Up Close with The Google Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel Slate and Google Home Hub

Reflecting on an afternoon Made by Google

All the Google Products have screens and Google Assistant, but they don’t necessarily look like they come from the same company.

Thank you, Google, for showing some restraint: A mere four products and not so much detail and minutiae that any one gadget got lost in the mix.

It was a busy and yet oddly breezy affair on Tuesday in lower Manhattan, where Google whisked through the introduction of its new Google Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, a new tablet, the Pixel Slate, and the Home Hub, basically a screen version of Google Home.

The rumors and leaks were so plentiful, Google poked fun at them in an opening video and, for a moment, made me think Google might still have a major surprise up its sleeve. Oddly it did not.

Broadly, the products Google did unveil are impressive pieces of engineering.

Google moved its Pixel phone line forward without leaving behind its distinctive personality. They’re sleeker objects with larger screens, though the $799 Pixel XL still has substantial bezels on the top and bottom edge of the OLED display. Even the notched 6.3-inch $899 Pixel 3 XL has a black bezel at the bottom edge. They have fingerprint readers on the back, but no facial recognition or iris-scanning technology. They have dual 8 MP cameras on the front (including one with ultra-wide photo…