Review Summary
Expert Rating
With the Pixel 10 series, Google has narrowed the gap between the base Pixel 10 and the Pro XL model more than ever before. In many ways, the Pixel 10 might be the model most people should buy. But if you want the absolute best that a Pixel phone can offer, the Pixel 10 Pro XL still justifies its price tag. The new Tensor G5, which is present across all Pixel 10 models, is easily one of the biggest upgrades as it unlocks a slew of on-device AI features. The Pro XL also gets camera features like Pro Res Zoom, a larger display, and the biggest battery ever seen in a Pixel phone.
Priced at Rs 1,24,999, the Pixel 10 Pro XL is positioned as Google’s answer to the iPhone 16 Pro Max (17 Pro Max soon) and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. It might be the company’s best attempt yet at taking on Apple and Samsung. The Pixel 10 Pro XL does not win on raw benchmark numbers, where Apple and Samsung still pull ahead, but it makes a stronger case in software and AI. Add to that a premium design and dependable all-day battery life, and you get a flagship that almost feels worth the asking price.
Table of Contents
Tensor G5 is the best Tensor yet*
I need to start with the Tensor G5, because it sits at the core of what makes the Pixel 10 Pro XL tick. This is Google’s first chipset built on TSMC’s 3nm process, a shift away from Samsung Foundry, and it integrates the latest Gemini Nano model to enable on-device generative AI features. By moving to TSMC, Google has delivered a chip that is not only faster than its predecessor but also notably more power-efficient and thermally stable.
The Tensor G5 chip is not designed for raw benchmark numbers. Google is not competing with Qualcomm or MediaTek on brute force. The Tensor G5 feels snappy in day-to-day use. Over a week of using the Pixel 10 Pro XL as my primary phone, I didn’t run into sluggishness or stutters while multitasking. The Tensor G5 also holds up under sustained load better than older Tensor chips, which tended to throttle quickly. In fact, it performed better than its rivals in our CPU Throttle test.
If you’re a hardcore mobile gamer reading this, let me clarify something – the Pixel 10 Pro XL is not a gaming phone, and the Tensor G5 is not a gaming chipset. While it can run titles like BGMI or Call of Duty Mobile just fine, you will notice the phone warming up and the battery draining faster compared to rivals.
AI here, AI there, AI… where?
If Tensor G5 is the heart of the Pixel 10 series, AI is the brain. It shows up everywhere, both explicitly and implicitly. The most obvious examples are Gemini and Gemini Live, both of which launch at the push of a button. Gemini lets you type or speak queries, while Gemini Live enables real-time, free-flowing conversations. It can even interpret what the camera is seeing to provide relevant information.
Another explicit feature is Pixel Journal, a new app that lets you jot down thoughts and goals. AI steps in by generating prompts, summarising entries, suggesting next steps, and surfacing insights based on what you write. The more you use it, the better it gets, and all of this happens securely on-device.
Pixel Journal turned out to be my favourite AI-powered app on the Pixel 10 Pro XL among the ones Google announced. It gave me the freedom to write unfiltered, but also offered helpful nudges through AI summaries – whether that was breaking down my investment notes or suggesting if I’m on the right track with my workout routine to reach my goal. Th
The biggest AI swing, though, is one you don’t directly see: Magic Cue. Running in the background, it gathers data from apps like Gmail, Messages, Photos, and Screenshots, then surfaces it when relevant. In theory, this is supposed to make life easier by popping up details like your flight time or an address someone asks for in chat. In practice, it still has teething issues.
For one, it takes around 24 hours to process app data. More importantly, it’s limited to Google’s own apps. For example, if someone texts me on Google Messages asking for a colleague’s number, Magic Cue will fetch it from Contacts and display it right above the text box. But ask me the same thing on WhatsApp, which is my default app, and Magic Cue won’t show up.
Magic Cue feels like a rare Pokémon: hard to find, but useful when it appears. I often felt like Ash Ketchum waiting to spot that elusive creature.
Magic Cue feels like a rare Pokémon: hard to find, but useful when it appears. I often felt like Ash Ketchum waiting to spot that elusive creature. Sometimes I’d do everything Google suggested to trigger it – like asking family to message me about my upcoming flight, hoping it would pull the info from Gmail – only for it to leave me hanging dry. But then, out of nowhere, it would spring to life. When my wife texted me a grocery reminder, Magic Cue instantly surfaced the Google Keep icon, letting me save the reminder with one tap. Moments like that hint at its potential, even if it’s inconsistent right now.
What is a photo?
Generative AI has reached a point where it’s getting harder to tell what’s real and what’s not, especially in photos and videos. Google has been playing with this idea for a while now, with tools like Magic Eraser and Add Me that take imperfect originals and turn them into the “perfect” shot you imagined, even if it isn’t entirely real. With the Pixel 10 Pro XL, Google pushes further with new features like Pro Res Zoom, Auto Best Take, and Ask Photos (a US-only text-based photo editing tool).
The catch is that the final image isn’t truly accurate. Since AI is filling in details it thinks should be there, it may not represent what the subject actually looked like. Online, I noticed examples where Pro Res Zoom added craters to the moon in places where none exist. In my tests, it primarily cleaned up noise and produced clearer, softer-looking images. To Google’s credit, the feature won’t work if it detects human faces to avoid uncanny distortions. So, while Pro Res Zoom works as intended, the question you’ll ask yourself is “Is it really a photo?” if that sort of moral dilemma bothers you.
Auto Best Take, as the name suggests, upgrades the original Best Take by automatically merging group photos so everyone looks their best. In theory, it’s a clever solution. In practice, I couldn’t get it to work properly, even with the right settings enabled.
While Pro Res Zoom, Auto Best Take, and others let AI create the photo you want to see, Camera Coach balances the scale by helping you take better photos yourself.
Then there’s Camera Coach, which is more about helping you take better photos yourself than having AI generate them. Launch it from the top-right corner, and it’ll walk you through composition tips with step-by-step instructions. It’s well-intentioned, but clunky and a bit time-consuming. I found it tedious to keep tapping through instructions instead of the app moving forward automatically, and the UI doesn’t adapt well to landscape shots, as the text still runs vertically, which breaks the flow.
Familiar Pixel camera, boosted by AI
The Pixel 10 Pro XL’s camera hardware remains largely unchanged from the Pixel 9 Pro XL: a 50MP primary sensor, a 48MP telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom, and a 48MP ultra-wide lens. The difference this year lies in the Tensor G5 and Google’s new AI tools, which aim to push the overall photography experience forward.
Daylight shots come out crisp and visually appealing, with excellent exposure control and wide dynamic range. Colours from the primary sensor look natural, while the ultra-wide lens maintains consistency with good detail retention. Compared directly, the Pixel leans toward a cooler, bluish hue, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max tends to capture warmer tones.
The 5x telephoto lens delivers sharp, detailed images at its native zoom, with minimal noise. Between 1x and 5x, however, the phone crops from the main sensor, resulting in a drop in detail. Beyond 30x and up to 100x, Pro Res Zoom takes over, artificially enhancing clarity through generative AI.
Portraits are solid but not standout. The Pixel 10 Pro XL still lags behind phones like the Vivo X200 Pro (still my pick for camera phone of 2025) and even the iPhone 16 Pro Max, both of which offer more natural skin tones and better edge detection. You can capture 50MP portraits on both Pixel Pro models, but only through the primary sensor. A telephoto implementation would have provided more natural depth and bokeh, but the output remains highly detailed, as evident in the cropped photo below, which showcases the clarity of the Levi’s tag on my colleague’s shirt.
In low-light scenes with enough ambient light around, the Pixel 10 Pro XL holds its own. Detail and exposure control are handled well, and in my testing, it edged out the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which produced softer shots with less fine detail, noticeable when zoomed in.
Despite no hardware upgrades, the Pixel 10 Pro XL’s cameras hold up well in most lighting conditions, delivering sharp detail and clarity. AI plays a big role, both in the background and through editing tools, to help create share-ready shots. That said, it still trails the iPhone 16 Pro Max in colour accuracy, the Vivo X200 Pro in portraits, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra on hardware strength.
Loving Material 3 Expressive
All Pixel 10 phones ship with Android 16 and the new Material 3 Expressive features, which are also rolling out to older Pixel phones with the September Pixel Drop. Material 3 Expressive stands out for a few reasons, but the biggest one for me is how Google has made certain apps simpler and easier to use. Take the Phone app, for example. Favourites and recent calls now appear on a single screen, making it quicker to reach the people you call most often. For someone like me, who doesn’t enjoy talking on the phone beyond close family, this streamlined layout feels just right. Even incoming calls look cleaner now with a simple Decline/Answer slider.
The Control Panel has been redesigned, too. Buttons now appear rounder when disabled and shift to rectangular shapes with rounded corners when enabled. The brightness bar has a new look, and you get more control over tile arrangement. You can even adjust tile sizes between 1x and 2x depending on your preference. It takes a few minutes to organise everything, but it feels like a useful quality-of-life improvement.
Finally, Pixel 10 phones are guaranteed seven years of OS and security updates, keeping them relevant until Android 23. Whether Tensor G5 is still holding up by then is another matter entirely.
Small changes, big déjà vu
Rounding things off are the smaller upgrades. The design is virtually identical to the Pixel 9 Pro. Put the two side by side and you’ll struggle to tell them apart, unless you notice the slightly larger ‘G’ logo on the back or the marginally tweaked shades of Moonstone, Jade, and Obsidian. It still feels every bit as premium as before. The familiar camera visor remains, and you still get just two physical buttons on the right. The power button sits above the volume rocker, which makes it harder to reach and easy to confuse, since most Android phones place them the other way around.
The display is unchanged at 6.8 inches, with LTPO OLED and a 120Hz refresh rate. Peak brightness is up slightly, from 3000 to 3300 nits. It’s a sharp, vibrant panel with evenly slim bezels. They’re not the slimmest you’ll see on a flagship, but I never found myself wishing for more. Outdoor visibility, even in direct sunlight, was excellent.
Battery capacity gets a small bump from 5,060mAh to 5,200mAh. In practice, though, it doesn’t stretch usage much further. Despite the more efficient Tensor G5, this is still a solid one-day phone. My usage averaged between 4 to 5 hours of screen-on time, which is fine and never really caused battery anxiety. But expect to plug it in every night or top it up the next morning. I suspect the extra capacity is being used to keep features like Magic Cue running in the background.
Charging is where you see more progress. The Pixel 10 Pro XL supports 45W wired and 25W wireless charging on the new Qi2.2 standard, exclusive to the Pro XL. It now takes around 75 minutes to go from empty to full over a wire. There’s also support for Pixelsnap, Google’s answer to MagSafe, though we didn’t receive accessories to test it with. You can use Apple’s MagSafe charger on the Pixel 10, but charging speeds won’t be optimal.
Verdict
The Pixel 10 Pro XL feels like Google’s most confident flagship yet. The Tensor G5 finally addresses the heat and efficiency issues that plagued older Tensors, although it doesn’t match the raw performance offered by Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Apple. The AI features, from Pixel Journal to Magic Cue, point to where smartphones are headed. Some of these ideas still feel half-baked, but when they work, they’re genuinely useful. The camera system is reliable, though not the clear winner anymore, and the design changes are so minimal you may struggle to spot them. Battery life remains firmly in the one-day zone, but at least charging is faster now.
At Rs 1,24,999, this is a phone for Pixel loyalists and those curious about living with AI-first features before the rest of the industry catches up. For everyone else, the base Pixel 10 might actually be the smarter buy.
Editor’s rating: 8.2 / 10
Pros:
- Tensor G5 is more efficient and stable than past Tensors
- Clever AI features like Pixel Journal and Magic Cue (when they work)
- Clean, simple Material 3 Expressive software experience
- Seven years of OS and security updates
Cons:
- Magic Cue feels inconsistent and limited to Google apps
- Camera hardware is unchanged, portraits fall behind Vivo and iPhone
- Battery life is just one day despite a bigger cell
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