The Pixel Tablet: A Versatile Smart Display

The Pixel tablet is an excellent addition to any smart home, offering a range of features and functionalities that make it an ideal display for your living space. One of the most useful features of this device is its ability to ring the doorbell and show who's at the door on the tablet itself. With the Nest doorbell integration, you can easily check who's at the door without having to leave the comfort of your couch. Simply ring the doorbell, and the camera will display a live feed of the person at the door, allowing you to see who it is before deciding whether to answer or not.

However, there is one major issue with this feature - it currently does not work as intended. Even on the home screen, the Add a Glance feature fails to show who's at the door. But don't worry, this is an easy fix. With a few taps of the display, you can quickly switch between different modes and features, including the weather app. Speaking of which, the Pixel tablet's weather app is truly impressive. You can access 10-day forecasts, hourly updates, and even watch live videos of your favorite weather conditions.

One thing that would make this experience even better is having customized favorites in the Google Home app for devices on the Pixel tablet. When you adjust your settings on your phone or other Pixel tablets, it should automatically update to reflect changes on this device as well. However, if you have multiple devices with different layouts and features, you might find that some options don't quite work as intended.

Another feature that's currently missing from the Pixel tablet is the ability to automatically adjust what you see when it detects your motion. While there are third-party apps available for Android that can achieve this, it's not a built-in feature of the device. But don't worry - with a little creativity and some outside-the-box thinking, you can still customize your experience.

For example, Reed from Smart Home Solver has created a video showcasing how to use an app called Kiosk Browser to customize your Pixel tablet display and integrate it with Home Assistant. With this setup, the device can automatically switch between different modes, such as displaying a home dashboard when you walk into the room or switching to a screen saver when you leave.

But what really sets the Pixel tablet apart is its versatility. Unlike other smart displays on the market, this one stays in place and serves as a multi-purpose display that can be used for everything from watching videos to playing games. And with a full charge, it's always ready to go, so you can simply pick it up and take it with you wherever you need it.

Of course, all of these features come at a price - the Pixel tablet is significantly more expensive than other smart displays on the market. But if you're looking for a device that can seamlessly integrate into your daily life and offer a range of features and functionalities, this might be the perfect choice for you.

In conclusion, the Pixel tablet is an impressive piece of technology that offers a wide range of features and functionalities. While it may not have all the bells and whistles just yet, its versatility, speed, and customization options make it an excellent addition to any smart home. Whether you're looking for a device to display your favorite photos or videos, control your smart devices, or simply provide entertainment for family members, the Pixel tablet is definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday I'm going to test out using a pixel tablet as a wallmounted display to control my Google Home Smart home now some of the benefits of doing this is it keeps it higher out of the way from the kids and then it's just easier to access and if I ever need to use the tablet I can just simply pop it off the wall and it will be fully charged now I'm going to do this with the mount Genie wall mount now I've actually done this before with my Google Nest Hub and that was great but some of the benefits of using the pixel tablet is it's much faster and then like I said I'll be able to remove it from the wall if I ever need to and use it and then it's just going to have a nice big bright display right here and I can quickly get to all of my controls to control my Google smart home so the first thing we're going to do is cut a giant hole into the wallet to get this set up now first I need to decide on the height now I kind of like it up here where I simply just reach my hand out and I can interact with the display so it's going to look something right there I need to make sure that I'm not going to run into any studs so you need to get a stud finder to find that and then we're going to trace the pattern to cut the hole now this is honestly the only wall mount that I could find for the pixel tablet but I think it's going to be perfect for this experience so in here you have all the instructions and here it also comes with an extension cable if you need to Route the cable through the wall here it comes with a pattern that we can use and then this is what we will Mount into the wall that the tablet dock will actually Mount to it comes with an adapter so that you can have this be powered over power over ethernet and some clips to mount the bracket into the wall now before I cut anything I'm just going to to test with the mount so this is where I would want to have the bottom of the display right there so I can kind of get an idea of where that's going to be and then I know okay about right here is where the line is and here I just need to make that level and trace it out and make sure you don't overcut now I am installing this on a temporary wall just because I wanted to test it out before I cut another hole somewhere else in the house so the only difference here is going to be the sound possibly when I have the dock up here and let's cut that out now that we've cut out the hole the next thing we need to do is Route a cat cable here so here I have that installed now we're going to add the mount so we just need to Simply slide this on and push it in looks like I'm going to take out just a little bit more and there we go very carefully fitted in and now we're going to attach two metal backers to the bottom and to the top this will lock it into place if of course it wasn't quite as tight we're now going to add our Poe splitter and here we're going to use the included Poe adapter once you have the power cable or the adapter plug in now we're going to slide in the mount and we need to make sure that this is put over the top it's going to take a little bit of work to do that there we go I was able to get it in without adjusting anything now let's plug in the cat cable to the poe adapter now it is recommended to use poe+ or Poe Plus+ now not that you'll ever see this side but I just wanted to mention over here if you do have some drywall here this will hit it just a little bit so it might be a little harder to fit in you may need to at that point find an adapter that turns this or you might need to even just route the regular cable through the wall which I believe is up to clode but I have no idea I'm not an electrician and the dock turned on it does have a boot sound so we can know that works and here on the pixel tablet I am using the pixel tablet case so it should just magnetize right onto here and be able to charge through there that fits on great now there is a bit of a gap here behind so that I am able to easily pop off the tablet when I need to and the tablet was dead when I put it on and there you can see it did turn on and it looks like I need to upgrade my switch to poe+ because it is charging it got powered up up to 3% but here it keeps stop charging and charging again so I'm going to fix that right now we'll just plug it into the wall now that we have the wall mount installed I'm going to go to the dock and change the room that it's in now here it's currently in the studio but but I'm going to move it into the basement and that allows it to know it's docked here and can change the lights in this room all right now that mve that so now I can use my voice commands hey Google turn off the lights and that turned off the lights in the room turn on the lights and right now I have it set to after 15 seconds it will automatically go to the lock screen we can see our pictures and everything and then if I just want to LLY control certain devices in the home I can just tap on the home controls here for the Google home app and there I can simply turn off the lights and here when the lights are off and the device goes to sleep then there is a night mode it can go into where it is showing the clock on screen and I can wake it up to tap the display tap home and adjust my devices now here when using Google's pixel tablet case if you don't align it perfectly there may be times when it isn't charging or it does disconnect but most of the time it charges no problem now without the case it looks great it locks on a little bit better but there is the concern if you don't talk it properly or somebody bumps it incorrectly it could fall off so you may need to be careful about that now after the tablet has been mounted and charged up a little bit I've been playing with it and I think this is actually pretty awesome now to really make this useful this is where we can totally customize what the tablet can do so first up we're going to change the Hub screen so when it's docked this is what it shows shows down here you can quickly go to those Google home controls but we're going to unlock this and we are going to pull this down and go into the settings of the tablet and go to HUB mode and here we have screen saver so right now I just have it set to Art Gallery so it's going to show these random pictures but we have a few options here depending on what you want if maybe you just want to show your Google photos you can come in here to Google photos maybe you just want a really big clock so here if we go into the full screen clock we have a few options we have Eclipse we have Prime handcraft and the Retro flip and here let's start with the prime we're going to go in and customize that so you can choose light mode dark mode or you can have it automatically change based on the time of day I think that's great and now let's lock it to see what that's like so there you go it's during the day there we can quickly see that from across the room and I like how it even made the temperature outside a little bit brighter so I can see that easily let's try dark mode here here we have Eclipse again we can change light dark automatic and so on let's go ahead and choose dark mode for this one and there you can see really big across the room that works any any time you T tap the screen to go to the home screen here we have handcraft little more stylized but not as big of a clock and here we have a retro flip let's go ahead and turn it to dark mode right now really big numbers but you do not get the temperature on this screen and here from across the room no problem seeing what time it is so that's how you can customize the clock let's go ahead and choose a Google photo screen saver and see what that looks like and so here we have the standard picture frame with the time and the weather down there no way to really customize those then there's also an option for weather so if you just want to have a big clock that shows the weather here you can do that so it's going to have this animated display that is really cool so it's raining outside right now so there again time and weather and then here you also have the option to choose weather frog so this a really fun animated weather frog that can show you what the weather is outside and again time and temp down there but it might be a little bit harder to see from farther away so there you go and then you have some other additional controls here if you don't want to see home controls you do have the option to turn that off and for now I'm going to go ahead and stick with the weather option okay great and so that is how you can customize the home screen now if we want to customize the Google home app where we can see the controls that we want if we go in here we can then go and open the full app you will need to unlock your device and in here we have the option to choose what is on this screen so scrolling down to the bottom we have the option to reorder or we have the option to edit so here I can turn on and off if I'm going to broadcast see Google Assistant um here I have some routines that I might want to enable and then here we can see custom other cameras and different lights from different rooms so here I have a camera I have the lights in this room here I can even have the basement Dock and the curtains so scrolling through through here I can find more lights that I might want to quickly and easily control all right from the lock screen so let's go ahead and choose the basement stairs and so on so we're going to tap save there and now it has moved everything around and so with this I can easily adjust different lights so here if I want to change the brightness of the basement lights I'm able to just drag on there I can tap to turn on and off just like that so then here under favorites one more thing we can do is re order so if there's something that's down at the bottom and you always want to control it and it's not currently at the top you can just simply drag it up there so I want to make sure that the basement lights are up here so I always have access to that and other cameras um let's see I can turn on certain cameras and have them up there as well so let's go ahead and do that and we can tap save so now that is customized now another thing you can do is quickly control many devices in the home right from the top here so if I want to go into the cameras I can now see a camera feed of all my different devices in my home that are currently accessible um on the Google home app so some of them are turned off or something so that's why they're not showing on here but that's great if I want to adjust all the lighting in the home I have an option to easily turn off and on it would be really cool if you could make this as like your home screen now it would be really cool if you had certain widgets for some of these buttons but that's not available you could use what is called action blocks to do some of that here I have full room so if I want to turn off all the lights in the basement I can tap basement turn those off if I want to turn those on I can do that and then I have individual lights I can control so I can hold down on the light I can adjust the brightness of the light and I can change the color right down here so you have access to everything without even using voice on the pixel tablet so lots of customization in the Google home app here I can go in and see the settings of my Wi-Fi see how everything's performing here it's showing different climate controls so I can turn on fans I can adjust my thermostats and so on and then you would tap on devices and here you can see all the rooms in your home so here I have my lights outside I can then tap and it will turn those lights on and off outside if I want to go to a different room I'm able to do that and I can quickly and easily control all the devices in the home right from here that works pretty great and then you can quickly adjust automations and other things so I think that's really cool you have a lot of function there um if you just unlock it and go fully into the Google home app now another thing that we can customize is the home screen here so this is going to be done with widgets and just putting apps on the screen so just like any other tablet you can go in here to the app section and drop apps that you want quick access to there so if I want to check out my Nest cameras I can go into here and it's going to show me just my Google Nest cameras so that's nice next I want to see if I can add any widgets that might be helpful for this wall display so we're going to go into widgets um so scrolling down here there's not really too many that I'm going to be able to use like maybe a calendar widget this is great because I want to see what are upcoming events happening so that's something on other smart displays that I haven't been able to do here I can simply remove a widget like that right now I have the clock I don't really need a Big Clock Widget on here um here I have notes I don't need that but maybe I want to add my shopping list so I can go in here to widgets I can go down to keep and I can simply add our shopping list right here so when I unlock the tablet I can see what's on my list and I can then add more things if I want to so so far this being able to customize this is quite more functional than other displays I've seen and down here I have music so that's something I might use often so I'm going to do music uh maybe I want to search for different movies and things that are available I can go to Google TV and then I can easily cast it to my chomecast here in the room and then let's go choose a few more widgets so it looks like for certain smart apps I can do widgets so with the casa app I could control different scenes from my casa lights here with Google photos I could put pictures right on the lock screen and since on the Hub you see the time and the weather let's go ahead and put a weather widget right here and then you could do you know YouTube music Widgets or other things like that so quite a few options here um the only problem is there isn't like a specific Google home widget if I had the option to set a few widgets here where it was turn on basement lights or pause different playing devices in the home that would be something that would be really cool to add to this home screen but I can do everything by voice and so on now a few other cool things that you can do being able to have a tablet is I can do video calls so if somebody called me I would be able to do that here let's open up the camera here and you can see that here I have a full camera that I could record videos with or whatever it might be and I can use Google meet to make video calls as well or I can download the Zoom app to be on Zoom calls right here on the wall so I can continue doing things but still be on the call I can load full YouTube and watch all my YouTube videos on here I can download all the other apps I can use Netflix Hulu every single thing that I want it could play on here if you put this in your kitchen or something like that it would have access to all of that so really really cool to be able to have this and then of course at any time if I want to fully use this all I need to do is pop this off I can sit down on the couch browse play work on Google Docs whatever it may be I can connect a Bluetooth mouse or a Bluetooth keyboard to be able to fully utilize this as kind of a wallmounted tablet here so really really cool and then of course I have the option to use this to play music out of the dock that is there hey Google play music for my new Jam's playlist okay and for some reason it didn't play but I can come over here Tap Play now with the speaker it's all coming out of here at the bottom so there's no speaker that's being lost in the wall everything comes out right here it doesn't sound muffled or anything and if we had the full wall here it might actually add a bit of Base to the wall but then if I want to take it off it's going to keep playing on here I can walk around the house use the tablet and then when I come back and dock it it's then going to transfer the music right onto the dock and there you go so you have all those controls I can use this to play music throughout my house I can have it move music from one speaker to the other and so on so you get all the Full Nest Hub features just without the nest Hub interface so now that I've had this mounted for a bit of time would I recommend doing this I would say so but there are a few caveats one of the updates that has not come to the pixel tablet is the ability to ring the doorbell and have it show up here on the pixel tablet so let's go ahead ring my Nest doorbell and you can see what happens which is nothing now if you are in the home screen the add a glance feature should show who is at the door but that is currently not working now if you click on the weather up here you also have a really cool weather app so here it's showing the 10day forecast you can see the hourly forecast and all kinds of other weather conditions and that is really cool that you can cool quickly get to all that now I think I did Mount it just a little bit too high but that's no problem I can easily just move the drywall down now right now to use the tablet I do have an extra step of security set up so I need to use my PIN code or my fingerprint that's just so my kids can't use whatever but that also allows them that they can switch to their accounts if they want to use it so here I can just simply press the fingerprint up at the top it unlocks and I can go right in and adjusts the device another addition that could make this experience a little bit better is having customized favorites in the Google home app for device so when I adjust all the different favorites in the Google home app that changes it for my phone for this pixel tablet other pixel tablets that I have in my home and so on but if I have multiple docs in my home I would want different customized menu so in this menu I want things that are going to be controlled in this room or maybe in the basement if I had one upstairs I would want it controlling those devices upstairs so that is one of the things that you can't really change you just have to choose devices that kind of work for the entire home unless you want to head into the Google home app now another feature that this does not have is the ability to automatically adjust what you see when it detects your motion now there is a camera up here and you can do all kinds of things like video call and different um Zoom calls and things like that but built in there's not a way for it to change when it detects you but the good news is this is built on Android and so it has plenty of apps where you can do certain things like that so Reed from the smart home solver made a video all about how you can customize the pixel tablet and use a home assistant dashboard and he made a really cool video about that that I'll leave linked at the end of this video but is what he found is there's an app called kiosk browser that allows you to customize this so when it does detect you it can automatically go to the home dashboard when you walk up to the screen and you can control different devices and when you walk away then it will go to the screen saver so he said that works really great um I've been playing with it a little bit but I don't use home assistant so I can't really utilize that dashboard um right now I think I can just have it like open a website or something which could show me my cameras but not do too much else so if you really are interested you would definitely need to check out that video so that's another thing that um you could have on this but um isn't enabled by default but overall I think this is actually a great thing to have the speed of this is topnotch it's just as good as you want to have a display all other displays that I've used Nest hubs the echo hub they're all pretty sluggish so having a pixel tablet that has a much faster processor it's of course going to cost you a lot more has been really nice to have now the other big benefit about this is you can use this multi-purpose it's going to stay here it's going to be your wall display it's going to be your um Google speaker in the room um it's going to be able to show cool pictures and other things like that but then when you want to use it for something else you can easily take it off sit on the couch play games and certain things like that and it's already fully charged when you're done using it you just come up here and put it back it charges fully and then it becomes your smart home display so really a versatile product is going to cost you a little bit more than buying an Amazon tablet or something and putting it on your wall but I think the ability to have it be so versatile um The Better Sound and all the other features you get with a pixel tablet is definitely worth it so if you have any further questions please let me know down in the comments below and check out smart home solver video right there about the kios browser and you can check out more about the pixel tablet here thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next onetoday I'm going to test out using a pixel tablet as a wallmounted display to control my Google Home Smart home now some of the benefits of doing this is it keeps it higher out of the way from the kids and then it's just easier to access and if I ever need to use the tablet I can just simply pop it off the wall and it will be fully charged now I'm going to do this with the mount Genie wall mount now I've actually done this before with my Google Nest Hub and that was great but some of the benefits of using the pixel tablet is it's much faster and then like I said I'll be able to remove it from the wall if I ever need to and use it and then it's just going to have a nice big bright display right here and I can quickly get to all of my controls to control my Google smart home so the first thing we're going to do is cut a giant hole into the wallet to get this set up now first I need to decide on the height now I kind of like it up here where I simply just reach my hand out and I can interact with the display so it's going to look something right there I need to make sure that I'm not going to run into any studs so you need to get a stud finder to find that and then we're going to trace the pattern to cut the hole now this is honestly the only wall mount that I could find for the pixel tablet but I think it's going to be perfect for this experience so in here you have all the instructions and here it also comes with an extension cable if you need to Route the cable through the wall here it comes with a pattern that we can use and then this is what we will Mount into the wall that the tablet dock will actually Mount to it comes with an adapter so that you can have this be powered over power over ethernet and some clips to mount the bracket into the wall now before I cut anything I'm just going to to test with the mount so this is where I would want to have the bottom of the display right there so I can kind of get an idea of where that's going to be and then I know okay about right here is where the line is and here I just need to make that level and trace it out and make sure you don't overcut now I am installing this on a temporary wall just because I wanted to test it out before I cut another hole somewhere else in the house so the only difference here is going to be the sound possibly when I have the dock up here and let's cut that out now that we've cut out the hole the next thing we need to do is Route a cat cable here so here I have that installed now we're going to add the mount so we just need to Simply slide this on and push it in looks like I'm going to take out just a little bit more and there we go very carefully fitted in and now we're going to attach two metal backers to the bottom and to the top this will lock it into place if of course it wasn't quite as tight we're now going to add our Poe splitter and here we're going to use the included Poe adapter once you have the power cable or the adapter plug in now we're going to slide in the mount and we need to make sure that this is put over the top it's going to take a little bit of work to do that there we go I was able to get it in without adjusting anything now let's plug in the cat cable to the poe adapter now it is recommended to use poe+ or Poe Plus+ now not that you'll ever see this side but I just wanted to mention over here if you do have some drywall here this will hit it just a little bit so it might be a little harder to fit in you may need to at that point find an adapter that turns this or you might need to even just route the regular cable through the wall which I believe is up to clode but I have no idea I'm not an electrician and the dock turned on it does have a boot sound so we can know that works and here on the pixel tablet I am using the pixel tablet case so it should just magnetize right onto here and be able to charge through there that fits on great now there is a bit of a gap here behind so that I am able to easily pop off the tablet when I need to and the tablet was dead when I put it on and there you can see it did turn on and it looks like I need to upgrade my switch to poe+ because it is charging it got powered up up to 3% but here it keeps stop charging and charging again so I'm going to fix that right now we'll just plug it into the wall now that we have the wall mount installed I'm going to go to the dock and change the room that it's in now here it's currently in the studio but but I'm going to move it into the basement and that allows it to know it's docked here and can change the lights in this room all right now that mve that so now I can use my voice commands hey Google turn off the lights and that turned off the lights in the room turn on the lights and right now I have it set to after 15 seconds it will automatically go to the lock screen we can see our pictures and everything and then if I just want to LLY control certain devices in the home I can just tap on the home controls here for the Google home app and there I can simply turn off the lights and here when the lights are off and the device goes to sleep then there is a night mode it can go into where it is showing the clock on screen and I can wake it up to tap the display tap home and adjust my devices now here when using Google's pixel tablet case if you don't align it perfectly there may be times when it isn't charging or it does disconnect but most of the time it charges no problem now without the case it looks great it locks on a little bit better but there is the concern if you don't talk it properly or somebody bumps it incorrectly it could fall off so you may need to be careful about that now after the tablet has been mounted and charged up a little bit I've been playing with it and I think this is actually pretty awesome now to really make this useful this is where we can totally customize what the tablet can do so first up we're going to change the Hub screen so when it's docked this is what it shows shows down here you can quickly go to those Google home controls but we're going to unlock this and we are going to pull this down and go into the settings of the tablet and go to HUB mode and here we have screen saver so right now I just have it set to Art Gallery so it's going to show these random pictures but we have a few options here depending on what you want if maybe you just want to show your Google photos you can come in here to Google photos maybe you just want a really big clock so here if we go into the full screen clock we have a few options we have Eclipse we have Prime handcraft and the Retro flip and here let's start with the prime we're going to go in and customize that so you can choose light mode dark mode or you can have it automatically change based on the time of day I think that's great and now let's lock it to see what that's like so there you go it's during the day there we can quickly see that from across the room and I like how it even made the temperature outside a little bit brighter so I can see that easily let's try dark mode here here we have Eclipse again we can change light dark automatic and so on let's go ahead and choose dark mode for this one and there you can see really big across the room that works any any time you T tap the screen to go to the home screen here we have handcraft little more stylized but not as big of a clock and here we have a retro flip let's go ahead and turn it to dark mode right now really big numbers but you do not get the temperature on this screen and here from across the room no problem seeing what time it is so that's how you can customize the clock let's go ahead and choose a Google photo screen saver and see what that looks like and so here we have the standard picture frame with the time and the weather down there no way to really customize those then there's also an option for weather so if you just want to have a big clock that shows the weather here you can do that so it's going to have this animated display that is really cool so it's raining outside right now so there again time and weather and then here you also have the option to choose weather frog so this a really fun animated weather frog that can show you what the weather is outside and again time and temp down there but it might be a little bit harder to see from farther away so there you go and then you have some other additional controls here if you don't want to see home controls you do have the option to turn that off and for now I'm going to go ahead and stick with the weather option okay great and so that is how you can customize the home screen now if we want to customize the Google home app where we can see the controls that we want if we go in here we can then go and open the full app you will need to unlock your device and in here we have the option to choose what is on this screen so scrolling down to the bottom we have the option to reorder or we have the option to edit so here I can turn on and off if I'm going to broadcast see Google Assistant um here I have some routines that I might want to enable and then here we can see custom other cameras and different lights from different rooms so here I have a camera I have the lights in this room here I can even have the basement Dock and the curtains so scrolling through through here I can find more lights that I might want to quickly and easily control all right from the lock screen so let's go ahead and choose the basement stairs and so on so we're going to tap save there and now it has moved everything around and so with this I can easily adjust different lights so here if I want to change the brightness of the basement lights I'm able to just drag on there I can tap to turn on and off just like that so then here under favorites one more thing we can do is re order so if there's something that's down at the bottom and you always want to control it and it's not currently at the top you can just simply drag it up there so I want to make sure that the basement lights are up here so I always have access to that and other cameras um let's see I can turn on certain cameras and have them up there as well so let's go ahead and do that and we can tap save so now that is customized now another thing you can do is quickly control many devices in the home right from the top here so if I want to go into the cameras I can now see a camera feed of all my different devices in my home that are currently accessible um on the Google home app so some of them are turned off or something so that's why they're not showing on here but that's great if I want to adjust all the lighting in the home I have an option to easily turn off and on it would be really cool if you could make this as like your home screen now it would be really cool if you had certain widgets for some of these buttons but that's not available you could use what is called action blocks to do some of that here I have full room so if I want to turn off all the lights in the basement I can tap basement turn those off if I want to turn those on I can do that and then I have individual lights I can control so I can hold down on the light I can adjust the brightness of the light and I can change the color right down here so you have access to everything without even using voice on the pixel tablet so lots of customization in the Google home app here I can go in and see the settings of my Wi-Fi see how everything's performing here it's showing different climate controls so I can turn on fans I can adjust my thermostats and so on and then you would tap on devices and here you can see all the rooms in your home so here I have my lights outside I can then tap and it will turn those lights on and off outside if I want to go to a different room I'm able to do that and I can quickly and easily control all the devices in the home right from here that works pretty great and then you can quickly adjust automations and other things so I think that's really cool you have a lot of function there um if you just unlock it and go fully into the Google home app now another thing that we can customize is the home screen here so this is going to be done with widgets and just putting apps on the screen so just like any other tablet you can go in here to the app section and drop apps that you want quick access to there so if I want to check out my Nest cameras I can go into here and it's going to show me just my Google Nest cameras so that's nice next I want to see if I can add any widgets that might be helpful for this wall display so we're going to go into widgets um so scrolling down here there's not really too many that I'm going to be able to use like maybe a calendar widget this is great because I want to see what are upcoming events happening so that's something on other smart displays that I haven't been able to do here I can simply remove a widget like that right now I have the clock I don't really need a Big Clock Widget on here um here I have notes I don't need that but maybe I want to add my shopping list so I can go in here to widgets I can go down to keep and I can simply add our shopping list right here so when I unlock the tablet I can see what's on my list and I can then add more things if I want to so so far this being able to customize this is quite more functional than other displays I've seen and down here I have music so that's something I might use often so I'm going to do music uh maybe I want to search for different movies and things that are available I can go to Google TV and then I can easily cast it to my chomecast here in the room and then let's go choose a few more widgets so it looks like for certain smart apps I can do widgets so with the casa app I could control different scenes from my casa lights here with Google photos I could put pictures right on the lock screen and since on the Hub you see the time and the weather let's go ahead and put a weather widget right here and then you could do you know YouTube music Widgets or other things like that so quite a few options here um the only problem is there isn't like a specific Google home widget if I had the option to set a few widgets here where it was turn on basement lights or pause different playing devices in the home that would be something that would be really cool to add to this home screen but I can do everything by voice and so on now a few other cool things that you can do being able to have a tablet is I can do video calls so if somebody called me I would be able to do that here let's open up the camera here and you can see that here I have a full camera that I could record videos with or whatever it might be and I can use Google meet to make video calls as well or I can download the Zoom app to be on Zoom calls right here on the wall so I can continue doing things but still be on the call I can load full YouTube and watch all my YouTube videos on here I can download all the other apps I can use Netflix Hulu every single thing that I want it could play on here if you put this in your kitchen or something like that it would have access to all of that so really really cool to be able to have this and then of course at any time if I want to fully use this all I need to do is pop this off I can sit down on the couch browse play work on Google Docs whatever it may be I can connect a Bluetooth mouse or a Bluetooth keyboard to be able to fully utilize this as kind of a wallmounted tablet here so really really cool and then of course I have the option to use this to play music out of the dock that is there hey Google play music for my new Jam's playlist okay and for some reason it didn't play but I can come over here Tap Play now with the speaker it's all coming out of here at the bottom so there's no speaker that's being lost in the wall everything comes out right here it doesn't sound muffled or anything and if we had the full wall here it might actually add a bit of Base to the wall but then if I want to take it off it's going to keep playing on here I can walk around the house use the tablet and then when I come back and dock it it's then going to transfer the music right onto the dock and there you go so you have all those controls I can use this to play music throughout my house I can have it move music from one speaker to the other and so on so you get all the Full Nest Hub features just without the nest Hub interface so now that I've had this mounted for a bit of time would I recommend doing this I would say so but there are a few caveats one of the updates that has not come to the pixel tablet is the ability to ring the doorbell and have it show up here on the pixel tablet so let's go ahead ring my Nest doorbell and you can see what happens which is nothing now if you are in the home screen the add a glance feature should show who is at the door but that is currently not working now if you click on the weather up here you also have a really cool weather app so here it's showing the 10day forecast you can see the hourly forecast and all kinds of other weather conditions and that is really cool that you can cool quickly get to all that now I think I did Mount it just a little bit too high but that's no problem I can easily just move the drywall down now right now to use the tablet I do have an extra step of security set up so I need to use my PIN code or my fingerprint that's just so my kids can't use whatever but that also allows them that they can switch to their accounts if they want to use it so here I can just simply press the fingerprint up at the top it unlocks and I can go right in and adjusts the device another addition that could make this experience a little bit better is having customized favorites in the Google home app for device so when I adjust all the different favorites in the Google home app that changes it for my phone for this pixel tablet other pixel tablets that I have in my home and so on but if I have multiple docs in my home I would want different customized menu so in this menu I want things that are going to be controlled in this room or maybe in the basement if I had one upstairs I would want it controlling those devices upstairs so that is one of the things that you can't really change you just have to choose devices that kind of work for the entire home unless you want to head into the Google home app now another feature that this does not have is the ability to automatically adjust what you see when it detects your motion now there is a camera up here and you can do all kinds of things like video call and different um Zoom calls and things like that but built in there's not a way for it to change when it detects you but the good news is this is built on Android and so it has plenty of apps where you can do certain things like that so Reed from the smart home solver made a video all about how you can customize the pixel tablet and use a home assistant dashboard and he made a really cool video about that that I'll leave linked at the end of this video but is what he found is there's an app called kiosk browser that allows you to customize this so when it does detect you it can automatically go to the home dashboard when you walk up to the screen and you can control different devices and when you walk away then it will go to the screen saver so he said that works really great um I've been playing with it a little bit but I don't use home assistant so I can't really utilize that dashboard um right now I think I can just have it like open a website or something which could show me my cameras but not do too much else so if you really are interested you would definitely need to check out that video so that's another thing that um you could have on this but um isn't enabled by default but overall I think this is actually a great thing to have the speed of this is topnotch it's just as good as you want to have a display all other displays that I've used Nest hubs the echo hub they're all pretty sluggish so having a pixel tablet that has a much faster processor it's of course going to cost you a lot more has been really nice to have now the other big benefit about this is you can use this multi-purpose it's going to stay here it's going to be your wall display it's going to be your um Google speaker in the room um it's going to be able to show cool pictures and other things like that but then when you want to use it for something else you can easily take it off sit on the couch play games and certain things like that and it's already fully charged when you're done using it you just come up here and put it back it charges fully and then it becomes your smart home display so really a versatile product is going to cost you a little bit more than buying an Amazon tablet or something and putting it on your wall but I think the ability to have it be so versatile um The Better Sound and all the other features you get with a pixel tablet is definitely worth it so if you have any further questions please let me know down in the comments below and check out smart home solver video right there about the kios browser and you can check out more about the pixel tablet here thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next one\n"