Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Performance, Design, and AI Features

The Pixel 9 Pro impresses with its build quality and software but still struggles with performance and storage limitations.

### Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL: A Complicated Yet Promising Evolution
* 📱  The Google Pixel phones have always been special, featuring beautifully animated software, but they often come with **significant issues** that detract from the **overall experience**.
* 🔧  The new Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL have a lot to prove, showcasing the **best build quality yet**, comparable to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, with a **solid construction** and **grippier sides**.
* 📦  However, the unboxing experience is somewhat underwhelming, with only the phone, a cable, and a SIM ejector included in a **pretty but empty box**.
* 📊  Performance remains a concern, as the new Tensor G4 chip still **lags behind competitors**, making actions feel slower, although gaming performance has **surprisingly improved**.
* 📸  The camera hardware is similar to last year's model, providing good quality images, but it still struggles with certain features like **zooming and portrait mode**, which are **less polished** compared to rivals.
* 🤖  New AI features like "**Ad Me**" and the "**Magic Editor**" show promise but can feel **half-baked and limited**, while the Gemini AI assistant offers a more **conversational experience** but **lacks some basic functionalities**.
* 🔋  Battery life is decent, with **6.5 hours of screen-on time** for the smaller Pro and **7 hours** for the XL, and overheating issues seem to be addressed with the addition of a **vapor chamber**.
* ⚡  Overall, the Pixel 9 Pro improves upon many past issues, but with a starting price of **$1,100**, it needs to compete more effectively with the **speed and storage** of its rivals.

I have had a complicated relationship with the Google Pixel phones over the years. I've always said that at their very core, these phones are special. They have this beautifully animated, friendly, customizable software that's always capable of doing a few things so intelligent that they're practically indistinguishable from magic. But at the same time, these phones make me rage because so far, there's always been a blocker, significant enough issues that distract you from being able to focus on that delightful software. I've had build quality issues, I've had overheating issues, I've had signal issues, inconsistent camera issues, and just generally the phone's being quite a bit slower than the competition issues. So that puts this new Pixel 9 Pro and the 9 Pro XL, which is the one I've been mainly using, in a very interesting position. They have a lot to prove, but if they can prove it, then I mean, these could basically become my favorite phones ever. So this is how the Pixel 9 Pro and the Pro XL come presented. It's a pretty box.

but sadly, it's also a pretty empty box. You get the phone, you get a cable, and there's a SIM ejector somewhere in here. Well, at least it makes my job quicker. Here's the thing though: this is the best-built Pixel ever. It feels almost exactly like an iPhone 15 Pro Max when you pick it up. Very similar dimensions, very similar flat sides with a slight curve, and it's the same weight down to the gram. I remember reading a post saying that way more of the people who buy Pixels are actually ex-iPhone users as opposed to ex-Samsung, so I'd be very surprised if this similarity wasn't intentional to even further entice Apple fans who are still on the fence. But either way, I mean this as a compliment to the Pixel. The sides are grippier than their past phones. It looks and feels just really classy, especially with these thinner, completely even screen bezels. And this is also easily the most solidly constructed phone Google has ever made. It doesn't flex one bit, and if you

haven't already seen it. I'd say it very much passed the Jerry rig durability test. I've kind of been getting the feeling over the last few years that the pixel would end up as yet another one of those canned Google projects, you know, the classic downward spiral where things aren't quite there with a tech product, so then it doesn't sell well, so then it makes less money, so then it gets less investment, and never improves because of that. Besides, Google is specifically famous for cancelling projects, but getting a significant redesign like this feels like a reassurance that Google is still very much kicking around. Google is still determined to keep trying to become a definitive part of this Smartphone War, and the more that you use this phone, the more you realize why that's so important to them. But I'll get there. Oh, also, I don't normally talk about cases, but if you're going to make one, this is how it's done. This thing is addictively soft. It shows up no fingerprints, no light scratches. It gently swoops around the camera module.

giving you this soft lip to rest your fingers against. There's nice felt on the inside, a metal logo, and metal buttons which actually match the remaining visible part of the phone. And the sprinkle on top is that the fit is perfect. Every single cutout is exactly centralized, which, well, you'd be surprised how often that doesn't happen. And you know what? Design is not the only thing that's on the up here. The optical fingerprint scanner that we used to have, that was one of my major gripes. This new pixel switches that out for an ultrasonic scanner. It's basically firing out sound waves instead of light to map out the ridges of your fingers. But the upside of that is that it gives the phone basically a three-dimensional understanding of your prints, so it's more reliable, and you really feel that. I haven't had any signal issues, and while it's hard to say anything conclusive about signal because there's just so many factors, I do a pretty regular 2 and 1/2 hour trip from Nottingham my

hometown to London on the motorway, and the signal is famously patchy on this. Though I was actually flitting between 4G and 5G almost the entire time, with only two 5-minute bursts of nothing, so it's looking likely that the new modem on the inside of this pixel is doing its job. The general feel of using the phone is it's flawless. It's the best, honestly. Every single animation has an accompanying feeling generated by the vibration motor, even things like a gentle hum as you slide up and down your brightness. Plus, I've not had a single bug, which is a low bar, I realized, but that automatically makes this the most stable pixel launch in history. The battery is actually... the battery is not charged, so it's on 8% right now. Let's just plug it into our shiny new anchor Prime power station. But yeah, the battery life on these Pros is enough. I wouldn't call it sparkling. I'm talking 6 and 1/2 hours of screen-on time on the smaller Pro and 7

on the XL, which is less than my Samsung but enough for almost anyone, and it feels like Google's gained control of their overheating problem. I mean, the solution wasn't rocket science; they just finally caught up and put a vapor chamber in the phone like their competitors have been doing for ages. That has a lot of knock-on effects. It means that the screen, which is bright and pretty delicious by the way, doesn't dim minutes after I take it out on a hot day. The camera seems to record continuously without stuttering, and games don't dramatically slow down with persistent play. In fact, I did whip out the good old 3D Mark extreme stress test to put some numbers to this feeling and found that while the Galaxy S24 Ultra had 57% stability, meaning that by the end of this 30-minute or so stress test, it was only running at 57% of the performance it started with, the Pixel retained 71.7. Now, that's not the full story 'cause while the Pixel's stability score is higher, its performance to start with is

so much lower that even with more stability, there isn't a single point in this test where it's better than the S24 Ultra. Every year, performance has been a classic Pixel weakness that every year Google seems to keep addressing by just slapping that AI Band-Aid on top, and this new phone isn't completely free of that curse either. The new Tensor G4 chip that you find inside of the Pixel 9 Pros is still noticeably less fast than the chip inside the best from Samsung, Apple, OnePlus. All of those companies' top-end phones make basically every action instant, whereas the Pixel still feels like it enjoys its thinking time. You know, little things like it taking just a split second for the full-resolution image to load when you zoom into it, and the phone's storage speed might have something to do with that too. I ran multiple tests, and the Pixel comes out as significantly slower in terms of sequential read and write speeds than Samsung, which would explain why it takes longer to load things. And I'm just going to be brutally honest, this disparity

felt like an acceptable compromise when Google was charging $900 for a pro pixel, but now we're at $1,100. It needs to get on that level. That said, in a way, it's actually better than I thought it would be. I was expecting gaming, for example, to be a flop, but this is Zen Zone zero. This is as difficult as mobile games get to run, and I've played this for an hour at a time on absolutely maxed-out settings with no issues, apart from some slightly toasty side rails. And also, this chip combined with now 16 GB of RAM by default seems to drastically speed up AI tasks. I'm talking like 50% faster than they used to be, which was much needed. One of the key things that got to me with last year's pixel 8s was how stark the difference was between how easy and instant Google made AI photo editing look at their launch events versus the fiddly reality of it on the phones, made many times worse by the 5 to 10c loading.

time in between every single action, and so the fact that this stuff is so much faster here, it already starts to alleviate my blood pressure. As for all the new AI stuff they announced, I'd say most of it feels a little half-baked, which is a phrase I think I've used to describe every single AI phone this year. But there are three things, three things I absolutely love. The thing that they spent most of the time talking about was this one called ad me, where if you want to take a group shot but you don't want to ask someone to take the photo, you can separately take each person's shot, and Google software can merge them together into one. And while I would say that is very impressive from a technical perspective, I just don't think I'd ever use it. I've never really had a situation where I've wanted to take a group shot, and I haven't been able to find someone to take that shot. And if you can find someone, then that still feels like the better option to me, 'cause that way you

don't have to do this little fiddle. You don't have to take two separate shots. You don't have the risk that it doesn't quite turn out the way you expected, which, as we all know, there is a very decent chance of with any AI feature. And also, you know, it's just that your end result then is a photo of a real moment, which maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I still think that counts for something. There's a whole new app now for image generation called Pixel Studio, but to be honest, while it can generate some pretty quick, nice-looking images from scratch based on a prompt, it's nothing new or better than what's out there. It needs Wi-Fi, even though it's supposedly running on-device. And when you want to use it to mess with photos you've already taken, it's extremely limited and fiddly, with the selection tool being practically dysfunctional. And like, what in Earth is this? Why are the two key options for your next-generation AI photo editing app to add a caption or add a sticker?

this would have been cool if we were still living in the year 2000. The phone's assistant is in a slightly weird place. Basically, this phone's default assistant is Gemini. Gemini is more heavily AI-powered; it's way smarter, but it also seems to have a lot of limitations with how it can interact with your apps and also doesn't do some of the more basic things that Google Assistant used to do. So, it feels like we're at this pretty clumsy middle phase where you get both, and you can switch between them depending on the feature set you want, which makes me feel very much like a beta tester. Oh, but the magic editor is starting to get pretty interesting, though. I was playing around yesterday with the feature that allows you to zoom out of a photo that's already been taken, and I couldn't believe it. Like, look at this shot. I click the autoframing button, and Bam! It's understood that this wooden beam along the top has got to continue. It's understood that there's an extra step here, and it's estimated what it's likely

to look like it's understood that the trees are thinning around here, so when it zooms out, it's making sure that you can see more of the sky there. The idea of this feature isn't new; the execution of it very much is, and you can now reimagine photos, which can actually be very powerful and very convincing. I remember my jaw practically hitting the floor when I managed to change my cat into a dog. I mean, what the Google? The only thing I would say is it's a real hit to the feature's usefulness that you can't use it on shots of people. There's a new pixel screenshots app, which also falls into the category of pretty good. I actually think it's great that there's a separate app to manage screenshots, 'cause the reasons that I want to find screenshots are always very different from the reasons that I might want to browse my gallery. And while what the app does is not distinctly different from what most phones can already do by allowing you to search for things within your screenshots, it is one layer more.

intelligent because your phone can not just look at the specific info in the screenshots but also use AI to take one step back and understand what the screenshot is meaning. You're way more likely to be able to find it based on a vague description. The first thing that I absolutely love, though, is Gemini Live. It's basically the AI that you're used to but in a much more free-flowing way than I think we've ever experienced. You talk, you listen, you can talk over the AI. There are no trigger buttons or trigger words. It allows you to have something that very closely resembles a real human conversation. Let's do a little live demo. I'm debating between going for an Android phone or an iPhone. I'm a simple person. What would you recommend? Okay, choosing between Android and iPhone can be tough. iPhones are known for being really user-friendly and straightforward. They're a good choice if you want a phone that's easy to set up and just works. All right then, Google. Thank you, U. But what I also like about

It is that when you wanted to stop talking, you don't need to say anything or do anything. You just say what you want to say, and it will slowly reduce its own volume and listen. And I actually think that makes it a really powerful tool because it becomes like a live bouncing board. Like I was chatting to it last night. I said, I'm going to have some people over. What could I do for dinner that's a bit different? It said, Why don't you theme it? I was like, Great idea. We chatted for another 3 to 4 minutes, and by the end of it, I had a complete menu plan for my Pokémon-themed dinner, including the salad I would use to represent grass types and the spicy curry I'd use to represent fire types. Now, as for the other two AI features that I think are amazing, they're both within the camera. So let's talk cameras. The rear set of cameras have almost identical hardware to last year's phone. So that's a 50 MP main, 48

map Ultra wide and then a 48 map five times optical zoom, and so it's probably not shocking news to learn that the base quality of photos feels not that different from last year. So that means good color reproduction, a very strong ability to handle high dynamic range scenarios, and control those bright spots, very comparable levels of detail to Samsung's highest-end Galaxy S24 Ultra. But then a night mode that's good but just a little softer than Samsung's, and a portrait mode that I think it's fair to say falls behind. Like, look at the edge detection here versus the Galaxy. It really gives itself away as a phone photo, and upsettingly, many of the frustrations I had with last year's phone are also still present here. Zooming in and out is still very laggy. It makes it feel unpolished. The camera preview can still get grainy, even if the end photos are not. The transition between lenses feels jumpy. There's weird limitations, like you can't use your five-time zoom lens to take portraits, nor can

you use it for slow-mo with instead the phone opting for some very poor quality digital zoom, and this really cool cinematic blur mode is 1080p only. But the front camera is new. This is now a 42 MP sensor. That's the reason for the fairly large cutout, and I'll take it. It lets you go super wide if you want to get those group shots. I don't think I've ever seen a phone go wider than this. But also, I was pleasantly surprised by the detail, and you can also shoot some pretty solid 4K video because yes, Google has put some work in to bring up the video quality on the Pixels 2. And that leads me on to the AI feature video boost. It's kind of strange, but when you're taking video on this phone, this only works on your rear cameras, by the way. You have the option to boost that video. If you select the option, then your phone will keep the footage largely unprocessed so that the next time you're on Wi-Fi, it can upload it to the cloud.

and get Google's superpowered data centers to process it even better than your phone itself could. It improves the colors, the dynamic range, the stabilization. It can completely rescue grainy footage taken in low light, which was one of the biggest weaknesses of past Pixel phones. It can even upgrade the resolution to 8K. And it's one of those features that you feel like it shouldn't work; it almost sounds like some kind of elaborate scam, but it does. I guess you could say there is a hidden cost associated with it, though, 'cause like if you want 8K video-boosted content, you're going to need a heck of a lot of cloud storage, specifically Google Cloud Storage. You'll need about 800 MB per minute of it. And also, you need to be very careful with this phone about joining other people's data hotspots 'cause your phone will pick them up as Wi-Fi networks, and before you know it, you could have burnt through 10 GB of their data obliviously boosting your videos in the background without you even

realizing I know this from personal experience doesn't make you popular, but it's this kind of stuff that reminds you why Google never stops trying with the pixels. 'Cuz I mean, like, if this phone succeeds, so do all of their services, and not just Google Photos, but also their Gemini AI, because this phone is the best possible portal through which to funnel people to them. It's also very clear that this is why Google is like the only company still shipping a top-of-the-line Pro phone, starting with just 128 GB of onboard storage, which, to be honest, combined with it costing a whole $100 extra just to get to 256, feels lowkey diabolical to me. Ah, but then here is the other thing about this camera, the zoom. Zoom, see the big tin super res zoom feature that pixels have is already good. Like, when you zoom in 30 times and you take the shot, a surprising amount of improvement is made after that capture to the point where I would say the pixel's long-range zoom shots are already 95% as good as those on

Samsung's S24 Ultra, and that's one of that phone's key selling points. But then add in the new Zoom enhance AI feature on top of that, and Samsung gets absolutely murdered. Now, this obviously does open a can of worms 'cause what Google is doing here is inventing detail. It's not completely consistent, and it's perfectly possible that this texture it's creating isn't completely real. So, is it actually the better zoom camera? I guess that's up to you, but which image would I rather have? That's pretty clear. It's the Google. The final thing I would add about cameras is the very underrated panorama mode. This is the best phone for taking panoramas. It makes them really easy to take, they're super detailed, and each photo is stitched together extremely seamlessly. Okay, so is this phone good? Yes, it is. The Pixel 9 Pro either improves upon or completely fixes about 70% of my issues with past pixels. Everything from cameras to performance to AI. It does that with classic Google perks like this joyous software and 7.

years of Android updates with the extras that I didn't even know I wanted, like this big redesign, or well actually forget the redesign, look at this case. I really like this thing. The key cons are just, well, you're basically paying $1,200 for the XL model 'cause no one wants a flagship phone with just 128 GB of storage, and it's still not as fast as the competition. Okay, it's been an hour, and the phone is on 67% while I've been using it the whole time. And you want to know why? It's because of the new Anker Prime charging station. The company has sponsored this video, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the new gold standard for a setup. It's got a total output of 250 watts, so one cable into here, and this thing can happily charge your laptop, three phones, and two other gadgets, all at full speed. Plus, it's got a 2.26-inch LCD interactive charging display, which gives you immediate updates on charging status and speed. But there is more. There's a

new fusion power bank, which is so cool because this is basically a full-on wall charger, and then as soon as you want to go somewhere, you automatically have a fully charged 9,600 mAh battery pad. Not to mention the docking station, which is this absolutely ridiculous 14 in-1 charging and data transfer solution. You can turn a desk like this into a desk like this with one of these. This stuff right here is no exaggeration. Currently, the top contenders for what we're going to be kitting out are next-gen studio with so check out the full anchor Prime lineup in the link below.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Review - The Big Comeback!?

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The Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL: A Promising Evolution

The Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL have a lot to prove, with a history of significant issues in previous models.

The new design closely resembles the iPhone 15 Pro Max, aiming to attract ex-iPhone users.

The phones feature a solid build, grippier sides, and a perfect-fitting case, while also switching to an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner for improved reliability.

The Pixel 9 Pros have a stable and flawless performance, with a new modem ensuring smooth 4G and 5G connectivity.

5 hours on the smaller Pro and 7 hours on the XL, and the phone has effectively addressed overheating issues.

While the Tensor G4 chip is still slower than competitors, it offers better stability and faster AI task processing, making gaming and other demanding tasks more manageable.

Google's new AI features aim to streamline tasks and improve photo-taking, but some feel half-baked.

The "ad me" feature for group shots is impressive but may not be practical for everyone.

The Pixel Studio app for image generation is underwhelming, and the phone's assistant is in a clumsy transition between AI-powered and traditional functions.

The magic editor's photo zoom-out feature is a standout, offering powerful and convincing reimagining of images, while the new pixel screenshots app provides a better way to manage and search for screenshots.

The phone's AI can understand screenshots and provide assistance based on vague descriptions.

Gemini Live offers a more natural conversation flow, allowing users to talk and listen without trigger words.

The camera features have similar hardware to the previous year, providing good photo quality, but still struggling with zooming, lens transitions, and portrait mode.

The Pixel phone now has a 42 MP front camera with a super wide option for group shots and improved 4K video quality.

It offers a unique AI video boost feature that processes footage in the cloud for better colors, dynamic range, and stabilization, even upgrading resolution to 8K.

The phone's top-tier storage starts at 128 GB, with a $100 increase for 256 GB, and it also features an impressive long-range zoom capability.

Google's Pixel 9 Pro and Anker Prime Charging Station

The Pixel 9 Pro offers a powerful zoom camera with an AI-enhanced detail feature, making it a strong contender in photography.

The phone also excels in panorama mode, providing seamless and detailed images.

Additionally, the Anker Prime charging station offers a total output of 250 watts, allowing it to charge multiple devices at full speed, and features a fusion power bank for on-the-go charging.