The demise of the Google Pixel Tablet shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone

OPINION: Rumours have been swirling online this week about Google’s Pixel Tablet lineup, with claims that we likely won’t be seeing a Pixel Tablet 2 or Pixel Tablet 3. 

This, according to an anonymous source who spoke to Android Authority, is down to “concerns that the company would lose money on it”.

Is anyone really that surprised given the state of the first-gen Pixel Tablet that graced the desks of many around the world at release in 2023? I’m certainly not. 

To say that the Pixel Tablet was a device out of its time is somewhat of an understatement. Launching in the same period as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 and OnePlus Pad, the Pixel Tablet looked comparatively dated in its design, with a thick bezel and a look more reminiscent of the early Pixel smartphones. 

It was also lacking in power compared to similarly priced Android tablets, packing Google’s own Tensor G2 chipset that was already over a year old by the time the tablet was released. 

It was my opinion then, and remains now, that this was very much a tablet that was first conceived in the mid- to late 2010s and, for whatever reason, it took longer than Google expected to get it right. Rather than redesigning the tablet to better reflect the state of the tablet market in 2023, Google essentially said ‘let’s just get it out of the door and see what happens’.

Now, the hybrid nature of the Pixel Tablet – half tablet, half smart screen when docked to its speaker mount – meant Google had a bit of leeway with the overall look. After all, other smart displays like the Amazon Echo Show 8 have similarly chunky bezels and a rather simplistic look, but the execution was also flawed here. 

That’s mainly down to the hybrid speaker dock that the Pixel Tablet magnetically attaches to when not being used as a tablet, and specifically, the audio quality on offer. 

I’m not expecting Sonos-level audio quality, but considering its premium price tag, I was surprised when I heard just how poor the output was while my colleague Max Parker was reviewing the system at the Trusted Reviews offices. So much so that I’d initially assumed that it wasn’t the dock playing music, but the tablet itself. I was wrong.    

The sound quality was just bad, I’m not quite sure there’s another way to put it. The sound lacked any kind of bass, meaning you likely won’t play music on it as you might with a regular smart display, with notable distortion when attempting to play bass-heavy tracks. To me, it equated to the sound you’d get from a knock-off Bluetooth speaker you’d find for about £30 at a Sunday market. 

Max also noted in his review that, rather ironically given Google’s success with similar Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max smart screens, the Pixel Tablet smart screen experience wasn’t that feature-rich. 

He pointed out that Home integrations aren’t that straightforward to access, and that “you’re often pushed out into the main Android interface” when using it in its docked mode. It also lacks features like facial recognition offered by other Google-branded smart displays. 

So, it wasn’t a very good tablet, nor was it a very good smart screen. That could’ve been forgiven had it come with a budget-friendly price tag like Amazon’s Echo range, but that also wasn’t the case. Instead, Google went in the complete opposite direction, especially in the UK where it cost £599 at launch compared to a slightly more affordable $499 in the US. 

For a Pixel Tablet 2 to do well, the whole system would need a complete redesign – and is it really worth it? 

Considering we’ve not really seen much in the way of smart displays released in 2024, the market may not be there for Google to cash in on, especially with the no-doubt-expensive R&D costs associated with turning the current Pixel Tablet into a more competitive product in both the tablet and smart screen markets. 

I loved the idea of the Pixel Tablet, but the execution was flawed, and I think the writing has been on the wall since it was first released – this week’s rumours are just confirmation of that.