Pixel Slate review: Paying the “Google” premium for Chrome OS

Google spent a lot of time and effort trying to convince everyone that Chrome OS isn't just for laptops. The fruits of the company's labor have been slowly revealing themselves over the past year through software updates and the few Chrome OS tablets that are already available.

But Google officially ushered in the era of the Chrome OS tablet with its own Pixel Slate, which it announced last month alongside the Pixel 3 smartphone. The first Google-made tablet in three years is now available for purchase. And you can think of the Pixel Slate as a not-so-distant cousin of the company's premium Chromebook, the Pixelbook, in that it appeals to those who have chosen Chrome OS as their primary operating system and demand only the highest-quality hardware for it.

The Pixelbook, while certainly the most Googley Chromebook, has proven to be only one of the best Chromebooks available. Similarly, the Pixel Slate has a lot of things going for it—namely its chic design, support for powerful Intel processors, and a bunch of storage and memory—but it falls into the same traps as the Pixelbook did regarding productivity and price.