Pixel 8 Pro long-term review: BETTER than S24 Ultra?!

with all this talk about the s24 ultra and yes I have contributed to it massively I think certain smartphones are being forgotten about and the one that I want to talk about today is this couple of weeks ago Google sent me this brand new mint green pixel 8 Pro and I really like the color it's a very kind of faded pasty Hue I think personally it's better looking than the baby blue color that's interesting because the bay blue pixel 8 Pro was my best looking smartphone of 2023 and it very narrowly missed out on the smartphone of the Year award the coveted Mark Ellis reviews smartphone of the Year award only because the honor 90 is such good value however there is a new kid on the Block I've got so many phones in front of me which is the s24 ultra and I think I'm going to go on record now and say this I think it it is the best smartphone I've ever used and that leaves one very big question for this big pixel Fanboy where does that leave the pixel 8 Pro okay so first I need to explain why I love the pixel so much and to do that I need to dig into this drawer of smartphones so there's loads of x smartph x loads of X review there's loads of smartphones in this drawer and somewhere in here oh no is ah this which is the pixel 4 a and it was my first experience of the pixel phone thing this phone was just 349 and in a world where we spend th well over ,000 at least on a flagship smartphone that for me was a complete Revelation and yes there's no official IP rating with it the design is a bit plasticky the display is so so but the camera system my word that camera system completely blew me away and it was my first experience of a completely unb butchered version of Android and since then every single iteration of the pixel and I have tried all of them has got better and better and better so for instance the a series and I think this is the 7A they are starting to look fairly similar and I'm getting a little bit overwhelmed the a series continues to deliver massive value even though the price is creeping up a little bit and the regular eight in this case which is where's the eight is it that one no anyway the regular 8 and the pixel 8 Pro just like the 7 and the 7 Pro are one of those rare Android smartphones that I want to use all the time I can't because I'm an iPhone sheep I'm an idiot who is stuck in the Apple ecosystem I talked about this in the s24 ultra video which I'll link to above so you can watch that and call me an idiot in the in the comments something else to know about pixel devices is that they do catch the eye of onlookers this is quite rare these days the honor 90 does it because it looks so unusual and very interesting the iPhone isn't interesting I'm afraid whereas for some reason this design this kind of whatever you want to call it I genuinely really love this design but there's something about this that is interesting enough for people to comment on it and I have a sneaking suspicion that these phones are influencing something something I've spotted a lot recently I've bored you rigid about how much I love the pixel camera system so I won't gush about it too much in this video but there is something I've spotted recently which I just have to get off my chest and I'm going to show you two photos this first one is from the s24 ultra now take a look at this and tell me that doesn't look like a pixel photo there's just something about the character of this photo that screams pixel and here's another one from the honor magic V2 which is my favorite foldable so far again I think this looks incredibly pixel pixel very much like the pixel it's uncanny don't you think and I know I said I wasn't going to gush about the pixel camera system again in this video but just allow me this it's been a while since I've been on a photo tour with the pixel 8 Pro so I thought why not take this mint green version on a tour of lemington spa which is where I live you've probably never heard of it but it's a very lovely town and there's some lovely photo opportunities I've tried to Su out why I love pixel photo so much and I've never really got to the bottom of it I think it's the drama that's introduced into these images is and if anything that has been dialed down a little bit over the last two generations but it's still there if you've ever used Lightroom you'll be aware of the clarity slider which introduces a lot of contrast and just something to the image that really makes it pop off the screen now this isn't for everyone some people will think these images are too way too contrasty too sharpened and just a bit too much but that's why smartphone photography is massively subjective you might even think that these photos lack vibrancy and saturation but for me they're perfect and yes of course we have a 5x Zoom to play with on the pixel 8 Pro and no I cannot stop using it although I am a big fan of the ultra wide as well on the pixel 8 Pro it's my favorite Ultra wide of any camera system the other thing that pixel 8 Pro has in its favor these days is video boost I've not had much time to play with this but I'll give you some examples of it with it turned on and turned off now this is basically a server-based processing for video so you shoot the video on your pixel 8 Pro then sends that video to Google servers Google servers do some clever stuff with it and then send it back down to your pixel the results are pretty impressive particularly in night mode it's just one of those things where Google is one step ahead of Apple because you don't get this with the iPhone I never get into the details of pixel binning and cropping into sensors and all that stuff because I just don't care what I do care about is how good the photos are that come out of these cameras and for me the pixel Just Nails it every single time I said I wouldn't gush about it didn't I sorry let's talk about the January pixel update because that is quite exciting we didn't just get this mint green color in January Google also issued a what they call a feature drop and the timing was impeccable because it happened at just the same time funnily enough as the launch of the s24 ultra so this happens all the time Samsung comes out in January and says check us out we've got a new phone and then Google says hey and then other people get invited basically it worked it turned my attention back to the pixel 8 Pro the slight challenge with this feature drop is that not all of these features are available in the UK yet so I can't show you all of them one that I can show you is circle to search and weirdly this appeared on the s24 first I don't know why and the premise is really simple if you take a photo of something you spot something on an Instagram feed or a web page and you want to know what it is you hold down the bottom of the screen on the pixel 8 Pro and then Circle it and once you've cired IR that object Google tells you what it is circle to search may not be of any use to you whatsoever but I have found it very handy in certain situations and it's just an example of AI doing something that is very useful the next update relates to the temperature sensor on the back of the pixel 8 Pro and this was a weird addition last year because okay you could take the temperature of a surface of something and of the food you're cooking but that was it and equally why I think the intention that Google had with this is starting to become clear because if you live in the US you can now use that temperature sensor to take the temperature of yourself the way it works apparently is that you go into the temperature app on here and then motion the phone across your forehead but like I said I can't test that yet because it doesn't work in this country the January update also included photoemoji support in messages which is very similar in fact almost identical to the same thing in iOS where you can take any subject from a photo and turn it into an emoji and then you can use that emoji in future messages I've never found a use for this but then I am 43 there's also magic compose which has come to the messages app and again for some reason I can't test that because it's not on this phone the idea is that it uses AI to give you some help with the tone of your messages Google has renamed nearby share to Quick Share and this is a very airdrop like thing where you can basically transfer anything from one pixel to another pixel and Chrome OS and windows I don't think there's mac support for this yet but if that existed wow I I could potentially leave the iPhone and that's all the good stuff about the pixel I think to to balance out this long-term review I should I should give you a couple of gripes shouldn't I that I've got to say a few bad things about this phone the first thing to mention is that all of my gripes with the pixel 8 Pro are design related which sounds weird because it was my best looking smartphone of 2023 but hear me out firstly it's the slippiest smartphone I've ever used this matte glass back looks beautiful but it's so slippery it Demands a case part of the reason for that is the camera housing which again is very iconic I'm a big fan of this scratches way too easily Google please please change this going forward I would love to see a much more non-sc scratchable camera housing the power button feels like it's in the wrong place so it sits just above the volume rocker and I'm always pressing volume down and then thinking why isn't the screen turning off before realizing that the power button is above it and that's it there's nothing else I don't like about this phone I think the s24 ultra is the phone to beat in 20124 I do think it's the best smartphone I've ever used however the pixel 8 Pro comes a very close second and there are some renders doing the rounds at the moment of the pixel 9 Pro it looks lovely so I have very high hopes of the pixel line in 2024 but I would love to know if you've bought a pixel 8 Pro or if you're on the fence about buying one what is it about that phone that catches your attention why do you either love it or why are you so tempted to buy one let me know down below and the reason I've brought you into the kitchen is because this video isn't sponsored but I do have some very lovely brand Partners who help me run this Channel and literally keep these lights on one of them is gaja and gaja make the coffee machine and the beans that you're sitting on at the moment yes it's expensive but they do have a big range with lots of different options for different budgets I've worked with Gaga to get some really interesting discounts so if like me you are fueled by coffee go check it out the link is just down below and if you've still got some time hang around for another link to my full review of the s24 ultra just to find out what this is up against now now it's coffee time

Channel: Mark Ellis Reviews

Views: 79,086

Keywords: Mark Ellis Reviews, Mark Ellis

Id: 8uvKWPHVx48

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2024