Google’s Pixel 10 Pro XL is a subtle but simple hardware upgrade over last year’s model.
The Pixel 10 is not quite as straightforward.
With the Pixel 9 series, it was easy to explain what you’d be getting by opting for a Pro model: a telephoto lens alongside a slightly brighter and sharper screen with slimmer bezels. That’s what most people would have noticed unless they had strong feelings about thermometers, or matte versus frosted glass.
I thought the base Pixel 9 was a great phone for the price. The design was strong, the display was still more than solid and the camera matched up to the 9 Pro, as long as you could live without the telephoto.
Now, Google has complicated the comparison by giving the base Pixel 10 a telephoto lens as well. But that doesn’t mean the 10 has a better camera system than the 9 — in fact, it’s generally a downgrade, to the point that you might be better off comparing the 10’s camera to the entry-level 9A.
The Pixel 10 Pro’s minor design tweaks have made their way over to the 10. The bezel around the camera system has been tightened up, the SIM card slot has been relocated to the top edge, the “G” logo is a little bigger and the speaker on the bottom now has symmetrical slots.
Google says the top earpiece speaker has been upgraded, but you’re not getting the huge boost to bass performance and clarity that the Pixel 10 Pro brought this year. While the difference in sound quality when watching videos is not insignificant when compared to the 9, the 10 Pro XL is way ahead of both.
The Pixel 10 I’ve been using is the “obsidian” model, which is more like a very dark grey. It’s not a bad look — the glossy back panel gets a little fingerprinty but it’s nothing too excessive. The other colorways look more interesting, though: there’s an electric blue “indigo”, a greyish-blue “frost” and the return of the nearly-neon “lemongrass”.
Like the Pixel 9, this is just a really nice phone to use. I prefer the matte frame to the shiny finish on the Pro model, and it feels very solid and compact. It’s up there with the Xiaomi 15 as one of the better smaller phone designs around. The 6.3” 1080p display is similar to last year’s, which is to say it’s pretty good despite the thicker bezels than the Pro’s, but it’s also received a slight boost to 3,000 nits of peak brightness.
The new Pixelsnap magnetic wireless charging system is also here on the Pixel 10, representing one of the biggest year-on-year usability upgrades. The 4,970mAh battery charges at up to 15W wirelessly over Qi2, or at up to 30W with a cable, neither of which is very fast. But as a long-time MagSafe devotee on the iPhone, I do think Pixelsnap is likely to cut down on the instances where you find yourself urgently in need of a fast charge, given the wide range of compatible magnetic portable batteries and desk stands.
The Pixel 10 uses the Tensor G5 system-on-chip as the Pro models, and the software story is also the same. The Material 3 Expressive version of Android 16 is 100% my favourite phone operating system right now — it’s just as good on the Pixel 10. You can read more about exactly why it’s so great below.
Google's new Pixel software overhaul is an expressive barrel of fun
For the past couple of months, I've been using a pre-release smartphone operating system that represents a significant design overhaul, with a greater focus on transparency and new visual elements that respond realistically to your touches and swipes.
Okay so, the camera.
The Pixel 9 had the same main and ultrawide cameras as the Pixel 9 Pro, but that’s not the case this year. The Pixel 10’s main and ultrawide cameras are actually the same as the 9A’s, while the newly added telephoto lens matches the 9 Pro Fold’s.
In other words, we’re going from two cameras deemed worthy of the highest-end Pro-line Pixel to three that were either taken from the entry-level model or a space-constrained foldable. I feel like I have to mention that hardware isn’t everything with every Pixel review I write, but at the same time these camera modules are very much known quantities.
Here’s how they shape up.
Like I found when testing the Pixel 9A, the 10’s smaller sensor gives noticeably deeper depth of field than the 9; in other words, more of the background is in focus, limiting your ability to make your subject stand out. Exposure and colour are very similar, though — this still very much looks like a Pixel camera.
The difference between ultrawide shots isn’t as dramatic. The Pixel 9 tends to give a cooler colour cast, and you do get a little more detail — the sensor is 48 megapixels vs the 13-megapixel component on the 10. Still, the 9 shoots 12-megapixel photos by default, and I don’t think too many people will be Pixel-peeping the results here.
As you’d expect, the Pixel 10 pulls ahead when it comes to telephoto shots. The 9’s Super Res Zoom feature does a pretty good job of cleaning up the detail at 5x to produce a picture that looks okay if you don’t look too close, considering there’s no telephoto hardware at all to work with. But the 10’s native 5x zoom lens gives you much better real image data, even with a small 12-megapixel sensor and f/3.05 aperture.
The same goes for the results at 8x, which is the highest digital zoom that the Pixel 9 even allows for. The 10 pulls ahead further in the rendition of finer details, while you can also see the shallower depth of field due to the longer focal length.
As for the comparison with the Pixel 10 Pro XL, the 10’s telephoto holds its own at 5x in daylight, and even up to its max of 20x — although the difference in colour cast here is pretty noticeable.
The gap is more apparent in low light, however. The 10 Pro’s larger, sharper sensor and faster aperture is able to turn out much cleaner images.
There’s nothing really surprising about this camera system — all of these components have been used in prior Pixel phones, and Google hasn’t attempted to revamp its signature processing style. You do get some of the Pro’s new features this year like Camera Coach, while others like the “Pro” controls are still artificially gated.
Honestly, whether this counts as an upgrade or not depends on how often you’ll want to take photos beyond 5x. Up to that point, the Pixel 9 is markedly better, but from there on out you’ll get better results from the 10. Having a solid telephoto lens in what amounts to a mid-range phone is a reasonable selling point — I imagine Google had the base-model iPhone in its sights here — but I would have preferred for the other two cameras to stick with the previous hardware.
It’s often been challenging to judge Google’s cheaper A-series phones on their own merits, because by the time they get released in the spring the base-model Pixel tends to have been heavily discounted. This year, though, it’s just as interesting to compare the new base Pixel to the existing $500 9A.
Next to that phone, the $800 Pixel 10 has a brighter screen, a newer chip, better build quality, a telephoto lens and Pixelsnap. I think that’s a more than reasonable proposition for an extra $300, but if all you care about is getting a modern Pixel, the 9A is still a very solid option that has the same main camera and ultrawide as the new Pixel 10 — and almost no camera bump.
The further $200 upgrade to the Pro, meanwhile, gets you more than last year. The wide and ultrawide cameras might not be any different to the 9 Pro’s, but they’re very different to the 10’s, and while the 10 does have a telephoto it doesn’t include the 10 Pro’s key Pro Res Zoom feature. I also don’t want to understate the difference in speaker quality; the 10 Pro XL really does sound great.
Ultimately I think this lineup probably makes more sense for Google because there’s clear stratification between each tier. All of these are really good phones for the money. But it does make me more interested than ever in how the 10A will shake out.