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The Pixel Tablet as a Smart Home Controller: Genuinely Versatile

2023 · From the Tech with Asher channel · Watch below or read on

If there is one word for the Google Pixel Tablet, it is versatile, and I mean that as a disruption warning to a few product categories at once. Docked on its speaker stand it is a smart display running the house. Lifted off, it is a real Android tablet. I have been using it as both, daily, and here is what that actually looks like.

Running the house from the couch

From the Google Home panel I control the lights behind me, tap and hold to sweep through colors, pull up the front door camera on request (hey Google, show me the front door, and the stream appears), and nudge the thermostat in the very room I am sitting in, watching it change in real time to 70 degrees. Voice or touch, whichever your hands are free for. This is the smart home experience the Nest Hub Max pioneered, on a screen you can take with you.

The handoff trick

Play music docked, lift the tablet, and the sound follows onto the tablet's own speakers without a hiccup. The dock speaker itself is honest-but-small (I hope a future version goes bigger), yet the seamlessness of that transition is what sells the whole concept. Sound test is in the video; it is genuinely decent.

It moonlights as a computer

Pair a Bluetooth keyboard (mine is a Hexgears) and a Logitech MX Master mouse, and it behaves like a small desktop: alt-tab switches apps, Chrome, Microsoft Word with dictation, the lot. The proof came during a storm that knocked out our power: tethered to my phone's hotspot, this tablet with its 27 watt-hour battery was the machine that kept email and documents moving. Heavy 4K video editing, no. Everything a household actually does daily, yes.

The fine print

• The 10.95 inch screen is bright at 500 nits, with 8 megapixel cameras front and back.
• Undocking takes a firm pull, so get the official case; re-docking lands on the first try most days, and I always hold my breath a little.
• Clearance under the docked tablet is low, so third-party stands are fiddly.

Versatile is the review: one purchase that is a smart home panel, a kitchen screen, a work machine in a pinch, and a music player, trading blows with devices that only do one of those things.