The Google Pixel C Review
by Brandon Chester & Joshua Ho on January 25, 2016 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Ultimately, the Pixel C ends up being a strange mix of things that may have worked together in a much more cohesive manner had it shipped with Chrome OS like it was clearly intended to. Unfortunately, Android just doesn’t provide an acceptable tablet experience, and Google’s own applications are some of the biggest offenders. Before discussing that, it is worth going over the Pixel C’s hardware, as Google did a great job executing many of those aspects.
The Pixel C’s construction is solid. The build quality is superb, and it fits in well with the existing Chromebook Pixel. I definitely think the body is too heavy though, and the keyboard is far too heavy. I don’t think building tablet keyboards out of aluminum is the right way to go, even though it makes them feel very sturdy and fits well with an aluminum chassis. The mass ends up being too high compared to fabric and polymer keyboard covers, and keeping down the mass of the total package is essential to making a tablet highly portable.
As for the hardware, the first thing to talk about is the SoC. Tegra X1 is very fast on both the CPU and GPU sides, and as far as Android tablets go it offers the best graphics performance that you can get. The display on the Pixel C is also very good, with accurate color rendering and a high brightness as well as deep blacks. The greyscale accuracy could use some work, and Google needs to improve on hiding their digitizer and cutting down reflections in general, but for the most part it’s a very good panel.
Battery life on the Pixel C appears to be very good. It topped the charts in our web browsing, video playback, and BaseMark OS II battery tests. However software problems prevent me from investigating how long the battery lasts in a GPU-bound workload and a mixed workload, but for anything that primarily taxes the CPU or display it appears that the Pixel C provides best-in-class battery life.
Why does this UI show the exact same amount of info as the UI on a 4.5" phone?
Unfortunately, once you start looking at some of the other aspects of hardware and software, the problems with the Pixel C start appearing in great numbers. I’ve said this time and time again, but Android simply doesn’t offer a compelling tablet experience in any regard. With the Pixel C in particular you get a plethora of stability issues and bugs as well. Connectivity issues with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth impact the usability of the keyboard, and the entire software experience is simply unfinished. I can’t use it for very long without encountering touch input issues, freezes, and complete OS crashes. I really don't know how Pixel C shipped with the software in the state that it’s in, and it's just not acceptable. The fact that Josh also received a sample and encountered the same issues that I have confirms that they’re not specific to a single unit, and any single one of the major issues that we’ve noticed should have been enough to delay the Pixel C’s launch.
By this point I think people should know what they’re getting into when buying an Android tablet as far as the application situation goes, but the Pixel C’s problems go far deeper than that. I have been told that Google plans to issue an update that fixes the connectivity problems, touch input issues, and stability. Google has shipped me with a new unit that runs a pre-release version of this update, and Josh will be receiving his soon as well. Once that occurs, I'll be taking another look at it. That being said, the amount of time it has taken to address such show stopping bugs has been far longer than I would have expected, and if I was someone who purchased it I wouldn't be happy at all with the current situation.
At the very least, I think existing buyers should be given some public timeline of when Google plans to issue the much needed bug fixing updates. In its current state, I honestly can’t give the Pixel C any sort of recommendation, even to the biggest fans of Google products. Its software needs a lot of work, and I hope that Google's upcoming patch fixes the major problems. The Pixel C may improve with future updates, but for now it's best to hold off and see how things change going forward.
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tipoo - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Ars theorized that this was never meant to run Android...Reading this review, it seems to add some plausibility to that.http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-c...
tipoo - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Not that ChromeOS would really help on the app front, so Google is in a bit of a pickle.testbug00 - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
ChromeOS would help a lot on the multitasking and functionality front. Think of it as a high end chromebook that has the ability to be used as a tablet.marcryan - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
I just finished returning my Pixel C. I didn't have issues in connecting the device and keyboard nor did I have problems with Internet connectivity. But the major show stopper for me was the touch screen latency. It was insane how many times I had to touch the device to get it to respond. I even tried a stylus on the screen in a drawing program and the pixel was unable to track a straight line without breaks along the way where the screen did not register the input.Beyond that there was a supreme amount of waiting time for an app to respond after tapping on it on the home screen. I did a side by side with my Nexus 6P and the nexus (not without its own flaws) performed noticeably faster which is shocking considering the benchmark scores on the pixel C processor.
There's something fatally flawed in the device which is unfortunate because I really wanted to like it, it's a nice piece of hardware.
evefavretto - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Another interesting characteristic of the A-series, and by extension, Pixel C' screen is the fact that, once divided in half, the two remaining parts keep the same proportion: 1:√2.Probably a design choice for a multitasking feature that was scrapped from Chrome OS and now will see the light of the day in Android.
Dribble - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Thank you for the NAND performance charts - I have been bitten twice by cheap and nasty NAND killing my tablet's performance after a year or two. I now won't touch one unless I know it's NAND is decent - and pixel C really is pretty borderline considering how high end it's meant to be.Agree google has software problems, although I would say it goes beyond missing features. It's clearly far to hard to keep something working as you upgrade. Almost every device I have owned has worked best on whatever version of android it came with. Every upgrade generally introduces problems. I get the feeling they developed the pixel c with android 5 and I bet it worked fine there, then they did an upgrade too 6 and now have all manor of niggles to sort out. Hence I am actually more drawn to devices that don't have major android version upgrades. I'll take an out of date but working version of android over the latest and greatest but slightly broken every time.
Dobson123 - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
There is a mistake in the chart on the first page: The Tegra K1 has 192 shader units, not 128.And do you know why they have disabled the A53 cores?
Kepe - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Judging by the overall unfinishedness of the Pixel C, I'd guess migrating from the small cores to the big ones and vice versa causes some kind of a performance issue Google couldn't solve, as the Tegra X1 doesn't have heterogenous multi-processing.. So there'd be even more lag and performance issues than there is now.But perhaps it doesn't really even matter, since the big cores go as low as 51 MHz. It probably wouldn't save much power (if at all) if the little cores were used when there's a low workload. Battery performance seems to be really good even without the little cores.
Brandon Chester - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
Indeed you are right. I've corrected the error.As for the cluster migration, just keep in mind that the SHIELD TV doesn't do it either. Granted, that is plugged into the wall so power isn't a big deal, but it's important to note that we haven't see a single implementation where the A53s are used so I wouldn't be quick to blame it on the Pixel C specifically.
tipoo - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
For the SHIELD does it not do switching, or does it turn the A53s off completely? As something plugged into a wall and with overkill cooling for an ARM SoC, it may as well use all 8 all the time, no?