The Google Pixel C Review
by Brandon Chester & Joshua Ho on January 25, 2016 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
When Apple unveiled the iPad, they promised that it would achieve 10 hour battery life. That has been something of a standard for tablets now, and for the most part we've seen that high end tablets end up meeting that goal, while mid range ones often end up falling short of it. 2015 was a bit of an exception to this in some ways, with many high end tablets also missing this goal by several hours in some cases. Due to the nature of tablets and how they're used, it's really difficult to recommend one if it doesn't achieve enough battery life to last you through the day with a normal workload.
To test the Pixel C's battery life I've attempted to run it through all of our battery tests. First up is our internal web browser test, followed by our video playback battery test.
It's clear that Google's use of a LTPS display and a large battery pay off big time when you look at battery life. Even with the SoC staying on its higher-power A57 cores, the Pixel C manages to last for over 13 hours in our web browsing test. This puts it ahead of every other tablet on record, and by a large margin too.
In video playback the Pixel C once again comes out on top. This is quite surprising, as normally AMOLED tablets perform best in this test due to their ability to turn off pixels when displaying black, as well as their general efficiencies with darker colors and shades. The gap between the Pixel C and the Tab S2 isn't insignificant either, so Google should be very happy with what they've achieved here.
In BaseMark OS II's CPU-bound battery test we again see the Pixel C top the charts. This is really surprising to me, because on the SoC side we're looking at four Cortex A57 cores on a 20nm process. Again, Google's large battery and LTPS display help a great deal, but it's also clear that Tegra X1 isn't causing any significant problems for the Pixel C as far as power consumption goes.
At this point I would normally continue to run our PCMark and GFXBench battery tests. Unfortunately, the Pixel C's software makes it incapable of completing either of them. I made five attempts to complete PCMark, which took a great deal of time as the test runs over many hours. In all cases the tablet locked up during the test and required a hard reboot. It may be possible to eventually get it to complete, but I didn't feel that it was worth delaying the review further in the hopes that I could eventually get the Pixel C to complete the test properly.
As for GFXBench, it instantly stops due to it detecting that the tablet is plugged in. I believe this may relate to Google's system for inductive keyboard charging, but whatever the cause may be the result is that I can't get a battery result for GPU-bound workloads either. It's worth noting that the web test also required several runs before I could get it to complete the test without the tablet crashing, so that's something to think about as far as software stability and reliability goes.
In the end, what I have seen of the Pixel C's battery life leads me to believe that it's quite good, but we're definitely not looking at the entire picture here due to the missing data. I can say that in my experience it seemed to last a long time, so if I had to go out on a limb I would say that the combination of the low power LTPS display panel and a relatively large battery allow for very good battery life even with the CPU running on its A57 cores. Since Tegra X1 has a great deal of GPU power I really wish I could have gotten a GFXBench battery result, but there's not much that can be done there.
Charging
Since tablets usually offer enough battery life to get through the day, being able to charge them incredibly quickly becomes less of a need than with smartphones because you'll often end up only charging your tablet overnight. That being said, the immense charge time required by older tablets which required larger batteries to power their SoCs and displays meant that if your tablet battery did die you probably weren't going to get to use it until the next day. With modern tablets we've seen a push to reduce battery capacity, as well as the inclusion of 10-15W chargers to reduce charge times.
The Pixel C ships with a 15W charger with a USB Type-C connector. The cable is actually fixed to the block, so you can't use it as a normal Type-C to Type-C cable. On the bright side, Google has used a cable which is around four feet long, so you get some extra length compared to using the included cable in the box. As you can see in the graph above, the battery is charged at around 11W while fast charging, which lasts for three hours before trickle charging begins. Getting the remaining 10-15% ends up taking another hour, with the total charge time from 0% to 100% being 4.14 hours. Considering that the Pixel C packs a noticeably larger battery than the iPad Air 2, the roughly four hour charge time is actually quite a good result.
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ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link
You're paying for something that "just works". You'd be surprised at how attractive that is for a lot of people that are simply incapable of using modern tech.So you can either stick your fingers in your ears and demand that everyone spend years of their life becoming experts in modern tech, or you can realize that there's some money to be made. Apple is in the business of making money.
Alexey291 - Saturday, January 30, 2016 - link
No offence to your and your expertness. But do you honestly think that it takes "a few years" to become an expert of playing with touchscreen devices?Oh boy...
jbelkin - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Well, not ignorant, just an economy that only supports 9% of buyers being able to afford the stnadard bearer.Vlad_Da_Great - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
@jbelkin. EU are not as shallow and easy to manipulate as their USA counterparts. Also, biggest % of iPhone purchases in USA are done from people over 60y old. If you look around the globe the second biggest country with huge engineering population (India) has no interest in the iPhone.Asians on the other side love magic, that is what APPL is good of selling.
vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
That's mostly related to income. The vast majority of those people would much prefer an Apple device if they could afford it. Most Android devices are incredible cheap devices.the_comment_guy - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
What are you talking about? Apple hasn't been ableto open stores in India due to their laws requiring 30% of their components to be sourced from small to medium enterprises: that's why they've barely made a dent in the Indian phone market. Despite this, Apple's sales in India have been increasing every year. If India relaxes its backwards laws, and Apple is allowed to open their own stores, Apple sales will explode.Alexey291 - Saturday, January 30, 2016 - link
Sure the sales have grown in india. Shame about the sales in the rest of the world.Essentially last quarter's sales have been propped up by the Chinese and Indian sales growth. The rest of the world however...
akdj - Thursday, February 4, 2016 - link
Rest of the world? As in North, South America and a dozen European countries? Apple's BLOWN their OWN records out of the water with iOS device sales. iPads are down ...unfortunately for Apple, they're built too well! Seriously, as I've owned each iPad ...we use them with our business and both original and iPad 2s are still BOTH working & battery life on the first iPad continues beating a dozen hours watching movies. Eight browsing or a good 25-30 listening to music, screen off!My iPad '2' purchased on launch day and the kids use it all the time. No issues ...they're replied amid don't die. Apple is continuing support for older devices. Kicking their own selves in the sack! Or ...maybe not.
While geeks like me justify with my job, personal business and personal 'wants' the purchase of each new iPad that drops, and because of each gen's phenomenal updates. iPad 3 aside, which I owned until 4 dropped - iPad 3 left on Craigslist the following day with its updated performance so obvious. The 'new' iPad 3, IMHO, is the only anomaly to the updates and performance increases, display/resolution updates, shaving weight, maintaining battery life and dramatically boosting its 'guts', sensors, display accuracy and smaller but significant user bonuses like the A/G display stack and their lamination & out of factory calibration ....make each iPad, in my line of work, play & education priceless! Original to iPad 2, the difference was/is obvious. 2-->3, 'Retina' on the iPad, a complete game changer. Oops, same engine as the iPad 2, 4 times the resolution, drop the 4 with its Apple designed SoC monster A8X --- exponentially bettering the iPad w/Retina experience!
While somewhat less Ferrari, more Subaru ...Air 1 is today a fantastic tablet (I've both Air 1 & 2). It's slower than its younger sibling but its sporting the first 64bit processor in a tablet and mine continues to get a lot usage. My Air 2, there's nothing on the market comparable. Not w/the App Store and its million optimized, all inclusive app/software accompanying options to aggregate and integrate with the home Mac, studio Macs or your phone/tab with Handoff. The continuity Apple's built into iOS and OS X as well as supporting older devices with both desk OS's, it's no wonder folks aren't replacing them as quickly as a phone! They're still selling a quarter more than the rest of the field does in a year! When you take the <$149 tablet choices off the table, iPad in its slump is outselling the entire industry 2-1 quarter vs. year! It's a top 100 in the Forbes 500 business itself! That's crazy IMHO. But the addition of iPad Pro changes things. Doubling the RAM on the iPhone 6s & iPad Air 2 was obvious in use, day to day ...it was just a LOT quicker at everything than my Air 1. They've now doubled to 4GB in iPP and as an owner for 3 months, I've never been happier with an iPad. The iPad A2 still ROCKS! I use it daily and it's as robust and reliable as any predecessor, just a helluva lot faster and finally now, finally being targeted by developers to take advantage of the hardware...as older products are phased out
Which left me curious about Josh's final comment/words
'Overall, I’m not even sure this measures up to the iPad Air 2 which is well over a year old by this point. I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone buy this tablet until the touch screen issues and generally poor performance has been resolved, and even then that recommendation would be to a limited group of people solely interested in a touch-only Android tablet.A
I read the review a second time all the way through. I went back and read the Air 2 review as well. While a couple of benchmarks seem to have parity or even exceed A2's --- the display performance, also beating A2, it's close in your measurements but EVERY other word strongly suggests not just an inferior experience in comparison (Pixel v A2), but performance destroyed by my iPad 4! Janky, unable to maintain connection, freezes and crashes and.... I can go on, it's not necessary though. Just seems to very much understate iPad A2's performance and without reading the rest, complete overstatement of the 'experience' of PixC as a couple of benches close, neck & neck, means absolutely nothing when it comes down to the user's overall experience. My iPad 2 seems to be a better comparison!
Yikes
lilmoe - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Nice ignorant comment bro. Way to go.id4andrei - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Hardware has nothing to do with Android's problem. Dev support for tablet operation in Android is lacking. Simple.