Pixel Slate Review: Paying "Google" Bonus for Chrome OS

Google has spent a lot of time and effort trying to convince everyone that Chrome OS is not just for laptops. The fruits of the company's work have slowly been revealed over the past year with software updates and a few Chrome OS tablets already available.

But Google has officially ushered in the era of the Chrome OS tablet with its own Pixel Slate, announced last month alongside the Pixel 3 smartphone. The first tablet made by Google for three years is now available for purchase . And you can think of Pixel Slate as a not-so-distant cousin of the company's premium Chromebook, the Pixelbook, in that it appeals to those who chose Chrome OS as the main operating system and that only require high quality material it.

The Pixelbook, although certainly the most Googley Chromebook, turned out to be the only one of the best Chromebooks available. In the same way, the Slate Pixel has many advantages, namely its chic design, the support of powerful Intel processors, as well as many storage and memory resources, but it remains in the same pitfalls as the Pixelbook. productivity and price.

Look and feel

The Pixel Slate may not share a silvery, white aesthetic with the Pixelbook, but it still has a sleek design, now with a darker shade. The all-metal back features an intense marine color with a slightly lighter blue "G" in the upper left corner. The 8-megapixel rear camera is in the upper right corner, leaving the rest of the slab free of any embellishment.

However, the back of the Slate collects fingerprints and smudges, like my 10-year-old self-declared Pokémon cards, so do not expect the metal to stay blank for long. Nevertheless, it's a solid tablet that does not bend easily under pressure.

Uniform black frames surround the 12.3-inch, 3000×2000, 293ppi screen, leaving your fingers with enough space to grab the tablet in either portrait or landscape orientation. The display produces rich colors and a decent brightness (Google would not provide the maximum brightness of nits, but our colorimeter measured 362 nits at full brightness). It responds well to the touch and the stylus, but the viewing angles of the display are not the best: direct sunlight and light-flooded environments produce a lot of glare.

Two front facing speaker grilles are placed on both sides of the case and produce a correct sound regardless of the position of the Slate. While they fill my little desk with her, they would have a hard time keeping my entire living room busy. only my whole apartment.

The edges of the slates are smooth, rounded corners and the device is only 7 mm thick and weighs 1.6 kg. Google has blocked two USB-C ports on either side of the Slate, allowing you to charge the device comfortably, regardless of your power source. A headphone jack is missing on the Slate, as on the smartphone Pixel 3, which is a disappointing reality but not surprising. The Pogo pins on one of the longer edges connect to compatible keyboard cases, and a new fingerprint sensor is on the opposite edge.

The USB-C ports, although not Thunderbolt 3 compatible, also allow you to connect to devices and dongles, which allows you to import data from other sources and connect them to an external 4K screen (Bluetooth accessories like mice are also compatible). Unlike the "Files" iOS application on the new iPad Pro, the "Chrome OS Files" application allows you to access data stored on external drives connected via USB- C. You can drag and drop or copy files from such a drive to the Pixel Slate's built-in storage, or you can move them to your Google Drive storage if necessary.

While the Pixelbook stood out more from other Chromebooks (and certainly other laptops in general), Pixel Slate is more discreet. This is not a bad thing, especially because Google has still sufficiently infused its signature, cleanliness and modernity, into its design. Slate gives up metal accents, diamond-cut edges and whimsical design elements. Instead, it follows the Swedish concept of "lagom" or "just enough" (which, according to your personal taste, is excellent or terrible).

Biometrics and Pixel Imprint Fingerprint Sensor

The Slate is the first Chrome OS device to have a fingerprint sensor, called "Pixel Imprint". The operating system did not support the biometric connection before. Although the camera has an 8MP front camera, you will not find an infrared camera on the Slate (the front camera is primarily for Duo video calls). But a fingerprint sensor is better than nothing and its configuration requires the same repetitive movement of pressure and uplift at the top of the drive for a few minutes.

Once your fingerprint has been saved, you can use it to sign in to your Google Account just as you would on a MacOS or Windows device. With the player at the top of the power button, you can press and hold it to start the Slate. However, the fingerprint reader has a strange idiosyncrasy: you can not turn on the tablet and connect at the same time. Since the fingerprint reader and power button are the same as on the Huawei Matebook X Pro, you would think you can press and hold once to turn on the device and sign in to your account. But this is not the case: this will only turn on the device and display the traditional login screen that asks for your pbadword.

For the most part, you can only use your fingerprint to unlock the Slate screen, but you must first create a PIN code. While Chrome OS on Slate requires you to set up a fingerprint reader when you first set up the device, it does not ask you to create a PIN code to accompany your fingerprint and pbadword. However, you must enable the PIN login option or pbadword in your personal settings before you can use your registered fingerprint.

Windows Hello requires that you create a PIN code before registering a fingerprint, so this process is not unknown. However, I badumed that I could use my finger to connect to the Slate immediately after registering because I had not been asked to create a PIN. It is also disconcerting that your fingerprint may exit the device from sleep mode, but will not connect initially after power is turned on. When asked about this, Google explained that it was a security measure for its Made By Google devices (such as Pixel smartphones), designed to better protect the device from unauthorized connection attempts at startup.

Nevertheless, I am pleased that Google has finally brought fingerprint authentication to Chrome OS and its own Chrome OS tablet. It is long overdue and, combined with the Titan C chip inside the Slate, the device is overall more secure. Google has developed the Titan C chip specifically for Chrome OS devices, but the new chip essentially accomplishes the same tasks as Titan M chips in Pixel 3 devices. This means that it facilitates the secure boot process, by storing the latest version. Chrome OS and preventing other users from restoring your system to a less secure version. It also provides screen protection with connection retry limits, device encryption, and other security features.