The $500 Google Pixel Pill is a superb 11-inch pill with a long-lasting battery and Google’s newest processor, which permits it to capably deal with gaming, streaming media, and light-weight work duties. One of many Pixel Pill’s main promoting factors is an included charging speaker dock that turns the system right into a succesful little speaker and likewise helps you to management your good residence. (You should purchase a $400 model of the pill with out the speaker dock, however we advocate the bundle.) The Pixel Pill comes preloaded with Android 14 (the newest model) and can get Android 15 when that OS replace rolls out this fall. It’s the best-performing Android pill in day-to-day use that we’ve examined, and it’s obtainable at an awesome value—particularly while you issue within the dock.
It has a wonderful show. The Pixel Pill boasts a shocking 11-inch LCD display screen with a decision of 2560×1600. The Pixel Pill’s show produces vivid and punchy colours, and it affords wonderful viewing angles. Nonetheless, in portrait orientation the Pixel Pill’s semi-widescreen (16:10 ratio) design makes it really feel considerably lengthy and slender, not like the extra sq., 4:3 ratio discovered on Apple’s tablets. Consequently, the Pixel Pill is greatest utilized in panorama mode. (For those who’ve by no means used an iPad, this may not hassle you.)
The included dock turns it into a wonderful smart-home system. The Pixel Pill’s dock permits its standout function, Hub Mode, which transforms it right into a smart-home hub. You should use Google Assistant to manage smart-home gadgets similar to good lights, video doorbells, safety cameras, and thermostats with the up to date Google Dwelling app. You should purchase a pill with out the dock for $100 much less, and you should buy the dock by itself for $129, however the $500 bundle of each pill and dock is well worth the value.
The dock, which has a material shell manufactured from 90% recycled plastic, almost seamlessly picks up audio from the Pixel Pill—a track enjoying on the pill transfers to the dock’s speaker with solely a split-second delay. Although the Pixel Pill’s 4 built-in stereo audio system get fairly loud, they will sound tinny at most quantity. The dock provides a 43.5 mm full-range speaker that’s louder than the pill will get by itself and provides depth and additional bass to audio when the Pixel Pill is docked. With the dock, the Pixel Pill can simply replenish a medium-size room with music that sounds fairly good.
It’s light-weight and straightforward to carry. Weighing simply over a pound, the Pixel Pill is simple to make use of for prolonged intervals with none discomfort. Google claims that the outer shell is constructed with over 30% recycled supplies, whereas the inner body is 100% recycled aluminum. It additionally has a nano-ceramic coating, which helps to maintain it clear and reduces fingerprints, and its energy button doubles as a fingerprint sensor.
The Pixel Pill can simply deal with a number of duties and high-end gaming. It’s powered by Google’s customized Tensor G2 processor, which can be the chip present in our previous price range Android choose, the Pixel 7a. This highly effective processor permits the pill to deal with a number of duties with ease. The Pixel Pill has 8 GB of RAM, and in our testing, it performed high-end video games like Asphalt 9, Name of Responsibility: Cellular, Diablo Immortal, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge easily, even when the pill obtained pretty heat throughout extra intense gameplay.
It helps multitasking, a number of profiles, and different Android 14 options. The Pixel Pill comes with Android 14 preinstalled, bringing options similar to hands-free Google Assistant, dwell translations, voice typing, widgets, Materials You theme choices, privateness toggles, copy/paste throughout gadgets by way of Close by Share (Google’s reply to Apple’s AirDrop), and a Children House for child-friendly content material. You’ll even have entry to Google’s Circle to Search function and the Gemini AI Assistant. In contrast to the iPad and iOS, Android helps multi-profile accounts; this can be a massive benefit if you wish to share a pill with relations.
A very good variety of most-used apps look nice on the Pixel Pill. One of many greatest points we now have with Android tablets is how apps look on an even bigger pill display screen. Based on Google, greater than 80 apps had been optimized for the Pixel Pill at launch, although most of them are Google apps. Only some dozen third-party apps are optimized for the pill, however they’re fairly main ones: Disney+, ESPN, Hulu, Lumafusion, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Phrase, and WhatsApp all have Android variations that look nice on the Pixel Pill. Since its launch, Google has added extra optimized apps like Diablo Immortal, Adobe Lightroom, Peloton, Paramount Plus, and extra.
The battery life is nice. In our testing, the Pixel Pill’s 5,000 mAh battery principally lived as much as Google’s battery-life declare of 12 hours on a single cost. For those who’re watching movies with the show at full brightness or enjoying graphics-intensive video games, it gained’t final as lengthy. For the quickest cost, it’s best to use a 27 W USB-C charger as a substitute of the charging dock, which is proscribed to fifteen W.
The digital camera is first rate sufficient for video chats. The Pixel Pill has a superbly effective digital camera system with an 8-megapixel 1080p lens on each the entrance and rear. The digital camera software program affords commonplace Google photograph options similar to Night time Sight, Lengthy Publicity, and Portrait mode, but it surely doesn’t produce Pixel 8–high quality photographs and movies. Nonetheless, pictures come out clear and with minimal grain in enough lighting, which is nice sufficient for video chatting with family and friends.
Flaws however not dealbreakers
Stylus assist is proscribed. Based on Google, solely USI 2.0–compliant styluses are appropriate; the Lenovo USI Pen 2 and Penoval USI 2.0 styluses are among the many few that work with the Pixel Pill. We examined an Amazon Hearth Max 11 stylus, which labored simply effective, however in order for you a pill which you could draw or write on, the Pixel Pill is probably not proper in your wants.
