Google doesn’t take prisoners when it comes to scrapping outdated services or products. The most famous recent example was Mountain View, which discontinued Google Play Music. The long-running service was discontinued when users were instead moved to the YouTube Music platform. And in the past few weeks, Google has again been ready to throw in the towel on other first-party offerings.
The Pixel Slate was first launched in October 2018 and is a 12.3-inch tablet that runs on Chrome OS.
Prices for the Pixel Slate at launch started at $ 599, and there were a number of cool features like pen support through the Pixelbook Pen.
However, less than a year after its initial release, Google announced that it would no longer develop the Pixel Slate line.
And two models that were in development were also scrapped.
Flash forward to 2021 and now, after the Pixel Slate was listed as out of stock for weeks in the US, Canada and the UK earlier this year, the tablet’s product list has been cleared.
The Google Store list for the Pixelbook pen has also been removed.
At the time of its release, the Pixel Slate received mixed reviews.
The Guardian rated the Pixel Slate positively, saying the Chrome OS tablet offers “a strong argument for the death of Android tablets.”
Well-known tech influencer Marcus Brownlee was less enthusiastic, however, calling his Pixel Slate review “that’s not the boss”.
For our part, Express.co.uk picked up the Pixel Slate at the time of publication.
And we weren’t overly impressed with our three out of five star rating.
In it we said, “There’s no question that Google made a decent tablet with the Slate, and it even has some features that you won’t find on an iPad.
“However, the outdated design, high price, and overall ease of use just can’t match the performance of the new iPad Pro.
“If it was massively cheaper than the latest Apple gadget, we might be forgiving of some of its flaws, but with some Slate models costing over £ 1,500, the iPad still rules the tablet kingdom.”
