Pixel Slate fire sale sees $300-$700 price drop, free pen, free keyboard

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  The new Google Pixel Slate. [credit: Valentina Palladino ]

The Google Pixel Slate Chrome OS tablet, which is over a year old now, is getting a price drop. Google has new regular prices for the various models, with discounts ranging from $300-$700 off the MSRP at several retailers, including its own online store. Buy a Slate sometime soon, and Google is also throwing in a free Pixelbook Pen (originally $99) and a keyboard ($199) for free. It's a fire sale.

The entry-level 8th Gen Intel Core m3 version, with 8GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, now starts at $499, down from the $799 price at launch. The Core i5 version with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage launched at $999, but now it's reduced to $599. The highest-end Core i7 version with 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 4K display is $899, down from a whopping $1,599 at launch. If you get the highest-end version with the free pen and keyboard, you're saving $1,000 off the MSRP.

Like many Google hardware products, the Pixel Slate has had a rough life. The device was widely criticized for being too expensive—you could get the same specs in an HP Chromebook x2 for less money, and most Slate models with the keyboard easily blasted into Macbook pricing territory. The sales pitch with the Slate was Chrome OS' new tablet features, but they weren't fully baked at launch, resulting in buggy split-screen modes and strange UI decisions. The original entry-level $599 version used an Intel Celeron CPU, which was so thoroughly panned in reviews for being too slow that Google delayed the model and eventually canceled it. About six months after the release, Google quit the tablet business altogether and decided to focus on laptops going forward, eventually leading to the development of the Pixelbook Go.

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