Google Pixel 8 Pro FULL REVIEW - Should You Buy??

H uh 36.4 now let's test it on the pixel 8 Pro's thermometer excuse me 36.3 hey look at that pretty damn close as you can tell I'm actually not feeling 100% I've had the worst cold this week which has been really frustrating during Tech toober but I'm here because I want to talk about the pixel 8 Pro and share with you my full review and hopefully answer the question of whether you should actually buy this and it is certainly the best pixel they've ever made obviously and actually a solid step up even over last year 7 Pro I do still have a couple of issues with this some of the most exciting features just aren't available yet and this is also the most expensive pixel they've ever made the a pro will set you back a cool 999 that's the same in dollars which represents a $100 or £ 150 price increase versus last year's 7 Pro so it's pretty expensive and that is also for the bog standard 128 gig model although it is only 60 quid to then double it to to 256 which I would definitely recommend or if you can pick up a pixel 8 Pro with one of Google's deals where you get like a free pixel Watch 2 which is worth 350 quid that's a pretty good deal look at that is a bit tasty isn't it this is the new B blue color now fortunately I actually have all three new colors of the 8 Pro we've got the porcelain AKA off white we got the obsidian black and also this very tasty new B blue which I think is one of the best looking phones I've seen in a long time why do I have three pixel8 pros well I actually have a fourth one over there and that's because this is a revieww sample sent by Google and I actually bought these two plus the third one to give to my dad my brother and my wife who I will absolutely love pixels as do I and I suppose if buying the phones for your friends and family is not like the highest recommendation the highest score you could give a phone then I'm not sure what is obviously that says something about how much I like these guys the headline upgrades include a much brighter screen we have this slightly refreshed design including a matte rather than glossy back and also a flat rather than curved screen Google also added a temperature sensor on the back for some reason uh we also get their faster and more efficient tensor G3 chip new camera sensors with wider apertures Pro camera options Ultra hdr photos which make bright areas look much more vibrant on the pixels HDR screen the selfie camera now supports autofocus and of course a whole bunch more of Google's AI magic with best take audio eraser the magic editor AI generated wallpapers improved Co screening we also now have Wi-Fi 7 we get tougher Gorilla Glass Victors 2 the face on loing has been upgraded so it's more secure which means you can now log into your banking apps and auto fill passwords with your face as previously you'd have to use your fingerprint we also have slightly faster charging and of course it ships with Android 14 and Google promise a whopping seven years of Android updates which is great to see so there's quite a lot new here with the 8 Pro but let's kick off talking about this design Google have dropped this waterfall screen in favor of a flat screen which funnily enough is what the cheaper non-pro models would have and if I bring in the regular pixel 8 you can see in terms of MMS of design there isn't really that much in it now just the size difference 6.2 versus 6.7 in although the 8 Pro has a matte glass back and also a glossy frame and it's the other way around on the eight also a temperature sensor here the extra telephoto lens of course slightly thinner bezels and a couple of different color options and I really do like this new design it feels more comfortable it's easier to pick up and I much prefer this matte rather than glossy bag you can also see we've got much more sort of rounded Corners so it just feels a little bit smaller in the hand overall the only downside is it's actually a millimeter thicker this year although while I do appreciate that this doesn't pick up any sort of smudges or fingerprints this sort of metallic frame around the camera module does seem to scratch and Scuf quite easily I've only had this for a week it might be kind of hard for the camera to pick it up but I've already got a couple of little micro scratches on the bottom here however we do still get ip68 water and dust resistance so we will survive a dunk in freshwater and it's good to see in Jerry RG everything's evaluation that it's pretty durable as well Google's also changed the screen's aspect ratio although just a little bit we've gone from 19.5 by9 to 20 by9 so it's a tiny bit taller but you'd be hard pressed to notice you'd also be forgiven for not seeing this guy the new temperature sensor underneath the flash this contactless thermometer and I don't really know why it's there maybe seeing how hot a pan is or baby's milk and it could be a basic indicator if you're getting sick I guess although Google says it's not really designed for that I have found it kind of useful to just check the ambient temperature of a room let's see how consistent that is 19.7 19.9 19.4 there like half a degree uh variation there but it can perhaps answer the ageo question of is it just me or is it hot in here other than that I'm not quite sure why youd need this if you've got any good suggestions let me know in the comments what is more exciting though is this screen and boy does it get Bright Now both the 8 and the 8 Pro offer similarly High brightness scissors and that's thanks to their new actu and super actu screens as Google call it and across the board whether it's typical use indoors HDR and even outdoor use the new pixels are significantly brighter but to save some battery the a Pro's refresh rate now goes between 1 and 120 HZ versus 10 and 120 last year now I mentioned they slightly tweaked the aspe ratio but they've also slightly tweaked the resolution it's actually a little bit lower this year the highr option the default one the a pro gives us 367 pixels per inch versus 384 last year you'd be hard pressed to not but it is have slightly lower R I also kind of wish they'd added like a dynamic resolution option so it would switch between the full resolution which honestly I'm never going to switch to because with pixels including the 8 Pro I want to get every little bit of drop of battery I possibly can from this so I'll save that battery it also makes it the lowest resolution among the Galaxy s20 Ultra the iPhone 15 Pro Max and these other two also benefit from Dolby Vision HDR support which sadly we don't get on the pixel the viewing angles don't appear to be quite as good you you can see the new 8 Pro here has a much more sort of green tint to the screen rather than the more natural white on the 7 Pro yeah I think the viewing angles are actually a tiny bit of a step down this year which is strange so there is still some room for improvement viewing angles maybe a dynamic resolution option Dolby Vision but I do much prefer this flat rather than curved screen and the higher brightness definitely makes a difference now on the inside both the 8 and the 8 Pro Sport the new tensor G3 chip now this is Google's own custom processor based around Samsung's xnos architecture which has historically been a bit rubbish good in the fact that it allows Google to sort of tweak and optimize the chips to allow for some of these sort of AI magic feature things the software extras and also it allows them to offer longer support for the phone and also because it's stock Android 14 in this case it is still incredibly fast to use the downside is they've never been particularly efficient they've overheated and the performance particularly for gaming has always been a bit me so does the G3 their third generation tensor chip which is now built on a more efficient four rather than 5 nanometer design resolve any of these issues well yes a bit in Gig bench 6 single core scores are 19% higher multi-core is 133% higher although in an 2u which is a broader test of the processor and the graphics we're looking at a 25% optic and in War Thunder with maxed out settings although without Ray tracing because the pixel doesn't seem to offer this yet although the Samsung and the iPhone do the Pro is averaging around sort of 882 FPS with the 8 Pro giving us about 105 so a decent little step up in gaming performance but it still can't quite match its Flagship competition another problem we've had with past pixels including blast J 7 Pro is overheating and also some pretty average battery life now I do have good news on average the 8 Pro is 2° C cooler than the 7 Pro not a huge difference but I'll take it and only once so far did the 8 Pro tell me it couldn't keep shooting 4K 60 video cuz the device was getting too hot and that was after some pretty extensive use so overheating issues are still present but less than before the biggest pain point for me though has been battery life and after having used the 7 Pro and the 8 Pro as similarly as possible for a full day by 11:00 p.m. at night I had 22% of my battery left on this guy versus 27% on the 8 Pro still not class leading but it is better and I think if you're coming from a pixel 6 or a five then you will definitely appreciate the extra battery you get with this even though I think with a 5,50 millah battery with the performance that we get from the G3 and the improved efficiency I still think it should last longer than this and it might do because as you guys know with pixels particularly the battery can improve over time as the software sort of learns your patterns and gets used to you essentially so this may go up a little bit over the next few weeks and months and I will revisit this in a longer term review but yes the battery life is a little bit better as is the charging they've also uh sped up the wi charging from 23 to 30 w and wireless charging is now boosted to 23 wats although only if you use Google's own new stand otherwise with standard chat charges it helps out at 12 watts and sadly this doesn't support the new ch2 standard for me there's always four things that make a pixel phone stand out there's the software the fact that you have stock Android which feels nice and fast and it's the quickest to get updates uh we also have great cameras one of the best of the market and also historically they've been really good value I'm not quite sure if that still uh remains with the price increase on these guys but number four are the extras those Google magic AI features features that make you say well I can't switch to a Samsung or an iPhone or whatever because well I'll be missing out on this and that's where these guys really stand out and they've improved a lot of these AI features on the 8 series like call screening which can answer calls for you and give you a live transcript of the call on the screen so you can decide whether to answer it or send a message or just hang up and I love this I also really like this feature which will read aloud whatever website you you have up so it's kind of like turning a written article into an Audi book it can come across a little robotic but I still think it's kind of neat you just have to create on a holid de a grand Universe to explore a brand new feature is this AI generated wallpapers which well does exactly what it says on the 10 really enter a prompt wait about 30 seconds and create your very own slightly trippy wallpapers and as someone who always struggles to find a good new wallpaper I found myself using this a lot okay let's do a life test using the Google Assistant to do voice to text or dictation if you will we got the 7 Pro you got the 8 Pro and this is me just talking behind the camera just waffling on telling you to like And subscribe and click that notification Bell and all those horrible YouTuber cliches and things like that although I can see the 8 Pro adding more grammar and it's sort of correcting itself as it goes a bit better so yeah seems to be a little bit smarter this year then of course we have all the camera AI features and Magic Eraser and unblur make a return and exclusively on the 8 Pro we now get enhanced Magic Eraser which uses the new UND device Ai and it seems to be a bit better at removing larger objects from your photos but it's the convenience of just tapping edit on a photo and doing a quick touch up with magic raser using umblr because well why not and usually it comes out looking a little bit more detailed yes you can do a lot of this stuff in Lightroom or photoshop but that's several extra steps and this is much faster and free another new feature is called audio eraser now we've got this lovely Trumpeter in the background here which is very nice uh but I don't want it in my video call or my little Vlog so if I turn on audio erazer hopefully it's cut out some of that background noise it'll actually identify what's in the video like background noise pets Sirens I imagine then you can sort of uh isolate and reduce those background sounds it's a bit like magic eraser for your photos but well for your sound which is why it's called audio Razer and you simply shoot your video and then tap edit afterwards and and you can reduce that background noise the 8 Pro also gives us this new magic editor option Google announced this a few months ago and right now at least it is exclusive to the a pro and also does require your photo to have been uploaded to Google photos but this generative AI tool much like the latest versions of Photoshop let's you move and resize subjects in your photos then we have best take this is also a new feature for the pixel 8s and if I edit my photo I then go into tools you'll see this best take option if I tap that give it a second it will find all the faces in the photo hopefully all the faces there we go five people five faces and so if I click on let's say Dan's face right here with this particular shot I've got five different options for well face swapping Dan essentially sorry Dan and the results range from pretty good to hilarious to a little bit creepy the caveat is you do need to upload to Google photos and have an internet connection and my experience has been a little bit hit or miss the problem is it requires you or the person you've handed your phone to to take several photos in quick succession so then the best take AI has different options to present to you but it can also get a bit weird or just miss out faces completely and there's also something fundamentally creepy about your faces being swapped and essentially you're creating a new composite photo using real images that were captured but in different photos a few seconds before or after now I know a lot of people are freaking out about this and thinking well it's taking photos too far what is a photo and I think like half of the verg review of this was like talking about best take and the AI and what is a photo it doesn't really matter it doesn't bother me at least you don't have to use it and I think we have this kind of Continuum of photo editing at one end you've got like unblur to make your photo a little bit sharper then maybe moving up you sort of add filters and change the colors of photos then you have perhaps Magic Eraser so you can cut out people in the background or tweak your shots to make them look a bit more presentable and then maybe at the other end of the Continuum you've got best take where you're literally swapping faces and also the magic a where you're moving subjects around the photo and you don't have to use those things but I appreciate that I have the option I have these tools in my camera Arsenal if you will and I think if it allows me to save one great photo that otherwise perhaps I wouldn't want to have shared because someone didn't like the way they looked then why not but it's also worth mentioning these AI features do genuinely get better and smarter over time and also we have seen some of these features go back to earlier pixels just via the Google photos app so it's hard to say how many of these will always be exclusive 8 series features now all that stuff comes after you've taken the photo or the video it's you know editing and post but what about the actual camera quality how good is this at taking photos and videos well it's the same setup as last year three lenses with an ultra wide that doubles as a macro the main lens and a five times tep photo which you can pinch in up to a 30 time zoom but this year we get bigger sensors and wider apertures which which means it can capture more light and it should give us clearer less noisy photos also new this year our range of pro camera options so you can tinker and tweak your shots including your full resolution Raw photos and I think Google's Incorporated it well into the camera app it's hidden away behind this Cog wheel if you don't want to get overwhelmed but it's there if you know what you're doing now to my eye the camera does offer some minor improvements the colors seem to be a touch warmer I think skin tones look a bit more natural there's also a bit more detail and less noise although often you have to sort of punch right in and squint to really see the difference and it does seem to handle dynamic range a little bit better overall particularly with brighter highlights and in low light while some shots you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference which is kind of surprising given the bigger sensors and The Wider apertures others the 8 Pro is noticeably brighter particularly this Astro mode photo with its 4 minute long multiple exposure although I don't know if I prefer the new one but overall it is a step up and while perhaps not a significant one the pixel 8 Pro continues to be one of if not the best cameras for Pure photography up front the selfie camera now supports autofocus which is particularly useful for video and quality is definitely sharper although not necessarily in a good way it almost looks like Google's just dragged the sharpen a slider up on Photoshop Now video is still pretty solid if not perhaps the strongest area of the pixels camera I'd say but it does well even if it can come across a little bit sort of oversharpened the touch washed out so I'm shooting this at 4k on the pixel 8 Pro as I'm just walking down looking at the screen it's pretty remarkable how stable the video is I think it's using a combination of ois and Eis although it does do a surprisingly good job in low light and that's without Google's upcoming and much hyped video boost mode which they claim will make the 8 Pro the best phone for low light video we'll see about that and then we do also have blur video which is like Samsung's portrait video or Apple's cinematic mode on iPhone and it just gives you that sort of blurry bokeh behind you although I am shooting this on the back of the phone with the main camera so I actually can't see what it looks like hopefully you get a bit of an idea of how well it's dealing with the sort of edge detection around me the video quality so I've only had about a week with this so far I do want to spend more time with the pixel 8 Pro and its camera over the coming months Google say more updates are coming including these new features later in the year but on the whole my experience has been very good and this is one of the best cameras you can get it's a nice refinement over the 7 Pro Photo look a bit more natural the pro options are nice to have as are all those magic tools you have to enhance and improve your photos in post although one limitation I've come across is why if portraits can only be taken with the main lens or then with a two or three times crop the five times lens isn't an option for portraits so should you buy a pixel 8 Pro well my answer is yes I absolutely love these phones uh I think there's always room for improvement battery is still a little bit meddling gaming performance still is up there with the competition and we're soon to see new Chips as well which will be even more powerful so if you're a big gamer or if you want the absolute best battery life probably look elsewhere but I love the software that stock Android experience is super duper fast it is more expensive this year but considering it offers comparable size cameras and features to say an iPhone 15 Pro Max or a Galaxy s23 Ultra even if the battery life and gaming performance perhaps isn't quite at the same level the price isn't actually too bad especially if you can bag yourself a free watch however you do also have to consider the regular pixel8 which is 300 cheaper this is $699 this is $999 the main differences of course are the smaller screen size this is 6.2 in versus 6.7 same tens of G3 chip although 8 gigs of RAM rather than 12 the main differences are the camera we lose the telephoto lens we lose that temperature sensor as well but I'm sure we'll survive and also slightly smaller sensors with narrow apertures so the camera quality is a bit of a step down but overall if you do prefer a smaller phone it's got similar battery life the same lovely bright screen but just in a more compact form factor for 300 quid less I reckon the pixel 8 actually may be the better option which is awkward cuz I've just spent all my time talking about the pixel 8 Pro but what do you reckon would you be tempted to buy one of these have you already got one let me know what you make of the new pixel 8s in the comments below thank you so much for watching guys if you've got any questions at all let me know in the comments below and if you enjoyed the video a like And subscribe would be lovely and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat

Channel: The Tech Chap

Views: 183,758

Keywords: pixel 8, google pixel 8 review, pixel 8 pro camera, google pixel 8 pro review, google pixel 8, pixel 8 pro review, Pixel 7 Pro vs 8 Pro, Pixel 8 vs 8 Pro, pixel 8 vs pro, pixel 8 camera test, pixel 8 camera, google pixel 8 pro, pixel 8 pro camera test, google pixel 8 pro camera, pixel 8 pro vs pixel 7 pro, pixel 8 pro vs s23 ultra, google pixel 8 pro features, pixel 8 vs 8 pro, pixel 8 review, pixel 8 pro, pixel 8 vs pixel 8 pro, pixel 8 pro vs, android 14

Id: J6rl76MAo7E

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 14 2023