Review Summary
Expert Rating
Much like Apple, Google is a strong believer in the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Google Pixel 8 Pro is an example of that. The company has continued with the design philosophy of the Pixel 7 Pro and has made some refinements, while the hardware gets an annual upgrade with a new chipset, improved display, and new camera sensors. All of this is sprinkled with some impressive AI features and wonderfully long software support. But do these justify the phone’s price tag of over Rs 1 lakh?
Table of Contents
Verdict
The Google Pixel 8 Pro looks more polished than its predecessor, brings a bright and rich display, and tons of game-changing AI camera features. But beyond everything else, Google promises a whopping 7 years of software updates. This essentially means the phone will stay relevant until 2030. But its performance might not hold up well until then and neither will its charging speed.
Design and display
The Google Pixel 8 Pro looks like the Pixel 7 Pro from a distance, especially looking at the back. But Google has improved the finishing in a few areas to make the Pixel 8 Pro look and feel more premium and comfortable to hold. Firstly, the glossy rear panel has changed to a soft-touch matte finish that feels nice to touch and won’t attract smudges. Next, the corners are rounded so it doesn’t look as boxy and share as its predecessor. The rear camera visor now has a single oval-shaped cutout to house all three camera sensors, which makes it look cleaner.
Also, that extra sensor you see under the LED flash is a temperature sensor. It can be used to check the temperature of objects (not humans) using the Google Thermometer app. You have to place the sensor close to the object and hit the Tap to Measure button on the screen. It works but it’s really not something you’ll be using often.
Google isn’t offering a variety of exciting colour options with the Pixel 8 series this year. The Pixel 8 Pro comes in either Obsidian or Bay colour options in India. The latter is what we received for review and it’s clearly the one to choose if you want something fresh. The light Blue ‘Bay’ colour has a nice calming look and feels great to touch thanks to the matte finish.
The display on the Pixel 8 Pro has been improved with thinner, more even bezels all around and bumped-up brightness levels. While its predecessor maxed out at 1,500 nits, the Pixel 8 Pro can go as high as 2,400 under direct sunlight. This is higher than the iPhone 15’s 2,000 nits peak brightness. Suffice it to say that the Pixel 8 Pro’s display can get plenty bright under the harshest of sunlight. Google has also opted for a flat display instead of the curved screen we saw on the Pixel 7 Pro.
With the Pixel 8 Pro, you get a 6.7-inch WQHD+ OLED display that’s protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top. It’s an LTPO display, which Google calls ‘Super Actua’, offering variable refresh rates between 1Hz and 120Hz. Quality-wise, the display is excellent with attractive colours and deep blacks, good sharpness and viewing angles, and terrific brightness levels.
Cameras
New AI photo editing tools will make you question what’s real and what isn’t.
The Google Pixel 8 Pro comes with a new set of camera sensors housed in the visor on the back. There’s a 50MP primary camera with an f/1.68 aperture, a 48MP telephoto camera that’s capable of 5x optical zoom, and a 48MP ultrawide camera with autofocus. The primary and telephoto cameras support OIS and EIS. At the front, you get a 10.5MP camera to take of selfies and video calls.
In addition to the upgraded camera hardware, there is a whole bunch of AI-powered editing tools that Google announced during the keynote, some of them capable of changing a photo completely. Firstly, there’s the upgraded Magic Eraser tool that previously allowed you to remove certain objects from an image. Now, Magic Eraser uses on-device generative AI to remove larger objects and people from a photo by generating new pixels to fill the spaces.
Best Take is a new on-device editing tool that lets you fix group photos in which one or more people have their eyes closed or are looking elsewhere instead of at the camera. It analyses data from a series of similar group shots to suggest the perfect photo where everyone is looking at the camera and smiling with their eyes open. The feature is still in its early stages and didn’t work evenly during the review, only managing to correct one face in the sample below, but the result was impressive nonetheless.
Magic Editor is the biggest new AI-based photo editing feature on the Pixel 8 series. This tool doesn’t just make subtle changes to a picture the way Magic Eraser and Best Take do, but it can completely manipulate a photo by allowing you to resize and reposition objects or people in a photo, change the colour of the sky, and more. I use the word ‘manipulate’ here because that’s what Google is allowing you to do: use generative AI to change a photo to the point that one won’t be able to tell what’s real and what’s fake. It’s still in the early stages so it’s not extremely accurate with cropping and shadows, so it’s still easy to tell that a photo has been edited. It also takes a pretty long time to process multiple previews (which is likely happening in the cloud rather than on the device as it requires internet access).
Let’s talk about the picture quality now. The primary 50MP sensor captures excellent photos in daylight, with good colour-accuracy and sharpness. That said, photos will look a bit on the duller and warmer side of the spectrum compared to brighter, punchier colours, and cooler-looking images captured by the iPhone 15 Pro Max. An example of this can be seen below. We will be doing a more in-depth camera comparison between the Pixel 8 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, so stay tuned for that.
Low-light shots look equally good through the 50MP primary sensor. Even without Night Sight mode, photos taken in dimly lit conditions offer good clarity and brightness without overexposing certain areas. Even lens flare has been largely reduced, although it is still present at times. The new Pro mode feature gives you basic manual controls like switching between 12MP and 50MP, shooting in RAW, and choosing between manual or auto lens selection.
I liked the 5x optical zoom photos taken using the 48MP telephoto camera. 5x shots delivered good clarity as seen in the image below. The parrot’s feathers look clear enough although not extremely sharp and there’s a nice background blur as well.
To recall, the Pixel 7 Pro came with a 12MP ultrawide camera. By upgrading to a 48MP sensor, Google is trying to achieve a more consistent picture output between the main and ultrawide cameras. This is evident as the ultrawide photos captured on the Pixel 8 Pro looked detailed enough, and the colours looked similar between the primary and ultrawide shots.
The Pixel 8 Pro can capture good-looking videos with enough details and vibrant colours around. Videos look decently stable with OIS and EIS support, but they won’t look as smooth or cinematic as what you get on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The new Audio Magic Eraser can reduce environmental sounds in videos like wind, honking or general chattering, and it works pretty well. Lastly, the 10.5MP selfie camera captures near-accurate skin tones with a good amount of sharpness as well. Selfie portraits look less natural as the bokeh effect isn’t as seamless around the edges as what the iPhone 15 Pro Max manages.
Performance and software
A brand new Tensor G3 chipset powers the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. If you were thinking Google’s latest processor is a significant improvement over the Tensor G2 and can finally take on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, you’d be mistaken. The Pixel 8 Pro’s benchmark scores are quite average. The device scored 1727 in single-core and 3433 in multi-core on Geekbench and around 845,000 on AnTuTu. In comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold5 with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor scored 1968 and 5137, respectively, on Geekbench and 1,492,136 on AnTuTu. Even last year’s iPhone 14 Plus with the A15 Bionic chipset scored higher, scoring 4689 in multi-core on Geekbench and 854,000 on AnTuTu.
The Tensor G3 chipset also seems to throttles the performance of the device too, more so than the Tensor G2 last year. After a 20-minute CoD: Mobile gaming session, the CPU Throttle test showed a performance throttling of around 52 per cent. However, I didn’t see any severe lag or frame rate issues during gameplay. In our 3DMark Extreme Stress Test, the device delivered around 70 per cent stability, similar to what the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered iQOO 11 managed. That said, the Tensor G3 chipset paired with 12GB of RAM is capable of running day-to-day tasks without getting overwhelmed. You only get the 128GB storage option in India, which is disappointing considering the price tag.
It’s clear that the Tensor G3 chipset has performance throttling issues, which one hopes Google can fix to a large extent through a software update. When it comes to thermals, however, the Pixel 8 Pro performed better than its predecessor. The device does noticeably warm when playing games for long durations, but it’s never too hot to cause any concern. It also gets slightly warm while running the camera app, but otherwise, the phone manages to stay largely cool throughout.
Let’s talk about the software because this is the part where Google left most people wide-eyed during the keynote. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are set to receive a staggering 7 years of software support! Yes, you read that correctly. These phones will receive 7 major OS upgrades, along with 7 years of security updates, Feature Drops, and AI innovations. This is a significant achievement, as no other Android OEM currently matches this level of support. It even surpasses Apple, which typically provides around 6 years of updates for iPhones. Google is essentially ensuring that these Pixel phones stay relevant even in 2030.
The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro ship with Android 14 out of the box, so they could get upgraded all the way to Android 21! But coming back to Andriod 14, you get a clean and stock interface that’s dominated by Google’s own apps. There are some new Google Assistant features like Summarize which uses AI to overview a web page in Chrome. Read aloud, which is an accessibility feature that generates an audio version of the content and reads it out loud in a bunch of languages of your choice, including Hindi. Summarize, however, is only available in the US.
Battery
The Pixel 8 Pro ships with a 5,050mAh battery which is about the same that you get in its predecessor. The battery is good to last you through a full day on moderate usage. Despite an LTPO display and a power-efficient chipset, the Pixel 8 Pro will still ask you to reach for a charger by the end of the day or, at best, in the morning before you head out to work. in our PCMark battery test, the Pixel 8 Pro lasted around 13.5 hours, which isn’t bad but it’s not great either.
Google has (marginally) upgraded the phone’s fast charging support. It now supports up to 30W speeds through wired charging instead of 23W, which is still quite slow for a phone in 2023, and a flagship one at that. The Pixel 8 Pro takes around 1 hour 30 minutes to charge from 20 to 100 per cent, and close to two hours if you’re waking it from the dead.
Final verdict
Google raised a lot of eyebrows when it launched the Pixel 8 Pro in India with a price tag of Rs 1,06,999. Google bumped up the price by around Rs 22,000 compared to last year’s Pixel 7 Pro, which is a significant bump, especially considering Apple managed to keep the pricing of the iPhone 15 models more or less similar to last year’s models. At this price, the Pixel 8 Pro could face an uphill battle in a price-sensitive market like India.
But impressive upgrades are what you get with the Pixel 8 Pro, especially on the software side of things. There are tons of camera features that will completely change the meaning of a photograph and the promise of 7 years of OS upgrades is a sweet deal for any buyer. The design is more refined now and the display is fantastic. The Tensor G3 isn’t the most powerful chipset out there, but it will get you from point A to B without fuss, so to speak. Overall, the Pixel 8 Pro is a solid upgrade, and one that can’t be ignored.
Editor’s rating: 8 / 10
Reason to buy
- Google is promising 7 years of OS updates, which is much longer than what any other Android phone maker commits to.
- The Pixel 8 Pro has a refined finish and an attractive Bay colour option that’s worth buying if you’re upgrading from a 2-3 year old Pixel phone.
- The Pixel 8 Pro comes with a dependable set of cameras that can capture good-quality photos, which can turn into even better photos through a host of new editing tools.
Reasons not to buy
- The Pixel 8 Pro is expensive in India and doesn’t offer enough upgrades to justify the price bump over the Pixel 7 Pro.
- The device charges slowly, taking over an hour and a half to fully charge.
- The Tensor G3 chipset has throttling issues and the device gets warm to the touch when playing games.
 | Rs. 106,999.00 | Go To Store |
 Google Pixel 8 Pro | vs |  Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max |
| Google Pixel 8 Pro | vs |  Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 5G |
