Hands-on with Google’s Pixel C: It’s not a Surface, but it’s a start

I really wanted to like Google’s latest in-house gadget, the Pixel C. The anodized aluminum. The Pixel allure. The voice recognition that’s said to work from across the room.

But after taking it for a whirl today — composing a short document, browsing the Web, using Google Now, switching from one app to another, and opening, closing, flipping, sliding, and tapping it — I’m a little disappointed.

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With the keyboard attached magnetically, it didn’t feel as sturdy as a laptop. It felt like a glorified tablet. And I guess it is, because the keyboard is an optional add-on — just as the Smart Keyboard is a premium peripheral for Apple’s new iPad Pro. (Oh, and by the way, where is the Pixel Pencil?)

If you remove the glimmer, the Pixel C (which stands for convertible) is Google’s first-party entrance into the two-in-one market, a starting point for competing directly with Microsoft’s Surface tablets. But if you try out a new Surface, you’ll find that the keyboard isn’t jammed in. It fits. The whole thing — with a mouse pad! — feels like an integrated package. And you can run a lot of applications on a Windows desktop, while on an Android desktop, like the Pixel C, you’re more limited in what you can do.

Despite the novelty of sliding the Pixel C screen off of the keyboard and magically connecting it in an upright position, the device just doesn’t feel like a serious competitor at this point. It would be a nice thing to have on your desk to show people.

Maybe that’s okay, not only because Google can improve the device from here, but also because Google has so many other things it’s doing well. For instance, the Chromebook line — why the Pixel C is running Android instead of Chrome OS, by the way, I couldn’t tell you — is growing up, the average YouTube session on a mobile device is now 40 minutes long, and the Cardboard virtual reality platform already has hundreds of apps after coming out last year. You could make the argument that Google has earned the right to try its luck at a two-in-one.

At the very least, if you try the Pixel C, you will probably have to admit that it is built solidly on the outside. If you put it in your backpack, you won’t have to worry about the screen getting scratched, unlike a conventional Android tablet such as a Nexus 9. And you’d have to say that it’s cool you pretty much never have to charge the keyboard.

A member of the team that built the Pixel C encouraged me to try holding the thing open — at the prescribed 100-135 degrees — and turning it upside down. I went ahead and gave it a try. At every angle I worried that the screen would fall off of the keyboard. Fortunately, there was no accident.

While typing out a few sentences in Google Docs, I noticed some peculiarities in the keyboard, which is inspired by that of the Chromebook Pixel. Most importantly, the apostrophe key is a sliver of a piece of plastic. Both shift keys are smaller, as are the tab key and the typically delightful search key that’s in the place of the caps lock on Chromebooks. The enter key, for some reason, is vertical instead of horizontal. The freaking bracket keys are missing. These details drove me a little bit crazy.

Yes, it’s different from previous Chromebooks. Yes, it’s different from previous Android tablets. But do I want one for daily or even weekly computing? No.

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We’ll be getting a Pixel C for a formal review in the coming months. After I spend some more time on it, maybe I’ll change my mind.