Although the 2024 edition of Google’s I/O developer conference is only scheduled to kick off later today, the search giant has taken everyone by surprise last week to announce the two new hardware products we expected to see daylight this week. Of course, one of the two went largely unnoticed, as unlike the Pixel 8a handset, it looks pretty much identical to its 2023 predecessor.
We’re talking about a rehashed Pixel Tablet with a lower price point than last year generated entirely by the lack of a charging speaker dock. In other words, the “new” Pixel Tablet dropped the exact thing that made the “old” version stand out in a crowd of far too similar Android tablets. If you’re not comfortable with that compromise, you can always still buy the 11-inch slate alongside a handy dock, and if you hurry, you can do so at a huge $120 discount.
This hot new Woot deal appears to be completely unprecedented, mind you, beating everything retailers like Amazon and Best Buy have previously offered in terms of Pixel Tablet savings without obligatory trade-ins or any other strings attached. More importantly, the 24-hour-only promotion makes the Android-based iPad alternative cheaper with a dock than without one at the time of this writing.
That’s right, you’re currently looking at spending $379.99 on two products and 20 bucks more on just one, and as far as we can tell, there’s no logical reason to go for the latter buying option. Not with Amazon-owned Woot including a standard 1-year Google warranty with its deeply discounted Pixel Tablet units in brand-new, unused, unopened, and undamaged condition.
Even if you don’t think you necessarily need that dock to seamlessly transform your Android tablet into an Amazon Echo Show-rivaling smart display, you should still take advantage of this deal and keep the accessory around just in case. That’s basically cheaper than free right now, and who doesn’t like free stuff?
The Pixel Tablet, of course, is not exactly an iPad Air killer, but when pitted against a “normal” iPad 10, it looks pretty good, both on paper and in real-life use. That 10.95-inch screen is plenty sharp, the Google Tensor G2 processor fast enough for most day-to-day operations, and the four stereo speakers certainly loud and powerful enough to keep you entertained during your daily commute to work and even while travelling on longer distances for longer periods of time.