Google Pixel Slate: slapdash software ruins the right hardware

The problem with Google's new Slate Pixel is that it checks as many boxes as many people want to check on a tablet. Desktop web browser that will not direct you to an app or serve a mobile version of a website? Check. Secure operating system updated with new security, bug fixes and features on a six-week cycle? Check.

An extensive library of applications to meet your needs when web applications do not? An interface that can switch between a tablet mode optimized for touch and a desktop mode when a keyboard and a mouse are connected? USB ports that are not arbitrarily locked, so you can not manage the base files? Check, verify and recheck. (There are two USB-C ports on the Slate Pixel.)

But even if the Pixel Slate ticks the boxes that the iPad Pro does not allow, it's not any better. Wherever the iPad is small but elegant, the Slate Pixel is open but unobtrusive.

Although the material is nice, the use of the Pixel Slate requires you to support a hundred small software indignities. For a device that starts at $ 599 and can run up to two thousand dollars for the fully specified model with keyboard and pen, it's at least minus a few dozen indignities .

] The Pixel Slate is the first Google tablet in recent years, running Chrome OS instead of Android. This is not the first Chrome OS tablet, but the first Google. The good news is that the material is excellent. It is not as advanced as the iPad Pro, but it is solid.

It has a touch screen of 12.3 inches, 3000 x 2000 pixels, surrounded by boxes of very small dimensions. Google calls this screen "molecular display" because it uses a different type of substrate for the LCD, which consumes less energy (and because no one seems to be able to withstand the allocation of energy). a wacky name to the new screen technology). In any case, it's good. It can become very bright and has very few drops, seen from an angle.

Frames might seem a bit smaller, but one of the reasons they are there is to house two front speakers that frame the screen left and right. Google seems rather dedicated to the speakers that direct you – its phones are equipped – and they make sense on a tablet. They can become very strong, do it without distortion and even manage to produce some bbad.

Aluminum body is solid color, slate blue (included?). It easily detects fingerprints and stains, but the quality of construction is strong and refined. The edges are rounded and the front window bends to get closer to the edge. It looks like a Pixel phone bursting into a tablet size. A fingerprint sensor is even smartly integrated with the power button to connect.

The tablet is great for tablet computers, but small for laptops. Its size is very close to that of the new iPad Pro 12.9 inches, and the same thing is to feel a little smaller than it is. On its own, it weighs 1.5kg, but you will want to add a keyboard, which will add weight. With Google's Google Pixel Slate keyboard, the entire package weighs a little more than the Pixelbook.

Talking about the Pixel Slate keyboard, it's a good microcosm of the entire device: it's a very good idea that is poorly executed. It is a keyboard style "folio", that is to say it has a flap covering the back of the device. You can drag this shutter on a magnets system to hold the slate of pixels from any angle. You can also flip the keyboard underneath to switch to easel mode. The keys on them are circular, which is strange at first but works totally. I also like the fact that they are backlit, that they have a good rendering of the keys and that they are quite silent.

The keyboard connects via a magnetic connector. Slate is smart enough to switch between tablet mode and laptop mode, depending on whether it is connected or not, the keyboard is reversed. All this is fine, but Google has infused details on the keyboard. It is so fragile that if you balance it on a flat and perfectly stable surface, it can flex to the point of slamming the trackpad. And it is attached only by this single shutter, so that everything can move if, again, it is not on a perfectly flat and stable surface.

Fortunately, there is a Bridge Bluetooth keyboard specifically designed for the Slate, which allows it to work much more like a laptop and costs $ 40 less at startup. Although, as I will say, Bluetooth has not been reliable for me on this device.

Google gets the best ratings for the outside of Pixel Slate (except the keyboard), but it's inside of it that things start to get confused. Google has decided that it would be best to offer this solution in five different models, which includes four different Intel processor choices, four different storage tiers, and three different RAM options.

Prices range from $ 599 for a base model with an Intel Celeron Dinky processor and anemic storage and RAM up to $ 1,599 for an overpriced price for just about everyone. The Pixel Slate keyboard costs $ 199 more (the $ 159.99 Brydge option I mentioned earlier) and the $ 99 Pixelbook pen. Although I usually want LTE, I'm pretty happy it's not an option because there are already so many choices.

To understand which model you need to acquire, you need to know a lot about what Chrome OS is and how. Chrome OS behaves with different specifications. The cheapest model will probably frustrate you if you push it past a dozen tabs or a few Android apps.

I tested the $ 999 machine with an Intel Core i5 Y-Series processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, as well as the keyboard and stylus for a total of $ 1,297. I think that's the only model that fits this computer, but because I know how Chrome OS works and I want to do more than just use it as a tablet for lightweight web browsing and the only way I can do it. frantic observation of Netflix. .

Since you need to know a lot about Chrome OS to get the most out of your Pixel Slate (whatever you choose), let's talk about Chrome OS and how it works on Pixel Slate.

If you have a connected keyboard, the Slate Pixel works just like any other Chromebook. There is a mouse and resizable windows. You can open Chrome tabs, web apps, and Android apps and move them. If you've used a modern Chromebook, it's very familiar to see that Android apps work but you feel like an invading species.

It is here that we enter into the minute indignities I mentioned earlier. It's been a year and a half since we have to let the Google Play Store's Android apps run on Chrome OS, and this experience is not going well.

Progress in improving the operation of Android applications on large screens has been extremely slow. Spotify has only recently begun to allow the ability to resize its application window, but it's still a stupid and vivid phone application. It's the same with Google's own apps. YouTube Music is a mess on this size screen. And you, as a user, have to decide which version of applications like YouTube Music to use in the first place: the Web application or the Android application?

I can accept some of these weaknesses because I managed to use only Android. applications in a few places where I really need it. And, honestly, they are sometimes more useful than Web applications. What I find it hard to accept is that there are too many bugs. My first examination unit resulted in a bootloop that Google could not diagnose and had to be replaced. The second has been more stable except that sometimes Bluetooth disconnects or even just refuses to turn it on after a reboot.

I remind you here that Google has removed the headphone jack of this device, which will make you much more dependent on Bluetooth. I've contacted Google about the Bluetooth bug (among others), and here's his statement: "We've received information about intermittent Bluetooth issues and we're working on a solution as quickly as possible."

Other bugs are just kind of a problem. exasperating. When the keyboard is connected, moving windows is relatively fast and smooth, even with a few Android apps and more than 20 tabs or open web applications. But switch the Slate Pixel to tablet mode and start using the sweep gestures, and that turns into a gloomy mess. The input with the Pixelbook pen is just as unpredictable: sometimes it's fine; On other occasions, Google Keep is so late that I have to leave the application and try again.

Chrome OS is an operating system designed for notebooks that has enrolled in an adult education course on tablets and that does not even understand it. homework, let alone homework.

What is frustrating is that you can see the truly awesome, flexible and useful system behind all this negligence. There are real little touches: the Google Assistant app is fast and completes the main search function well, although I would still like them to be better integrated. You can replace the normal-sized keyboard with a small floating phone-size keyboard that works fine, or use the stylus for handwriting input.

Another example of the foundation is the two USB sticks. -C ports. They just do what you expect from USB ports. It's great that there are two. I had our office ship in New York over a big box of USB accessories to plug in. By and large, I repeated the experience that Nilay had achieved with the iPad Pro and almost everything worked perfectly.

. External hard drives, USB mics, SD cards and even a printer work perfectly with Pixel Slate (although the printer requires an HP Chrome extension). Unlike iOS where the limitations come from the operating system, here the limitations come from, as you had guessed, the strange way that Android applications were integrated with Chrome OS.

Let's take Adobe Lightroom CC for example. When you connect an SD card, the Files application displays and you have access to the files. Until here everything is fine. But open the Android version of Lightroom, which can not see the external drive (probably because it was designed for Android phones and tablets). Therefore, you must extract the photos from Chrome OS local storage through the Files application, import them into Lightroom, and delete them.

This is the same rigamarole you should use with the iPad Pro, but only with the Files app instead of the Photos app. But there is one crucial difference: the only reason is that Adobe has not updated Lightroom to work better with the Chrome OS file picker.

I'm not talking about Adobe here, nor do I mean that this Lightroom USB test is the ultimate test to define what counts as a "professional computer". I would rather point out that the limitations you encounter when you use Android applications on Chrome OS are due to an ecosystem that is not as developed as needed.

You can work around all these software indignities. You can find small tips and Chrome extensions, you can understand in depth the differences between Android and web applications, you can ask the developers of applications to update their software and you can restart everything when your Bluetooth starts to act sneakily.

For some people, these workarounds are totally worth it because compromise is a more open computing platform that gives you a better web browser, a mouse, Windows, etc. and even Linux if you want it. These people are hard-boiled under Chrome OS, and these are really the only people who, in my opinion, should even consider Pixel Slate.

But even for them, Slate does not feel ready yet. The Pixelbook of last year is still there and is being discounted all the time. Of course, it has the processor of last year and you can not detach the keyboard, but I found it was more stable and easier. It also weighs a quarter of a pound less than the Slate with the keyboard connected. I still love my Pixelbook and I respect it.

Pixel Slate has many advantages, but it is too experimental. The problem is that I really like what Google is trying to do here. I would just like it to be less difficult and more effective.

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