[Impact]Pixel Slate review: Paying the “Google” premium for Chrome OS[/Impact]
Starting at $599, the overpriced tablet showcases Chrome OS' promising tablet future.
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Google spent a lot of time and effort trying to convince everyone that Chrome OS isn't just for laptops. The fruits of the company's labor have been slowly revealing themselves over the past year through software updates and the few Chrome OS tablets that are already available.
But Google officially ushered in the era of the Chrome OS tablet with its own Pixel Slate, which it announced last month alongside the Pixel 3 smartphone. The first Google-made tablet in three years is now available for purchase. And you can think of the Pixel Slate as a not-so-distant cousin of the company's premium Chromebook, the Pixelbook, in that it appeals to those who have chosen Chrome OS as their primary operating system and demand only the highest-quality hardware for it.
The Pixelbook, while certainly the most Googley Chromebook, has proven to be only one of the best Chromebooks available. Similarly, the Pixel Slate has a lot of things going for it—namely its chic design, support for powerful Intel processors, and a bunch of storage and memory—but it falls into the same traps as the Pixelbook did regarding productivity and price.
Look and feel
The Pixel Slate may not share a silver-and-white aesthetic with the Pixelbook, but it still has a clean design, now just with a darker hue. The all-metal back sports a deep navy color with a slightly lighter blue "G" on the top-left corner. The rear 8MP camera sits on the top-right corner, leaving the rest of the slab unmarred by embellishments.
However, the Slate's back collects fingerprints and smudges like my 10-year-old self collected Pokemon cards, so don't expect the metal to stay pristine for long. Nevertheless, it's a sturdy tablet that doesn't easily bend under pressure.
Uniform black bezels surround the 12.3-inch, 3000x2000, 293ppi display, giving your fingers room to grasp the tablet in both portrait or landscape orientations. The display produces rich colors and gets decently bright (Google wouldn't provide the maximum brightness in nits, but our colorimeter measured 362 nits at full brightness). It responds to touch and pen input well, but the display's viewing angles aren't the greatest: direct sunlight and environments with oodles of light produce lots of screen glare.
Two front-facing speaker grills sit on both short-side bezels and deliver decent sound no matter what position the Slate sits in. While they fill my small office with sound, they'd be hard-pressed to fill my entire living room, let alone my whole apartment.
The edges along the sides of the Slate are smooth, corners are rounded, and the device measures just 7mm thick while weighing 1.6 pounds. Google stuck two USB-C ports on either side of the Slate, allowing you to charge the device comfortably regardless of where your power source is. A headphone jack is absent on the Slate, as it is on the Pixel 3 smartphone, which is a disappointing but unsurprising reality. Pogo pins on one of the longer edges connect to compatible keyboard cases, and a new fingerprint sensor sits on the opposite edge.
The USB-C ports, while not Thunderbolt 3 compatible, also let you connect to peripherals and dongles, so you can import data from other sources and connect to an external 4K display (Bluetooth accessories like mice are compatible as well). Unlike iOS' Files app on the new iPad Pro, Chrome OS' Files app gives you access to data on external drives that are connected via USB-C. You can drag-and-drop or copy files from such a drive to the Pixel Slate's onboard storage, or you can move them to your Google Drive storage as needed.
While the Pixelbook stood out more among other Chromebooks (and certainly from other laptops in general), the Pixel Slate is more subdued. That's not a bad thing, especially because Google still infused enough of its signature cleanliness and modernity into its design. The Slate forgoes metallic accents, diamond-cut edges, and gimmicky design elements. Instead, it follows the Swedish concept of "lagom," or "just enough" (which, depending on your personal taste, is either great or terrible).
Biometrics and the Pixel Imprint fingerprint sensor
The Slate is the first Chrome OS device to have a fingerprint sensor, dubbed "Pixel Imprint." The operating system didn't previously support biometric login. While the device has an 8MP front-facing camera, you won't find an IR camera on the Slate (the front-facing camera is mostly for Duo video calls). But a fingerprint sensor is better than nothing, and setting it up requires the same, repetitive press-and-lift motion atop of the reader for a few minutes.
Once your fingerprint has been recorded, you can use it to login to your Google account just as you would on a macOS or a Windows device. The reader lies atop the power button, so you can press and hold it to boot up the Slate. However, the fingerprint reader does come with a strange idiosyncrasy—you cannot power on the Slate and login at the same time. Since the fingerprint reader and power button are one and the same, like they are on the Huawei Matebook X Pro, you'd think that you'd be able to press and hold once to turn on the device and log in to your account. But that's not the case: doing that will only turn on the device and bring up the traditional login screen that asks for your password.
Essentially, you can only use your fingerprint to unlock the Slate's screen from sleep—but you need to make a PIN first to do so. While Chrome OS on the Slate asks you to set up a fingerprint reader upon setting up the device for the first time, it doesn't ask you to make a PIN to accompany your fingerprint and password. However, you must enable the PIN or password login option in your personal settings before you can use your recorded fingerprint at all.
Windows Hello requires you to create a PIN before registering a fingerprint, so that process isn't unheard of. However, I assumed that I'd be able to use my finger to log in to the Slate immediately after recording it because I wasn't asked to make a PIN at that time. It's also baffling that your fingerprint can wake the device from sleep but not login initially after powering on. When asked about this, Google explained that this is a security measure for its Made By Google devices (like the Pixel smartphones), designed to better protect the device from unauthorized logins from bootup.
Nevertheless, I'm glad Google finally brought fingerprint authentication to Chrome OS and to its own Chrome OS tablet. It's long overdue, and combined with the Titan C chip inside the Slate, it makes the device more secure overall. Google developed the Titan C chip specifically for Chrome OS devices, but the newer chip essentially accomplishes the same things as the Titan M chips inside Pixel 3 devices. That means it helps with the secure boot process, storing the most up-to-date version of Chrome OS and preventing others from reverting your system back to a less secure version. It also provides screen protection with login attempt limits, on-device encryption, and other security features.
Keyboard case and Pixelbook Pen
Round keys, square-ish trackpad
Admittedly, I first judged the Pixel Slate's $199 keyboard case by its keys. I didn't think that round keys (gasp!) would be comfortable to type on, but I was wrong. The full keyboard on the case actually makes for a solid typing companion, largely due to the fact that most of the crucial side-hugging keys (Back, Enter, Shift, etc) are normal sized and in their normal positions.
While it wasn't difficult to type with the round letter keys, they're still round so they lose some surface area that's standard to square keys. I typed almost at my usual, fast pace, but the errors I did make came from my fingers wanting to press the straight side or corner of a key that wasn't actually there.
Typing was also a fairly quiet experience, which is presumably why Google labeled the round buttons "hush" keys. If you've used a Chromebook before, you'll understand the custom top row of keys that lets you do a number of Chrome OS specific things. There's a full-screen key, and app listing key, as well as a menu key that opens the bottom-right selection of device and profile settings. Google also added a dedicated Assistant key to the bottom-left side that opens up the new Google Assistant window where you can type or speak questions, commands, and other phrases.
The accompanying trackpad isn't the biggest, but it's a decent size that I'd expect to see on a keyboard case like this. Measuring about 2.9 x 4.0 inches, it supports a few gestures like pinch-to-zoom, and it supports physical clicks and light taps to select on the screen.
While the trackpad seems like it could fit on a traditional laptop, the skeleton of the keyboard case itself is nothing like a clamshell's supportive structure. The strongest part of the case is the stiff sliver of plastic with magnetic nodes that attaches to the edge of the Slate's body—the rest of it is flimsy, the keyboard portion shaking slightly when I typed at top speed.
The magnetic flap that sticks to the Slate's back lets you angle the tablet at nearly any angle, which is a welcomed change from detachables that only support two or three angles at most. However, it still requires more maneuvering than a laptop or a detachable like the HP Chromebook x2 does, and that forced me to handle the device with much trepidation.
A familiar pen
The Pixelbook Pen available for the Pixel Slate is the same stylus Google made for the original Pixelbook. That means your existing pen will work with the Slate, but if you don't already have one, now you can get this new black model for $99 extra.
Google didn't improve upon the stylus, so its best and worst features still stand. At its best, it's a good pen with little latency overall, but the millisecond difference between your handwriting and the digital strokes will depend on the app in which you're sketching. Native Google apps like Google Keep, and even Chrome when using handwriting recognition to search, respond immediately to the pen, but you'll notice a slight lag in other apps like Autodesk Sketchbook.
Pressing on the pen's one side button lets you highlight or capture portions of the screen and call upon the Google Assistant to tell you more about it. This feature works particularly well with detailed images, and images with some text included. However, it's not always consistent: the Google Assistant identified a meme from the sitcom The Office featuring panels with Pam and Dwight's face, but Vladimir Putin was the third search result after I circled an image of the Russian leader's head.
At its worst, the Pixelbook Pen is a basic stylus that costs too much and begs to be lost. While it's not the only $99 active pen, and Google certainly isn't the only company to charge extra for such an accessory, it's still overpriced. Google also didn't add any way to keep track of the pen if you use it with the Slate—it doesn't stick magnetically to the tablet itself, nor is there a way to attach it to the keyboard case.
While the Google-made accessories are decent, the fact that they add $300 to the price of the Pixel Slate is one of the worst things about the device. Google went full Surface Pro and iPad Pro with the Slate, which was probably an inevitable decision, but still not ideal for Chromebook customers. Most are used to spending $500 on a Chromebook at most, but Google hopes that some will be willing to drop $300 on the Slate's accessories alone.
I don't think most customers, even those fully invested in Chrome OS, will embrace this because Chrome OS remains fundamentally different from Windows and iOS (not to mention macOS as well). While you can certainly do more now with Chrome OS than you could even two years ago, it's still a browser-based operating system that excels in its simplicity. Most Chrome OS lovers, even those who want nicer hardware for the operating system they know and love, will be hard-pressed to spend over $1,000 on a device and its accessories when their primary purpose for buying that device is to connect to the Internet quickly and efficiently.
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Chrome OS in tablet form
Say hello to the launcher
Google's major push over the past year or so has been to get Chrome OS ready to serve as a tablet operating system. While there have been Chrome OS two-in-ones available for many years, the operating system was never fully optimized to be used in tablet mode. The final product looks familiar enough to make Chrome OS diehards feel right at home, but includes significant changes that make using slabs like the Pixel Slate more intuitive.
When in tablet mode, the Pixel Slate features the launcher as the new home screen with its search bar, predictive app suggestions, and all installed app icons front and center. The bottom bar remains consistent in this mode as well, featuring icons of opened and pinned apps in its center, the back button and the home/launcher button at the left corner, and the menus for the pen, settings, and recent items at the right corner.
Much like on Android smartphones and tablets, Chrome app icons can be rearranged in the launcher by pressing, holding, and dragging the icon to another location. You can't stick them anywhere in the launcher or on the laptop mode home screen like you can with Android devices, but you still have some personalization power.
The settings menu also borrows from Android, looking similar to the OS' settings and notification manager. Quick options to edit Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, notifications, auto-rotate, Night Light, Cast, and keyboard options dominate the window, with sliders to adjust volume and brightness at the base as well as profile settings, locking and power options, and more advanced Chrome settings icons at the top. Narrow windows with your most recent alerts sit atop the settings menu, allowing you to swipe to dismiss them.
Split Screen mode
Opening any app will fill your entire screen with it, but tapping the home/launcher button brings you back to the launcher's rows of apps so you can open other programs. The refined Split Screen mode positions two apps side by side when using the Slate in landscape orientation, or top and bottom in portrait orientation (it also works when the Slate's in laptop mode). Split Screen only supports two apps at once, but you can adjust the size of either window by dragging the adjustable line that divides them.
Split Screen makes multitasking much easier with the apps it supports, which include most of Google's native apps and a number of third-party apps. However, a message will pop up over some apps saying they do not support Split Screen, so you can't drag and drop them into the half-wide space on one side of your screen. I was particularly disappointed to see that Squid, a popular note-taking app, didn't yet support Split Screen.
If you try to move an app that doesn't support Split Screen into one of the half-wide containers, you risk messing with the entire UI—after a few attempts to test out multiple apps in Split Screen mode (with Chrome as a kind of anchor app that remained on the left side of my Split Screen setup), the right side of my screen stayed blank even after dragging apps like the Play Store into its spot. Some apps that should support Split Screen like Reddit didn't appear in the half-wide window, and when I tried to rectify that by putting a Google-made app in its place, the spot remained unfilled. The UI got so confused at one point that the adjustable black separation bar that divides Split Screen windows followed me into laptop mode, slicing my home screen in half even after I closed all apps.
I'm not surprised that bugs like this exist since this version of Chrome is the first iteration that includes all of Google's tablet-specific changes. Most of the time I used Split Screen with the Slate in various orientations and modes, it worked as intended. I hope that more third-party apps will support this feature in the future because it'll make it easier for those who rely on such programs (and not Google's native apps) to use Chrome OS tablets as productivity tools.
Keyboard changes
In addition to making all app windows draggable, Google also included a floating virtual keyboard in addition to the standard on-screen keyboard that takes up about one-third of the display. The option to switch from the traditional keyboard layout sits at the top of the keyboard itself, along with icons for keyboard settings, the handwriting keyboard option, and dictation.
You can drag and drop the floating keyboard anywhere on the display, and it will show up again in that same format and location the next time you tap on a text box. You can't adjust the size of the floating keyboard's window, but being able to move it around on the screen adds another layer of customization and typing ease in tablet mode.
Pen-lovers will appreciate that Google improved the handwriting recognition on the scribble keyboard to make it more accurate in translating your writing to typed words in the search bar. The feature never failed to understand which websites I was writing, although it did insert a few random spaces where they shouldn't have been. Those mistakes lead to me searching for "Ars Technica.com" on Google rather than navigating to ArsTechnica.com.
However, the scribble keyboard has terrible palm rejection. As soon as I set my hand down on the Slate to write my search query into the keyboard using the Pixelbook Pen, an unintended dot showed up on the writing area and in the selected text box, too. The scribble keyboard made the most mistakes when it incorporated those incorrect inputs into my search query. Palm rejection wasn't a problem in most of the other apps I used with the Pixelbook Pen—I put the entire side of my hand on the screen in Google Keep and not one rogue stroke appeared—which leads me to believe that the scribble keyboard just isn't optimized for pen-only input as well as other apps are.
A new Assistant window
As with the Pixelbook, the Pixel Slate houses the Google Assistant and you can call upon it by saying "Ok, Google," or by pressing the Assistant button included on the keyboard case that sits in between the left Control and Alt keys. The updated Assistant window sits close to the bottom bar and features the company's signature multicolored dots in the middle, with the question "How can I help you" next to it. If you open the window using the dedicated key, you can type your statement, question, or key word into the text bar by default. If you open the window vocally, the Google Assistant will already be listening for your command.
The way you interact with the Google Assistant hasn't changed much otherwise—Google just expanded the digital home for the Assistant. Some questions will be answered inside that new window, pulling info from a Wikipedia page and other sources, while other questions bring up full webpages such as Google Maps to show directions or the coffee shop closest to you.
Google already spent a ton of time and effort expanding the Assistant's abilities since it's come out with new Google Home devices and partnered with other OEMs to make Google Assistant Smart Displays. The Pixel Slate isn't introducing any new Assistant features, but rather another visual way of interacting with it, which some users may prefer over using a smart speaker.
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More Android app support
Every time a new Chrome OS device comes out, it seems that a few more Android developers have embraced the platform and adjusted their apps accordingly. The Pixel Slate's debut is no different as I found more of the most popular Android apps (according to the Play Store's categories) working fairly well on the new tablet.
Some apps, like the shopping companion Flipp and the forecast app for Weather.com, once opened only in a small, rectangular window but now immediately switch to full-screen, detecting the non-smartphone device on which they were opened. Others like Ebay have a refined UI, mixing elements of its mobile app and its webpage into one hybrid Chrome OS experience.
It's still not a seamless experience—Google can only do so much to persuade developers to embrace Chrome OS as they have Android. But it's getting better, and the advancements that developers have made complement those that Google have made in the overall Chrome OS tablet experience.
The automatic switches made when in tablet mode are more mobile-friendly than ever before, featuring more tappable elements, additional ways to type without a keyboard, and easier ways to organize open apps and windows. Google incorporated some of the most crucial Android features into Chrome OS well enough that users will find it easier to interact with their Chromebooks when in tablet mode.
Performance
While we didn't test the most powerful Pixel Slate available, we tested the model right below it: it runs on a Core i5-8200Y CPU, Intel UHD Graphics 615, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage, and costs $999. Those internals served our Slate well, giving it high performance scores on all of our benchmark tests and helping me use the Slate as my primary work device for a few days without any hiccups.
I wasn't surprised to see that the Slate performed nearly as well as the Pixelbook we reviewed last year because our review units had similar specs. However, even with the Slate's Core i5 processor, it only bested the HP Chromebook x2 (with its Core m3 CPU, Intel HD Graphics 615, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB drive) by a bit on each benchmark test.
HP's Chrome OS tablet served my needs just as well as the Slate did, confirming my belief that currently Chromebooks only need a certain level of power to be solid work devices. I appreciate the 8GB of memory in our Pixel Slate review unit because it will make multitasking easier, but it's probably not necessary to have a Core i5 processor.
I'd say the mid-range Pixel Slate model will be the most popular, with its Core m3 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and $799 price. The most expensive Slate model, with its Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and whopping $1,599 price tag, is overkill for most users.
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Battery life
The Pixel Slate, with its 48Whr battery, lasted an average of 693 minutes, or just under 12 hours, on our Wi-Fi test. On our graphics intensive test, it lasted an average of 362 minutes, or about six hours. Those numbers aren't bad, especially considering Google estimated 12 hours of battery life for this tablet. It lasted nearly one hour longer than the Pixelbook on both tests, but on the flip side, it was bested by HP's Chromebook x2 on both tests by nearly one hour.
Rounding out Chrome OS' abilities
The Pixel Slate was bound to drum up anticipation by nature of it being made by Google. Like the Pixelbook, it excels with its modern design, solid overall performance, and good battery life. The Pixel Imprint fingerprint sensor adds a much-needed feature that not only makes the Pixel Slate more secure, but sets a precedent for OEMs to include biometric authentication in future Chromebooks and Chrome OS tablets.
But more exciting than the Pixel Slate itself are all the new tablet elements introduced in the newest version of Chrome OS. The Pixel Slate is the perfect hardware showcase for such features, all of which are steps in the right direction. Chrome OS serves numerous types of devices, slabs only being the newest, and its new mobile elements will make it easier to use any Chromebook that works in tablet mode. I only wish that Google had squashed all the bugs before pushing out the software update.
These new features are not unique to the Pixel Slate, though, which relies on hardware to stand out just like the Pixelbook does. While that hardware is good, it's not the best for most users nor is it even the best out of the few Chrome OS tablets available now for those who want a premium device. I appreciate that Google offers a few different Pixel Slate models, but I wouldn't recommend the most affordable, $599 model, mostly because of its Celeron processor. Those who want relatively premium performance to accompany the device's premium design will have to shell out at least $799 for the Core-m3 powered model—and up to an additional $300 for the keyboard case and Pixelbook Pen.
But if you can live without a fingerprint sensor and that cute little "G" on the slab's back corner, HP's Chromebook x2 provides comparable performance and includes a keyboard and stylus in its $599 price tag. It may not be made by Google, but it's still a better value Chrome OS tablet.
The Good
Sturdy, minimalist tablet design.
New fingerprint sensor.
8MP rear- and front-facing cameras.
Round "hush" keys are easy to type on and fairly quiet.
Improved handwriting recognition.
Good battery life.
The Bad
No Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Keyboard case costs an extra $199.
Pen costs an extra $99.
No way to secure Pen to the Slate.
Somewhat buggy Split Screen feature.
Terrible palm rejection in scribble keyboard.
The Ugly
Gets very expensive very quickly as you spec it out and add accessories into the mix.
