If you have a smart home, you know how much thought goes into deciding which devices should go in a particular room.
Which room needs the best audio? Where will a smart display be easiest to actually see? How will guests react to a smart speaker positioned in the middle of your bathroom?
The decision is never easy. Each device within the Google smart home ecosystem has some notable pros and some equally notable cons.
However, if you’re drowning in smart devices like me, you don’t have to make the hard choice of adding one device to a particular room; you can just double up and put a smart speaker and a smart display in the same room.
That’s what I did, and my Pixel Tablet and Nest Audio have never been closer, both figuratively and literally.
The gaps in certain smart devices
No one device can do it all
I’ll be the first to admit that when I heard about the Pixel Tablet, I was elated.
The idea of having the tablet-smart display combo in one device was essentially science fiction when the first Google Home was released, which is how long I’ve been on the smart home bandwagon.
However, the device very much had that first-gen feeling. It had a lot of very cool features, but some clear gaps that make it less of an all-in-one smart home device than you’d expect.
For one, the Pixel Tablet dock — which turns it into a smart speaker as well as a smart display — does not work at all when the tablet is not attached.
Subsequently, every time your tablet is not on the dock, you can’t play music in the living room, you can’t play white noise in the bedroom, or you can’t set a timer in the kitchen.
So, whatever room you decide to put the Pixel Tablet in is being deprived of smart home functionality every time you actually use it.
For my situation, this was a dealbreaker.
For starters, I listen to white noise while reading in bed before going to sleep. I can’t do that with a Pixel Tablet.
My wife loves listening to music in the living room, but if I’m traveling and take my tablet for some in-flight entertainment, she’s out of luck.
If I’m using the tablet in the other room to knock out some emails and my wife needs a timer to know when to take dinner out of the oven, we could end up with a full-on fire in the kitchen, all because putting two smart devices in the same room seemed strange.
Smart devices together strong
Teamwork makes the dream work
Yes, putting two smart devices in the same room is strange, but when it works, it works. The Nest Audio and Pixel Tablet, in particular, work perfectly as roommates because they fill in each other’s gaps.
For one, you’ll never be left without a smart speaker in a particular room. Given the Nest Audio’s decidedly non-portal design, there’s no situation in which needing a tablet could impede your access to Google Assistant, or if you were lucky enough to get early access in October, Gemini.
On top of that, the Nest Audio has notably better audio quality than the Pixel Tablet on the dock. The Nest Audio features a 75 mm woofer and 19 mm tweeter, while the Pixel Tablet dock only offers a 43.5 mm full-range speaker.
If you’re not an audiophile, it basically amounts to a noticeably fuller sound and better bass by a substantial margin.
Also, you’ll have to disable one of the devices — probably the Pixel Tablet — from responding to your smart commands, otherwise you could end up Hey Googling yourself into an echo-y debate with your two smart speakers.
And we all know, there’s nothing worse than when your roommates gang up on you.
The Google smart home ecosystem
Plenty to choose from and more on the way
The Pixel Tablet and Nest Audio certainly aren’t the only smart home devices from Google, although they may be the two best suited to be in the same room.
Devices like the Nest Hub Max, Google TV Streamer, and many others can help inject a bit of smart tech into your otherwise unintelligent home.
Some serious upgrades are coming soon, too, with Google announcing the new Google Home Speaker, as well as revamping the Google Home interface and rolling out early access to Gemini for Home, which will see the popular AI model replacing Google Assistant.
It seems the AI evolution is finally coming to smart homes, which means now might be the best time to get on the bandwagon.
