After yesterday’s terrible showing by the $599 Celeron version of the Pixel Slate, I reached out to my podcast co-host, Matthew Miller, because he’s the only person I know with both a Core m3 and Core i5 slate. We both agree that the base Celeron configuration with 4GB of memory needs some work on Google’s part. It’s undeniable. The good news is, the Chromium team filed a bug report to address the animation lag and sluggishness.
I still believe that the $599 Celeron option shouldn’t be the torch-bearer for the Pixel Slate lineup, nor should it be compared to a more expensive iPad Pro. As it stands now, many folks have seen the lag from MKBHD’s video and have written off the entire product line. That’s not my opinion, that’s from reading through hundreds of comments on the video.
Regardless, many folks are wondering if the Core i5 is worth the $200 price difference from the less expensive Core m3 Pixel Slate. It’s a great question to ask since the HP Chromebook X2 has a Core m3 and in my brief time owning one, I found it to run quite well. I only returned it because it didn’t want to be limited by the 32GB of local storage as I use my Chrome devices for Android and Linux apps as well as Chrome OS.
If you’re in this boat of debating the $799 and $999 Pixel Slate, Matt’s brief video may help you decide. I’ll give you fair warning though: Matt doesn’t tell you which device is which until the end. See if you can correctly guess between when he’s using the Core m3 and the Core i5 Pixel Slate.
