Google Pixel 8 Pro Long-term Review: Great cameras, smooth Android experience, unreasonable price tag

Pros:
– Premium build and design; feels sturdy in hand
– IP68 ingress protection
– Great all-round camera performance
– Best Android experience
– 7 years of OS and security updates promised
– Sharp 120Hz display
– Good overall performance

Cons:
– Slow charging; no charger in the box
– Tensor G3 throttles under load
– Unreasonably high pricing

Price: Starts at Rs 97,999
Rating: 4/5

More often than not, we do not have the luxury of testing a phone for months before writing its review. To be fair, after having tested enough phones, one can judge the capabilities of a new model within a few weeks. As a result, the current Google flagship, Pixel 8 Pro already made it to our list of best phones of 2023 at the end of last year. However, for a truly wholesome experience and to see how it ages, one needs to use a device for a considerable amount of time.

We were lucky enough to have the company of the Google Pixel 8 Pro for the past several months and witness its evolution with the arrival of newer software updates and features. Unfortunately, there has been no significant price drop yet, and we wouldn’t want to continue waiting till the launch of the Pixel 9 series for its price to lower. So, now is a good time to share our experience with you in this long-term review.

Google Pixel 8 Pro Design: Feels sturdy and premium, but quite sizable
The build quality of the Pixel 8 Pro is quite solid, and it feels premium courtesy of an aluminium frame and glass back. Google opted for a curved display on the Pixel 7 Pro but reverted to a flat screen on their current flagship. Though I preferred the design of the former, the one here gave me no real reason to complain. Having said that, the 8 Pro looks a bit more generic in comparison. What is not generic is the trademark camera band that you get at the back of all Pixel phones in the past few generations.

I haven’t been too fond of the protrusion but have adjusted to it over time. It makes the phone a lot thicker and its glossy finish attracts smudge marks. The frosted glass back panel is immune to fingerprints and smudges though, and the Bay variant we got for review with a soothing light blue shade looks quite elegant and unique. The screen as well as the back are protected against scratches by a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. Adding to the sturdiness is an IP68 rating for dust and fluid resistance.

Though the weight distribution is fairly even, the phone does feel a tad heavy in hand and weighs in excess of 210 grams. The 6.7-inch screen also makes it a sizable device and among the larger flagship phones around. Though it feels slightly bulkier than its predecessor, in reality, it is marginally smaller than the Pixel 7 Pro in every direction by a fraction of a millimetre. The same applies to the bottom bezel too.

The volume rocker as well as the power button are placed along the right edge. The placement of the in-display fingerprint scanner is just right, and one can access it without stretching the thumb much. The scanner here is way more accurate and responsive than the one on the Pixel 7 Pro. The SIM tray is located along the left edge of the phone while a USB-C port and a speaker are present at the bottom. A memory card slot and 3.5 mm headphone jack continue to be absent, as is the case with most flagship phones.

Google Pixel 8 Pro Display: Arguably the best display on Pixel phones to date
The Google Pixel 8 Pro has a large, flat 6.7-inch LTPO OLED display with a slightly unusual resolution of 2992 x 1344 pixels, which is in fact a little lower than that of its predecessor’s. However, the screen here is a lot brighter with a peak brightness of 2400 nits. The HDR10+ compliant screen looks quite sharp with excellent colour reproduction and contrast. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate that keeps things smooth and flicker-free. Always-on display is also available here.

You do not get elaborate colour adjustments, and just two modes – Adaptive and Natural. The former makes the colours look slightly more vivid while the latter does pretty much what the name suggests. The difference is not as significant as one may think unless you know where to look. Both modes are perfectly usable and deliver good results depending on your preference. In fact, I would go to the extent of saying this is the best display across Pixel phones to date.

Google Pixel 8 Pro Performance: The Tensor G3 performance has improved over time, but still throttles
The Pixel 8 Pro is powered by Google’s third-generation Tensor G3 SoC, and while it’s reasonably powerful, it does not have the raw muscle power of Qualcomm’s flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. But one cannot underplay the AI crunching capabilities of the Tenson G3 that may not reflect objectively in popular synthetic benchmark scores.

The Pixel 8 Pro comes equipped with 12GB RAM and either 128GB or 256GB UFS 3.1 storage; some competing phones have been offering faster UFS 4.0 storage since early 2023. Moving on to the performance, the Tensor G3 breezes through day-to-day tasks like accessing social media or communication apps, watching videos, browsing the internet, opening multiple tabs on a browser and switching between them. Such tasks do not heat up the phone.

The phone generally stays cool but starts to get warm after 30 minutes of gaming or if you click dozens of photos at a go or record a long video. Though the heat doesn’t reach alarming levels, the performance throttles a bit in gaming as the temperature rises. Over time, there has been a noticeable improvement in this department. During the early days of my Pixel 8 Pro testing, the performance would drop as low as 50 per cent in the 3D Mark stress tests, but now consistently stays above the 70 per cent mark on average even under load. The drop is also a lot more gradual now as compared to before.

Let’s see how the performance of this phone compares with its predecessor and also the OnePlus 11 5G that is powered by Qualcomm’s previous flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. Before we head there, we noticed something interesting; despite having the same chipset, the Pixel 8 Pro returns noticeably better results as compared to the Pixel 8 in Geekbench 6 as well as PC Mark Work 3.0 benchmarks.

The single-core and multi-core scores stand at 1661 and 4455 as compared to 1584 and 3609 for the Pixel 8 respectively. In PC Mark, the Pro scored 11147 as opposed to 9906 of the non-Pro. The Geekbench scores are not just 30 to 50 per cent higher than that of the Pixel 7 Pro with the Tensor G2, but the Tensor G3 now outscores the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on the OnePlus 11 5G in the productivity benchmarks.

While the single-core score is a good 50 per cent higher due to its fast 3GHz Cortex-X3 core, its multi-core score has also managed a 10 per cent jump over the Qualcomm chip now. Even in PC Mark, the score was about 8 per cent higher than the OnePlus 11. This highlights the fact that refinements through software updates are critical for a phone’s performance over time. Moving on to gaming, the 3D Mark scores are at par with that of the Pixel 8, significantly higher than the 7 Pro but no match for the OnePlus 11.

In the 3D Mark Wild Life gaming benchmarks, we observed a 30 per cent jump in performance as compared to the Tensor G2. However, it is still a far cry from what the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can achieve, let alone the Gen 3, with the Tensor G3 trailing by a good 33 per cent. Having said that, the real-world gaming performance of the Pixel 8 Pro is pretty decent, and you can play most of the games out there on it. You can largely play most games in high detail but may have to lower the graphics settings in some cases for better frame rates.

In other departments, the Pixel 8 Pro performs admirably. The phone has two speakers, one behind the earpiece and the other at the base of the phone. Collectively they produce a fairly loud and punchy sound output with good stereo separation. The phone is Bluetooth 5.3 compliant and has tri-band WiFi with support for a/b/g/n/ac/6e/7 standards. The call quality and reception were perfectly fine during the course of our testing across geographies. And needless to say, it is 5G compliant.

Google Pixel 8 Pro Battery backup: Improved battery life, but still charges slowly
Though the battery capacity has barely changed, the battery backup on the Pixel 8 Pro has seen a noticeable improvement over its predecessor. The 5050 mAh battery lasts close to a day and a half of moderate use, which is par for the course in the segment. The charging times remain slow though and of course, Google does not include a charger in the bundle. The phone now supports 30W fast charging using USB-PD 3.0 chargers, as opposed to 23W on the Pixel 7 Pro.

We tried a couple of our usual USB-PD chargers with 30W output and also the new Raegr RapidLink 1180 GaN charger that can go as high as 65W. While the Pixel 8 Pro cannot make full use of its potential, the compact and lightweight Raegr charger did juice up the phone the fastest, though by a very small margin. The best charging time we managed in taking the Pixel 8 Pro’s battery from 1 per cent to 100 per cent was 1 hour and 22 minutes.

While it is a significant (25 minutes) improvement over its predecessor, it’s still far far away from the charging speeds offered by proprietary solutions from most Chinese brands over the past few years now. We are fine even if it does not charge the phone in 20 to 30 minutes like several phones these days, but the charging time has to drop under an hour sooner rather than later.

Google Pixel 8 Pro Camera performance: Among the absolute best out there
The Pixel 8 Pro has a lot of things going for it but its camera department would be my top pick. And I am happy to report that it is still among the top 3 camera phones in the market months after its release. You get three cameras at the back that cover all the major bases. There’s a 50MP primary camera with Laser auto-focus and optical image stabilisation (OIS), a 48MP telephoto camera with dual-pixel PDAF and OIS that provides 5X optical zoom and a 48MP ultra-wide camera with 126-degrees FOV and dual-pixel PDAF that also doubles up as a macro camera.

With a combination of hardware and software, the Google Pixel 8 Pro captures some of the most impressive shots across various modes and lighting. The main camera performance is excellent in bright as well as low light conditions. The colours are pretty much natural and the contrast is excellent, as has been the case with Pixel phones over the years. The detail and dynamic range are top-notch too. The same is applicable for low light photography.

The phone automatically switches to Night Sight mode when the light is low and that brightens up the image just enough without going overboard or compromising on the detail as you can see from the camera samples at the end of this section. The portrait shots have always been a standout feature on Pixel phones, and they are great here too with near-perfect foreground and background separation and a natural blur. You get 1.5X and 2X zoom options in Portrait mode, which are handy.

Speaking of zoom, the telephoto camera on the Pixel 7 Pro had wowed us last year, and things are no different on the 8 Pro. You can get up to 5 times closer to the subject with the 5X optical zoom, and OIS compensates for a bit of stutter quite well, resulting in sharp and detailed clicks. You also have the 30X digital zoom option, and through Google’s AI magic, it delivers surprisingly good images at full 30X zoom. Of course, they aren’t as good as the images captured using optical zoom but are far better than what one expects from that level of digital zoom.

The 48MP ultra-wide camera here is among the best around, and the colours and dynamic range are comparable to that of the main camera. It can also hold its own in low light, which is a major improvement as compared to its predecessor. The ultra-wide camera has auto-focus, and that allows it to capture some impressive macro shots too from up close. When you get closer to a subject, the phone automatically switches to macro mode; you get an option to disable it if you wish to stick to the main camera for a particular shot.

The 10.5MP ultra-wide front camera now gets auto-focus and clicks some impressive selfies with natural skin tones. It has a broad FOV and supports portrait shots too that come out quite well. The videography department doesn’t see much of a change this time. All cameras, front and back, can record 4K videos at 30 and 60 fps, and you can go as high as 240 FPS for 1080p videos using the rear cameras. You get OIS and EIS support to compensate for the shakes. The recorded videos from the rear cameras are sharp and stabilised but I wouldn’t term them as best in business. Apple and Samsung still have an edge in this department.

Click here for unedited camera samples.

OS and user interface: As smooth as it gets on Android phones
Given that it’s a Google flagship phone, it offers the latest, cleanest and the best Android 14 experience at the moment. You get a pure Android experience on the Pixel 8 Pro without any bloatware and with the Material You design language. The user interface is fluid, totally lag-free and now void of any major bugs. Some of the minor issues present in the phone at launch have been addressed in the subsequent updates. Pixel phones are among the few that keep getting better with time in the first year or two at least.

This phone runs the latest iteration of Android 14 with the July 2024 security patch, and one can expect regular updates going ahead. In fact, Google has promised 7 years of software updates for the Pixel 8 series, and that will keep the Pixel 8 Pro relevant and secure for a fairly long time. On a side note, the two-year-old Google Pixel 6a has also received the Android 14 update with the July 2024 security patch. So one can trust Google to deliver on their 7-year support commitment.

You get a bunch of useful tools on this phone to play around with, along with the popular Google apps that are seamlessly integrated. Be it object recognition using Google Lens or speech recognition or translation, things work smoothly. Add to that some camera software tricks like Magic Eraser and Camouflage to edit or enhance your images. Google has been adding new features to this device regularly along with AI enhancements, and we expect the Gemini integration to keep getting better over time. To explore the new features and changes, keep checking Pixel Tips on the phone from time to time.

Final words: An excellent flagship phone that needs a competitive price tag
The Google Pixel 8 Pro had a launch price of Rs 1,06,999 for the 128GB variant and Rs 1,13,999 for the 256GB variant in India with a one-year warranty, which we feel is exorbitant. The price has come down a bit since but not as much as we would have liked. You can now buy those variants for Rs 97,999 and Rs 1,05,999 respectively. While it is an excellent phone, the pricing really needs to be a lot more competitive. It is fast becoming an unwritten rule to wait for festive sales a year later to buy Pixel phones released in the previous year. That needs to change.

Other than the pricing and charging speed, the Pixel 8 Pro is a solid flagship phone. You get competent hardware, outstanding cameras and a great software experience that continues to make the phone better through updates with every passing quarter. And let’s not forget the promise of 7 years of software and security updates going ahead. All Google needs to do is get competitive with its pricing and charging speeds, and the Pixels will sell way better than they do here. Yes, we happily recommend the Pixel 8 Pro but would suggest waiting for a couple of months to buy it for a lot less in the festive sales.