Pixel Tablet suddenly drops to new lower price – as Google drops the speaker dock

After Google's announcement of the new Pixel 8a affordable Android phone, there was an additional quiet reveal regarding the company's Pixel Tablet – namely that its pricing is now officially lower, in a drive to further appeal of this Android slate. 

The Google Pixel Tablet will now be available to purchase for £399 in the UK – which sees a massive £200 (that's one third) of the original asking price cut. The major difference, however, is that this new, cheaper Pixel Tablet arrangement comes without the speaker dock in the box. 

When I first reviewed the Pixel Tablet, however, I did muse that it was an expensive prospect and that not every customer would want a dock to position the tablet, nor a speaker to output enhanced sound. The original proposition was akin to one of the best smart speakers rather than a through-and-through slate, which delivered mixed messaging in my view. 

Sans the speaker dock, the updated Pixel Tablet proposition is no longer "half tablet, half home hub", but rather one of the best tablets money can buy – if you're specifically in the market for an Android tablet anyway. There's no hiding that the best iPads still show Apple's dominance in this market – which, to be fair, is why I think Google took a different tactic when first launching its slate. 

As an option to catch up on the best streaming services' shows, for example, the Pixel Tablet's 11-inch format makes for easy hand-holding, while the LCD panel's 1600 x 2560 resolution delivers rich and detailed images for whatever you're watching. 

It's not an OLED panel, however, so I suspect a future upgraded Pixel Tablet will be in the works for later this year, probably next though. That's something that we could, just maybe, find out about at Google's annual conference, called I/O, which is taking place on 14 May this year.