After more than a year of teasers and leaks, theGoogle Pixel Tablethas finally launched and is now on sale. The dual-purpose device wants to serve not just as a conventional tablet, but also a rudimentary smart display while plopped on its charging dock. The transition between the two states isn’t always smooth, though, and that’s particularly the case when youuse Google Assistantvoice controls for interactions. Let’s dive into where this falls apart.
One device, two interfaces
Maybe the best way to describe the Pixel Tablet is one device that offers two almost fully separate interfaces. As long as you’re not docking it, for all intents and purposes it’s a bog-standard tablet running Android 13. When you use the Pixel Tablet in this state, there really is nothing confusing about the way it works. It has the familiar Pixel lock and home screens, the notification shade with its media player, and supports regular voice commands as you know them from your Android phone — complete with the option to open apps and use App Actions.
Hub Mode vs. tablet mode
When you dock it and leave it to itself, the Hub Mode kicks in. This essentially turns the Pixel Tablet into a stripped down Nest Hub-like device with a media slideshow and a voice control-first mode. You can mostly use this interface like you would on a regular Nest Hub — cast media to this screen, tap the playback buttons, and press volume controls as you would on your smart display, or use your voice to do these things.
The Pixel Tablet’s Hub Mode definitely can’t compare to a normal Nest Hub, though. For one, it doesn’t support Continued Conversations, a staple Google smart speaker feature that lets you easily ask follow-up questions without having to repeat “Hey Google” over and over again. The mode also doesn’t have any of the usual shortcuts that you access by swiping from the edge of the Nest Hub screen. you may only swipe through images from your slideshow, view the current time and weather, or tap a Google Home shortcut next to the clock. It’s a stripped-down experience, but it does the trick.
Things get complicated and messy when you start mixing the Android tablet side of things with the Nest Hub-like controls.
Controlling music playback: A case study
The easiest way to explain why operating the Pixel Tablet can get so confusing is with an example. When you want to play songs from YouTube Music on your docked Pixel Tablet using a voice command, it will pull up a picture-perfect copy of the Nest Hub’s music player interface. When you then unlock the tablet, you can still control your music via the media player in the notification shade (or via voice commands). However, youcan’topen the YouTube Music app on your home screen to seamlessly browse your library and check out suggestions. Nor is there any way to add to the currently playing queue — tapping play in the Android app will instead start anewaudio session that’s completely separate from the one you started in Hub Mode.
The Nest Hub-like Now Playing screen vs. the Android app
This leads to a few problems. On YouTube Music, you can’t manipulate the queue you started via voice at all. You can override it with a new casting session from your phone, but that also means that your currently playing song is interrupted. Things are a little smoother with YouTube and Spotify, which allow you to connect to the Pixel Tablet without starting a different video or song, and use your other device as a controller.
Hub Mode as an app
A look at the multitasking overview makes clear what’s going on with this two-fold playing experience. The music you’ve started in Hub Mode lives in an app of its own called “Chromecast built-in.” This means that when you start a media session via voice while in Hub Mode, the content is not coming from the app on the device itself, but rather straight from the server, like it would on a Chromecast or Nest Hub. On a technological level, this makes sense, but as a user interface, this firewall between tablet apps and voice-controlled Hub Mode playback is confusing, and needlessly frustrating for users.
The one advantage to this approach is that you don’t need to download a whole fleet of Android apps to use your services. When Netflix is connected to your Google account already, for example, and you only ever watch content on it while the tablet is docked, starting playback via voice, you don’t need to install the app on the tablet.
That’s not how most people will go about it, though. We’ve been conditioned to install all the apps we expect to want to use. This firewalled approach, separating the Hub Mode from tablet mode, is confusing and makes it more difficult to discover more music or films.
Voice commands when docked
Things get even more complicated when you use voice commands while your tablet isunlocked, but still docked. Google Assistant then completely ignores Hub Mode and pulls data right from your Android apps. When you use the tablet in this mode and tell it to play some music, it will start playback in your YouTube Music Android app, not in “Chromecast built-in” or Hub Mode.
This means you can use the same voice command (like “Hey Google, play some music”) to invoke two separate activities, depending on whether your device is unlocked or in Hub Mode. You can even see both of these activities from the same streaming service in the notification shade’s media player, by swiping left and right between them.
This mess gets even more complicated when you unlock your tablet and access Hub Mode (or Chromecast built-in) via the Recents overview, where it shows you the media that is currently playing. This visual experience is identical to the one you get when your tablet is locked and in Hub Mode. However, Assistant behaves differently here. Since youunlockedthe tablet, it will treat your device like an Android tablet. When you ask it to play some other music in this state, it will pull its data from the Android YouTube Music app, rather than the Chromecast built-in or Hub Mode that’s currently in view. You will probably rarely run Hub Mode in this state, but it’s a weird oversight in any case.
The problem itself extends beyond quirky use cases like this, though. It starts with simple things like starting a YouTube video in the YouTube Android app while docked, then pausing and leaving the tablet unattended until it locks and throws up the Hub interface. When you then return to your tablet and say “Hey Google, play” to resume what you were watching, it will start the YouTube video in question with audio only, with the Hub Mode interface in the foreground. (At least this happens when using YouTube Premium — I’m not sure what would happen without Premium, but I don’t think it would work any better.) You have walk up to the tablet and unlock it again if you want to keep watching.
Why can’t the Pixel Tablet’s Hub Mode simply always serve as a player interface for the Android apps that work in the background? Or at the very least, why isn’t there an option for this? This is how other Android devices handle voice commands, too. The Nest Hub interface might as well remain reserved for casting sessions only. From a user perspective, there is no reason why voice commands should sometimes pull up Android apps and sometimes the cast interface, no matter whether the device is in Hub Mode or not.
The firewall isn’t in place for everything
What’s worse is that the strict separation of Hub Mode Assistant and tablet mode Assistant isn’t in place for everything. Timers are a good example here. When you set a timer while in Hub Mode, you’re able to control this same timer from multiple places: the Hub Mode interface, your notification shade, and even the Pixel Tablet’s Clock app. As far as I can tell, this is the case for all Clock actions, including alarms and the stopwatch.
This proves that it is possible for Hub Mode to pull data straight from the Android side of things. I just wish this were the case for more services. It almost seems like despite all the time that the company had left to optimize the Pixel Tablet after it first teased it, Google either couldn’t overcome technical hurdles surrounding this problem, or didn’t think this was a problem that needed solving.
This may be the weirdest inconsistency in the experience, but it’s far from the only one.
The limits of voice control
Many people use Google Assistant to open apps on Android. Doing that while the tablet is in Hub Mode isn’t really convenient. When you try, Google Assistant will happily tell you that it’s opening some app, but you always have to use your fingerprint to finish the action — this makes sense when you’ve set up your lock screen. However, I tried to remedy this issue by turning on location-based Smart Lock, which keeps the Pixel Tablet unlocked on my profile while I’m home. Using Smart Lock, Google Assistant will just push me to the lock screen upon asking for an app and then, when I swipe up, it doesn’t open the app in question at all. It’s as if Google didn’t think of the possibility that someone might use Smart Lock with their tablet.
I originally wanted to use this “open app” voice shortcut as a workaround for the inconsistencies, thinking it would allow me to just open a random app and then use the Android version of Google Assistant. Given that I can’t get this to work, it looks like there is no simple way to access the Android Assistant without physically touching the tablet. (I didn’t attempt to remove my screen lock altogether, since I don’t want to use a device withoutanysafeguards in place — a very poor security practice in any case.)
Now, I recognize that many people will likely leave PIN and fingerprint authentication firmly in place, even on a shared device like the Pixel Tablet, but those of us who have no issues sharing their devices with other household members (or those who have a dedicated household Google account for shared devices) are left with a non-functional workaround.
The Pixel Tablet offers some great ideas with poor execution
This all shows that the tablet software and the Hub software don’t work together nicely, and even when they sort of do, it’s unpredictable chaos. Why can’t I control music playing on YouTube Music via the actual YouTube Music app on the tablet? And why is that possible for timers? Why is opening apps such a hassle in Hub Mode?
If you want to have a consistent Google Assistant experience, the Pixel Tablet isn’t for you. But if you just need some basic support for voice controls while it’s docked and will normally just use it as a tablet, this problem might not even affect you all that much, and the device might still be a good fit for you — though it’s still much more expensive than comparable products in the form of iPads and other Android tablets.
Google Pixel Tablet
The Google Pixel Tablet’s software may be inconsistent, but it’s still by and large a great home-first tablet. Once you get over the voice control quirks, there is a lot to like about it.
