Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL review: Superb cameras, with a side of Gemini AI

This year, Google decided not only to update the design of its Pixel phones but also put its AI features front and center. The Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL are the first Pixels that have swapped the Assistant for Gemini. With its latest flagships, Google continues to improve its cameras, by upgrading its primary sensor and expanding its suite of editing tools. And to power all those new AI tricks, the company has equipped the devices with its newest Tensor processor, designed to handle on-device Gemini tasks. For the first time, too, the Pro-branded Pixel is available in two sizes, with a smaller version joining the family. Better yet, if you go for the Pixel 9 Pro, you’ll be getting a largely identical phone to the pricier 6.8-inch Pixel 9 Pro XL. Please note: no camera compromise here, Apple.

But this isn’t just another flagship Android: it’s a concerted effort to get you hooked on Google’s AI-powered image editing, email assistance and more. The Pixel 9 Pro delivers on all these aspects, with varying degrees of success.

Google

With a refined design, much-improved telephoto camera and great battery-life, the Pixel 9 Pro cements its status as the smartphone with the best camera.

Pros

• Great camera features and improved telephoto camera
• A year of Gemini Advanced for free
• Incredible battery life
• A beautiful, bright screen that’s easy to use outdoors
• Tensor G4 runs cooler than its predecessor

Cons

• Slower charging speeds than the XL
• Not the best phone for gaming

$999 at Google

Google

With even more useful photography tricks and a much-improved telephoto camera, the Pixel 9 Pro XL cements its status as the best smartphone camera.

Pros

• Great camera features and improved telephoto camera
• A year of Gemini Advanced for free
• Impressive battery life
• A beautiful, bright screen that’s easy to use outdoors
• Tensor G4 runs cooler than its predecessor

Cons

• More expensive than last year’s Pixel 8 Pro
• Not a great gaming phone
• A little unwieldy

$1,099 at Google

Design and display

As I opened the box, I knew this was the most premium Pixel yet. The Pixel 9 Pro has softer curved corners than its predecessor, while the edges have been flattened. It also felt somehow familiar — like my iPhone. I had to double-check, and they weighed the same, down to the gram (all 221 of them). That’s not bad: the iPhone Pro is the de facto phone to beat. The Pixel 9 Pro has a similar matte satin finish.

I don’t know if the flattened sides make it easier to grip than the Pixel 8 Pro, but I found the substantial camera module did help with stability, occasionally resting on my finger or thumb during shots. The ‘cyclops bar’ is gone, replaced with a more conventional — but just as substantial — camera array. The temperature sensor is, for some reason, still here, although a Thermometer app update coming this week will let it save the things you’re most regularly measuring and even offer some AR guidance to ensure you’re the right distance away from the object you’re scanning.

Without the camera bar, which felt a bit much, the Pixel 9 Pro doesn’t feel like Google trying to make an aggressive design statement. The camera module is huge, however.

Like last year, Google has kept the display almost entirely flat. The Pixel 9 Pro XL’s 6.8-inch screen is 0.1 inches bigger than last year’s Pixel 8 Pro and brighter, too, peaking at 3,000 nits. It makes sense for Google to make its bigger pro Pixel even larger to match the XL in its name, but like the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the Pro XL is a little too big for me. My not-exactly-small hands struggled to reach the search bar or dropdown menus in the top corners. (Sidenote: I can move the Chrome address bar to the bottom of the screen on my iPhone, but not on Android? What gives?)

Meanwhile, the Pixel 9 Pro’s 6.3-inch panel is roomy enough to see plenty of lines of text at once, without me having to almost sprain a finger to reach its edges. Both Pixel 9 Pros have Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on their displays as well as across the satin-finish backs, like last year’s flagship phone, meaning they’re about as durable as before.

With the XL, you’re consciously deciding you want a Big Phone – this is S24 Ultra territory. Fortunately, it’s another bright, vivid screen from Google, with variable refresh rates from 1-120Hz for smooth scrolling when needed.

The XL Pixel Pro’s resolution of 1,344 x 1,992 translates to a pixel density of 486 ppi, which is lower than the Pixel 9 Pro (495 ppi). But good luck discerning that in real life. Google continues to lean towards more understated color tones on its screens, compared to rival phones from Samsung and Apple. Still, I think it suits the shades of Android’s Material Design palette, as well as this year’s hardware color options. Both Pixel 9 Pro sizes arrive in black, white, hazel and rose quartz. I was sent the hazel version, which is subtle to the point of looking almost gray. My colleague Cherlynn Low is infatuated with the rose quartz Pixel 9 Pro she’s tested.

Cameras

The Pixel camera is still the best smartphone camera. Last year, we called Pixel 8 Pro “the most powerful smartphone camera on the market,” and Google has tried to hold on to that position. Hardware-wise, the sensors are the exact resolution as the Pixel 8 Pro, aside from the leap to a 42-megapixel front-facing camera, up from 10.5 megapixels last year. Google has also improved the autofocus, and it takes surprisingly decent crisp shots and video.

But we’re all here to discuss the triple camera array on the back. There’s a new 50MP primary camera, a 48MP ultra-wide, and a 48MP telephoto camera with a 5x optical zoom. The upgraded hardware doesn’t result in noticeable improvements over the Pixel 8 Pro in most of the photos I compared… until I started using the telephoto sensor. There, I saw huge improvements to detail and color. Google has addressed some of the Pixel 9 Pro’s video-recording weaknesses too — I didn’t notice any overheating issues with the new Tensor chip, even when recording multiple video clips at maximum resolution.

New camera software features

Google has once again augmented its cameras with software features that walk the line between gimmick and game-changer.

Add Me could be the latter for me. As the guy with the newest smartphone in my friendship group and family, I’m usually the one taking candid and group shots for everyone. But that means there often aren’t many photos of me. Add Me is a new camera mode which combines Google’s computational photography expertise with augmented reality to scan and frame an area and group of people. Once you’ve taken the first photo, you trade places with someone else, the Pixel 9 Pro will ask that person to align the frame, and take a second shot.

It’s a little like the Best Take feature from last year, which could swap out faces to ensure everyone’s giving their best smile, the Pixel then processes and combines those two images together. It’s a simplified Photoshop clone tool, sure, but it looks good. I will be using this at the next birthday/wedding/christening/future 40th birthday party. (Ed. note: We get it, Mat, you’re popular.)

The Pixel 9 Pro arrives with several features initially teased a year ago, including Zoom Enhance and Video Boost. Zoom Enhance is pretty self-explanatory, using AI to increase both detail and sharpness on your most aggressively zoomed photos. The results can be mixed. It’s not as egregious as Samsung’s super-imposed moon photography, but Zoom Enhance does its best work on shapes, structures and patterns, sharpening up brickwork, foliage and more. It still usually makes a mess with humans.

There are use cases for Zoom Enhance (it does a great job sharpening up London’s Tower Bridge) but I’m not sure it’ll rescue your concert pics from the back of the venue. Not unless you want a nightmarish vision of Taylor Swift’s face massaged by AI. Notably, Zoom Enhance is one of the camera AI features that’s processed on-device.

With Video Boost, the Pixel 9 Pro records video in a special mode (that you will have to toggle in settings before recording) and those clips are automatically uploaded to the cloud for server-side processing. What’s new for the Pixel 9 Pro is that you can shoot videos with up to 20x zoom or create boosted videos with 8K resolution. You’ll need to record at 1080p to create 4K videos, and capture in 4K to make 8K clips. This is upscaled 8K, so while clips seem crisper in places, don’t expect 8K footage that’s comparable to what you’ll get with dedicated cameras. Video Boosted 8K seems more like a spec boast for Google rather than a feature you’ll use with any regularity.

Having said that, Google has improved Video Boost substantially since it first launched, adding smoother transitions between focal lengths and different camera sensors. With Video Boost, leaping from a standard wide view to 5x zoom is far less jarring, and Google has fixed the color imbalances between its trio of sensors — it looks much like it was filmed on a single-lens camera. It also offers a boost to any video captured in low light. It won’t make pitch-black footage visible — I did try — but does improve the color and detail of dim video clips. You can also punch in to 20x digital zoom if you’re using Video Boost for surprisingly functional footage.

Once you’ve taken your photos, an upgraded Magic Editor brings the same content-aware fill features as last year, capable of deleting unwanted objects and people from your photos. This year, Google adds more generative AI power. First up, Autoframe will let the Pixel try its hand at improving your photo’s composition, cropping and even extending your photos, generating backgrounds and adding elements, sometimes successfully.

Reimagine puts Google’s generative AI skills to use with more creative tasks, allowing you to select backgrounds, items or other areas of your photo, and create dreamy composite images. I was able to swap out my living room for a Hawaiian sunset, make the floor lava in a nearby park and more. Get too specific with your wording, though, and the results aren’t quite as impressive. But that’s the state of smartphone generative AI, for now.

The pro camera controls, introduced with the Pixel 8 Pro, are still here. They let you manually tweak exposure, shutter speed, and ISO, and are still super useful for those who know what they’re doing.

Software

On the Pixel 9, you may notice a few surprise apps that you never installed. But this isn’t quite bloatware: they’re Google’s new Pixel Screenshots and Pixel Studio. Instead of adding more complication to the Photos app, these have been made into standalone apps, which I’m very glad to see.

For now, you’re unable to edit photos with people in Pixel Studio, which dampens a lot of the fun. If you want standard generative-AI cartoon images and renders, Pixel Studio can oblige, although my creations aren’t quite as cohesive as the examples shown. While Pixel Studio offers the ability to title your designs, most times that text will get turned into the usual AI-generated squiggles, defeating the purpose of making most things with this app.

It’s a little too early to draw conclusions on Pixel Screenshots, too. It uses AI to parse through all your screenshots, making information like prices, reservations and dates searchable. However, the Pixel 9 doesn’t populate your screenshots automatically, nor could I find a way to pull my existing screenshots (years of them!) from my Google Photos backup, which seems like a miss. The Photos app already silos them as screenshots, so there must be a way to transfer them across. Is this a privacy issue? We’ve asked Google.

This means the tool offered limited utility during my first week of testing. What could be incredibly useful is how Gemini AI can gradually learn to identify what’s captured in the screenshots beyond simply reading the text. Screenshots in general are just smarter on the Pixel 9 Pro. I captured some travel itinerary emails, and before I even had to open an app, the Pixel suggested adding my hotel stay to Google calendar. These are the touches I love. (Of course, I could hold the power button to summon Gemini and ask it to do so similarly.)

Both Pixel 9 Pros get a year’s subscription to Google One AI Premium, a bundle of 2TB storage as well as the use of Gemini Advanced. The latter lets the AI directly dabble in apps like Gmail and Google Docs, to summarize text, PDFs and email conversations, although I didn’t spot it in my own Gmail app. I was still able to test this in a Chrome tab elsewhere, as the subscription extends to every device you use with Google products. There’s also access to Gemini Live, a conversational mode that’s almost entirely voice-based. I’m not sure how much I’d use this mode, however. I prefer to type my specific requests.

Gemini Live will tick along in the background as you use other apps, which adds to the utility, and stores all your requests and results on the main Gemini screen. I was able to barrel through about 15 different voice requests for shows I wanted to see at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and it could already parse showtimes and venues, faster than I could manually find them. It struggled with some names and couldn’t identify some notable comedians at all. Google has made AI-assisted search a functional part of how I use my phone.

It’s been fun seeing what Gemini Advanced is capable of. After taking an obtuse photo of several skyscraper buildings in central London, I asked Gemini Advanced to identify where the photo was taken. The AI initially said it could be New York, suggesting one of the buildings was One Vanderbilt.

Then I said that was incorrect and that it was taken in London. Gemini Advanced circled back, identifying not only one of the buildings but also the address, which was roughly 100 feet away from where I took the photo. The sheer seamlessness of the experience on Android was what impressed me most, but this is part of Gemini Advanced and after the one-year trial ends, Google expects you to pay $20 a month to keep your access. At a time when all my payments for Netflix, Spotify and more are climbing, Google isn’t offering enough to make me add another subscription to the pile.

Performance and battery life

Along with 16GB of RAM, the Pixel 9 series features the Tensor G4, Google’s latest slice of silicon, designed to breeze through AI tasks and generative AI requests. But If you’re a mobile gamer this isn’t going to blow you away. The G4 is more powerful than the Tensor G3, sure, but it doesn’t quite match the smoothness of the latest Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm. Tensor G4’s improved abilities are put to use most with new AI tasks: for example, Google says its Add Me feature taps into augmented reality software along with 15 different on-device AI models.

We haven’t quite got to the point where we can compare the speeds and efficiencies of generative AI tasks. For the most part, the Pixel 9 Pro behaves like a typical flagship phone. Chrome is unlikely to stutter, and the Pixel 9 Pro seems capable of handling heavy video editing and processing with ease, as well as new Magic Editor features for your photos. These features still take a moment, but the fact that so many AI tools work on-device, with no connection needed, impresses me.

The Pixel 9 Pro XL’s 5,060mAh battery is almost identical to the Pixel 8 Pro (5,050mAh), and it delivered over 22 hours in our looped video rundown test. The Pixel 9 Pro, meanwhile, managed to run for almost 25 hours. However, maximum charge wattage differs between the two Pros too. The Pixel 9 Pro charges at 27W, less than the Pixel 8 Pro’s 30W, while the new Pixel 9 Pro XL charges at 37W. This means the XL should charge faster than the base Pro. Google says the Pixel 9 Pro can get up to 55 percent in 30 minutes, while the XL will reach a heady 77 percent in the same time, using the company’s own 45W charger. My Pixel 9 Pro showed similar figures, speedily recharging to over 50 percent in under 25 minutes.

Wrap up

The Pixel Pro has never looked better and feels like the premium devices Google’s always wanted to make. Naturally, there’s a premium cost associated. Given that last year’s 6.7-inch Pixel 8 Pro was $999, the $1,099 Pixel 9 Pro XL is $100 more expensive, while the Pixel 9 Pro, with the same cameras, storage, processor and AI hooks, but a smaller screen, costs the same $999. However, compared to rivals like Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra ($1,300), the Pixel 9 Pro devices remain competitively priced.

The Pixel 9 Pro is a showcase for Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, and it’s been given a huge opportunity to shine as Pixel 9 Pro owners enjoy a year of free access to the more advanced model. It’s early days for some of the new software features, like Pixel Studio and Screenshots, however.

Competition from Apple and Samsung over the last few years may have chipped away at the competitiveness of Pixel features like Night Sight, but Google continues to improve the Pixel’s imaging prowess further. The Pixel 9 Pro cements the Pixel series’ status as the best smartphone camera. It’s so good that I don’t mind that chonky camera cutout — it changed my mind.

Some of these new features are crucially ones I will regularly use, like Add Me. Elsewhere, Google taps into cloud processing to beef up your video with the might of its server network. At the same time, the Pixel keeps many of its computational photography tricks on-device, with the temperamental Zoom Enhance available without the need for an internet connection.

It all culminates in a phone with unique tricks and incredible battery life, regardless of which size you go for. It’s so good that my iPhone will have to go without its SIM for a little longer: the Pixel 9 Pro will be my main phone for just a bit more.