Impressions: Pixel Stand

The Pixel Stand was half price on Black Friday.

Great news, except for one small problem: the half-price Pixel Stand was at Best Buy.

If you’ve ever tried to buy stuff from overseas, you know Best Buy is one of those sites where it’s basically impossible. They ruthlessly cancel anything shipping to a forwarding address, which means you need a real US address to buy.

Lucky for me, I had a friend in the States. Thanks to Enneamer, a.k.a. “Dirty Teacher,” I finally got my hands on the one wireless charging dock that can fast-charge a Pixel 3 XL.

After using it for a bit, fast wireless charging does work… The rubber coating feels great in the hand, build quality is solid, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. The Pixel Stand comes with a charging brick, and it seems like only that brick can achieve fast charging. And it’s worse than that — only with that brick will the Pixel Stand “work normally” at all. Yes, plug in any other adapter and it just shows an orange light, meaning insufficient voltage? Insufficient current? Whatever it is, it won’t work.

2. The detection area on the Pixel Stand is very sensitive — just set the phone down and it charges. It doesn’t only support the Pixel 3 XL either; other wireless-charging phones work too. But it seems like it doesn’t support iPhone. My wife’s iPhone 8 didn’t seem to respond when placed on it, though I don’t know if it just wasn’t positioned right.

3. Wireless fast charging is 10W, which is pretty decent — at least it can fully charge the Pixel 3 XL in an hour. It also automatically launches the Pixel Stand app, supports the voice assistant, and lets you set up more photo frame features, but… I honestly think most of that is useless. The only genuinely useful one is the “screen lights up to wake you before your alarm goes off” feature.

4. The Pixel Stand seems to have something like Sony’s smart charging protection. When I charge at night it automatically switches to slow charging to avoid overcharging, and during the day it fast-charges.

All in all, at half price it’s a pretty good buy — basically the future “foreign e-waste” price already.