The Google Pixel C Review
by Brandon Chester & Joshua Ho on January 25, 2016 8:00 AM ESTJosh's Thoughts
While I haven’t been deeply involved in the review of the Pixel C, I also happened to receive the Pixel C tablet for evaluation. My initial impressions of the device were relatively positive as the keyboard docking mechanism is relatively smart and novel, although not perfect. The use of a magnetic flap which rotates with a high amount of tension to keep the tablet upright is a very smart way to avoid including a kickstand, but it definitely takes a bit of time to get used to the actions required to separate the tablet and keyboard, flip the tablet to the right orientation, and connect it. The design and construction of the device are also quite competitive with the best tablets on the market.
Unfortunately, pretty much any praise I have for the Pixel C ends once you look past its physical aspects. As soon as I attempted to do some initial setup using the keyboard accessory, the experience completely fell apart due to contention by other communication on the 2.4GHz frequency space. A casual scan of the networks in the area shows a pretty significant number of SSIDs from neighboring apartments, and while it isn’t quite at the level of a convention center, I had a significant number of connectivity issues that still haven’t gone away after multiple days. This manifests as either the keyboard not registering at all despite showing up as connected, repeated key strokes, or significant input latency on the order of multiple seconds.
In addition to these issues, the Pixel C tablet also seems to be have some significant touch screen latency and registration issues. It felt like I needed to use multiple taps to get anything to register, and even when it registers there can be a shocking amount of latency before anything happens. This really shouldn’t be happening on anything remotely high-end in 2016, so this alone makes me reluctant to even consider recommending it to anyone.
Even when one puts these concerning issues aside, there's no way to ignore how the software really holds back this tablet. In terms of usability, this is arguably somehow below the iPad Air 2 in practicality, as pretty much every app is just a larger version of the phone application without much in the way of proper utilization of the larger display size. There’s also no multi-window functionality, which is shocking when you consider how Samsung, LG, and numerous other OEMs have implemented some form of this functionality for years at this point. Even Apple’s iOS, which started out with basically no ability to adapt to varying aspect ratios, display sizes, and pixel densities, has decent multi-window functionality working at this point. It’s deeply concerning that Google has taken so long to implement functionality that clearly has demand given how many OEMs have implemented it in their Android skins, especially given that Android was designed from the ground up to support multiple device resolutions and sizes.
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.
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Laxaa - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
It seems to me like the Pixel C was released a year or two too early.versesuvius - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
Adding a keyboard to an ARM device is just adding insult to injury. ARM devices are never going to be useful beyond what they were intended to be in the first instance, which is content consuming devices. Their advantage, which is size and power consumption, is also their limitation. If any company tries to sell an ARM device with a keyboard, one can be pretty sure that that company is pretty much at the end of the road. Disabling four cores of the processor on the top device from the company, while pushing a keyboard on buyers, just says it all. It says that the buyer was not going to do anything useful with it anyway, that is with this device from this particular company anyway.hMunster - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
How can you appload the battery run time and lament the size and weight at the same time?10basetom - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
So the final grade for the Pixel C is a C. Final grade for Android tablet ecosystem? D-Lolimaster - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
How can you release a tablet without SD reader, come on.This tablet would be perfect for reading my collection comics&manga, I don't want to rely on the internetz just for reading purposes.
Demigod79 - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link
A couple of years ago I attached a keyboard case to a Nexus 10 and tried to use it like a laptop. It failed. Even though the Nexus 10 supported keyboard navigation and mouse input I found it difficult to anything really productive, and having a keyboard cover on it limited its functionality as a tablet. The Pixel C seems to be a modern-day rehash of my failed experiment with the Nexus 10 and I can very well imagine how using it would be (that is, very bad).The thing is, I had thought Android tablets would gradually evolve and grow, incorporating desktop features like expanded storage and windows apps. The latter was something that I particularly desired ever since using Samsung tablets that had pop-up apps. I thought this was the future and hoped Google would adopt and expand it to incorporate all apps. Frankly, I never thought tablets should have tablet versions of apps. In my opinion, running one app at a time was largely due to the limited screen space available on a phone, which obviously didn't apply to tablets. I thought the natural thing to do with a tablet was to run those phone apps in separate windows, not have bigger versions of those apps. I dreamed of the day when I would be able to run multiple Android apps at once like I did on my laptop.
I waited in vain for Google to incorporate windows apps, and then last year I got fed up and bought a Surface Pro 4 instead. It was the best decision I had ever made. Not only can the Surface Pro 4 replace my laptop (haven't touched it since) it can also replace my tablet since I can run Bluestacks (Android emulator) on it. Best of all, I can finally run Android apps in a window like I've always wanted to do. Add in the ability to run desktop applications as well as desktop games through Steam and it easily ranks as the best mobile device I've ever bought. I have given up on Microsoft for a while but it now seems to be the future (Android had the potential to be the future but Google squandered the opportunity, and now they are relegated to creating lame products like the Pixel C).
deppman - Friday, January 29, 2016 - link
I agree, although I prefer Ubuntu as my general purpose OS since it is more appropriate for my needs.Have you seen Jive's Remix OS? It's pretty much what you describe, and it's run by ex googlers. I expect Google to buy them out because the evolution is so obvious and correct. It's my guess that internal political BS is what has happened here. If they simply added windowed ART apps to chrome OS - or windowed apps and a full chrome browser build to android, they'd achieve pretty much what you described.
IMO, they are missing a wonderful opportunity to unseat MS as the primary desktop OS by not resolving this obvious elephant in the room.
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alexlaoe - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link
Runs very well. Just bought one and I love the beauty behind the design.https://open.spotify.com/user/artistm/playlist/1RC...
Rc1138 - Sunday, January 31, 2016 - link
Despite my love for big tablets I can't bring myself to like this device. Making a "productivity" tablet is just too early for android. I have a really old nexus 10 and it's nand perfomance as well as overall stability(touch,wi-fi and apps) is several times better than this halfassed powerhouse. The only thing I like about Pixel C is battery perfomance(both battery life and charge time) because nexus 10's charge time equals it's web browsing time(roughly 7 hours). I can't think of a targeted group this tablet is aimed for because for the same price you can buy a really sophisticated surface 3