Err... if the lighting at that location was rather yellow and the camera's white balance was set accordingly, then every display would've looked blue on pictures...
A tablet made by people that make 200k per year ( or more) for themselves with complete disregard for what the market is and what the users need. Moronic AR for a tablet , huge bezels all around, demented price, outdated SoC .... and a cool keyboard that costs as much as a 9.7 inch Chinese tablet. Not that anyone is doing a better job at making tabs... How freaking hard is it to shrink the bezels all around, go with an AR that favors ALL content, set a sane price that users can live with and is competitive with other computing form factors and make sane hardware choices. Same PPI as a 5 inch 720p phone was cool 3 years ago. Tegra X1 when A72's era has started is lower high end, 3GB of RAM is cool and all but even some 90$ phones have 3GB today. Sure it's not as bad as the Surface but that doesn't mean it's not terrible. If Donald Trump would be a product designer instead of a politician (lol), he would make a better tablet.
The Surface Pro 3 that comes with a miserable GPU, barely adequate CPU, has constant wifi problems, and can't hibernate properly over a year after release?
Um, the entry level specs of a SP3 are still considerably better than any Android or iOS device. Perhaps you are thinking of the Atom based Surface 3?
And not sure what you mean about hibernate. Power management is different as of Win8, hibernation in the old school style is not the default sleep mode anymore, instead devices remain minimally powered until you do something with them. For that mode the SP3 works perfectly.
The Surface Pro that actually offers functionality beyond your phone worth carrying around a screen over 6 inches and has a CPU that apparently sets the bar for barely adequate so high that only a tiny subset of ARM tablets are even adequate. That Surface Pro 3.
Yup, Microsoft is currently dumping Surface Pro 3's with I-3 CPU and 128 GB SSD's for exactly the same price as the 64 GB pixel. MS's keyboard is also $20 cheaper. So for somone who is looking for an alternative to a laptop, I can't see why they would choose the Pixel.
Ugh! Don't waste your money. The new model starts at $899 without a keyboard, and uses the M3 which is much weaker than the A9X used in the iPad Pro. The Pro 3 is even worse with the old i3.
Who cares about the iPad Pro, it is just a toy. Now I can play Angry Birds even faster. You can't even adjust the angle it sits at when you use it with a keyboard.
And yet both chips are entirely adequate to enable the huge variety of use cases that justify the Surface line and indeed modern tablets beyond the oversized phones not worth a price tag outside the bargain bin.
Seriously?!? This is THAT expensive for you? Are you living in Uganda, or merely so cheap that you survive off complimentary condiments?
500$ for a quality piece of hardware is by no means out of reach even for people who make 30-40K a year.
Just forgo one of the POS 400$ AMD laptops you're gonna go get, and get this instead.
Or get a second hand iPad, since that option offers the most bang for the buck.
I suspect you're trolling, since the rest of your comment is just too stupid to take seriously: From the 90$ 3GB cellphones you're describing, to your critiquing one of the fastest CPU/GPU combinations currently in the market.
Don't get me wrong, good trolling attempt, but next time try a little less hard...
Oh, and FYI: The bezels are there to make it more comfortable. I don't know how troll fingers would work on a tablet, but us humans tend to need a spot to put our thumb on. Bezels that are too thin also makes swiping uncomfortable.
The Pixel C is very expensive for what it provides because it's a very lopsided product. It's a very high quality oversized phone with a very high quality keyboard, but at the end of the day it can do what phones do and that's it. A Surface, even a Pro, justifies its price better by making much better use of its large screen to open up a huge variety of and by being very thin and light for an actual solution to all use cases (as opposed to the tablet and laptop Mac fans seem to love carrying around).
It's yet another Google release of an expensive premium variant of something with such limits to its possible uses that the hardware is wasted on making it too expensive for what it can do.
X1 is outdated? Seriously, what shipping A72 SOC are you referring to? Outside the A9X the X1 is as good as it gets right now. In other words, on Android the X1 is as good as it gets right now.
As for the PPI, it's a tablet. This may come as a shock to some people, but modern tablets have far lower pixel density than modern phones. This isn't exactly a new paradigm we're dealing with here. The PPI is fine, it's in line with other recent high-end tablets.
Agree that the price is pretty high though, both the tablet itself and keyboard accessory. Unfortunately tablet accessories in general are usually really expensive for what they are, keyboards in particular. They're trying to compete at the high-end, but apparently they don't know how to do that. Their products were more compelling and successful when they just avoided the high-end market altogether.
Wow, had no idea that thing even existed. I have to admit the results are pretty disappointing. The GPU performance is terrible, like you said, and the CPU performance isn't much better than the A57, certainly not anywhere close to enough to render the X1 "outdated". I realize the results are limited (only geekbench) but it doesn't look promising from a performance standpoint. When I first saw the single-core results I just assumed that the A57's in the X1 were clocked higher, but nope, they're both 2 GHz. Overall the A72 scores 5% higher, but there's actually about a 5% regression in integer performance. There must be some sort of a bottleneck on that SOC... right? I mean, I realize the A72 is supposed to improve efficiency, but with practically no improvement in IPC? If so it's going to be totally obsolete vs 2016's lineup of custom ARM v8 cores.
I'd very much like to know which aspect ratio it is that favours ALL content, like you say. You obviously have the answer, so I truly hope you'll share it with the world.
On the other hand, you just might be one of those oddballs that insists that 16:9 (or 16:10) is perfect no matter the content - something that is patently false, as shown by the success of the iPad, the shape of all kinds of paper, and the fact that most people buying 27" WQHD displays today do it for the extra VERTICAL resolution. Outside of movies, games and videos, on displays smaller than 27", widescreen is a very, very bad fit.
For tablet use cases, something along the lines of 3:2-4:3 seems to be the best compromise.
Exactly. The 16:11.25 aspect ratio of this tablet is pretty close to ideal for many purposes. A4 paper which is used around the world (all but US and Canada) is 16:11.31, so this tablet is almost exactly paper sized. That makes this tablet close to the perfect aspect ratio for working on things like Word documents. The US paper aspect ratio of 16:12.36 isn’t that far off from this screen either so it'll do decently well without too much wasted screen space on US Word documents (a lot better than most other tablets).
The great thing about a screen that is close to A4 paper aspect ratio, is that you can put two applications side-by side and they don’t change their look at all (you just switch the tablet from to portrait to landscape). Two 16:11.31 aspect ratio programs side-by side are also at a 16:11.31 aspect ratio. So, this is really great for having two Word pages open at once. Or maybe a PDF on the left and the document you are working with on the right.
Thus, 16:11.3 aspect ratios are as ideal as they can be for productivity. It also matches closely to with any 4:3 content, for which there is a ton, so it isn’t terrible for video either.
I would agree with the other comments that relative to the price tag, the tablet is not a very good value at all. It needs to offer far more.
Looking at the benchmarks, I'm actually kind of disappointed by the SOC too. If the early tests are correct, the Apple A9X looks vastly superior (and I had to admit this as an Android enthusiast). The A9X GPU may be as much as 20-25% more powerful and as far as CPU single threaded performance goes ... it's a pretty one way slaughter.
I'd really like to see someone try to make a good competing SOC and ideally, make stock AOSP available for the device (allowing for sources that companies like Samsung don't, which prevents more AOSP based ROMs).
For the money, I'd like at least 4GB of RAM if not more (even newer phones like the Note 4 ship with this) and the screen had better be near-perfect.
Even then though, it's hard to justify the price tag. I wonder if someone (likely Xaomi with it's affordable MiPad) offers a better value.
I was sure that a constrain version of X1 in a tablet was much slower than Android TV. This is the real true about X1 and Nvidia big proclaims as usual.
So it dropped about 15%, or looked at another way, it doesn't quite *double* the speed of the same priced iPad Air 2 as seen in the Pixel C- roughly 20% *faster* than the Surface Pro 3 too. Since this is the same price or cheaper than these other devices, and it beats them in the order of 20%-90%, I'd say the SoC is rather dominating.
Really? For you a SOC dominating is just GPU wise? CPU wise is slower than K1 and no mention iPhone 6S and iPad Pro. GPU it's ok but not as fast as Android tv. iPhone 6S is very close to X1 in GPU GFX Bench Pixel C version. Again I don't want to mention the IPad pro...you did mention it anyway no me. I was only telling that you find the true of the chip when you compare apple with apple.
No I haven't as if you can have the energy to check GFX bench at 1080p bench, all the devices are running same resolution. Moreover usually a chip on tablet has less constrains than a phone...dont you think?
Multi core scores it beats either one of the K1s, single core it loses to the Denver based K1, overall it is still faster CPU wise. Vs the iPadPro the Pixel C is ~20% faster on 3DMark while the iPadPro is ~60% more expensive. On the CPU side the iPad Pro scores quite a bit higher on the single core tests, slightly higher on the multi core tests. Even if we focus solely on the CPU side, it isn't remotely close to warranting a ~60% price premium- that is an even larger disparity when you factor in that the significantly more expensive iPadPro flat out loses on the GPU side.
The iPhone 6S has decent single core performance and fairly solid multi core- it gets *smashed* in GPU benches by the Pixel C- it isn't close. For the record, I didn't mention the iPadPro in my first post, I mentioned the SurfacePro 3 which was mentioned earlier.
You want to pick apart the Pixel C I can see a lot of areas that you could make a case. The SoC isn't one of them. What SoC could Google possibly have used that was better? I would like to see a link with some numbers for any SoC Google could have gotten their hands on that would have been better.
You as many others unfortunately keep posting 3D Mark Ice storm as reference where if you can find some website with proper explanation you will see that it's a old bench using OpenGl ES 2.0 with a poor resolution of 720p. Moreover the total score is based also on physics score as well, in which the Apple's products were never fast. I would instead looking at GFX Bench at 1080p with Open Gl ES 3.0 and more to be close to reality. Go and check yourself the result and you see where the IPad Pro is. If you want to do it of corse otherwise stick with your dogma.
For the record I was only saying that if people think that the version of X1 in the tablet would have same performance of Android tv then would be very much disappointed. If you want to compare GPU of the iPhone 6S, IPad air 2 and Pixel C thats what you get:
40fps Iphone6S, 43 fps Ipad Ipad Air 2, 53fps Pixel C - Manhattan 1080p.
An extra $100 for just 32gb of on board memory? I dont see mention of microSD either. Maybe its just an oversight in the table. But 100? COMMON APPLE. Oh wait, its not apple. Its the company that makes fun of them doing what they do, overcharging us for $10 of hardware.
Kinda curious that they elected not to make this part of the Nexus line, in name at least... Either a lack of confidence on it or just some short sighted view that the Pixel brand has just as much recognition at this point.
Could've just called it the Nexus Pixel or something... Not that I care much either way, I actually like the AR and hardware but I'm not paying $500+ for a tablet running a mobile OS anytime soon. The functionality is just not there...
I say that as someone who uses his phone for way more than he should too, but on a device that large I expect better window management, better keyboard integration with actual key combo shortcuts, etc.
They keep building these interesting tablets with cool keyboards then they let it down in software/UI. Meh... I had an OG Transformer and I've played a lot with a N9 I gifted, FWIW, only using a N7 as a tablet right now.
I just got mine yesterday and am typing this on it. Overall I like it. Going to skip the comments on build quality or android that everyone seems to make. I tend to buy and use a lot of mobile devices. This isn't a conventional review just some things that I noticed.
1. It's really, really, really, snappy. Apps switch quickly, pages load quickly, apps start quickly. This is subjectively very noticeable. 2. The keyboard is the most usable tablet keyboard I have ever used. It quickly made my nexus 9 with keyboard seem like a joke, better than the transformer tablets as well. I can type about as fast on a laptop, but I wouldn't try coding on it due to the missing esc, and brackets, and software. Google made the right choice by using full size keys. 3. I'm not impressed with the screen. Nothing wrong with it, it's a great screen, but I'm used to this, it's a minor upgrade over the nexus 9. 4. It's basically an android laptop. Going to be using this for a while for some laptop needs. if tablets keep moving in this direction they will replace laptops. I don't think we are there yet, but this shows that we are close. 5. I'm ambivalent about the price. $500 used to be the going rate for a high end 10" tablet. Even Apple has lowered the price on the air(never would have happened under Jobs). I do prefer to pay more though and get a better product. Seems a little steep though.
I don't think that the power of the Nvidia Tegra K1 would be utilized fully with Android. Seeing as this is a productivity tablet, it would help a lot if it can run a full fledged photoshop or something similar. Unfortunately, that is not available in android. The os is the limitation really, only if it has Windows os or other full pc os, it would be a different story. The surface pro 4 can really do better in terms of productivity, being a windows 10 tablet and having faster raw performance http://versus.com/en/google-pixel-c-vs-microsoft-s... (at least in some of its variants).
And, at the end of the day, it still doesn't have a micro-SD slot....so I have no interest in it. I know, I know, Google's doing that to promote its "cloud" service. Doesn't mean I'm interested in outside storage, or, for that matter, will always have access to WiFi, so I can store to or retrieve from their cloud.
Hell, even the el-Cheapo $50 base level Amazon Fire tablet has a memory card slot now!
The lack of a micro SD slot is a slight annoyance, but you don't need a special otg cable with USB type c, so just grab a cheap type c male to type a female adapter and keep a thumb drive handy. You can swap out files quickly. It's not a elegant of a solution as an internal micro sd slot, but it's better than nothing. The tablet's design, materials, and horsepower more than make up for it.
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osxandwindows - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
who is this tablet for again?boozed - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
You're going to need to be less obtuseIntervenator - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
I'm with OSX on this one.kgersen - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link
mainly for Googlers so they can test & tweak the new features for Android on it.melgross - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
This got an absolutely terrible review on Anandtech today.http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/pixel-c-rev...
melgross - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Oops! I'm so used to linking to Anandtech, I used their name here.Obviously, I meant ArsTechnica.
kurahk7 - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
No surprise. Even in the picture above, you can see how cool/blue the display is.Dobson123 - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Err... if the lighting at that location was rather yellow and the camera's white balance was set accordingly, then every display would've looked blue on pictures...ImSpartacus - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Damn, I really want Android tablets to stop sucking so SoC makers have a solid platform to do some really cool things.It's like, there's A9x and maybe X1 and...
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Table lists 802.11a/b/g/n while the text lists ac as well. Guessing the table needs to be updated?Brandon Chester - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Yup. Sorry about that. It's 2x2 802.11ac.ruthan - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
No LTE modem again?ImSpartacus - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Android tablets probably don't sell enough to justify the extra SKU.jjj - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
A tablet made by people that make 200k per year ( or more) for themselves with complete disregard for what the market is and what the users need.Moronic AR for a tablet , huge bezels all around, demented price, outdated SoC .... and a cool keyboard that costs as much as a 9.7 inch Chinese tablet.
Not that anyone is doing a better job at making tabs...
How freaking hard is it to shrink the bezels all around, go with an AR that favors ALL content, set a sane price that users can live with and is competitive with other computing form factors and make sane hardware choices.
Same PPI as a 5 inch 720p phone was cool 3 years ago. Tegra X1 when A72's era has started is lower high end, 3GB of RAM is cool and all but even some 90$ phones have 3GB today.
Sure it's not as bad as the Surface but that doesn't mean it's not terrible. If Donald Trump would be a product designer instead of a politician (lol), he would make a better tablet.
Mushkins - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Seriously, for $599 this is nuts. You can get the lowest model Surface Pro 3 for only $30 more.V900 - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
The Surface Pro 3 that comes with a miserable GPU, barely adequate CPU, has constant wifi problems, and can't hibernate properly over a year after release?That Surface Pro 3?
Reflex - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Um, the entry level specs of a SP3 are still considerably better than any Android or iOS device. Perhaps you are thinking of the Atom based Surface 3?And not sure what you mean about hibernate. Power management is different as of Win8, hibernation in the old school style is not the default sleep mode anymore, instead devices remain minimally powered until you do something with them. For that mode the SP3 works perfectly.
xthetenth - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
The Surface Pro that actually offers functionality beyond your phone worth carrying around a screen over 6 inches and has a CPU that apparently sets the bar for barely adequate so high that only a tiny subset of ARM tablets are even adequate. That Surface Pro 3.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
Yup, Microsoft is currently dumping Surface Pro 3's with I-3 CPU and 128 GB SSD's for exactly the same price as the 64 GB pixel. MS's keyboard is also $20 cheaper. So for somone who is looking for an alternative to a laptop, I can't see why they would choose the Pixel.cknobman - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link
Soooooo you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.Great post though ;)!
melgross - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Ugh! Don't waste your money. The new model starts at $899 without a keyboard, and uses the M3 which is much weaker than the A9X used in the iPad Pro. The Pro 3 is even worse with the old i3.Speedfriend - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Who cares about the iPad Pro, it is just a toy. Now I can play Angry Birds even faster. You can't even adjust the angle it sits at when you use it with a keyboard.xthetenth - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
And yet both chips are entirely adequate to enable the huge variety of use cases that justify the Surface line and indeed modern tablets beyond the oversized phones not worth a price tag outside the bargain bin.id4andrei - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
The A9x is not faster than Core M Broadwell, let alone M3. You meant to say it's faster than Atom.lucam - Friday, December 11, 2015 - link
Its much faster than Core M Broadwell, in CPU and GPU wise.V900 - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Seriously?!? This is THAT expensive for you? Are you living in Uganda, or merely so cheap that you survive off complimentary condiments?500$ for a quality piece of hardware is by no means out of reach even for people who make 30-40K a year.
Just forgo one of the POS 400$ AMD laptops you're gonna go get, and get this instead.
Or get a second hand iPad, since that option offers the most bang for the buck.
I suspect you're trolling, since the rest of your comment is just too stupid to take seriously: From the 90$ 3GB cellphones you're describing, to your critiquing one of the fastest CPU/GPU combinations currently in the market.
Don't get me wrong, good trolling attempt, but next time try a little less hard...
Oh, and FYI: The bezels are there to make it more comfortable. I don't know how troll fingers would work on a tablet, but us humans tend to need a spot to put our thumb on. Bezels that are too thin also makes swiping uncomfortable.
xthetenth - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
The Pixel C is very expensive for what it provides because it's a very lopsided product. It's a very high quality oversized phone with a very high quality keyboard, but at the end of the day it can do what phones do and that's it. A Surface, even a Pro, justifies its price better by making much better use of its large screen to open up a huge variety of and by being very thin and light for an actual solution to all use cases (as opposed to the tablet and laptop Mac fans seem to love carrying around).It's yet another Google release of an expensive premium variant of something with such limits to its possible uses that the hardware is wasted on making it too expensive for what it can do.
dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
X1 is outdated? Seriously, what shipping A72 SOC are you referring to? Outside the A9X the X1 is as good as it gets right now. In other words, on Android the X1 is as good as it gets right now.As for the PPI, it's a tablet. This may come as a shock to some people, but modern tablets have far lower pixel density than modern phones. This isn't exactly a new paradigm we're dealing with here. The PPI is fine, it's in line with other recent high-end tablets.
Agree that the price is pretty high though, both the tablet itself and keyboard accessory. Unfortunately tablet accessories in general are usually really expensive for what they are, keyboards in particular. They're trying to compete at the high-end, but apparently they don't know how to do that. Their products were more compelling and successful when they just avoided the high-end market altogether.
syxbit - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
The A72 is shipping in the $100 Fire TV 4k.Benchmarks show the CPU is faster than X1. But GPU is much worse
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/amazons-201...
dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Wow, had no idea that thing even existed. I have to admit the results are pretty disappointing. The GPU performance is terrible, like you said, and the CPU performance isn't much better than the A57, certainly not anywhere close to enough to render the X1 "outdated". I realize the results are limited (only geekbench) but it doesn't look promising from a performance standpoint. When I first saw the single-core results I just assumed that the A57's in the X1 were clocked higher, but nope, they're both 2 GHz. Overall the A72 scores 5% higher, but there's actually about a 5% regression in integer performance. There must be some sort of a bottleneck on that SOC... right? I mean, I realize the A72 is supposed to improve efficiency, but with practically no improvement in IPC? If so it's going to be totally obsolete vs 2016's lineup of custom ARM v8 cores.syxbit - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
One thing that's' interesting is that the Fire TV SoC is a dual core A72. So it loses on multi-threaded to X1.Valantar - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
I'd very much like to know which aspect ratio it is that favours ALL content, like you say. You obviously have the answer, so I truly hope you'll share it with the world.On the other hand, you just might be one of those oddballs that insists that 16:9 (or 16:10) is perfect no matter the content - something that is patently false, as shown by the success of the iPad, the shape of all kinds of paper, and the fact that most people buying 27" WQHD displays today do it for the extra VERTICAL resolution. Outside of movies, games and videos, on displays smaller than 27", widescreen is a very, very bad fit.
For tablet use cases, something along the lines of 3:2-4:3 seems to be the best compromise.
dullard - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Exactly. The 16:11.25 aspect ratio of this tablet is pretty close to ideal for many purposes. A4 paper which is used around the world (all but US and Canada) is 16:11.31, so this tablet is almost exactly paper sized. That makes this tablet close to the perfect aspect ratio for working on things like Word documents. The US paper aspect ratio of 16:12.36 isn’t that far off from this screen either so it'll do decently well without too much wasted screen space on US Word documents (a lot better than most other tablets).The great thing about a screen that is close to A4 paper aspect ratio, is that you can put two applications side-by side and they don’t change their look at all (you just switch the tablet from to portrait to landscape). Two 16:11.31 aspect ratio programs side-by side are also at a 16:11.31 aspect ratio. So, this is really great for having two Word pages open at once. Or maybe a PDF on the left and the document you are working with on the right.
Thus, 16:11.3 aspect ratios are as ideal as they can be for productivity. It also matches closely to with any 4:3 content, for which there is a ton, so it isn’t terrible for video either.
CrazyElf - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
I would agree with the other comments that relative to the price tag, the tablet is not a very good value at all. It needs to offer far more.Looking at the benchmarks, I'm actually kind of disappointed by the SOC too. If the early tests are correct, the Apple A9X looks vastly superior (and I had to admit this as an Android enthusiast). The A9X GPU may be as much as 20-25% more powerful and as far as CPU single threaded performance goes ... it's a pretty one way slaughter.
I'd really like to see someone try to make a good competing SOC and ideally, make stock AOSP available for the device (allowing for sources that companies like Samsung don't, which prevents more AOSP based ROMs).
For the money, I'd like at least 4GB of RAM if not more (even newer phones like the Note 4 ship with this) and the screen had better be near-perfect.
Even then though, it's hard to justify the price tag. I wonder if someone (likely Xaomi with it's affordable MiPad) offers a better value.
lucam - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
I was sure that a constrain version of X1 in a tablet was much slower than Android TV. This is the real true about X1 and Nvidia big proclaims as usual.BenSkywalker - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
X1 in the Pixel C clearing 40K in 3DM IS U-http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/08/google-pixel-c-...
vs 47K in Shield TV
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9289/the-nvidia-shie...
So it dropped about 15%, or looked at another way, it doesn't quite *double* the speed of the same priced iPad Air 2 as seen in the Pixel C- roughly 20% *faster* than the Surface Pro 3 too. Since this is the same price or cheaper than these other devices, and it beats them in the order of 20%-90%, I'd say the SoC is rather dominating.
lucam - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Really? For you a SOC dominating is just GPU wise? CPU wise is slower than K1 and no mention iPhone 6S and iPad Pro.GPU it's ok but not as fast as Android tv. iPhone 6S is very close to X1 in GPU GFX Bench Pixel C version. Again I don't want to mention the IPad pro...you did mention it anyway no me. I was only telling that you find the true of the chip when you compare apple with apple.
chakrila89 - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
So you're comparing the GPU to a phone that has to push half the pixels and a set top box with active cooling?chakrila89 - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
Actually a quarter of the pixels. Misread.lucam - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
No I haven't as if you can have the energy to check GFX bench at 1080p bench, all the devices are running same resolution.Moreover usually a chip on tablet has less constrains than a phone...dont you think?
BenSkywalker - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Multi core scores it beats either one of the K1s, single core it loses to the Denver based K1, overall it is still faster CPU wise. Vs the iPadPro the Pixel C is ~20% faster on 3DMark while the iPadPro is ~60% more expensive. On the CPU side the iPad Pro scores quite a bit higher on the single core tests, slightly higher on the multi core tests. Even if we focus solely on the CPU side, it isn't remotely close to warranting a ~60% price premium- that is an even larger disparity when you factor in that the significantly more expensive iPadPro flat out loses on the GPU side.The iPhone 6S has decent single core performance and fairly solid multi core- it gets *smashed* in GPU benches by the Pixel C- it isn't close. For the record, I didn't mention the iPadPro in my first post, I mentioned the SurfacePro 3 which was mentioned earlier.
You want to pick apart the Pixel C I can see a lot of areas that you could make a case. The SoC isn't one of them. What SoC could Google possibly have used that was better? I would like to see a link with some numbers for any SoC Google could have gotten their hands on that would have been better.
lucam - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
You as many others unfortunately keep posting 3D Mark Ice storm as reference where if you can find some website with proper explanation you will see that it's a old bench using OpenGl ES 2.0 with a poor resolution of 720p. Moreover the total score is based also on physics score as well, in which the Apple's products were never fast.I would instead looking at GFX Bench at 1080p with Open Gl ES 3.0 and more to be close to reality. Go and check yourself the result and you see where the IPad Pro is. If you want to do it of corse otherwise stick with your dogma.
For the record I was only saying that if people think that the version of X1 in the tablet would have same performance of Android tv then would be very much disappointed.
If you want to compare GPU of the iPhone 6S, IPad air 2 and Pixel C thats what you get:
40fps Iphone6S, 43 fps Ipad Ipad Air 2, 53fps Pixel C - Manhattan 1080p.
Smashing, isn't ?
HideOut - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
An extra $100 for just 32gb of on board memory? I dont see mention of microSD either. Maybe its just an oversight in the table. But 100? COMMON APPLE. Oh wait, its not apple. Its the company that makes fun of them doing what they do, overcharging us for $10 of hardware.Brandon Chester - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
It has no MicroSD slot.Impulses - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Kinda curious that they elected not to make this part of the Nexus line, in name at least... Either a lack of confidence on it or just some short sighted view that the Pixel brand has just as much recognition at this point.Could've just called it the Nexus Pixel or something... Not that I care much either way, I actually like the AR and hardware but I'm not paying $500+ for a tablet running a mobile OS anytime soon. The functionality is just not there...
I say that as someone who uses his phone for way more than he should too, but on a device that large I expect better window management, better keyboard integration with actual key combo shortcuts, etc.
They keep building these interesting tablets with cool keyboards then they let it down in software/UI. Meh... I had an OG Transformer and I've played a lot with a N9 I gifted, FWIW, only using a N7 as a tablet right now.
kron123456789 - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
The question is - does this thing support OpenGL 4.x as Nvidia Shield Android TV or it'll be like Nexus 9?lucam - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
It seems so as it can run GFX Car chase bench and for doing that it must have the support of Open Gl 4.xkron123456789 - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Android version of Car Chase uses OpenGL ES 3.1 + AEP.lucam - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Sorry, you are right. I was confused by the name GFXBench 4.0lucam - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
Talking about IPad Pro....when will the review? be :)Lolimaster - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
$150 for a keyborad WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F*KLolimaster - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
So no SD card slot, fail. I want a tablet to read my manga collection 1.41 aspect ratio was nice.ol1bit - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link
Save a few hundred and get a SHIELD TABLET K1.mpalczew - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link
I just got mine yesterday and am typing this on it. Overall I like it. Going to skip the comments on build quality or android that everyone seems to make. I tend to buy and use a lot of mobile devices. This isn't a conventional review just some things that I noticed.1. It's really, really, really, snappy. Apps switch quickly, pages load quickly, apps start quickly. This is subjectively very noticeable.
2. The keyboard is the most usable tablet keyboard I have ever used. It quickly made my nexus 9 with keyboard seem like a joke, better than the transformer tablets as well. I can type about as fast on a laptop, but I wouldn't try coding on it due to the missing esc, and brackets, and software. Google made the right choice by using full size keys.
3. I'm not impressed with the screen. Nothing wrong with it, it's a great screen, but I'm used to this, it's a minor upgrade over the nexus 9.
4. It's basically an android laptop. Going to be using this for a while for some laptop needs. if tablets keep moving in this direction they will replace laptops. I don't think we are there yet, but this shows that we are close.
5. I'm ambivalent about the price. $500 used to be the going rate for a high end 10" tablet. Even Apple has lowered the price on the air(never would have happened under Jobs). I do prefer to pay more though and get a better product. Seems a little steep though.
jb958 - Friday, December 11, 2015 - link
I don't think that the power of the Nvidia Tegra K1 would be utilized fully with Android. Seeing as this is a productivity tablet, it would help a lot if it can run a full fledged photoshop or something similar. Unfortunately, that is not available in android. The os is the limitation really, only if it has Windows os or other full pc os, it would be a different story. The surface pro 4 can really do better in terms of productivity, being a windows 10 tablet and having faster raw performance http://versus.com/en/google-pixel-c-vs-microsoft-s... (at least in some of its variants).marvdmartian - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link
And, at the end of the day, it still doesn't have a micro-SD slot....so I have no interest in it. I know, I know, Google's doing that to promote its "cloud" service. Doesn't mean I'm interested in outside storage, or, for that matter, will always have access to WiFi, so I can store to or retrieve from their cloud.Hell, even the el-Cheapo $50 base level Amazon Fire tablet has a memory card slot now!
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link
To think, google went on and on about how android 6 was way better for sd card use, then refuses to use it in any of their products.oRAirwolf - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link
The lack of a micro SD slot is a slight annoyance, but you don't need a special otg cable with USB type c, so just grab a cheap type c male to type a female adapter and keep a thumb drive handy. You can swap out files quickly. It's not a elegant of a solution as an internal micro sd slot, but it's better than nothing. The tablet's design, materials, and horsepower more than make up for it.xiixexe - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
Surface Pro 3 - i3 128GB is on sale for $599 + $129 SP4 type cover. I don't see why I would buy this over a PC for productivity.rubene66 - Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - link
Is their going to be a full review?