Pixel 9 and 9 Pro XL review: forward motion
Pixel 9 and 9 Pro XL review: forward motion
Google's hardware game continues to improve
Google is getting a lot better at this.
Last year’s Pixel 8 Pro was a statement of intent. It might not have been the flashiest phone released in 2023, but it was easy to recommend. Even though most previous Pixel phones had their flaws, they were always endearing. You wanted to like them. But the Pixel 8 Pro was good.
Not quite a year later, we have the Pixel 9 lineup. As a company, Google is clearly focused on how AI will transform the day-to-day smartphone experience for everyone. As a hardware division, though, the Pixel team is upping its game.
I’ve been testing the Pixel 9 and the Pixel 9 Pro XL for more than a week. There’s also a smaller Pixel 9 Pro, which I haven’t used, that has near-identical specs to the 9 Pro XL in the more compact size of the 9. I’ll be specific about the differences when necessary, but just know that I’m basing my experience on the 9 and the 9 Pro XL.
While the Pixel 9 series carries on the design lineage started by the Pixel 6, it’s enough of a step change that I imagine next year’s models won’t look too different. In substance and style, this is about as much of an overhaul as the iPhone 12 represented four years ago, with the same flat-edged approach that just about makes the phone feel new — for a Pixel, at least.
With its polished metal edges, sturdy construction, and frosted glass back panel, the Pixel 9 Pro XL feels more like an iPhone than ever. The most distinct feature remains the horizontal camera “bar”, which no longer reaches to the phone’s sides but still stands out among the smartphone crowd. Google has also kept up its efforts to ensure that Pixel phones look just as good in a case, if not better. The camera bar feels like a natural part of the design rather than an obtrusive bump that the case has to mitigate.
Google says that both the 9 and 9 Pro are twice as durable as their predecessors, though it’s not clear what that actually means. I will say I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with the build quality of the Pixel 9 — I actually think I prefer it to the Pro XL. The 9’s matte metal edges and glossy back glass sit beautifully in the hand, and it’s much less prone to slipping when you set it down on smooth surfaces. The difference in materials is subjective, of course, and the 9 Pro is clearly the more capable device, but you shouldn’t get the sense that Google has cut corners on the regular Pixel 9. If you buy the Pixel 9, you’re getting a really nice phone.
That hasn’t always been the case, especially when it comes to screen technology. But the Pixel 9 shines here, with an excellent 6.3” 1080p 120Hz OLED panel that reaches up to 2,700 nits of brightness, beating out last year’s 8 Pro and looking even better in direct sunlight. Viewing angles are more than solid and the thin bezels are truly uniform, which is still a rarity on Android phones.
The 9 Pro models do have better displays. They’re a little sharper, they get even brighter at 3,000 nits, and their bezels are very slightly thinner, plus of course the XL model stretches to 6.8”. But the tradeoff here is between a really great panel and an even better one. I’ll be watching out for how a potential entry-level 9A shapes up next year, because the 8A was not competitive in that regard.
Google has also equipped the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro with a new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, replacing the optical unit from the previous generation. It’s definitely faster in side-by-side testing, although I can’t say the 8 Pro ever gave me problems in real-world use.
Both the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro share Google’s latest Tensor G4 processor, and as far as I can tell the story is similar to last year. The SoC is not class-leading in pure CPU or GPU benchmarks, but it’s improving in terms of heat and efficiency and Google seems to believe in its capabilities for low-level integration with AI in mind.
On that note, Google is going all-in on RAM this year, with the Pro models featuring 16GB and the 9 including 12GB — that’s a 4GB boost all around. You might remember that Google initially planned to restrict certain AI features to the 8 Pro due to the 8’s lower 8GB of memory, so giving 12GB to the Pixel 9 feels like a worthwhile futureproofing move.
I’ll just say I’ve had no problem at all with the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s performance in the little over a week I’ve been testing it. This still wouldn’t be my first choice for a gaming phone, but it’s a noticeable improvement over its predecessor, and I’ve found it to run very well in everyday tasks. That said, I’m still not sure Google’s made the case for its Tensor smartphone chips. Four years into the initiative, you can’t yet call it a selling point.
There aren’t too many hardware quirks to note this time around. The Pixel 9 Pro phones keep the 8 Pro’s mystifying temperature sensor, and the Pro 9 XL’s larger battery also charges faster — you get up to 70% in half an hour with a 45W charger vs 55% on the 9 and 9 Pro. The Pixel 9 Pro models also go up to 1TB of storage, while the Pixel 9 tops out at 256GB.
The camera hardware has not received major upgrades. The Pixel 9 Pro still has a 50-megapixel 1/1.31” primary sensor alongside 48-megapixel 2.55” ultrawide and 5x telephoto modules. The ultrawide has received a bump in aperture to f/1.7, however, with Google touting improved macro capabilities, and it features on the non-Pro Pixel 9 as well. That represents a big improvement on the Pixel 8’s 12-megapixel ultrawide.
The 9 Pro also has a big upgrade to the selfie camera — it’s now at 42 megapixels and offers a wider 103-degree field of view. The Pixel 9 sticks with a 10.5-megapixel unit that has a 95-degree field of view and noticeably worse image quality. The Pixel 9 also skips out on the 5x telephoto lens, where the 9 Pro remains very competitive.
Hardware is never the point of Pixel photography, though, and you can expect the 9 and 9 Pro to perform identically with their primary and ultrawide cameras. I have not noticed a huge difference over the results from the 8 Pro, though that would probably require a longer period of testing. Google has settled into its Pixel look for many years now, and the 9 series continues to deliver on the promise of cool, reliably well-exposed photos that definitely look like they were taken with a phone.
The Pixel 9 Pro may not be my favourite phone camera, but it might be the most reliably crowd-pleasing. It also fits well with Google’s broader efforts to improve smartphone photography, which these days have more to do with deconstructing the concept of a photo than attempting to recreate traditional cameras.
There’s the new Add Me mode, for example, which gives you a sleek interface to take a photo of a subject, then hand the phone to them so they can capture you in the same frame. Zoom Enhance, meanwhile, uses generative AI to increase photo detail after the fact.
Here’s an example:
On the left is a 30x photo of the Park Hyatt Tokyo. On the right, the Zoom Enhance version, which you have to generate yourself in the editing options. It normally takes about five or six seconds.
In this case, I think the results are okay if you don’t zoom in too closely. It serves the purpose of giving you a sharper image for social media sizes, and buildings with straight lines are probably a best-case scenario.
Humans, not so much. Even the grass looks worse here in the Zoom Enhance version. You shouldn’t expect this feature to work well with anything involving irregular detail.
Google has also rethought the UI for panorama photos, and I think this is a total home run. Instead of shakily trying to keep your phone upright while pivoting across the scene, you now get dots in the viewfinder to guide your direction, and the camera app does a great job of stitching and straightening everything together. It even works in Night Sight — you just have to hold the camera steady for a second or two longer at each viewfinder dot.
The results are awesome. We’ve all taken bad panorama photos before, but it’s really difficult to do so on the Pixel 9.
I will note that certain camera settings and features are locked to the Pro models for what I can only assume is artificial segmentation. Manual controls for focus, shutter speed, and ISO aren’t available on the Pixel 9, nor are features like the cloud-powered Video Boost or the ability to force your lens selection.
Other than the camera, there isn’t all that much to say about the Pixel 9’s software, because it’s the first ever Pixel not to launch with a brand new version of Android. We’re several beta versions deep into Android 15, so there’s no reason to expect that the final release isn’t imminent, but for now these phones are still running 14. That’s not a knock, of course, because the Pixel’s clean, intuitive software is still by far my favourite version of Android and remains a serious selling point.
Google did announce a couple of new AI-powered Pixel-specific apps that are launching with the new phones. Pixel Studio is an AI image generator that combines on-device and cloud models, while Pixel Screenshots sorts through your previous screen captures and surfaces relevant information based on your searches.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to test either because they’re not available at launch in Japan. That’s perhaps understandable due to the reliance on large language models, but disappointing nonetheless considering how good a job Google has otherwise done of making the Pixel feel like a first-class citizen in Japan. Pixel Screenshots in particular looks legitimately useful, so I hope it gets wider availability soon — even if only in English.
Honestly, there’s not that much to say about the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro’s hardware, and that’s an achievement for Google. This year’s Pixels are simply very good. The industrial design is much improved and the screens are great. The cameras are not going to win any spec sheet awards, but Google can differentiate itself regardless. Even the Tensor SoC is fine.
I like writing about wild new phone designs as much as anyone. Believe me, though — I’ll take this Pixel era over the years when I’d have to figure out why the battery life was terrible or the notch was comically huge or the gesture control system was useless. The non-Pro Pixel 9, in particular, feels less like a compromise than ever before.
All indications are that Google plans to stick around in the smartphone market as a way to push its vision for Android and AI services. The best way for that idea to work is for the Pixel team to put out unambiguously world-class hardware, and it’s coming close to doing just that.