Google Pixel 8 Pro Review: Picture perfect

Let’s face facts - you don’t pick up a Pixel if you’re chasing the best specs, be it the chipset, camera sensors or the fastest charging. The appeal of Google’s Pixel series has always been software, right from its roots as a showcase of pure Android the way Google intended…to bringing in the latest AI-photography innovations to market. And so it is with the Pixel 8 Pro, a phone that had me go “wow” each time I tested one of its several new software features. Yet, is it enough to warrant the princely price tag of over INR 1 lakh?

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Unless you’re holding the new ‘Bay’ colour variant with the light blue, matte finish rear, it’s not easy to tell the Pixel 8 Pro apart from its predecessor. You still get the visually distinct aluminium visor housing a triple camera system, and there’s a new temperature sensor under the flash. Corners are more rounded, for a better, almost-pebble-like hand feel. Flip it around, and the changes are more visible – a flat-edged 6.7-inch OLED ‘Super Actua’ display with increased 2,400 nits brightness, and the rather excellent LTPO (1-120Hz) display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2, as is the rear panel. Stereo speakers, good haptics, wireless charging and IP68 dust-water resistance round out the premium build and design. One hopes the Pixel 8 Pro lasts seven years – that’s the staggering level of software support for this device, taking it all the way from Android 14 till Android 21!

Now, Pixels have always been camera first handsets, and there’s a new set of sensors – a 50 MP primary, a 48 MP 5x telephoto and a 48 MP ultrawide, all of which enjoy improvements to low-light sensitivity. Pictures in daylight are excellent, with good details and somewhat warmer colors, but details really shine in dimly lit conditions, even when handheld. The 5x telephoto does a great job in punching into a scene and taking you closer to the subject without sacrificing image quality. The new Pro mode allows for greater creative control, and macros using the upgraded ultrawide are pleasing as well.

Once you’ve shot an image, Google unleashes a bevy of AI-powered editing tools that I assure you will make you question what’s real in every photo you see coming from a Pixel. Take the upgraded Magic Eraser tool, that uses on-device generative AI to remove large objects and people from a photo and generate new pixels in their place. Spoiler alert: it works shockingly well, removing people even from the foreground and filling in greenery and fences behind them, as if they never existed! Or Best Take, which analyzes a series of similar group shots to reconstruct, if you will, an image where everyone is looking at the camera and smiling!

Yet, it’s the Magic Editor tool that shows you the true potential of AI-editing – it uses off-device AI to completely manipulate an image by moving objects or people in a photo, change the background etc. It’s also easy to tell these are early days for this tech – these tools take frustratingly long to run on most images, and I’m hoping Google picks the pace up over time, else these will remain novelty AI features that folks just won’t have the patience to use.

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Some of it comes down to Google’s Tensor G3 chipset that powers the 8 Pro which, while it runs cooler than last year’s Tensor G2, also tends to throttle performance during extended gaming sessions and tends to fall behind 2022’s flagship in terms of pure performance. Battery life is good for a day of moderate usage, with moderately faster-yet-still-slow 30 W charging speeds. Google now retails a 12 GB memory/256 GB storage variant, which is a step up from the sole (and paltry) 128 GB model at launch, but you’re going to have to really want the AI and camera tricks to justify spending upwards of a lakh on this, particularly if you consider the significant jump the price represents over the Pixel 7 Pro. 

Rating: 8/10

Price: INR 1,06,999 (12 GB/128 GB), INR 1,13,999 (12 GB/256 GB)