Google Pixel 11/Pro Review: Poker Face

0:16 I'll bet.

0:27 Alright.

0:27 I'm also betting.

0:37 Good morning.

0:39 Bet.

1:01 All in.

1:11 So...

1:12 I've been using the Pixel 11 Pro for the past two weeks all over the world.

1:17 Spain for a solar eclipse,

1:18 then Ireland for a World Ultimate Frisbee Club Championships,

1:22 then Wisconsin for a Pro Frisbee Championships and then back here at home.

1:26 And it's been great.

1:27 Super reliable, very good battery life,

1:29 great cameras, great software, and all of that...

1:32 should be enough.

1:34 But...

1:34 there is still a problem with the Pixels right now.

1:36 They are all more expensive and...

1:40 they don't have the best hardware...

1:42 So as a reviewer, I gotta say that's not a great combo.

1:46 Now, when I say they don't have the best hardware,

1:48 I don't mean that the build quality isn't good.

1:50 It is actually really good.

1:51 Like it still has the trademarked visor look,

1:53 so it has some character and it's recognizable.

1:55 But that little bump is also a little shallower on the base Pixel.

1:58 They've also made a nice adjustment of giving the matte black

2:01 Pro Pixel matte black rails as well, which is so clean.

2:04 These phones are rock solid.

2:05 They have the dust and water resistance, they feel great in the hand.

2:09 So it's not that they aren't built great, but the interior hardware,

2:12 the specs, they are still a huge weakness of the Pixel.

2:15 So like Tensor G6, all these new Pixels have the new Tensor G6 chip inside,

2:20 which has shaped up to be about a 20%

2:22 faster CPU in both single-core and multi-core versus the G5.

2:26 And I'd say that's about on par with phones

2:29 running the super high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

2:32 Except for the GPU part where they

2:34 are still in a completely different stratosphere.

2:37 The Pixels to this day also don't have the biggest batteries...

2:40 or anywhere near the fastest charging.

2:42 It's kind of funny, they introduced this new...

2:45 extreme charging feature on the Pixel 11s this year,

2:48 which if you have it turned on and your battery is

2:50 under 50% and you plug it into a powerful enough charger,

2:53 it'll give you an extreme charge,

2:55 which means it'll pause a bunch of the background activities and suspend

2:59 a bunch of thermal management to give you a quick burst of battery.

3:03 And even that is like 30 to 35 watts, which is not that fast.

3:07 For context, the famously conservative Samsung

3:09 flagships charge at 45 watts peak,

3:12 and the OnePlus 15 I've been daily driving for about a year charges at 80 watts,

3:17 which is extremely fast.

3:18 And even the camera hardware is not so ultra high-end lately in Pixel phones...

3:24 either.

3:25 Pun intended.

3:25 There is no full 1-inch sensor like the flagship Ultra phones,

3:29 no 200 megapixels or 10x zooms.

3:31 But here's the thing.

3:32 In theory these are all fine trade-offs to make because these are

3:36 all things that only an enthusiast would really care about, right?

3:40 Like a super high-end GPU...

3:42 and the ultra high-wattage charging and crazy camera hardware.

3:45 It's fine if it doesn't have those things if it's not an enthusiast phone,

3:50 but if those things are still...

3:52 decent, then this can still be a good...

3:54 mainstream phone.

3:56 And they are still decent.

3:57 Like despite Tensor's complete lack of GPU prowess,

4:00 this Pixel 11 Pro in high resolution mode has

4:03 been mostly pretty smooth through all kinds of regular use.

4:06 Social media, emails, a bunch of web browsing.

4:09 You know, there would occasionally be some frame

4:11 drops in heavy multitasking or some big full-screen

4:14 animations and sometimes while scrolling on a super

4:17 heavy website with a bunch of tabs open.

4:19 But otherwise, yeah, Android 17 has been running mostly pretty smooth.

4:23 I also didn't do any high-end gaming...

4:25 or video editing, you know,

4:26 things that an enthusiast probably will want to be able to do with their phone.

4:30 But again, if we're establishing it's

4:32 not an enthusiast phone and then performance...

4:35 was fine.

4:36 And this Tensor chip is also clearly pretty efficient too because I have

4:40 been enjoying easily all-day battery life

4:41 on this phone without really ever second-guessing anything.

4:45 I've had days with 5 plus hours of screen-on time,

4:47 6 plus hours sometimes with this much brighter screen...

4:50 and still 30% left.

4:51 Now would an enthusiast phone with a huge silicon-carbon battery get you more?

4:55 Absolutely.

4:55 But this is not...

4:57 bad, this is not iPhone, er, levels of like pretty bad battery life.

5:01 And then these cameras, these cameras, they are interesting...

5:05 So base Pixel 11 has a new larger primary and telephoto camera.

5:09 And these Pixel 11 Pros also have even larger,

5:12 better primary sensors and 5x telephotos.

5:14 The ultrawides are unchanged.

5:16 I spent most of my time daily driving this Pro XL, and I think these are B...

5:21 cameras is where I landed.

5:22 Here's why.

5:23 The primary camera here is actually a new sensor.

5:25 It's a 50-megapixel one.

5:27 I actually switched to 50-megapixel mode,

5:28 which takes an extra beat to process but once you flip it on, which...

5:32 it stays on every time you reopen the camera, and I think it's totally worth it.

5:36 The highlight for me though is the new zoom camera, which I actually think...

5:40 might be better than the main camera.

5:42 At least I had more fun with it.

5:43 You could definitely...

5:45 argue that, you know, a 3x might be more useful.

5:48 But I had a lot of fun taking...

5:49 5x photos, and the extra reach is very nice to have.

5:52 But I do find that when you keep zooming beyond the 5x optical,

5:56 it starts to get a little overprocessed and watercolory pretty fast.

5:59 So it's definitely not going to be the king of zoom...

6:02 like some other more ultra phones.

6:04 But the bigger sensors here versus last year,

6:06 it just means things like Night Sight are

6:09 way faster because they're letting in more light,

6:11 and photos are generally sharper and a bit

6:14 less noisy in bad lighting conditions.

6:16 And it does all of this...

6:17 while keeping the contrasty, punchy look that we all know Pixels for.

6:21 But of course, I can also very much still nitpick.

6:23 The ultrawide...

6:24 is...

6:24 it's unchanged and it's kind of showing its age.

6:26 It's not pushing particularly good.

6:28 And the main cameras also very much suffer

6:30 the same point-light problem as the new iPhones as well.

6:33 Especially in lower light, and photos and videos,

6:35 you get these little floating points, these little flares, and...

6:38 zooming between lenses while video recording.

6:41 I feel like it's slightly unnatural.

6:42 Like when you tap a new focal length,

6:44 it does this ramping thing which I don't love.

6:46 Also, for some reason,

6:48 out the box they turned off double tapping the power button to open the camera.

6:53 Not sure why.

6:54 So pro tip: you can dive into the settings and turn that...

6:57 back on...

6:58 It's way faster than any other way to get to the camera.

7:00 But overall, not the best cameras, or the absolute sharpest photos,

7:04 or the biggest zoom, or 200 megapixels or anything.

7:07 But...

7:07 really good software chops, B+...

7:10 camera.

7:10 So I hope all this is painting a pretty clear picture now that you know,

7:14 these new Pixel phones are...

7:15 good phones and they're fun to use.

7:18 If you're looking to them for enthusiast things, then...

7:21 you're looking in the wrong place.

7:22 Like, you won't find bleeding-edge specs

7:25 or silicon-carbon batteries or hundreds of megapixels,

7:28 but what you will find is software.

7:31 Lots and lots of really good software.

7:33 I already did my top five features of Android 17...

7:36 video, so I'm gonna link that below.

7:38 So if you don't already know what using the latest

7:40 version of Android on a Pixel is like, boom.

7:43 You can watch that video.

7:44 But even beyond all of those top features and all

7:46 the other stuff they've been adding over the years, there's just so many...

7:51 little things that make the Pixel...

7:52 so clever and fun to use.

7:54 Even from like, the way the volume slider has this extra little momentum,

7:57 this little bounce when you pull it all the way up or all the way down.

8:00 The new camera looks also, even though they're a couple of taps away,

8:04 it's fun to change the way the character of the camera looks,

8:07 which makes bigger difference than the new sensor sizes ever could.

8:10 Also, have you noticed the My Pixel app icon on the Pixel changes...

8:13 for your specific phone color specific...

8:16 I mean, you'd never notice that unless you had

8:18 another Pixel next to it to check, but it does!

8:21 And if you do have another Pixel, you also know that the tap to share

8:25 with Android Quick Share has this super clean animation now,

8:27 kind of like AirDropping between two iPhones.

8:29 It's stuff like that.

8:30 And then being first in line for whatever other software stuff

8:33 Google comes up with in the next six to seven years,

8:36 or however long it's got software updates for.

8:38 So what's the problem?

8:40 Why did I say there's a problem with Pixels right now?

8:42 So it's not even a new problem

8:45 or even a problem unique to the Pixels specifically,

8:48 but it definitely applies to them, which is that during this...

8:52 RAM shortage crisis and...

8:53 the price increases across the board,

8:55 it's become more obvious than ever that Pixels are software-defined phones.

9:02 And so, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that means, weirdly,

9:06 you can't expect to get a bunch more premium hardware by paying extra.

9:10 So I feel like the only Pixel I can reasonably

9:13 recommend to the masses right now is the base Pixel 11, and it's already $900.

9:19 So it's not like some fantastic deal.

9:21 But this, it's all the new stuff.

9:22 It's the Tensor G6, it's the new brighter screens,

9:25 it's the triple cameras, it's the seven years of software updates.

9:29 It's great, but so then there's the Pro, right?

9:31 This starts at $1,100 now.

9:33 Same size.

9:34 It's the slightly better cameras, yes, but what else do you get?

9:39 Same spec, same RAM.

9:41 You get Highlight, which is that little glowing LED

9:45 on the back that lights up only for incoming calls.

9:48 It's borderline useless, honestly.

9:51 And then you actually get a slightly smaller battery because

9:55 it had to make room for those slightly bigger cameras...

9:58 It does not feel like an $1,100 phone to me.

10:01 So to get a noticeable screen upgrade with the larger

10:04 screen and to get the 16 gigs of RAM that last

10:07 year's phone started with, you end up having to go all

10:10 the way to the 512 gig Pro XL, which is now...

10:13 $1,400.

10:14 Now, I know there's crazy trade-ins and I know people...

10:17 finance these and pay them off in monthly chunks, but still, just as a reviewer,

10:22 I feel the need to point out that you can get

10:25 basically all the phone you need with the base Pixel 11,

10:28 and then if you're gonna get $1,200 $1,400 worth of phone,

10:31 I feel like you should be getting the ultra high-end,

10:35 more premium enthusiast-grade stuff along with all that too...

10:39 And that's just not something...

10:41 that the Pixels have.

10:42 And you know what, I've said this before...

10:44 Pixel phones...

10:45 are all in on the software and they always have been.

10:48 They're the smartest smartphone...

10:50 and so if there were ever a time for Google to switch it up,

10:53 turn over a new leaf and go way harder on the hardware, this would be it, right?

10:57 But they haven't.

10:59 And then with the higher RAM prices and skyrocketing costs across the board,

11:04 this is officially the scariest time to be...

11:07 a software-forward phone.

11:09 So either Google really believes in this stuff

11:12 or that poker face is really good.

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12:24 Thanks for watching.

12:25 Peace!