If you look at Black Friday and Cyber Week as a war fought between retailers — and there are worse analogies — one of the prime battlegrounds is tablets, with Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and a host of others slugging it out. The good news is, as the tech giants all fight each other’s prices lower and lower, we all win. Here’s one of those winning deals — the Google Pixel Tablet is on sale at Amazon for 38% off in a Black Friday deal, bringing this top-level Android tablet down to just $249.
This is the 11-inch model Pixel with 128GB of storage — the 256GB version is only 16% off thus far, so the smaller one is the superior deal — and it earns high marks across the board for streaming, surfing, video calls and conferencing, emailing, and more. If you have Google Smart Home devices or you’re considering taking that leap, however, the Pixel tablet really shines as a smart-home hub to control them all.
One Huge Happy Ecosystem
As extensive and easy the connection between the iPad and the wider Apple universe is, the Pixel’s interaction with the massive Google ecosystem might just have it beat. Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet, YouTube, and the rest of Google’s huge array of apps are all immediately and easily accessed with the Pixel Tablet. Seamless and virtually unlimited storage in Google Cloud Storage makes the Pixel’s smaller 128GB of built-in storage a moot point. Google’s physical products, including the Pixel Buds and smartphones, also make for easy linkups with the Pixel tablet — you can even copy and paste messages and photos from a Pixel phone to a Pixel tablet.
The newest members of the Google family are also prime selling points for the Pixel tablet — Gemini and Google AI. These artificial intelligence tools are outstanding on any device, with Gemini’s creative brilliance helping you write emails, brainstorm, summarize notes or Gmails, and more, and Google AI’s amazing ability to search anything from whatever app you’re using when you draw a circle around it.
Solo Superstar
Even if the Pixel was not a prominent member of the huge Google ecosystem, it would be an outstanding tablet on its own. The 11-inch display has 2560×1600 resolution and an anti-smudge coating, so its great for streaming, gaming, or videocalling. Three microphones and four speakers add to the interaction potential, along with the 8MP front camera with automatic lighting adjustments and the ability to keep you in the frame even as you move around the room. The robust 12-hour battery life counts even when you’re streaming or making video calls, and the split-screen tech lets you drag and drop apps for side-by-side multitasking.
The Google Pixel Tablet stakes a claim to being one of the very best Android tablets on the market, and the 4.5-star average rating from Amazon reviewers bears that out. With Black Friday pricing at Amazon bringing the Pixel Tablet down by 38% to just $249, it’s one of the better tablet deals we’ve seen thus far.
