Google Pixel 8 Pro Review

Overview

The Pixel 8 series was highly anticipated by the fans of the brand with the hopes of offering a stable, high-end product that has overcome the flaws of the previous Pixel 7 series. Anticipations for improvement hit every direction and aspect of the smartphone and the Pixel team has made the extra effort to answer this call, yet maintain the baseline philosophy behind the Pixel smartphones. And that is to deliver a more helpful and personal experience with the help of AI. Actually, the entire lineup is focused on software achievements and features that use high-end hardware to come to life. So probably, for hardware-only spec-sheet-focused users the Pixel 8 series won't sound like a flagship one. Still, these smartphones arrive with advanced software features that are a rarity in the mobile world. We purchased the Pro model from the series to put through our routine of extensive testing. For starters, let's go through the official Pixel 8 Pro specifications and unbox the device.

Specifications

The Pixel 8 Pro has an IP68-rated body with an aluminum frame and glass finish on the front and back. The smartphone is built around a 6.71-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1344 x 2992 px. The official specifications sheet states 1600 nits of maximum brightness in high-brightness mode and 2400 nits of peak brightness. These will be checked by us in the Display section of this review. The Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide, or LTPO, backplane allows the screen to operate at a 1-120 Hz variable refresh rate, while using less battery than a standard OLED display. Speaking of batteries, the Pixel 8 Pro arrives with a 5050 mAh battery pack supporting 30W fast charging, 23W Qi wireless charging, and reverse wireless charging. We test in real conditions the battery life of each device we review. The Pixel 8 Pro battery life results are to be found in the Battery section of this review.

The main focal point of the new device is its pro-grade camera system. The Pixel Camera Bar on the rear shell houses a trio of high-resolution units. The main one uses a 50MP sensor with 1.12 μm pixels and an f/1.68 lens with a 26 mm focal length equivalent and an 82° FoV. The main camera is aided by octa PDAF, LAF, and OIS. The 48MP ultra-wide camera sits right next to the main one. It has an f/1.95 aperture and a 125.5˚ FoV. This unit is aided by OIS, EIS, and quad PDAF. Finally, there's a 48MP telephoto camera enabling 5x optical zoom. It has an f/2.8 aperture and a 21.8˚ FoV and also benefits from OIS and EIS. For selfies, the Pixel 8 Pro sports a 10.5 front camera with dual PDAF, OIS, and EIS. It has an f/2.2 aperture and a 95° FoV. This shooter is also capable of capturing 4K videos at 60 fps. The advanced camera features are discussed in detail in the Camera section of this review.

The Pixel 8 Pro arrives with the new Tensor G3 chipset built on Samsung's 4nm process. The CPU has 9 cores in three clusters – a single Cortex-X3 core clocked at 3GHz, four Cortex-A715 cores clocked at 2.4GHz, and four 2.15GHz Cortex-A510 cores. The deca-core ARM Mali-G715 GPU clocked at 890MHz offers a 15% faster processing speed. There’s also a 10% faster AI TPU codenamed Rio ticking at 1.1GHz. The upgrade in the Tensor G3 (codenamed Zuma) has been focused on enabling on-device generative AI processing in partnership with Google DeepMind. The Tensor G3 arrives with the Tensor security core built-in and it works with the Titan M2 security chip for enhanced protection. The Pixel 8 Pro is equipped with 12GB of quad-channel, LPDDR5X RAM clocked at 4266MHz. The model has three UFS 3.1 storage options – 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB.

The Google Pixel 8 Pro is equipped with an in-display fingerprint sensor and a huge hub of sensors including a barometer, flicker, and spectral sensor. There are also two stereo speakers and three microphones with active noise cancellation. A USB Type-C 3.2 port with DisplayPort Alt mode is also provided. No headphone jack. The device is the first to arrive with Android 14 out-of-the-box and in the Software section of this review we will cover in detail the new OS. Some of the connectivity options include NFC, dual-antenna Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be), Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, and Cast Display. The model has a single slot for a Nano-SIM card and an eSIM option. It works with the following network bands (depending on the market): 2G GSM (B2, B3, B5, B8), 3G UMTS (B1, B2, B4, B5, B6, B8, B19), 4G LTE-FDD (B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B12, B13, B17, B18, B19, B20, B25, B26, B8, B29, B30, B32, B66), 4G LTE-TDD (B38, B39, B40, B41, B46), and 5G NSA, SA (n1, n2, n3, n5, n8, n, 12, n20, n25, n26, n28, n38, n40, n41, n66, n71, n75, n76, n77, n78). All major GPS location services are supported as well.

Complete Google Pixel 8 Pro specifications.

What's in the box

The Pixel 8 Pro arrives in a simple, white, rectangular box with the Google logo on the lid, followed by the model's name, and a photo of the device's rear showing off the Pixel Camera Bar. It is important to note that the packaging is plastic-free as part of Google's commitment to reduce its impact on the environment. The box contents are the absolute minimum for a smartphone package and this is what you get:

• Quick Switch adapter
• USB Type-C to Type-C cable (USB 2.0)
• SIM tray pin
• Quick start guide