This is the Google Pixel 6 Pro, and it’s the pixel that’s been long overdue. It finally sees a much larger 120 hertz screen, beefed up camera hardware and Android 12 Out of the box. Google says its new smartphone is the best expression of Android. And we’re here to put that to the test.
Design
With the phones 6.7-inch display, and weighing in at 210 grams, the pixel 6 Pro is beefy. The phone shows off a new design language for Google Pixel with its bolder corners and lines. But with curvy glass around the back in front of the phone, all protected by Gorilla Glass Victus the punch hole camera has moved to the center of the screen.
The optical in-display fingerprint scanners. Placement is nice towards the top of the lower third of the phone. And the camera visor really is the focal point of the back of this phone. I mean, you can’t miss it. It’s like boom, there it is. The frame is made of polished aluminum all the way around, except the top part, which has a plastic insert for letting millimeter-wave 5g signals pass through. It’s a new direction for Google. But I’m not a fan of these new plastic cases. They seem to let dust pass through too easily.
I already found some debris marks on the frame. This is the largest display on any Pixel phone and it’s a 6.7 inch LTP O M OLED Q HD plus screen. It supports 120-hertz refresh rate, and it can play HDR 10 content. In our testing, we achieved a maximum brightness of 860 minutes with the adaptive brightness turned on. Despite not scoring as well as other flagships from Samsung apple in vivo, the pixel 6 pro still excels with sunlight legibility.
There are just 3 color display settings and not really an option for customizing them. But the natural profile does have excellent accuracy. There are dual stereo speakers on the pixel 6 Pro and they sound good with emphasis on vocals. But the bottom-firing speaker is certainly louder than the earpiece. overall loudness is decent. But we’ve heard louder speakers than this, I kind of feel naturally that technology has moved us forward as humanity as a people.
Battery
The Google Pixel 6 Pro comes with a 5000 mAp battery, which is pretty large for a pixel. But that doesn’t reflect in the endurance scores. The Google tensor chipset and the 120-hertz screen do use a lot of power. And although the phone’s web and video times were decent, it didn’t do well and stand-by tests resulted in an 84-hour endurance score. Now that number isn’t terrible, but it’s not as amazing as some other similarly equipped phones.
It’s worth noting that the pixel 6 pro doesn’t come with a charger adapter. But Google does sell a 30-watt charger meant to be used with this phone. The thing is, the pixel 6 Pro is very conservative with its charging. It does reach the advertised 50% in 30 minutes, but it takes almost two hours to fully charge the phone.
Chipset
The pixel 6 Pro comes with Google’s first custom chipset made in collaboration with Samsung. It was designed by Google with a superior custom-built machine learning engine that allows for new software features that are optimized at the hardware level. performance with the tensor chip was excellent in everyday use in both computational and graphics benchmark tests. And it was able to keep up with other devices running this Snapdragon 888. It didn’t do as well in our stability tests, the pixel 6 pro steadily throttled to around 70% of its max performance over the first 15 minutes, and from then on it dropped down to around 60% A total of three times over the next hour. Android 12 brings significant visual changes with the material you decide from updating fonts, boxes, and menus. The overhaul brings nicer visuals, larger buttons, and a colorful theming engine that pulls accent colors from your wallpaper. Aside from being one of the most visually pleasing versions of Android, here are some of the features made possible thanks to Google’s tensor chip. First off is voice typing, which is so much smoother and doesn’t even require an internet connection to work. The speech to text model is on device punctuation is added automatically. And all you have to do when you’re done is say send and send. There’s a new feature baked into Android called Live translate and it worked as advertised was cool is that everything is done automatically and without having to switch back and forth between translation apps. There’s also live translate for live captions. And while the idea is cool, it’s an ambitious feature, only a few languages are supported. Also, it’s very difficult to read text being translated in real time.
Camera
There are 3 new camera sensors on the pixel 6 Pro, including a 15 megapixel main camera, a 48 megapixel Periscope telephoto camera with four times optical zoom, and a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera. All these sensors are larger than those from its predecessors. The main and Periscope cameras have optical image stabilization. In daylight, the pixel 6 pros camera performed very well. But we can’t help noticing that HDR plus looks a little different here. There’s far more detail in the images now. And dynamic range has improved. Colors are vivid and white balance still has that cool tone that’s signature of the pixel.
There’s more sharpening now which looks great overall, but textures look speckled of close, but that probably won’t matter once the image is posted somewhere in compressed. The camera app has four zoom modes 0.7x 1x 2x and 4x 2x. Photos are cropped from the main sensor and use Google’s super resume to enhance the image. Plenty of details are retained at the expense of some added noise, especially in details that are further away. There’s also a noticeable softness to lines that isn’t present with the main camera. Four times zoom will switch to the dedicated Periscope camera and the shots from this camera look very good.
Dynamic Range is great. And although colors don’t look as vibrant, these images aren’t over sharpened and there’s a more realistic look to these shots. We went all the way to 10 times zoom, which crops from the periscope camera and is enhanced with Google’s super resume. The shots look decent, and this Periscope camera is a valid alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S 21 Ultras 10 times optical zoom, but the Samsung still captures more details. Then there’s the ultra wide camera, whose white balance is inconsistent with the main cameras. Still, this ultra wide does produce cleaner shots from those from the pixel five ultra wide camera.
Camera test
Google says its new camera sensor can capture up to two and a half times more light than the pixel five and the main camera can comfortably captured low light scenes without using night sight. shots look pretty good. By default night sight automatically kicks in when it needs to, and it’ll work on any of the three cameras, but night sight can sometimes take several seconds to capture. With night sight enabled. images look clearer and sharp, and even the skies will glow. In some cases, colors are accurate and nicely represent the scene.
Some shots look more natural than others. But generally, images can look so bright that you would think the picture was taken in daylight. We were impressed by how much light was pulled from the scene. Despite the lack of light in some of these scenes. The zoomed night sight photos have nice colors consistent with the main camera, though they aren’t as sharp but they do get the job done. The ultra wide cameras night shots look decent. The overall images look a bit darker than the main cameras but not bad overall. The front facing 11.1 megapixel selfie camera shoots great looking selfies with nice details and pleasing colors. Then emigrant is also quite good. But sometimes HDR plus doesn’t know what to do if you’re wearing a white shirt that won’t render the shirt as bright white. Instead, it always has to underexpose it, making it look strange and inconsistent under different light.
With Google tensor, it’s not possible for Google to apply its HDR corrections to video frames much quicker, all the way to 4k at 60 FPS video quality sees significant improvements. 4k video looks really nice with great dynamic range and pleasing colors. We can’t help but notice this Moray effect on that building in the back, but it’s probably because of some textures that we can’t see. 2x video is cropped from the main camera, but it looks fine colors and dynamic range are consistent with the main camera and footage is noticeably softer.
Footage from the four times Periscope camera looks very good. This shot was a handheld which says a lot about the pixel 6 PROs video stabilization. Ultra Wide video looks nice with great dynamic range, pleasing colors and minimal noise. You can record selfie videos at up to 4k at 30 FPS. There’s a new voice enhancement feature that blocks out background noise and here’s how that sounds.
This is a 4k video shot or the front facing camera of the Google Pixel 6 pro without speech enhancement on now this is is a video with speech enhancement turned on in 4k from the front facing camera, the Google Pixel 6 pro
Price
The Google Pixel 6 pro starts at 899$. Putting in at the premium smartphone range. It has all the hardware it needs to make a very compelling device, powerful triple camera setup, a huge battery and striking new design. Battery life, though not terrible, does fall a bit short. And we think the cameras although powerful, just need a bit more tweaking to get HDR plus to be more consistent.
Google tensor is a great performer but not for sustained gaming. Naturally, the pixel 6 Pro is up against flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S 21 Ultra, the Apple iPhone 13 Pro, and the vivo x 70. Pro Plus. Google’s advantage here is the tensor chips, new software features, and firmware updates come directly from Google. If you’re coming from an older pixel, or even a Nexus phone, it may be worth considering the pixel 6 Pro. Google Now promises three years of iOS updates and five years of security patches. Otherwise, if you already have a more recent pixel, you might want to consider waiting for the second generation of Google tensor chip. The pixel 6 Pro is only available in some markets so it may be difficult to find in the first place.
You can buy the Google Pixel 6 Pro here
