Following the death of Android tablets, Google has been slowly rebooting its tablet ambitions under the Chrome OS banner. After debuting the concept with the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, Google now has its first-party Chrome OS tablet hardware, the Pixel Slate.
The device has a more-than-passing resemblance to the Microsoft Surface or iPad Pro: there's a tablet, and a keyboard cover, and a pen. The tablet is an Intel-powered device with 4-16GB of RAM and a 3000×2000 display. Single USB-C ports are found on the left and right sides, and a pogo pin connection is on the bottom.
This is the first Chrome OS device to support biometrics—on the top of the device is a power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner. Inside, Google has a Titan security chip (originally designed for its cloud servers) to protect against various kinds of tampering and provide safe storage for secrets.
The back of the device doesn't do a great job of looking like a "Pixel" device. While the phones and the Pixelbook had a two-tone glass and aluminum design, the Pixel Slate is one solid piece of metal with only a "G" logo in the corner. It's a fetching blue color.
There are 8MP cameras on the front and back, and like a Pixel phone, Google is providing computational photography magic in the Pixel Slate. The company is making the Android Google Camera app work on the Pixel Slate, so you'll get bokeh effects and, hopefully, excellent-looking pictures. The front-facing camera has a wide-angle lens and larger pixels, optimized for video chatting. And for sound there are two front-firing speakers.