Google Pixel 8 Pro Review: Finally, the Perfect Pixel

With the Pixel 8 Pro, Google has finally delivered the no-compromises Android alternative to the iPhone that it has always promised. As important, this phone eliminates all the issues I experienced with its otherwise excellent immediate predecessors, the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro.

Design

Though the current Pixel design language remains controversial in some circles, I love that it is attractive, practical, and distinctive. Thanks to its body-wide camera bar, the Pixel 8 Pro looks nothing like other smartphones, and it sits flat on tables and other surfaces without the wobble caused by the offset camera array used by other device makers.

This design has also improved in subtle but important ways since it debuted with the Pixel 6 Pro. The Pixel 7 Pro replaced the plastic camera bar of its predecessor with a more premium and durable metal rendition, and now the Pixel 8 Pro puts each of the lenses inside the same oval black cutout, giving it an even cleaner visual style. That said, I like the island-style camera bar Google used on the Pixel Fold even more and would like to see something similar on the Pixel 9 Pro.

Google also moved back to a matte glass on the rear of the device—the Pixel 7 Pro was curiously glossy, and a fingerprint magnet—not that this change will matter to most: You’re going to want to protect this slippery slab of glass with a case. But here, too, we see another improvement: Google’s stock polycarbonate case is, for the first time, attractive and comfortable to hold without adding bulk, and it nicely complements the phone.

Google wisely continued forward with other design elements that still work well. As with its predecessors, the Pixel 8 Pro is a true “all-screen” smartphone, with tiny bezels, and the brushed aluminum side frame makes another appearance with its integrated antenna and SIM card tray cutouts. That you will hide with a case.

I described the Pixel 6 Pro and 7 Pro has being big and bulky, but after experimenting with smaller smartphones, I find myself preferring larger models like the iPhone 15 Pro Max and now the Pixel 8 Pro. This is a personal preference thing, of course, but I’m sure my age and eyesight play a role as well. Regardless, I find the Pixel 8 Pro, which actually weighs a tiny bit more than its predecessors and is roughly the same size, to be ideal for my needs. That said, it’s a stretch to use one-handed because the far top corner of the screen is so far away. This issue is not unique to this device, of course.

Display

Like its predecessors, the Pixel 8 Pro features a 6.7-inch, high resolution OLED display panel with a tall and thin aspect ratio, high refresh rate capabilities, and punchy colors and deep blacks. But there are differences both major and minor, and they collectively deliver the Pixel upgrade I’ve been waiting on for years: This display is perfectly flat and lacks the error- and glare-inducing curved sides that undermined previous models. Finally. Google is apparently so impressed by this upgrade that it’s even given this display an Apple-like name, Super Actua.

The name is terrible, but the display is terrific. Because of a negligible aspect ratio change—from 19.5:9 to 20:9—the Pixel 8 Pro’s 1344 x 2992 native display resolution is a tiny bit lower than the 1440 x 3120 found on its predecessors, with a corresponding dig in pixel density from 512 PPI to 489. I can’t imagine anyone would notice a difference—the lack of curved edges is far more obvious—but as with previous Pixels, I’ve left the Pixel 8 Pro configured with the default “high resolution” (1008 x 2244) rather than the native “full resolution” as it looks fine and should help with battery life.

Like its predecessors, the Pixel 8 Pro uses a dynamic adaptive refresh rate, and instead of just toggling between the standard 60 Hz rate to 120 Hz “for some content” as needed, it smoothly transitions from as low as 1 Hz all the way up to 120 Hz as needed. For the first time, I left this feature enabled: I don’t really notice the higher refresh rate when scrolling, and I don’t play games, but the battery life has improved enough with this model that I didn’t start tweaking additional display features to help solve the problem.

The Pixel 8 Pro display gets impressively bright—up to 1600 nits for HDR content with a peak brightness of 2400 nits—but I feel that its unheralded Extra Dim setting, which lets you dim the display beyond its minimum brightness, deserves more attention. When enabled, the Pixel 8 Pro no longer looks like high beam headlights in the dark as other phones do. This is almost certainly healthier for your eyes, but it’s absolutely more comfortable.

Finally, I have for the first time in years left the left adaptive brightness enabled because the Pixel 8 Pro doesn’t suffer from the extreme under-lighting issue as its two most recent predecessors. It’s not completely solved—I do sometimes need to manually bump up the brightness a bit—but it works noticeably better than before.

Hardware and specs

The Pixel 8 Pro is powered by the third-generation Google Tensor G3 processor, a 64-bit system-on-a-chip (SoC) design that marries a 9-core Arm Cortex CPU, Arm Mali-G715 GPU, and third-generation Google Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) into a single die using a 4nm Samsung manufacturing process. As with previous Tensor chipsets, Google optimized the G3 for AI and efficiency, not raw performance, and so it performs poorly against the latest Snapdragon and Apple chipsets on benchmarks. But real-world usage, as always, is another story, and in over two months of daily use, I have never once ran into a performance hiccup or hitch.

That said, something has changed and for the better: I blamed previous-generation Tensors for the slow charging experience and rapid heat gain that dogged the Pixel 8 Pro’s predecessors, but neither is an issue with the G3. Like any smartphone, the Pixel 8 Pro can heat up, sure, and I suspect prolonged game playing would prove especially challenging. But no one is buying a Pixel for games, and in normal use, this phone has never overheated, and the fast charging experience is, get this, fast. (More on that below.)

The Pixel 8 Pro ships with 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, a slight upgrade over the Pixel 7 Pro, and 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB of fast UFS 3.1 storage, the same as last year. And with Google now guaranteeing 7 years of OS version upgrades and security updates, the Pixel 8 Pro is as future-proof as a smartphone can be: This support lifecycle exceeds anything Apple offers, and only Samsung matches it in the Android space.

Connectivity

Adding to its future-proof promise, the Pixel 7 Pro is the first smartphone I’ve owned with Wi-Fi 7 capabilities (which operates at 6 GHz in addition to 2.4 and 5 GHz), not that I’ve ever encountered such a network. It also features mmWave and Sub 6 5G cellular connectivity via both nano SIM and eSIM (one each), Bluetooth 5.3 with dual antennas, NFC, and an ultra-wideband (UWB) chipset. I’ve had no issues with connectivity at all: I routinely hit download speeds of about 950 Mbps on my Eero 6E mesh network, and my experience switching eSIMs from T-Mobile to Google Fi recently was seamless and quick.

Audio-video

As before, the Pixel 8 Pro provides stereo speakers, but this time they are augmented by spatial audio capabilities. I rarely watch movies or other videos, or listen to music, audiobooks, or other audio content, using the built-in speakers, opting for earbuds like a normal person. But I did test the Pixel 8 Pro to determine whether it suffers from the right/down audio bias that dogged the Pixel 7 Pro, and to see whether spatial audio is an any way interesting.

And I’m honestly not sure in either case. I feel like there might still be a slight bias to the right/bottom speaker, but that could be my hearing or the sound mix used by the selection of songs I sampled. For spatial audio, I turned to Netflix and streamed a selection of movies—among them, 6 Underground and The Adam Project—and, while the stereo separation in each was notably good, I’m not sure if I’d call it spatial. After all, there’s only so much two tiny speakers can do. And when I compared those movies to the original Jurassic Park, the audio experience of that 30-year-old film was no less impressive.

The Pixel 8 Pro also provides three microphones with noise suppression capabilities for phone calls and meetings. Like most people these days, I don’t spend a lot of time making phone calls normally, but I had some lengthy calls over the holidays, and they were all clear and drama-free, at least from a call quality perspective.

Cameras

Pixel phones, especially the flagship models, are renowned for the quality of the photographs they produce, and for good reason: The hardware is usually very good or better, but Google’s computational photography capabilities are the best in the business. And the results are almost always consistently better than what we see from Samsung and Apple flagships, with Pixel landing in a happy middle ground between the over-saturated shots we see on the former and the dull, lifeless shots that iPhone delivers by default.

The Pixel 8 Pro continues this trend, and it offers major hardware and software upgrades when compared to its predecessors. Where Pixel 6 Pro pushed forward with 4x optical zoom on its telephoto lens and Pixel 7 Pro finally added a truly-wide ultra-wide lens with minimal edge distortion, Pixel 8 Pro delivers a trifecta, with upgrades across the lenses, all of which are now high-resolution in the 50 MP range, until the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which continues to use low-resolution (12 MP) telephoto and ultra-wide lenses.

More specifically, the Pixel 8 Pro has a 50 MP Octa PD main (wide) lens with an f/1.68 aperture and an 82-degree field of view, a 148 MP Quad PD ultra-wide lens with an f/1.95 aperture and a 125.5 degree field of view, and a 48 MP Quad PD telephoto lens with an f/2.8 aperture, a 21.8 degree field of view, and 5x optical zoom (with “Super Res Zoom”, i.e. digital zoom with computational photography enhancements, up to 30x).

Each of these lenses is superior to their predecessors in some way, and Google has expanded the photographer’s options, giving us, among other things, resolution choices (12.5 MP and full-resolution 50 MP options on the main lens), new Pro controls (including the ability to disable automatic lens switching when focusing or zooming), new Portrait mode options, 5x optical zoom (up from 4x) on the telephoto lens, and much-needed improvements to video recording. I wrote about this more in Loving the Google Pixel 8 Pro Camera Upgrade (Premium) with the specific aim of keeping the length of this review manageable, so please refer to that article for more information.

Here, I’ll just say that the Pixel 8 Pro camera experience has never disappointed, and as always, I very much prefer Google’s default image processing, with its “Goldilocks” HDR boost, to that of Apple or Samsung. (Granted, in the latter case, I’m referencing my wife’s two-year-old Galaxy S22 Ultra; I will soon have an S24 Ultra for further tests.) After a lot of experimentation triggered by the new Camera app and all the new options, I use 12.5 MP (labeled as 12 MP in the app) on the main lens because 50 MP shots introduce too much shutter lag, and I use JPEG and not RAW images because I’m a snap shooter, not a professional. I do move back and forth between auto and manual lens selection, however, and love that the latter maps a specific lens to the onscreen UW, W, and T buttons in that mode. Overall, I love this camera.

The selfie camera on the front is a bit different from that on the Pixel 8 Pro’s predecessors, but as a middle-aged man, I find taking selfies an awkward experience. The tech specs are similar to last year: It’s a single 10.5 MP wide lens with an f/2.2 aperture and a 95-degree field of view.

Security

Google struggled for years to provide Pixel users with biometric security features that work reliably and securely enough to authenticate your identity for Google Wallet usage, but the Pixel 8 Pro finally delivers. Its Face Unlock facial recognition capabilities are finally work reliably and well enough for Wallet, and for authenticating against apps like Microsoft Authenticator. And that means I have only rarely needed to fall back to the in-screen fingerprint reader, which is about as good as before and usually works fine. That said, it sometimes refuses to acknowledge a press on the lock screen in dark settings, forcing me to push the power button and try again, which always works for some reason.

Internally, the Pixel 8 Pro provides the same secure underpinnings as past Pixels, with its Titan M2 security chip, Trusty trusted execution environment, and private compute core. As noted, Pixel 8 Pro owners are among the first to get 7 years of security updates, which is wonderful. And the phone supports passkeys natively and has integrated anti-malware and anti-phishing protections. I can’t stop Google from tracking me online, but they do keep out the bad guys.

Battery

The Pixel 8 Pro delivers all-day battery life, if barely under heavy use, and while it continues to lag the iPhone in this regard, it’s improved just enough that I don’t worry about it as much as it did with its two most recent predecessors. I usually end the day with about 60 percent battery life if I don’t leave the house, or 30 to 40 percent if I go out in the world and listen to podcasts while driving or at the gym.

Charging is dramatically improved, and I’m surprised to report that the Pixel 8 Pro’s fast charging capabilities are superior to those of the iPhone 15 Pro Max. You can charge its 5050 mAh battery to 50 percent in 30 minutes with the right charger, and then things slow down from there, just not as horribly as with previous models. And if you buy a 30-watt USB-PD 3.0 (PPS) charger like the tiny Anker 511 Nano Pro I got (and recommend), it’s even better: I can hit a 50 percent charge in 25 minutes, several minutes faster than with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. A full charge is tough to measure as I never let it run completely out of battery life, but I estimate it to be about 80 minutes. Previous Pixels were closer to 2 hours, in part because they only supported 22-watt chargers.

In the past, I also complained about the heat generated by the Tensor CPUs in previous Pixels, and I’ve long theorized that this was responsible for the slow charging speeds I experienced with the Pixel 6 Pro and 7 Pro. Like any smartphone, the Pixel 8 Pro can get warm while charging, but it never gets truly hot despite the faster charging times. This isn’t market leading by any measure—second-tier phones from companies like OnePlus continue to embarrass the rest of the industry—but it’s a meaningful improvement that obviates my concerns.

As before, Pixel 8 Pro also supports wireless charging and that, too, is faster than before, at 23 watts (up from 15). I never tested that, but I did use its reverse wireless charging feature—which needs to be toggled on manually—to bring a friend’s phone back to life one time.

Unique hardware features

Aside from the aforementioned temperature sensor, reverse wireless charging, and physical SIM card support, there’s nothing especially unique about the Pixel 8 Pro from a hardware perspective. It has a USB Type-C 3.2 port for power and connectivity, IP68 dust and water resistance, and a fingerprint-resistant coating that may contribute to its matte finish. Nothing major.

Software

In the end, Pixel sinks or swims on the success of its software, and this is where Pixel 8 Pro shines brightest. Indeed, this part of the review got so long that I’ve pulled it out and will publish an edited version as a separate post soon. For now, I’ll just say this: I very much prefer Android to iOS, in part because of its superior customizability. But I also very much prefer Google’s highly enhanced and optimized Pixel version of Android to any other version I’ve used.

This isn’t just a differentiator, it’s a game-changer: Google uses AI throughout the system to improve experiences both obvious and unexpected. It can screen phone calls and does a terrific job of intercepting spam texts and phone calls. It offers live translation capabilities and system-wide automatic live captioning of anything making sounds. It has numerous personal safety features, from car crash detection to safety checks and emergency sharing. There’s so much in there that it’s difficult to even keep track of it all, but equally impressive is that this mountain of helpful features doesn’t feel like bloatware or make the UI more complex. It just pops up when needed.

More on this soon, but the Pixel 8 Pro is devoid of crapware and chock-full of unique features I miss when I use iPhone or other smartphones. This is the ideal mobile personal computing environment.

Pricing and availability

Google raised the base price of Pixel 8 Pro by $100 to $999 when compared to its predecessors, but it’s still the best value in flagship smartphones, given that iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1199 and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra starts at an even uglier $1299. And it’s often on sale, in fact, it feels like it’s almost always on sale, with prices more typically starting as low as $799. Point being, don’t ever pay full price.

Google offers three storage choices—128 GB ($999 list), 256 GB ($1059), 512 GB ($1179), and $1 TB ($1399)—but you can’t upgrade it with microSD storage after the fact (as is common in the flagship smartphone space). And there are now four color choices, Obsidian (black), Porcelain (beige), Bay (blue), and the new Mint (light green), though that latter color can only be purchased in the 128 GB configuration for some reason. I bought mine in Obsidian, and with 128 GB of storage because that’s all I need: As I write this, I see that I’m using just 43 percent of the storage and have 73 GB free.

Recommendations and conclusions

The Pixel 8 Pro isn’t just the best value in premium smartphones, it’s the best premium smartphone available today. And that’s because Google hasn’t just chipped away at my past complaints, it’s obliterated them entirely, with the Pixel 8 Pro offering a gorgeous flat display, fast and secure authentication, and fast charging that is finally truly fast in addition to long-time advantages like its superior camera system and highly optimized and help Android variant. 7 years of OS upgrades and security updates doesn’t hurt, either, and while battery life still lags the iPhone, the Pixel 8 Pro does deliver real-world all-day battery life, easing previous concerns dramatically.

If there’s an Achilles Heel here, it’s with the broader Pixel ecosystem, which feels second-rate across the board compared to what Apple offers. I’ll be writing more on that topic soon, but here I will simply state the obvious: The Pixel 8 Pro finally delivers on the premium, no compromises experience I’ve always wanted from Google, and it is highly recommended without reservation.

At-a-glance

Pros

• Superior three-lens camera system with 5x optical zoom
• Excellent day-to-day performance
• Gorgeous, large, high refresh rate display
• Future proof with 7-year support life cycle, powerful specifications, and Wi-Fi 7
• Highly customized version of Android with a breathtaking collection of helpful additions
• Fast and secure facial and fingerprint authentication methods
• Fast charging has finally caught up, surpassed the market leaders

Cons

• Battery life is middle of the road, not exceptional