Ahead of the launch of the Pixel Tablet, one of the key selling points was that it would effectively be a detachable Nest Hub with much better hardware. However, after using it for a few weeks, I don’t think the Pixel Tablet is actually a better Nest Hub, despite everything that it does well.
With the Nest Hub, Google took the previously audio-only helpfulness of the Google Assistant and added visuals and a minimal touchscreen experience. In effect, anything you could do on a Nest speaker could also be done on the Nest Hub, and some things – like smart home management – became even easier thanks to the touchscreen. And when you weren’t actively using it, the smart display could serve as a clock, photo frame, or delightful weather indicator.
In many ways, the Pixel Tablet seems like a natural progression of the Nest Hub. While docked, the tablet can do almost anything (more on the exceptions in a bit) that a smart display can.
Want to Cast music or video from your phone to a larger screen/speaker? Easily done. Need to get some answers or control your music hands-free? Google Assistant is always ready. You also have much the same suite of screensaver options, including the beloved Weather Frog.
But instead of being a permanent fixture in a room, you can freely undock the Pixel Tablet and use it as a normal Android device. Instead of using simplified Google Cast apps and the built-in smart home controls of the Nest Hub, you can use full-fledged Android apps for things like Spotify, Disney+, and Google Home.
On paper, the Pixel Tablet looks like an obvious successor to the Nest Hub, but in practice, the reality is a bit more complicated.
For starters, there are things a Nest Hub can do that the Pixel Tablet simply cannot. If you own a Nest Doorbell – or certain other compatible doorbells – you can get an immediate chime and live camera feed on the Nest Hub when someone is at your door. By comparison, the Pixel Tablet doesn’t show the live video as you’d expect, requiring you to access it manually, but it will at least chime.
Other model-specific features are also missing from the Pixel Tablet, like the sleep-sensing capabilities of the Nest Hub (2nd Gen) and the Nest Hub Max‘s ability to serve as a security camera.
Then you have the things the Pixel Tablet does differently, for better or worse. On a Nest Hub or speaker, when asking for a timer and giving it a name – i.e., “Hey Google, set a cookie timer for 10 minutes” – the Assistant would use a thematic alert sound/song depending on the name. Baked goods get a riff on “The Muffin Man.” Pasta and pizza get a song inspired by Italy. Tea and coffee timers chime to “I’m a Little Teapot.” You get the idea.
On the Pixel Tablet, these timers are now handled by the built-in Google Clock app just as they would be on a phone. That sense of delight and whimsy is simply gone.
Worse, Quick Phrases – things you can say to the Google Assistant without saying “Hey Google” – are far more limited on the Pixel Tablet compared to on the Nest Hub Max. And the few actions that do remain – saying “Stop” when a timer goes off – are far less reliable than before despite the Pixel Tablet’s improved hardware. Where I could previously say “Stop” from across the room, I now need to be directly in front of and facing the tablet.
Top comment by jimmy cychowski
Our household is fully in the Google ecosystem, we have Nest speakers, through the house, a home Hub in the bedroom which we use as our bedroom audio playback machine, as well as alarm clock, and it's been a pretty great device, when we heard that Google had a Tablet, smart screen hybrid, we thought we should get one if it can do everything that the existing Home Hub does, so we wanted to get the Pixel Tablet to replace the home hub in the bedroom, however the whole Pixel Tablet package is let down from a poor decision by Google, in my opinion, the included speaker dock is useless if it's not docked to the Pixel Tablet, I can see many occasions when for example my partner would be using the Pixel Tablet with her Pixel Buds and I would want to stream say a podcast, or play news radio on the included speaker dock that came with the Pixel Tablet, however that is not possible, I'm I the only person who thinks this is a extremely stupid move from a functionality perspective, seems like it wouldn't have cost Google that much more in production costs to include the needed componentry to make this possible.
Luckily, many of the Pixel Tablet’s issues and differences could be fixed over time with future refinements and polish work from Google. Perhaps Google Clock could regain some of the whimsy of Google Assistant timers. Maybe a future Google Home app update would open your Nest Doorbell feed automatically.
That said, I believe these differences stem from the Pixel Tablet’s inherent lack of focus. When you get down to it, the Pixel Tablet is two separate things – an Android tablet designed for everyday use and a portal at the center of your smart home – and as made clear by the “Pixel” branding, the tablet is the priority. By comparison, the Nest Hub series was able to focus solely on being the best smart home companion that it could be.
So despite the many ways that the Pixel Tablet is obviously better than any previous Google Assistant smart display – between the crisp display, high-performance chip, and the power of a full Android tablet – the Nest Hub series is still undefeated in the smart home in my eyes.
Correction 8/21: We removed an erroneous reference to the Pixel Tablet lacking the “Ambient EQ” feature of the Nest Hub. These are available as “Ambient Brightness” and “Ambient Tone” in the Settings app. We apologize for the mistake.
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