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Google held its annual hardware event on Tuesday morning in New York City, showing off a host of new devices for your home, your ears, and your pockets.
The company unveiled the latest Pixel phones—we’ve long known those were coming, thanks to leaks—as well as some new smart speakers, smart earbuds, and a new Chromebook.
The star of today’s show was Google’s flagship handset. This year’s Pixel comes in two sizes: the 5.7-inch Pixel 4 and the 6.3-inch Pixel 4 XL. Gone is the fingerprint sensor, which has been replaced by a face-unlock feature. And like other top phones this year, the Pixel also gains a square camera module on the back. Nestled within that quadrilateral are two lenses—a wide-angle and a telephoto—but, as has always been the case with the Pixel’s camera, the software is more important than the hardware. The Pixel’s camera sees improvements to Night Sight, Super Res Zoom, and Portrait Mode. It also gains dual exposure controls to better capture shots in tricky lighting.
The other big change in the Pixel is the way you control it. Google has added a faster voice assistant and support for gesture controls, so you can now snooze an alarm or skip a song with a wave of the hand. The $799 Pixel 4 and $899 Pixel 4 XL go on sale today, and ship on October 24. Read more about the new phones in Lauren Goode’s report.
The first generation of Google’s Airpod-contenders sounded fine, if you could get past the many frustrations of getting them to work properly. Pairing was a mess, some features only worked with Pixel phones—even turning them off was overly complicated. The newly announced Pixel Buds (yep, the name stays) aim to be the refresh that fixes all that. Onstage, Google didn’t go into much detail about the fiddly mechanics of pairing devices—the headset won’t ship until next spring—but the changes the company did highlight seem intended to make the Buds more functional. The new earphones are fully wireless, rather than connected by a cord like before. The Bluetooth connection has also gotten a boost; Google says it will work through three rooms in a house, or across an entire football field outside. Unfortunately, battery life isn’t exactly great: 5 hours, with 24 hours of charging in the case. It’s about the same amount as Airpods, but still nothing special.
One good part about the original Pixel Buds was their Google Assistant integration, which returns for the next-gen earbuds. It’s a useful feature, allowing you to get notifications beamed straight into your external auditory meatus or to use Google Translate in real time. Pixel buds have always had a lot of potential. Let’s just hope that now they work right.
The Pixelbook was the first Chromebook that felt kinda like a real computer. It had some problems running basic apps, but in theory the specs behind it were powerful enough to manage far more than the basic tasks of other Chromebook models. The goal of the new Pixelbook Go seems to be to realize that potential. Some of its specs are downright high-end: an optional 4K display, an Intel i7 processor, and up to 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. It’s also got a 12-hour battery, two USB-C ports, a headphone jack, and a weird ribbed rubber bottom for better grip. At a starting price of $649 (that’s without the 4K screen and high-end specs), it could be the Chromebook that convinces you to move fully into the cloud.
Google’s Home products have undergone a change in branding. Now grouped together under the Nest moniker, the new devices are part of an effort to unify the Home and Nest product lines. For simplicity’s sake, it makes sense.
This new generation of Nest Mini is $50 and makes some small but meaningful changes to the Mini format. Google has pumped up the volume on the Mini, making the audio both louder (and bass heavy) and of better quality. A home intercom function lets you ping other Minis throughout the house, so you don’t have to get up to talk to your family members. It works kind of like a phone, too, so you can make calls from the Mini. Or, if you’re away, call your connected devices and beam your voice throughout the home.
The Mini also comes in new colors, and Google made a point of noting that all the Mini fabrics are made of recycled plastics.
Google Wi-Fi—sorry, Nest Wi-Fi now—are beacons of connectivity that spread internet around your house in a nonhierarchical “mesh.” Place the little dollops throughout your living space and they extend the reach and strength of your wireless connection. It’s the same technology concept that powers Amazon’s Eero devices.
Google has redesigned and updated its mesh network router lineup. The Nest Wi-Fi Router and Point make up a two-part connectivity system, with the Router blasting out a signal and one or more Points helping to spread it around. The Point also has a smart speaker in it, so you can talk to it (and the Assistant) just like a Nest Mini. Google says most homes should be covered by the $269 two-pack, but if you have a McMansion, you can get a three-pack for $349. The Nest routers are available November 4.
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