Performance & Battery Life

As far equally ARM devices are concerned, the Google Pixel C is incredibly powerful, thanks to the Nvidia Tegra X1 SoC inside. This fleck hasn't appeared in many other widely available devices, and is the fastest SoC Nvidia has released, packing an 8-core CPU (4x ARM Cortex-A57s at one.9 GHz, plus 4x ARM Cortex-A53s) and an impressive 256-core Maxwell-based GM20B GPU at up to 1000 MHz.

The Tegra SoC is 64-bit capable and congenital on a 20nm process, and it's connected to 3 GB of LPDDR4 RAM via a 25.half-dozen GB/due south piping. There'south also either 32 or 64 GB of internal NAND with no selection to add a microSD carte du jour slot. A USB Type-C port, equipped with USB 3.i, allows you to connect extra storage to the Pixel C if need be.

For connectivity, the Pixel C is equipped with Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/m/n/ac on both 2.four GHz and v.0 GHz bands with 2x2 MIMO support, also as Bluetooth iv.1. The tablet doesn't support LTE connectivity, and at that place's no GPS or NFC like you occasionally find in competing devices.

In general use, the Pixel C is a very fast tablet, but I wouldn't necessarily draw it as faster than an iPad Air or other loftier-end ARM-based tablets. Apps load apace, browsing the spider web is fluid, and I had no issues editing documents in Google Docs. With the right apps at your disposal, light video and photo editing is possible, and functioning in these tasks is very good.

Considering the Surface Pro four is a much more versatile device, with the ability to multi-task and run full Windows apps, it isn't completely fair to compare it to the Pixel C despite both devices including keyboard accessories. Only if you were interested in operation differences, the Intel Core i5 models of the Pro 4 are faster to utilise in nearly circumstances where comparisons can be made, such as intensive web browsing and light photograph editing.

In general, though, Android's inherent capabilities and choice of third-political party apps is more than restrictive for productivity workloads than the operation of the Pixel C'southward Tegra X1 SoC. The device is capable of pretty much annihilation y'all throw at it, but so you just can't throw that much, at least at this phase in Android'due south life.

In games, the Pixel C flies thank you to the integrated Maxwell GPU. Even though the Pixel C'due south display packs four.6 million pixels, game performance was first-class, even in the nigh intensive titles. 1000 Theft Auto: San Andreas, for instance, runs poorly on some devices with the graphics cranked to the maximum. On the Pixel C, the game runs smoothly, fifty-fifty after an extended flow where GPU throttling would normally kick in. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, some other title that some devices struggle with, runs very well on the Pixel C.

The merchandise-off for bully performance is increased heat output. The Pixel C'south superlative left corner, which is presumably where the SoC is located, gets quite hot during extended gaming sessions. It never heats up to the betoken where it burns yous, but it certainly gets uncomfortable to touch on for long periods. Thankfully the Pixel C's hot spot is not in a location I naturally impact while belongings the device.

Let's take a look at how the Pixel C stacks upwards in some benchmarks.

The Pixel C features a 34.2 Wh battery, which is larger than similarly-sized tablets like the iPad Air 2 (27.viii Wh) and Milky way Tab S2 (22.3 Wh). In terms of bombardment size, the Pixel C compares quite favorably to larger "Pro" tablets like the iPad Pro (38.8 Wh) and Surface Pro four (39 Wh) when factoring in the smaller display.

I had a lot of trouble benchmarking the Pixel C's battery life due to several software bug, but in general I institute the bombardment life to be very good, certainly ameliorate than my Galaxy Tab S2. Fifty-fifty while just playing a game like Fallout Shelter on the Pixel C, I could get upwards of five hours of life, which is great for high-performance usage of a tablet.