Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro review: flagships found | Google’s new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are a reset of its smartphone ambitions, and they have new designs, new processors, new cameras, and new capabilities. | By The Verge | Facebook | Alright, you've been patiently
waiting. It's finally here. Let's review the Pixel 6 and
the Pixel 6 Pro. The Pixel 6 6 Pro are a big deal for Google.
They're the company's first attempt at making a high-end
phone in quite a few years and then the first phones with
Google's new custom tensor processor which powers AI and
ML and lots of hopes and dreams, I guess. It's also
finally updating the camera's hardware after years and years
of using the same old sensor in Pixels. These phones are also
just big, I mean, just at these things. They're not small
phones. If you're coming from Pixel 5 or Pixel 4, it's going
to take some adjustment and maybe some bigger pockets. Also
big, that camera bar that houses these new sensors. Like
Becca said in our hands-on video, it's absolutely massive.
But at least the phone doesn't rock on the table when you put
it down because the bar spans the back of the whole thing.
The Pixel 6 starts at $599. It comes with 128 gigs of storage,
8 gigs of RAM, and has a standard wide and ultra wide
camera. It has a flat 6. 4 inch screen a 90 hertz refresh rate
and an eight megapixel front-facing camera. Now,
depending on how you buy it, it will support either basic sub
65G or the fast but really hard to find millimeter wave 5G. If
you're getting it unlocked or from T Mobile, you can expect
sub six. If you're getting it from Verizon or AT and T,
you're gonna be paying a little bit more but you'll also get
millimeter wave. Now, the Pixel 6 Pro starts at $899. It also
comes with 128 gigs of storage and it has 12 gigabytes of RAM
and adds a four X telephoto cam alongside that wide and ultra
wide camera that are on the regular Pixel 6. It's got a 6.
7 inch screen with a variable refresh rate of up to 120 hertz
and it has curved sides. Now the front camera on the six pro
is 11 megapixels and has a little bit wider field of view.
You might be able to fit an extra friend in a selfie. You
don't have to worry about any of the fiveG shenanigans with
the 6 pro. No matter how you buy it, it will support both
sub six and millimeter wave 5G. Now the Pixel 6 comes in
two-tone black, green, or red. The Pixel 6 Pro is available in
white, black, or a yellowish gold. Now, between them, the
sixes color options are way more fun but whatever, you're
gonna wanna put a case on these and that's a good idea because
they are both big, slippery bars of soap. Now, I've had
both models slide off my desk, table, sofa arms, my lap, you
name it. Plus, I've nearly dropped them more than once. We
even managed to crack one of our review samples even though
these have Gorilla Glass Victus on the front, you can still
break them easily enough so you're gonna wanna get a case
and when I first got my hands on these pixels, I really
wasn't so sure about this design. From the front, it's
hard to tell them apart from the Samsung Note 10 or Note 20
and from the back, they kinda look like TCL phones to me and
after a couple of weeks, the design really hasn't grown on
me. Sure, they feel nice and premium in ways that prior
pixels didn't but they kinda lack some of the whimsy and fun
that the older models had. Alright, let's get into the
meat of this. How do these new pixels perform? The answer,
very very good. There's very little to complain about with
either of them. Both screens are punching colorful, they're
bright enough to read in sunlight and the faster refresh
rates make the interface smooth when you're scrolling around
especially on the pro. If you look closely, you can find some
issues like if you look from extreme angle, you might see
some color shift or if you're using the Pixel 6 Pro, there
might be some visible under light screen areas where the
curves are but you have to look really closely to find these
things and in fact, it's really even hard to show you them on
video. They don't really interrupt my day-to-day use and
frankly, I don't have a problem with any of these screens. They
don't have any weird bugs or issues like a color cast and
low brightness or flickering or really bad color reproduction
that we saw on older pixel phones. Now, the tensor chip
perform just as great as other high-end Android phones whether
I was launching apps, multitasking, navigating the
UI, or whatever I happen to do. It's not gonna run benchmarks
as fast as Apple's latest chips but it's miles ahead of the
processor that was in last year's -Pixel 5 and totally
competitive with the Snapdragon triple 8. Also, great battery
life. Both phones were able to last a full day of heavy use
with plenty left over in the tank. Most nights, I was
plugging them in with 35 to 40% battery left. If you're a light
user, I could easily see you go in two days with this. Now, a
lot of that has to do with the fact that these are big
batteries and they're big phones with big batteries. It's
a big mood but either way, the problems that Pixel's had with
battery life years ago are firmly in the past. Now, on
charging, both models support wireless and fast wire charging
but neither come with an actual charging bricks so it's BYOB or
bring your own brick. They also do reverse wireless charging
for things like wireless earbuds. They both have loud,
clear stereo speakers and for the first time since the
original pair back in 2016. And in something that matters a lot
to me, they've got really nice haptics. Bad Buzzy Haptics can
just ruin the experience on a phone for me. But Google nailed
it here. They're soft and clicky with just the right
amount of feedback. But the Pixel 6 and six Pro really drop
the ball is with their underscreen fingerprint
scanner. It's in a comfortable spot. It's about a third of the
way up from the bottom of the screen but it's just slow
compared to others and sometimes it needs a few scans
to recognize my fingerprint. There's also no facial
recognition here. So this is the only biometric security
option you got and frankly, it could be a lot better. As you'd
expect, the Pixel 6 pair run Google's latest version of
Android, the completely redesigned Android 12 and for
the most part, I like it. It's very legible. The animations
and design elements are fun and whimsical and it mostly stings
out of my way when I'm using the phone. It's like Google put
all the fun in the software this time as opposed to putting
it into the hardware design. There are a few Pixel 6
specific tricks that are worth talking about though and the
most significant one for me is in the phone app. The Pixel 6
can make life a lot easier for you when you're calling
automated phonetree systems and it can even wait on hold for
you. The Phone Tree System attempts to transcribe what's
being said and it provides you with easily tapable buttons so
you don't have to sit there listening intently the entire
time a robot is speaking to you but it's still very clearly in
beta and it misses a lot of the words in the context still.
Hopefully, this gets better over time. Another thing
enabled by the Pixel 6's tensor processors faster and more
accurate dictation which is convenient to use but will be a
lot more useful when Google figures out how to get it on to
a smart watch. Those features plus some photo stuff will get
into. I promise I have not forgotten about the camera are
the main benefits of Google's custom tensor processor.
They're not an AI revolution but that's okay because I'm not
ready for the robot overload yet. Lastly, Google says it
will be supporting the Pixel 6 and6 Pro for five years which
is a lot longer than the typical Android phone gets. But
that's only referring to security updates. Google's only
committing to three operating system upgrades over the
lifetime of the phone. Which means that Android 15 will
probably be the last upgrade that these get come twenty
twenty-four. Alright, it's time to get into
these cameras. These new cameras are a big deal because
like the phones, they are big. These are just huge sensors.
They're also a big deal because this is the first time since
2017 that Google has put new hardware inside of a pixel
camera. And the main camera in both phones is a new giant 50
megapixel sensor. It's hard coded to produce 12. 5
megapixel images. It's set behind an F1. 85 Apture lens
and it has optical image stabilization. Next to that is
a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera that has 114 -degree
field of view and F 2. 2 lens. Now sadly this does not have
any macro or close up focusing ability like you can get on the
iPhone 13 Pro and lots of other phones but it does have optical
stabilization and finally on the six pro you get a new fourX
telephoto 48 megapixel camera that spits out 12 megapixel
images. It's got an F3. 5 aperture lens and has optical
stabilization. Of these cameras by far my favorite is the
telephoto camera. It's the first telephoto on a phone that
I've actually enjoyed using. It's got longer reach than you
get on an iPhone 13 Pro and has better compression and subject
so I don't need to use portrait mode nearly as much. It's also
way sharper and more usable everyday than Samsung's 10X
camera, and thanks to Google's algorithms, you can zoom
digitally up to 20X and still have a mostly usable picture.
Seriously though, I was on the road to choosing the Pixel 6
between the two of these but that's how a photo camera, it's
pretty great. The new main camera is excellent too. It's
classic Pixel, high contrast, moody looks with lots and lots
of detail in both good and low light. It's very competitive
with the best from Apple. I'm not gonna declare either
standout winner. Some shots look better from the iPhone,
some shots look better from the pixel but both are very good
and as we've been saying for a few years now, which one you
prefer really comes down to your own personal taste but if
there's one area that I would like to see improvement from
Google on, it's how long the pixel takes to capture night
mode shots. A lot of times you'll be standing there
holding the phone for multiple seconds at a time to finish the
capture which can be a problem when your subject is moving
around or you're just not patient enough to wait for it.
A lot of times the iPhone would take half as long to capture
the same scene. Now, the ultra wide camera is good but it's
clearly the weakest of the bunch. It's got softer details,
noticeable distortion. I think it's safe to say the iPhone has
Google beat here. The iPhone has also always consistently
beat Google with video capture and this year, yeah, that's
still the case. The Pixel 6's video is a lot better than
older pixels but it's still wonky with image stabilization
and has some weird color processing that's very
different from how Google processes still photos. Reds
and oranges and any highly saturated colors in particular
look way saturated in the video. But you can easily
record 4K60 FPS video for as long as you want without it
overheating which is a big improvement over the Pixel 5A
from earlier this year. Google is making a big deal this year
about how it's adjusted its image algorithms to work better
for darker skin tones. And it's great to see the company
addressing this problem that's long played the photo industry.
Now both Nicole Nguyen at WSJ and Julian Chikatu at Wired
were able to test the camera with a wider range of skin
tones and came to some really interesting conclusions. I
encourage you to check the articles out, we're gonna link
them below. If you look at all the photos, it's clear the
pixel is still doing pixel things. It's high contrast with
a dose of over exposure to compensate for it and very
sharp details. Some folks might like that look but not everyone
will even if you have darker skin. Lastly, it wouldn't be a
pixel camera with a couple of neat software tricks that make
hard things a lot easier than they used to be. The first is
Magic Eraser. It lets you move distracting people or objects
from your photos that you just don't want there. It's a fun
trick but it can be really hit or miss. This isn't gonna put
any skilled Photoshop editors out of work. You can also get
very similar results from third party apps so it's not totally
necessary to buy a pixel for this. But the thing that really
impressed me was a new motion capture mode which lets you
mimic a panning shot or a long exposure with a single snap of
the shutter and no tripods or neutral density filters or
extra equipment involved at all. These are things that take
years of practice and lots of equipment to capture with a
traditional camera and the Pixel makes it as easy as
snapping a selfie. I love it. We're gonna be doing a lot more
with these cameras too. Becca's gonna be commanding them head
to head with the iPhone 13 Pro in the next episode of Full
Frame so be sure to stay tuned for that. Okay, so that's a lot
of stuff. What's the take away here? Well, the takeaway is
that the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro are excellent devices and
among the best phones you can buy right now. In fact, I'd say
that they're the best Android phones full stop. They have a
great value. The Pixel 6 in particular offers a lot of
phone for $600 and there's no show stopping bugs or issues to
be worried about. If you could deal with the fact that they
are just giant phones, you're probably gonna be happy with
them. Now, if you're trying to decide whether or not that $300
extra for the six pro is worth it, that's a tough call. I
really prefer the regular sixes flat screen and slightly
smaller size but I know I'd miss the telephoto of the six
pro if I went without it. At the end of the day, it feels
like Google really did it this time. It's produced flagship
competitive phones without any glaring issues or omissions and
it's priced them under the competition. Okay, so what are
you getting? Fast speeds, competitive prices, and
excellent camera plus that telephoto on the six pro, some
of the best software you can get on a phone anywhere, and
great battery life. What happens when Google tries to
make an excellent phone is it ends up making an excellent
phone.
Google’s new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are a reset of its smartphone ambitions, and they have new designs, new processors, new cameras, and new capabilities.