Google Pixel C review: A brilliant tablet, limited by Android

Storage

Unsurprisingly for a Google-produced tablet, there’s no microSD card storage available here – the company wants you to think the future is in the Cloud, after all. That means choosing between either 32GB or 64GB of built-in storage at the point of purchase, depending on how much content you want to carry around with you when there’s no internet connection.

Camera

Google’s default camera app has a few more features from when it first appeared on the Play store, but it’s irritating that the shutter button appears at the top of the screen when holding the tablet in portrait mode. You could flip it 180 degrees, of course, but then your hand will be covering the camera. The live view isn’t all that great either, often showing scenes as overexposed when you press the shutter.

^ Outside, the Pixel C struggled to expose the scene correctly – it’s too dark near the bottom, but overexposed in the sky

^ Indoors, with lots of light, the Pixel C manages to capture a reasonable amount of detail – although colours are washed out

The actual images captured by the 8-megapixel sensor look more true to life, at least, although there’s still quite a lot of noise, even in well-lit conditions, and it struggled to capture both light and dark areas. An HDR mode would have helped here, but there’s no option for that here. Detail is reasonable, even indoors when there’s not a lot of natural light, but it struggles to focus in really low-lit scenes. It’s by no means a bad camera, but the combination of basic features and mediocre live view mean you’ll be better off with your smartphone camera for anything other than video calls.

Conclusion

The Pixel C is a powerful, long-lasting and beautifully built tablet, with a keyboard dock to match. For occasional typing, single task working and multimedia playback, it’s an excellent device. At £399 (plus £119 for the keyboard) it’s only slightly more expensive than the Xperia Z4 Tablet, but is a much nicer device overall. If you’re looking for something less expensive, but still very capable, then the Nexus 9 can still be found through various online retailers.

Whether Android is ready for laptop use is questionable, however, and the lack of multitasking definitely hurts it in comparison to Apple’s iPad Pro. Stock Android and stellar performance will be enough for many, and the possibility of official multi-window support in a later update might make this a more functional productivity device further down the line, but right now it’s an expensive, albeit stunning, device that’s no better value than the competition.