Earlier this year Google launched its first Pixel Tablet with a unique twist. Here’s how it compares to the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S9.
With a handy wireless charging docking station included in the box, the Pixel Tablet is both a tablet and a smart home hub in one. The question is, is it enough to challenge the latest addition to Samsung’s popular S series?
Keep reading to learn more about how these two Android tablets compare.
The Galaxy Tab S9 has a 120Hz AMOLED display
The Galaxy Tab S9 has an 11-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a 120Hz refresh rate, which should offer a smooth scrolling experience across apps. The tablet could also benefit from some battery-saving benefits thanks to the AMOLED technology as it doesn’t require black pixels to be lit.
The Google Pixel Tablet, meanwhile, has a similar-sized and still very sharp 10.95-inch screen. However, Google has stuck with LCD display technology and the refresh rate is limited to a more average 60Hz.
The Google Pixel Tablet comes with a docking station
One of the standout features of the Google Pixel Tablet is the docking station that comes in the box.
The Charging Speaker Dock is a dock with a magnetic interface that the Pixel Tablet satisfyingly snaps onto. Once the Pixel Tablet is attached, the tablet will automatically begin charging and reroute any audio through the built-in speakers on the dock.
Attaching the tablet to the dock will also activate Hub Mode, essentially transforming the tablet into a smart home hub. This includes giving the user access to smart home controls through a slimmed-down version of Google’s Nest Hub UI.
The Galaxy Tab S9 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
The Galaxy Tab S9 benefits from the same powerful chipset found in the high-end Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy.
Samsung has hinted at major performance improvements between the last generation Ultra and the newer one thanks to the inclusion of this chipset, and we assume a similar trend will apply to the smaller Tab S9 as it carries the same processor.
The Pixel Tablet, meanwhile, runs on Google’s own Tensor G2 chip. This is a chipset with a heavy emphasis on AI as opposed to pure performance, so we wouldn’t be surprised if the Tab S9 surpassed it in benchmark tests.
The Galaxy Tab S9 packs a 13-megapixel better camera
One perk of the Tensor G2 is that it brings many of the great photo editing tools found on Google’s Pixel smartphones to its tablet. This includes the Magic Eraser, Night Sight and Photo Unblur.
However, the Google Pixel Tablet falls behind when it comes to camera quality – at least on paper. The Pixel Tablet has an 8-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel front camera, a pairing we found good for video calls and scanning documents but not on the same level as Google’s Pixel phones by a long shot.
The Galaxy Tab S9, on the other hand, has a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 12-megapixel front camera.
The Google Pixel Tablet is cheaper
One of our biggest issues with the Pixel Tablet was its UK price, which is strangely high at £599 despite only costing $499 (around £388) in the US.
Despite this, the Pixel Tablet is still the cheaper option compared to the Galaxy Tab S9, which starts at £799 in the UK.
