As bifurcated as the Android tablet market can be for general users, Google deserves some credit for attempting to bridge this divide. And it's bridged it well, considering the Google Pixel C is competitive with the best flagship tablets on the market.

While – as with competing premium tablets – the Pixel C's tablet PC features are still a work in progress, the Pixel C merits its status as Google's flagship tablet thanks to its stellar specifications and build quality.

Text and images were displayed with excellent fidelity and virtually free of noticeable pixilation. Overall, the Google Pixel C display abilities deservedly place it in the same league as other premium tablets we reviewed.

The Pixel C also performed solidly during battery benchmarking tests from our colleagues at Laptop Mag. In their testing, a tablet loops through webpages at a constant brightness until it powers down.

The Google Pixel C specifications are stellar on paper, with a 10.2-inch display that has a resolution of 2560 x 1800 pixels. It's a marginal but beneficial bump in resolution compared to other top tablets, which generally reach the 2048 x 1536-pixel range.

In our hands-on testing, we were impressed by the Google tablet's phenomenal screen and display performance. During testing from our colleagues at Laptop Mag, the Pixel C had a top-in-class brightness rating of 509 nits, which is a unit of measurement for the luminance of a screen.

Internally, the Google Pixel C is built on a NVIDIA Tegra X1 processor that provided superb testing performance. During our benchmarking with the performance and graphics tests Geekbench 3 and 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited, the Pixel C produced respective marks of 4,328 points and 40,436 points.

Geekbench 3 evaluates general performance through a variety of synthetic processor and system tests, while 3DMark uses simulated gaming scenarios to stress the tablet's graphics processing ability.

Google includes a standard 8-megapixel (rear) and 1.2-megapixel (front) pair of cameras on the Google Pixel C that provided standard image fidelity in our hands-on testing. We took a variety of outdoor and indoor test images, and they had reasonable color reproduction and detail.

Google includes several software tools for functions like panoramic, close-up and 3D-like 360-degree photos. The cameras aren't especially remarkable, but provide enough fidelity and features for most home users.

Still, the physical strengths of the Google Pixel C make up for these occasional quirks and make it relatively friendly for business and student users. As with other mobile operating systems that have tried to move toward a tablet PC experience, the Pixel C and Android are still going through some growing pains.

App optimization remains a mixed bag for Android computer tablets, as programs like ESPN's Fantasy Football and Instagram still default to menu layouts meant for mobile phones.

While the keyboard smoothly integrates with the tablet in some areas (for example, the dock can be charged wirelessly through the tablet), it can be awkward in other places. For instance, the Google Pixel C attaches to the dock via a rotatable magnetic pad that provides functionality somewhat like a tablet.

While the pad provides a full laptop-like range of viewing angles for the Pixel C, detaching it from the tablet requires a forceful tug. In addition, the keyboard's narrow dimensions force the Enter key to be aligned vertically instead of horizontally.

However, the Google Pixel C can be configured with 32GB or 64GB of internal storage. The Pixel C's keyboard dock accessory – which has to be purchased separately during the checkout process – manages to solve most of the pitfalls tablet keyboards typically fall into.

The sturdy dock features the same style of metal used on the tablet and a full plastic keyboard with a comfortable level of key travel, which refers to the distance you have to press a key down.

The Google Pixel C tablet is built around a sturdy aluminum body that has a nice heft to it and which is cleanly designed. Seams between the screen and body are imperceptible, and the case is free of noticeable flex.

The Pixel C also has a multicolored lightbar on the back for decoration, and it functions as a battery life indicator. The tablet relies on a USB Type-C port for data transfer and charging, and it has a basic stereo speaker setup with average audio quality. Note that this tablet supports neither mobile data connectivity nor microSD cards.

With its mark of 11 hours and 8 minutes, the Google Pixel C tested battery life falls in line with comparable premium tablets, which regularly break the 10-hour mark in Laptop's testing. Physically, the Pixel C's design falls generally in line with comparable premium tablets, but with its dimensions of 9.5 x 7 x 0.27 inches and weight of 1.14 pounds, the Pixel is marginally heavier and thicker than other top tablets.

Still, we found the tablet to be excellent to use in our hands-on testing thanks to its stellar build quality.