Google has made the Pixel Tablet a much more tempting proposition, and fixed one of its core issues. Here’s how.
The Pixel 8a has just been unveiled, but that’s not the only exciting announcement from Google. We also learned that its somewhat awkward Pixel Tablet is being repackaged and repositioned.
Scroll down Google’s blog post on the launch and you’ll see that “Starting today you can also pre-order the Pixel Tablet without the Charging Speaker Dock for $399”. That applies to the UK too, where it now costs £399 sans Charging Speaker Dock.
That’s a £200 / $100 saving on the previous package price for a product that is, let’s face it, a pretty basic Android tablet at heart.
This move was widely predicted, as we reported around a fortnight ago. It’s extremely welcome, nonetheless. As you can see from our original 7 out of 10 review, we liked the Pixel Tablet, but found its positioning as a hybrid tablet/Nest Hub Max to be unnecessarily restrictive and not wholly convincing.
Divorced from that Charging Speaker Dock (which can still be bought separately for £139), we can now focus on what it is – a keenly priced mid-range Android tablet with a sharp 10.95-inch and the cleanest UI this side of an iPad.
Talking of which, the newly positioned Pixel Tablet unfortunately runs smack bang into a repriced iPad (10th gen), which has just permanently dropped from £499 to £349. Google’s tablet just can’t catch a break, can it?
