Pixel 8 & Pixel 8 Pro Review: The Verdict
Google's Pixels may have gotten more expensive, but so has everything else. As such, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro still represent solid value when compared to their closest competitors. It's just a shame their batteries aren't better.
What we love
- Fantastic cameras
- More premium feel
- Seven years of software updates
What could be improved
- More expensive than last year
- Shortish battery life
- New AI camera features more gimmicky than useful
The essentials
- Performance: Not the fastest around, but no complaints
- Battery: Underwhelming. Expect around four hours of screen time from the Pixel 8, and a touch longer from the Pixel 8 Pro. That should still get you a full day of standard usage, but without much of a buffer. Heavier users may need a top-up during the day.
- Screen: Lovely! And the Pixel 8 Pro screen is finally flat.
- Camera: Excellent. The faster primary lens makes the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro much more reliable shooters. The Pixel 8 Pro also benefits from a greatly improved 5x zoom lens.
75/100
Artificial Intelligence is a core part of the Pixel 8 pitch. The key messaging for the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro makes reference to "Google AI", and the big new features all rely on the buzzword. Face swap tech for family pictures, a generative photo editor, and an audio eraser for videos.
Google AI has been in the Pixel marketing mix since the Pixel 6, but this is the first time the messaging has been pushed this hard. And I get it, AI is super trendy right now, so Google is doubling down.
Despite this, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro's most important improvements are all hardware-based. The feature that's made the most difference to my life is the faster primary lens. Both phones have a wider aperture on the main camera, which means they shoot faster. The photos I've taken of my dog are consistently sharper than what I could get on the Pixel 7 last year.
Google has tried to address this in the past with AI-powered features like Face Unblur, but the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro reinforce the fact you need good hardware above all. Software only gets you so far.
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Bag of tricks
Best Take and Magic Editor are the Pixel 8's two headline AI camera features, so we're gonna start here.
Best Take is a Cronenberg-esque face-swapping tool. If you take several photos featuring multiple human subjects in a short burst, you can effectively combine them in a single shot to ensure everyone is looking their, well, best. Once you've picked your favourite base image, you can then swap out individual faces for poses from other photos in the burst.
Best Take is ostensibly designed to solve the problem of ensuring everyone is looking at the camera or smiling in a group shot, and it works well enough. It's one of Google's more convincing AI photo effects, even if it's unsettling seeing faces change while you're editing. If you take a lot of family photos, Best Take could be a nice value add.
On the other hand, Magic Editor's scope is a lot bigger. It's almost like having Baby's First Photoshop right in Google Photos. Magic Editor is an evolution of Google's Magic Eraser tool, and in addition to being able to remove elements for your shot, it lets you reposition them or enlarge them. It also has functionality for swapping out the sky.
Magic Editor definitely works better than Magic Eraser ever did, but it's still pretty inconsistent. In most cases, AI can't convincingly fill in where an object used to be. Results vary from blotchy to flat-out wrong. One attempt left me with a hedge missing a corner.
The functionality is also quite slow, with results taking upward of ten seconds to generate.
Here's a photo before I used Magic Editor:
And here's the same image after:
It's much worse because it's missing Billie, but there's also a blurry quality to the replacement elements - especially when the footpath meets the street.
Sure, there's fun to be had in using Magic Editor to quickly supersize a cat, but in its current form, it's too inconsistent for anything but fun.
But as aforementioned, there's a lot more to the Pixel 8 camera than AI tricks.
(For what it's worth, AI exists through the entire Pixel photography pipeline. Even when you're taking a standard photo, machine learning is being used to make it better. This is a given when it comes to phone photography in 2023, and not what I'm referring to when discussing the new generative AI functionality.)
The wider aperture on the primary lens makes the camera noticeably more reliable. I'm consistently getting sharper photos of my dog than I was with the Pixel 7 last year.
Even if you're not constantly taking photos of your pets (or small children, I guess), the faster lens helps get sharper photos in low light. Night mode exposures are shorter, which means there's less chance of motion blur.
I'm a big fan of Google's night mode aesthetic, and out of the box, you tend to get brighter photos than what you'll get from an iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro. Photos from the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro tend to have fewer fine details, however - especially on longer night mode exposures.
The Pixel 8 Pro also benefits from a much faster 5x zoom lens than last year (the standard Pixel 8 doesn't have a dedicated zoom lens). This actually makes it usable in dark environments, and I was even able to get some pretty decent photos from it at a live gig the other week. Not all of them were this good, but it's a striking result from how far back I was.
5x zoom doesn't match Samsung's 10x zoom lens in the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but the Pixel 8 Pro is more reliable thanks to the wider aperture. Any camera shake is much more noticeable when using long-range zoom. The Pixel 8 Pro can hit 10x digital zoom, but the results aren't great.
Lastly, there are the ultra-wide lenses. The Pixel 8 has a new 12MP ultra-wide lens that gives it a macro mode for the first, while the Pixel 8 Pro has a 48MP ultra-wide lens. While more megapixels aren't always better, the Pixel 8 Pro's ultra-wide shots are a marked improvement on what the Pixel 8 can achieve - especially in challenging lighting.
Here's an ultra-wide shot from the Pixel 8:
And here's the same shot from the Pixel 8 Pro:
That being said, it’s still nice the Pixel 8 gets the added versatility of a macro mode this year.
On the video front, the Audio Eraser - which can remove background sounds from your footage - genuinely works well. I recorded myself speaking with construction noise happening in the background, and Audio Eraser cleaned it up nicely. Don't expect miracles, however. It won't, for example, make footage you shot at a concert sound any better.
The Pixel 8 Pro will also benefit from an exclusive Video Boost mode down the line. This will allow you to send your footage to Google's servers for enhancement. One of the big promises is greatly improving low-light footage, effectively making it a night mode for video. I haven't been able to test this functionality yet, however.
Pixel 8 & Pixel 8 Pro camera samples
Check out these camera samples taken on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro primary lens. Click or tap on any photo to see a larger version.
A little bit nicer, once again
The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are both that little bit nicer, finish-wise, when compared to last year's models.
This is especially noticeable on the Pixel 8 Pro. The curved display is gone, and thank god. It's all best we pretend the phone industry's obsession with curved displays never happened. Sure, they looked kinda cool, but a flat display is so much more practical in every way.
The Pixel 8 Pro also feels markedly nicer in your hand; every harsh edge has been sanded off. Google has also swapped out polished glass for a matte back, and I for one am a big fan. It's less slippery, and hides fingerprints better. It's a shame this improvement didn't carry over to the standard Pixel 8.
The standard Pixel 8 is a touch smaller this year, measuring in at 6.2-inch. That’s great if you prefer smaller Android phones. In addition to shrinking the phone, Google has also increased the Pixel 8's refresh rate to 120Hz, making scrolling a little bit smoother.
Google's official silicon cases also feel that little bit nicer. It is however worth noting that the ridge that sits above the charging port is very delicate. It has a lot of give to it, even when your Pixel is encased. This shouldn't negate the protection on offer, but I could see the ridge snapping with enough wear and tear.
Seven long years
The one Pixel 8 software change I'm a big fan of is Google's new support pledge. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro will both receive seven years of major operating system upgrades, security updates, and feature drops.
This gives Google the best support life of any phone manufacturer at the moment. Samsung promises four years of major operating system upgrades, and five years of security. Meanwhile, iPhones have historically received at least five major operating system upgrades.
At the same time, we don't quite what this support will look like. Despite the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro sharing the same processor, some camera functionality is limited to the Pro model. There's absolutely no reason the standard Pixel 8 can't support a manual camera mode like the one you get in the Pixel 8 Pro. Instead, Google is using the software feature to try and upsell customers.
Google is far from the only manufacturer to do this, but it does make the seven-year promise a bit murkier. I have no doubt that Google will give the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro seven years of security updates; I'm just concerned that Google might hold new features back to try and sell new phones, as we're already seeing here.
Cynicism aside, a seven-year support pledge is fantastic. Google should be applauded for it, and even if you don't plan on keeping your Pixel 8 for seven years, it makes it a more viable phone for someone if you hand it down or sell it. It would be great to see the rest of the phone industry match this.
In need of a charge
Battery life is once again underwhelming on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. In my testing, I was able to get around four hours of screen time when connected to a 5G network on the standard Pixel 8, and as much as four-and-a-half on the large Pixel 8 Pro.
In both cases, you should still be able to get through a full day of standard usage, but you'll likely find yourself dropping into the sub-20% danger zone regularly. Heavier users will find themselves needing a top-up throughout the day.
For comparison, we were able to get at least six hours of screen time per charge from the standard iPhone 15. It's a frustrating shortcoming on Google's behalf, especially when its Tensor processors are designed for efficiency.
On the performance front, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are both silky smooth for everyday usage. They load apps just a little bit faster than last year's models, and are zippier when processing photos after you take them.
Once again, Google has been cagey about the actual improvements when compared to the previous generation. Instead, a spokesperson told us the company has optimised for the phone's AI-related functionality, rather than "speeds and feeds".
And to a certain point, that's fair. It's hard to fault the everyday performance on offer here. It does however show a surprising lack of ambition in terms of raw performance. You're not getting functionality like ray tracing here, and there's an especially strong contrast when compared to the iPhone 15 Pro, where we're starting to see AAA console-quality titles running on a mobile device. Apple has a clear idea what the future of flagship mobile performance looks like and Google's vision seems cloudy by comparison.
Even outside of gaming, there are features like Video Boost which require you to upload your footage to Google data centres for processing. With a beefier processor, it's easy to imagine this being done on device instead. Not only would that save you data (video files tend to be much larger than photos), it addresses any potential privacy concerns.
Google Pixel 8 & Pixel 8 Pro - Final Thoughts
Google may be all in on AI, but I'm not. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are great phones where gimmicky headline features overshadow the actual improvements. While there's a clear need to differentiate in the mobile space, and features like Magic Editor make for impressive tech demos, the day-to-day utility of a generative AI-powered photo editor is far less than that of faster camera lenses.
And yes, in this instance, you don't need to choose. The Pixel 8 offers both AI camera tricks AND a faster primary lens, but there are other areas it makes compromises. Sure, there's adaptive battery tech and an ultra-power saver mode that can extend your battery, but why not just put in a bigger battery?
AI qualms aside, the Pixel 8 is still a great phone, even if it is $200 more expensive than last year's model. The new $1,199 price point is still $100 cheaper than the entry-level Galaxy S23 and $400 less than the standard iPhone 15. While the battery could be better, you get snappy performance and fantastic camera quality in a premium package.
The Pixel 8 Pro's proposition is a bit less clear-cut considering its much bigger $400 price rise. $1,699 is still a good deal cheaper than what you'll pay for an iPhone 15 Pro Max or Galaxy S23 Ultra, but you also end up with a worse battery life and slower processor. The Pixel 8 Pro is by no means a bad device, but whether it's right for you depends on your priorities.
If you're tossing up against a Samsung, I'd pick the Pixel if you prioritise photography, or a Galaxy S23 Plus or Galaxy S23 Ultra for battery life. If you're comparing with Apple, the Pixel 8 Pro is a very sensible choice if you don’t want to spend a minimum of $2,199 on a Pro Max (and you're not heavily locked into Apple's ecosystem).
There are more reasons to try Pixel than ever this year, but AI features aren't one of them. If you're buying a Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro specifically for functionality like Magic Editor, I think you'll be disappointed. But if you're just looking for a solid phone that's a bit cheaper than the competition and has a reliable camera, there's still a lot to love.
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