Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Pixel 8 Pro: Problem or Perfection?”.
Thought the pixel8 pro was a perfect phone, but it’s got a big problem that seemingly nobody’s talking about. So, whenever anybody myself included talks about a pixel like the first thing is like camera camera camera and then like a little bit more camera, I’m going to get to that, but now that the phone is $ 100 more expensive at $ 1,000. That is a lot of money. When you take your phone out of the box, I think for that price premium.
You should like feel something with it. You should feel good. You should almost feel a connection cuz, it’s probably going to be in your hand, quite a bit now looking at the design.
This is a refinement of what came before it, but man, those refinements, make a huge difference. I was talking to some of the guys here in the studio about it. This is definitely like an S year, uh for the pixel. I guess if the six was the real year, this would be an SS, but I think it’s kind of the best version of the S here.
The changes here add up to something really big, so the visor is still here. It looks slightly different. I love that it goes all the way around to the edges of the phone. I do wish, though, that the metal was kind of a mat instead uh.
The back now now was a kind of a frosty look feel instead of glossy also want to give Google credit for actually using a different color other than black or white or some version of taupe. We got blue, it’s ba, it looks absolutely beautiful um and something that I’ve enjoyed with the phone. The colors look different. The phone looks different. The flat screen feels different. This phone feels every bit of $ 1,000 in your hand, even just the weight.
It’S such a visceral thing. If you haven’t held a pixela pro, you can feel the difference between this and the 7 Pro and when you turned the phone on, I was actually genuinely surprised by the 6.7 in screen. So I say this all the time I feel like a broken record, but I love a great screen and I think Google brought their aame here with this one. I would actually go as far as to say it is of the same quality as Samsung displays, and they certainly make the best displays out there.
The big difference, though, I think, is how they’ve tuned the colors here, whether you’re on adaptive or natural, the colors, are a bit more muted. I prefer kind of the contrasty bright colors, but the screen here is awesome and of course, all the high refresh rate stuff that you’d expect all the way down to one so you’re always on display works. That’S nothing new to the pixel. It’S just the best version of what they’ve done before one thing.
That is definitely not the same. Uh from last year’s phone is Peak brightness. This is a 2400 nit Peak brightness. Now it’s not going to sustain that for a huge amount of time, but if you use your phone outside indirect sunlight, you can tell a difference how bright this thing get.
This is at least to my eyes: the brightest phone I have ever used and I’ve used the majority of of major release, phones that have come out over the past almost 15 years. If brightness matters to you, then don’t don’t even look at anything else. The pixel8 pro is the way to go. If use your phone Outdoors all the time, pixel8 Pro is the way to go. I don’t want to say it’s eyering only bright, but probably want to put on some sunglasses when you use this thing all right, so camera right, that’s that’s the pixels jam and when you’ve got a pro phone. Having Pro cameras seem to be like the logical step and every company out, there is trying to make the cameras and their phones as like professional as possible or as plus as possible, whatever they decide to call it, how you get. There is think course, fo manufacturers take different paths. Some try to pack you in like as many many cameras as possible. Others, like Google, focus on software software and then like some more software. On top of that, which, I think is a secret sauce, the pixels always had a really good camera system.
This year Google took that software software software added one more software, but also added some Hardware to go with it. So this feels like magical technology fairy dust, but magic editor is Bonkers. Unless you change almost everything uh in a photo, you can remove things from the background.
Just the lighting and a ton of others. You can even move a subject somewhere else in the frame. If it’s a person and the lightings not right, it definitely looks like they’re standing in front of a green screen, but you can do it and that’s awesome and taking photos of people. You can adjust the faces of those people in the photos. S like the best one somebody’s got three kids and I inevitably have somebody doing this in every picture.
That feature alone is a really compelling reason to look look at the pixel8 pro so from start to finish, Google is using Ai and software to make the photo experience as good as it can be. That’S like that’s their recipe. They put that thing in a pot and cooked it for years, but with the a pro they didn’t just rely on that recipe. There’S also really good Hardware built in with this thing.
So what my biggest complain to a lot of phones is that the main camera sensor is usually awesome, but the others are usually garbage uh. The pixel is like the opposite of that. So you get three cameras.
The main sensor is 50 megapixels, which is a nice high resolution, but the ultrawide and 5x telephoto is also 48 megapixels, which is a resolution you expect from usually just the main camera on a lot of phones and that’s awesome. I can talk about how good the pixel camera is, but I mean you can just look at it for yourself. Everything about pixel photos is good, there’s a reason.
Good photos and pixel tend to be synonymous. I don’t want to be cliche to say this. Camera system is pixel perfect, but it’s pretty darn close in every scenario. Low light looks great, super bright, sunlight, looks great half in the sun. Half in the shade looks great faces, look great portrait mode, awesome job at cutout and you add in all the Magic Eraser stuff.
There is now almost no photo you can take with the pixel. That’S not going to look some version of like the good to Great scale and usually it’s going on the great side, and all of that is awesome. But it’s not going to stop with just photos, though.
I’Ve been crazy impressed what Google has done with video, and it’s not true anymore – that Android’s lagging behind iPhone for video. That kind of got squashed a few years ago, but now what we’re seeing is a lot of ways. Some of the Android phones even take leaps. Some instances, above what apple is doing, I can confident say the pixel 8 Pro your video is going to look as good as your photos now, not in every instance.
There’S still some issues uh with highlights and how it’s handling things, but for the majority of video and wellit scenarios it looks absolutely incredible. It’S doing a much better job in low light, and if you just want to take videos with your phone share them on social media or even put them up on a TV or something pixel8 Pro does a really good job. Now I would not use this as like a replacement for like a cinema uh camera, but if you’re, just taking again casual video pixela Pro is a beast.
Last year brought us the tenser G2 with second generation of Google’s own own s. So – and it was good, I don’t think anybody was running to call it great. It ran okay, it started to slow down after time it got warm when doing kind of some heavy video or heavy gaming on it.
I wasn’t overwhelmed with the g2, it was fine, it was a seemed like a mid chip at best, the G3, at least in my now about 2 weeks or so of using the phone uh. Google brought it here. This feels fast in video, the heat that I had with the g2 and the g. One are not. There experience no slowdown. This is a really fast.
What appears to be very efficient processor now, if that started to kind of wear over time. I don’t know yet and if I had a guess, the optimizations Google made with this chip are kind of why I like the phone so much processor’s fast and again doesn’t overheat like it has in the past. I’M guessing they’re confident enough with what this chip can do: they’re promising 7 years of os and security updates for this phone. That is a ton now listen.
Google is notorious for promising things and then killing them. They usually do deliver on what they promise. So if they’re saying 7 years, you will get 7 years of updates for this phone. They might not offer that same thing.
For you know, next year’s pixel um, but at least for the 8 Pro 7 years is pretty good. This phone will get an update in 2030, which is just absolutely nuts here. Also, nuts uh seems to be battery life so far, so it’s a 550 mAh battery and again just 2 weeks and my test is I’m real heavy in social media in video – and I know third party optimization really determines a battery life, so third party apps that I use might not be optimized versus the one you use. Our battery lives could be way different.
In my usage, though, it’s been pretty good. I can get to the end of the day between 25 and 30 %, which is kind of my threshold for a really good battery. That gives me just a big buffer to use it a little bit more.
If I need to on those heavy days um battery life does not appear to be a concern. Uh at all. Every few years Google adds something new to a pixel line. That is something you don’t see on really any other phone. There’S a temperature sensor uh on this right here and uh. It works it’s not going to work on the human body.
It’S got to be certified for that. But if you want to measure temperature of a ceramic mug of wood, uh of someone through clothing that does work now, your guess is good as mine as to why this here, if I was going to imagine this is probably something around 2020 seemed like a really Good idea – and they just kind of put it in here – maybe there’s something a larger picture, where it’s going to play into something that we don’t know yet probably use it once and forget about it from every angle that you look at the pixela pro. This is finally the pixel without compromise it’s the first pixel I can recommend without adding any caveats, but the problem with the pixel 8 Pro isn’t.
The phone itself is that the pixel fold exists. The phone itself is incredible, but is it really the top end? There? Now You’ got the pixel fold, which does almost everything. I’Ve talked talked about incredibly well, the camera system. It’S not as good. It’S got the senser G2 instead of G3, but it folds it adds more functionality, as larger screens outer display is absolutely incredible. You can’t just recommend the pixel 8 Pro anymore as the best pixel.
I think that Crown still goes to the pixel fold and as much as I love the 8 Pro – and I really do – I just have a soft spot in my heart for foldables. If that’s not your jam, the pixel 8 Pro is amongst the best phones ever made and across the entire lineup of pixel phones, whichever one you go for you’re getting great software that Google’s always been known for, and it feels like this is the plan. Google has always had, and it finally come to fruition, and if you want a pixel, this is the best candy bar one to buy of all time. .