Google Pixel 6 Pro 256GB 5G Prices & Plans

Google Pixel 6 Pro 256GB 5G Review

For the last few years, Google's star phones were its more budget-friendly options. The Pixel 3a and Pixel 4a were far more interesting - and a better buy - than their flagship counterparts. After skipping over a true top-tier phone last year, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro represent the search giant's latest attempt to be taken seriously in the premium space, to be uttered in the same breath as Samsung and Apple, to be a worthy alternative.

The Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are a bold gambit; Google has gone all in. Not only has it opted for a new visual language, it's designed its own chipset to power the phones. The vast majority of Android devices are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. By designing its own, Google is getting into Apple territory. Apple, of course, has full oversight of the entire software and hardware pipeline for the iPhone, and as such, this allows the two to better work in tandem.

By designing its own chipset for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, Google is clearly aiming for a similar kind of integration. Hardware and software that works together toward a common goal. While it's tricky to gauge which Pixel 6 features Google couldn't have implemented without its custom processor, the results make the pair of new devices some of the year's most exciting phones.

Before we start, here's how the pair compare:

Maybe the machines have learnt too much

Dubbed Tensor, Google says its first chipset is about 80% faster than the Snapdragon 765 processor you'll find in the Pixel 5. It makes for a zippy day-to-day experience, and I didn't encounter a single performance hitch in my time with either the Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro. On paper, it isn't as fast as the current crop of high-end Snapdragon or Apple processors, but that's not the play here. Pure performance isn't what's important, it's about the experiences Tensor enables or makes better. Instead, Google says Tensor improves onboard AI and machine learning performance, while also making it more battery efficient.

Phones heavily lean on machine learning and AI for photography, but we'll touch on that shortly. One of the most impressive Tensor-enabled experiences is the Pixel 6's speech recognition Instead of typing a message, you can tap a microphone button to start dictating to the Pixel 6, which seemingly jots it down in real-time. The functionality has been reliable and accurate enough that I've changed how I use my phone. Instead of banging out a text, I've been happy to just dictate. It even adds punctuation. And if the Pixel gets a word wrong, you can just tap on it to replace it. It's not a feature I expected to use as much as I have. The Pixel 6 will censor your swears, however - well, other than "crap".

The Pixel 6 can also translate texts as you type without needing an internet connection, and features improved live translation which should be a boon for when we can travel again. Especially if you can't get WiFi or mobile coverage.

Teaching a new camera new tricks

As aforementioned, phones lean pretty heavily on AI and machine learning for photography these days. We often call this computational photography, because your phone's software is doing just as much lifting as the hardware itself. Google has garnered a reputation for excellent cameras largely due to the strength of its software, and thankfully, the same holds true with the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. They're easily the best Android phone for photography, and even best the iPhone 13 Pro in some ways.

The Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro share the same 50MP primary lens and 12MP ultra-wide lens. The Pixel 6 Pro does however benefit from an extra 48MP telephoto lens with 4x optical zoom. There's also a bit of variance when it comes to selfie cameras: you get an 8MP front-facing camera on the Pixel 6, and an 11MP front-facing cameras on the Pixel 6 Pro. The 11MP is a wider lens, so you've also got the option to "zoom out" and fit more people in your selfie.

Here's a non-zoomed out selfie:

And here's a wide-angle selfie:

But back to the back of the phone. The Pixel 6 primary lens is naturally the star of the show, and reliably takes great photos in almost any condition. The night mode is especially impressive, with it taking bright photos that still have a natural amount of contrast to them. This is a bit different to what Apple has done this year, where low light photos retain more shadows in order to look more like what your eyes see.

Here's a low light shot from the Pixel 6:

And here's the same shot from the iPhone 13 Pro:

The one clear area where the Pixel 6 camera isn't quite as good as the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro is speed. This year's iPhones have some of the fastest cameras around thanks to wider lens apertures - one area where software can't compensate for hardware. This makes the iPhone 13 just a touch more reliable when it comes to shooting fast moving subjects like energetic puppies, and means features like night mode are faster on it (which in turn leads to sharper shots). 

Even outdoors in broad daylight, you can see a bit of blur on this Pixel 6 photo:

Conversely, the Pixel 6 easily has the best portrait mode of any phone - a feature that heavily relies on artificial intelligence. While it's not 100% foolproof, it simply does an excellent job of working around hair and keeping loose ends from blurring in the background when they shouldn’t. Here's a photo from the Pixel 6: 

And here's a photo from the iPhone 13 Pro:

The ultra-wide lens is unsurprisingly a slight step down in quality from the primary lens, but it still does the trick in most situations. It can just be a bit harder to get a clear shot in low light.

As aforementioned, the Pixel 6 Pro also benefits from a 4x zoom lens that's unique to it. It can be a little bit slow to shoot, so it isn't always the best pick - especially in low light - but it's a fun tool to have in the arsenal. Software zoom can be pushed as far as 20x, but the results aren't great if you go that far. Results as 10x are surprisingly usable, however.

Here's how the zoom range of the Pixel 6 Pro compares:

The standard Pixel 6 may not have a zoom lens, but it can still do pretty decent 2x digital zoom.

The pair of Pixels also pack a few new software tricks: motion mode and magic eraser. Motion mode can be used to add a sense of movement to your photo to make it look a bit more dynamic. You can use it in two ways. The first is if you're shooting a subject that's moving from one point to another - a puppy or a cyclist for example. It keeps your subject sharp, but adds a slight blur to the background. It's not always reliable, however. 

Alternatively, if you're locked on to a stationary object that has movement - a waterfall or a highway, for example - you can use motion mode to create a nifty long exposure effect. This tends to work much better.

Magic eraser is a new tool that's designed to get rid of unwanted subjects from the background of your photos. Unfortunately, the results are very hit and miss. Even with a small subject in an uncomplicated shot, it's very obvious the photo has been altered. The more complicated your photo, the worse a job magic eraser does.

Hang ten

Both the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are 5G phones, but the Pixel 6 Pro also has the unique distinction of being the first phone with mmWave 5G in Australia. mmWave 5G is a faster form of 5G that operates on higher frequencies - if you have mmWave coverage, you can get download speeds over 3Gbps. It also has a much higher capacity, so more phones in the area can operate at high speeds simultaneously. This does however come at the cost of signal strength: mmWave can only travel a few hundred metres. Even Telstra says mmWave is best suited for locations like transport hubs, stadiums, or tourism hotspots.

While mmWave 5G is exciting on paper - who doesn't love a zippy speed test? - the reality is that it barely exists in Australia right now. Telstra and Optus have very few live sites so far, and they only exist in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. Vodafone doesn't have any yet. There also aren't any use cases that need mobile speeds that fast.

It's neat to have a phone that supports mmWave 5G in Australia, but it's not the prime reason you should be considering the Pixel 6 Pro.

Friendship ended with camera bump, now camera bar is my best friend

If nothing else, the Pixel 6 design is distinctive. Google has eschewed the top-left-hand-corner camera bump trend for a long thin bar that goes across the entire width of the phone. The camera bar is flanked by a two-tone design, where you get a slightly different hue of your chosen colour on either side. You're not going to mistake the Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro for any other phone.

Personally, I'm a fan. Even though the camera bar significantly protrudes from the phone's body, it doesn't leave it unbalanced in the same way the camera bump on an iPhone 13 or Galaxy S21 does. The Pixel 6 doesn't tilt if you're trying to use it on a flat surface.

As high-end phones, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro feature the same kind of glass-and-metal sandwich you'll get on any other flagship. You'll get a matte aluminium finish on the standard Pixel 6, but a polished aluminium on the Pixel 6 Pro. The build quality feels in line with what you should expect from a premium device. My only niggle is the buttons on my Pixel 6 Pro are too soft. The buttons on my Pixel 6 have a nicer, clickier feel.

While the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro share the overall aesthetic, they're far from identical. The Pixel 6 is the smaller pair, touting a flat 6.4-inch 1080p+ display with a 90Hz refresh rate. The Pixel 6 Pro steps this up to a curved 6.7-inch Quad HD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The difference in refresh rate doesn't make much of a difference - both are still super smooth, and it's hard to complain about the quality of either screen. Curved displays are a love-it-or-hate-it feature, but the Pixel 6 Pro taper is rather subtle and doesn't result in false touches.

"All day" is clearly subjective

Google is promising about an all-day battery for both the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, but that won't be true for everyone. I was able to get about four hours of screen time per charge on standard Pixel 6, and between four and five on the Pixel 6 Pro. In both cases, I was constantly connected to 5G. Both can definitely last a day per charge, but don't expect much of a buffer on the smaller Pixel 6. The Pixel 6 Pro is a tad more forgiving. Neither is as resilient as the standard iPhone 13 and don't come close to matching the iPhone 13 Pro Max's battery king status.

Admittedly, the Pixel 6 is par the course what we've now come to expect from 5G Android flagships - between three and four hours of screen time per charge. The extra hour or so you'll get from the Pixel 6 Pro is very welcome, and makes it the smarter pick if battery is a deciding factor. It has the best battery I've seen on an Android flagship this year. It's just a shame Google didn't manage to do better in terms of battery to truly help the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro stand out. Given how far the camera bar protrudes, adding an extra millimetre of thickness wouldn't have hurt.

Google is still promising three years of major operating system updates for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, but is now offering five years of security updates. This is as good as it gets in the Android world, but it's puzzling that Google isn't doing more to match Apple in terms of support. The iPhone 6s still got upgraded to iOS 15 this year, and it came out in 2015.

Pixel 6 & Pixel 6 Pro - Final Thoughts

New phones are often boring these days - after all, there's only so many meaningful improvements and adjustments manufacturers can make that aren't gimmicks. The Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro aren't immune from that, but they're still easily the most exciting Android phones around right now.

While the Pixel pair doesn't break the mould from what you'd expect from a phone, they're polished products packed with nifty functionality. The cameras are excellent, the voice to text is seriously impressive, and the design feels fresh. It's hard to tell if Google genuinely needed to design its own processor to achieve what it did with the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, but I'm nonetheless impressed with the final product.

More importantly, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are ridiculously good value. The Pixel 6 starts at just $999 while the Pixel 6 Pro goes for $1,299. For comparison, the ten-month-old Galaxy S21 now starts at $999 thanks to a discount (it launched at $1,249) and you're looking at a minimum of $1,199 for an iPhone 13 mini. That's awfully compelling, given they can easily go toe-to-toe with their rivals.

If you're looking for a high-end Android device, the Pixel 6 Pro is the phone to beat. The Pixel 6 is still an excellent choice if you’re looking to save money and are okay with sacrificing a zoom lens and a little battery. They're both simply great handsets that prove that you should be considering a Pixel if you're spending top dollar.

Pixel 6 & Pixel 6 Pro camera samples