get loud and it smartly moves audio from the tablet to the speaker or vice versa whenever you dock or undock it while playing audio - this is called Audio Transfer - the dock only works as a speaker with the tablet connected, otherwise, it just sits there taking up space. The colorway matches your pixel tablet, it’s wrapped in fabric. And I’m not a fan of the proprietary power plug for the dock, I wish it was just USB-C like the rest of the world of Android so that’s kinda annoying. You can’t angle or reposition the tablet, it’s set at one specific angle and thats it.

I mentioned the weather - this is considered a screen saver while in Hub Mode. You can choose other screensavers like a photo gallery, but this calming weather one was my preference. I also set it to Do Not Disturb for all notifications so nothing pops up on my display.

If you watched my unboxing and setup Short video, there were two points I wanted to add to this video. One is upon first boot, it takes a long time for the screen to turn on, like I thought it was shipped with a drained battery for a second. Also you’ll know I just copied data from my Pixel 7 Pro and my main google account. Something got wonky when I did this because it had issues connecting to the Google Home App when docked and setting up as a part of my Home. I knew it should work but I had to factory reset the device from fresh instead of copying data from a previous device in order to make it work.

I’m diggin the fingerprint unlock. I am glad a biometric option is included as this is easier than typing a pin each time. It’s capacitive and works pretty quick. It sits right next to the volume rocker, which mirrors the casing of a Pixel phone with the volume up side being closest to the power button.

The battery works well. It’s a 27 Watt Hour battery, quoted to last up to 12 hours with video streaming. Here are some of my results from the settings page after messing around with it for a while. It again can be charged via the dock or via USB C on the tablet itself.

Speaking of video streaming, you can use it via Wifi 6 or Bluetooth 5.2 and you can Cast to it from your other Android devices or Chrome, and casting works but only when it’s docked. But you can loophole this dock requirement when casting by starting a cast to get the connection setup, then removing it from the dock and walking around with it and it’ll stay connected. It doesn’t support Matter for smart home integration and control - which I wasn’t super surprised by given it’s a tablet first that can be used as a device in your home, not a Hub.

Hubs and the Pixel Tablet have kinda been conflated and compared to be the same thing - but the tablet is an Android tablet that lets you control your home similar to how you control your home from a phone. The Hub is only for smarthome management and sometimes entertainment or calls. The tablet also doesn’t just pop open your Home controls - you’ll have to open each app to control things, or open the Home app to control things, or talk to Assistant. So two different experiences. There’s also no physical privacy switch like there is on a Nest Hub. So consider where you are putting your dock, given there’s no physical switch.

While watching videos, the big 11” display gives you great viewing angles. It’s a 16:10 aspect ratio and with a 2560x1600 resolution LCD display. It’s certainly not as bright as my phones, it’s peak is around 500 nits which is pretty low, and it does support USI 2.0 stylus pens. As I scroll you may have noticed that the refresh rate is only 60hz, a surprisingly low number given the price.

Now since I happen to have a stylus, I wanted to show you this really cool hack, I forget the outlet but I saw this on like 9to5 Google or something. They mentioned this really cool fact that you can just magnetically attach a stylus right here so I got the Amazon stylus and it totally works! So I’m just gonna leave it there whenever my tablet is docked so I never forget where it is cuz knowing my brain I probably would.

But it does have stylus integration, it works pretty well, I’ve been using it for Google Keep notes, I’ve been using it to edit really precise edits like you can see here.

So that got me thinking. I wonder if I could edit my videos on here. Is it powerful enough to handle my 4k video files? Well it’s got Google’s Tensor G2 chip with the Titan M2 Security chipset, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 or 256 GB of storage, - why I cannot get 256gb of storage in this colorway is beyond me - why can’t we get the pretty colorway with tons of storage - and 5 years of pixel updates as well.

When I edited my 4k video files, yeah, it worked great. I was able to use my stylus and make precise choices in my edits and I didn’t notice any lag or any issues. Also the two editors that I use - Rush and Capcut - both take up the entirety of the tablet screen, which I really appreciate because that makes it so much easier to see all of the tools and features that I have at my disposal whenever I’m using those apps. It makes it so much easier than using it on a smartphone, so the fact that I can use this to edit 4k videos is very very exciting. I know I sound like a total dork when I say th at but I’m very excited to edit 4k files on my tablet. That’s gonna make my life so much easier.

Ok, so some of y’all might buy one of these and set it up in a household with the expectation of multiple people using it - you can do that - each person can unlock it with their own fingerprint to log into their own google account.

Video calling works well too, and google meet is preinstalled. It features a near little tool called continuous framing to adjust lighting to keep you well lit while in calls. Split screen and multi tasking are really cool and I’ve been using these pretty often for productivity apps like tracking my video calendar in Notion while also having my youtube channel pulled up on the other half of the screen.

Let’s chat a bit about Google Assistant as well. You can use Assistant on this tablet just like any other - you can enable it’s use from the lock screen or not. It does wake up consistently and it hears me well, and it can be used anytime whether you’ve got your tablet docked or not. But from there, I have some criticisms.

Google needs to learn how to have only one product answer you when you’ve prompted assistant. If I add the Tablet to my home and put it in my Studio, my Max speaker is also in that room and connected to the hub app. Either the tablet or the hub should answer me when I wake up assistant, not both. And if my phone is in proximity, having 3 different devices reply to my question is jarring.

Assistant also still doesn’t always respond to my husband’s commands, but sometimes it does, so sometimes he has to repeat his command or I have to talk to it for it to complete a task. And that’s with both of us set up as users. There is no continued conversation on the tablet with assistant.

At a $499 starting price, buy it if you want an Android tablet experience. Don’t buy it as a replacement for your Nest Hub Max because it does have limitations and won’t give you the same experience as your Hub.

It has it’s quirks. But I’m really enjoying the added convenience. Is that enough to warrant 500 bucks? That’s hard to say - that’s pretty pricey for an Android tablet. If you have questions about the features, though, hit me up in the comments! Thanks yall!