Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro review: flagships found

Pro are a big deal for google theyre. The companys first attempt at making a high end phone in quite a few years and then the first phones with googles, new custom, tensor processor, which powers ai and ml, and lots of hopes and dreams. I guess its also. Finally, updating the cameras hardware. After years and years of using the same old sensor and pixels, these phones are also just big. I mean just look at these things: theyre, not small phones, if youre coming from pixel 5 or pixel 4, its going to take some adjustment, and maybe some bigger pockets. Also big that camera bar thats houses, these new sensors, like becca, said in our hands on video, its absolutely massive, but at least the phone doesnt 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 dollars. It comes with 128 gigs of storage, eight gigs of ram and has a standard wide and ultra wide camera. It has a flat 6.4 inch screen with a 90 hertz refresh rate and an 8 megapixel front facing camera. Now, depending on how you buy it, it will support either basic sub 6, 5g or the fast, but really hard to find millimeter wave 5g. If youre getting it unlocked or from t mobile. You can expect sub six if youre getting it from verizon or at t. Youre going to be paying a little bit more, but youll 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 it adds a 4x telephoto camera. Alongside that wide and ultra wide camera that are on the regular pixel 6., its 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 6 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 dont have to worry about any of the 5g shenanigans with the 6 pro, no matter how you buy it, it will support both sub 6 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 yellowish gold. Now, between them, the sixes color options are way more fun, but whatever youre going to want to put a case on these and thats a good idea, because they are both big slippery bars of soap now ive had both models slide off. My desk table sofa arms. My lap, you name it plus ive, nearly dropped them more than once. We even managed to crack one of our review samples, even though these have gorilla glass victis on the front. You can still break them easily enough, so youre going to want to get a case, and when i first got my hands on these pixels, i really wasnt so sure about this design from the front its hard to tell them.

Apart from the samsung note, 10 or note 20, and from the back, they kind of look like tcl phones to me and after a couple of weeks, the design really hasnt grown on me sure they feel nice and premium in ways that prior pixels didnt. But they kind of lack some of the whimsy and fun that the older models all had lets get into the meat of this. How do these new pixels perform? The answer very, very good theres very little to complain about with either of them. Both screens are punchy and colorful theyre bright enough to read in sunlight and the faster refresh rates make the interface smooth when youre scrolling around, especially on the pro. If you look closely, you can find some issues like. If you look from an extreme angle, you might see some color shift or, if youre, using the pixel 6 pro there might be some visible shadow under light screen areas where the curves are. But you have to look really closely to find these things. In fact, its really even hard to show you them on video, they dont really interrupt my day to day use and frankly, i dont have a problem with any of these screens. They dont have any weird bugs or issues like a color cast in low brightness or flickering or really bad color reproduction that we saw on older, pixel phones. Now the tensor chip performed just as great as other high end android phones, whether i was launching apps multitasking, navigating the ui or whatever i happen to do its not going gon na run benchmarks as fast as apples latest chips, but its miles ahead of the processor That was in last years, pixel 5 and totally competitive with the snapdragon 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 percent battery left, if youre a light user. I could easily see go in two days with this now, a lot of that has to do with the fact that these are big batteries and theyre, big phones with big batteries, its a big mood, but either way the problems that pixels had with battery life years Ago are firmly in the past now on charging both models, support wireless and fast wired charging, but neither come with an actual charging, brick so its 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 2016 and in something that matters a lot to me, theyve got really nice haptics bad buzzy haptics can just ruin the experience on a phone for me, but google nailed it here. Theyre, soft and clicky, with just the right amount of feedback, but where the pixel 6 and 6 pro really drop. The ball is, with their underscreen fingerprint scanner, its in a comfortable spot, its about a third of the way up from the bottom of the screen, but its just slow compared to others, and sometimes it needs a few scans to recognize. My fingerprint theres also no facial recognition here, so this is the only biometric security option you got and frankly, it could be a lot better, as youd expect.

The pixel 6 pair run googles latest version of android, the completely redesigned android 12.. Now, for the most part, i like it its very legible. The animations and design elements are fun and whimsical and it mostly stays out of my way when im using the phone, its 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 six 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 youre calling automated phone tree systems and it can even wait on hold for you. The phone tree system, attempts to transcribe whats being said, and it provides you with easily tappable buttons. So you dont have to sit there listening intently, the entire time a robot is speaking to you, but its 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 6s tensor processor is faster, more accurate dictation, which is convenient to use, but will be a lot more useful when google figures out how to get it onto a smart watch. Those features plus some photo stuff well get into. I promise i have not forgotten about. The camera. Are the main benefits of googles, custom, tensor, processor theyre, not an ai revolution, but thats? Okay, because im not ready for the robot overloads yet.

Lastly, google says it will be supporting the pixel 6 and 6 pro for five years, which is a lot longer than the typical android phone gets, but thats only referring to security updates googles. 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 2024. all right its 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 are 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 its hard coded to produce 12.5 megapixel images. Its set behind an f 1.85 aperture lens and it has optical image stabilization next to that is a 12 megapixel ultrawide camera thats, 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 6 pro you get a new 4x telephoto 48 megapixel camera that spits out 12 megapixel images, its got an f 3.5 aperture Lens and has optical stabilization of these cameras by far my favorite is the telephoto camera, its the first telephoto on a phone that ive actually enjoyed using its got longer reach than you get on an iphone 13 pro and has better compression and subject separation.

So i dont need to use portrait mode nearly as much its also way, sharper and more usable every day than samsungs 10x camera and thanks to googles, 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 telephoto camera its pretty great, the new main camera is excellent too its classic pixel high contrast, moody looks with lots and lots of detail in both good and low light, its very competitive with the Best from apple im not going to declare either one a standout winner, some shots, look better from the iphone. Some shots look better from the pixel, but both are very good and, as weve been saying for a few years now, which one you prefer really comes down to your own personal tastes. But if theres one area that i would like to see improvement from google on its how long the pixel takes to capture night mode shots a lot of times, youll 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 youre, just not patient enough to wait for it a lot of times the iphone would take half as long to capture the same night mode scene. Now the ultrawide camera is good, but its clearly the weakest of the bunch.

Its got softer details, noticeable distortion, i think its safe to say the iphone has google b here. The iphone has also always consistently beat google with video capture and this year, yeah thats. Still the case, the pixel 6s video is a lot better than older pixels, but its still wonky with image stabilization and has some weird color processing, thats, very different from how google processes still photos now, reds and oranges and any highly saturated colors in particular. Look way. Oversaturated in the video, but you can easily record 4k 60fps 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 its adjusted its image, algorithms, to work better for darker skin tones and its great to see the company addressing this problem. Thats long plagued the photo industry now, both nicole nguyen at wsj and julian chicatu 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 their articles out were going to link them below. If you look at all the photos, its clear, the pixel is still doing pixel things, its high contrast with a dose of overexposure 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 wouldnt 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 dont want there its a fun trick, but it can be really hit or miss this isnt going to put any skilled, photoshop editors out of work. You can also get very similar results from third party apps, so its not totally necessary to buy a pixel for this. But the thing that really impressed me was the 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 were going to be doing a lot more. With these cameras, too, becca is going to be comparing 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 thats a lot of stuff whats, the takeaway 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, id say that theyre, the best android phones full stop. They have a great value. The pixel 6 in particular offers a lot of phone for 600 and theres no show stopping bugs or issues to be worried about.

If you could deal with the fact that they are just giant phones, youre – probably going to be happy with them. Now, if youre trying to decide whether or not that 300 extra for the 6 pro is worth it thats, a tough call, i really prefer the regular 6s flat screen and slightly smaller size, but i know id miss the telephoto of the 6 pro. If i went without it at the end of the day, it feels like google really did it this time, its produced flagship, competitive phones without any glaring issues or omissions and its priced them under the competition okay. So what are you getting fast speeds, competitive prices, an excellent camera plus that telephoto on the 6 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? The app so its not totally necessary to my background, fell down theres another gadget that weve been waiting years for new macbook pros so be sure to check out our video on those. And now you can watch any of our videos on any popular smart tv platform.