Google Pixel 8 Pro long-term review: what on earth has Google done here?

The Google Pixel 8 Pro really blew me away. That’s all the more astonishing because I actually had no expectations of the device.

Design and display

On the outside, not much has changed compared to the Pixel 7 Pro: the display edges are now flat instead of curved, the back is made of frosted glass, and there’s a temperature sensor in the camera module. I’ve used that exactly once so far. The Pixel 8 Pro is built insanely well and feels as premium as an iPhone Pro for the first time, but thanks to the aluminum frame it is much lighter than the equally sized iPhone 15 Pro Max. The 6.7-inch Super Actua LTPO OLED display means I like to hold it in my hand for a long time. I also like Google’s silicone cases: even though they’re made of silicone, dust and dirt don’t stick to them. For the first time, I like using a silicone case.

Three reasons for a Pixel

You usually buy a Pixel for three reasons: Google’s own smart features, stock Android and the camera.

Smart features. The Tensor G3 makes features possible at crazy speed. Examples:

• Call Screening filters calls and asks for the reason, so you don’t have to put up with spam calls, or your mother-in-law’s call.
• Speech recognition and Live Translate have become better and faster.
• Google Assistant, in my opinion the best voice assistant, reads online articles aloud at different speeds. Voice input when writing has also become better.
• Emails in the Gmail app can be translated automatically.

Stock Android. Some think it’s great, others find it awful and prefer Samsung’s One UI. The Pixel 8 Pro comes with Android 14 and brings, among other things, AI wallpapers with which you can create your own wallpaper. The notification light is also back, but only in the form of the camera on the back lighting up. For that you’d have to put the smartphone down with the display facing down.

Camera

The camera is the best Google has ever built in: a 50-megapixel main camera, a 48-megapixel ultrawide and a 48-megapixel telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom. I don’t have to think about which camera is best for which shot, I get the same image quality everywhere. With digital zoom, lost pixels are recalculated by AI up to 10x zoom. That’s crazy.

What stood out negatively to me was portrait mode: the Pixel zooms in, so for more distance you have to use the ultrawide camera. For everyone who wants more, there’s Pro mode, which I never use because automatic mode works great. The selfie camera also takes good photos that look like they were taken in a studio, sometimes even a bit too sharp. Sometimes I prefer the camera of my iPhone 8 Plus.

Thanks to AI, crazy functions are possible in photo and video editing:

• adjust the size and position of living beings or objects, or make them disappear
• take several shots of group photos and insert the best facial expression for each person
• change the blur of portraits afterwards

That works breathtakingly well. The video quality has been enormously improved and is outstanding in my eyes. A future update will bring a Video Boost mode that optimizes exposure, contrast and color values with AI.

Two criticisms

Battery: With the 5,050 mAh battery, I get over 6 hours of screen-on time, mostly over two full days. But I’m on Wi-Fi at home or in the office most of the time. Some wrote to me that they get closer to 3 hours when they are mostly away from Wi-Fi. That isn’t a good figure for a smartphone in this price class.

Unlocking: The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner and face unlock work extraordinarily well during the day. In low light, face unlock works little to not at all, and then I have to use the fingerprint scanner. That annoys me when you’re used to the device unlocking immediately when you pick it up. In the morning after getting up it doesn’t work so well either, but that’s more down to me.

Verdict

The Google Pixel 8 Pro is an absolute flagship. Design, quality, display and camera are unbeatable, and the many AI features make it the smartest smartphone on the market. If you buy it, you can’t go wrong and you get a flagship you can use for seven years. That’s the cherry on top, because seven years of updates have never been offered on the smartphone market like this before.