Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review — Elegant engineering meets productivity and entertainment

I’ve been watching the folding phone development since they first appeared, and now I genuinely believe they’re ready for consumers. That’s not to say the earlier devices were bad, they just weren’t as polished as normal phones.

I don’t think there’s too much to introduce here aside from the fact that you’re reading our review of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. This is the second generation (although the first to reach Australian shores) of foldable phone from Google and there’s a lot to talk about.

Before getting too far into the review, it’s important to note that review devices have only been available for a few days; so there may be need to follow up this article in a few weeks.

The hardware: Inside and out

Because everything was covered in the launch post, I’m not going to go through the details of specs here. What I am going to spend more time on is the physical hardware look, feel and the user experience. So we need to (without going into granular details) start with the physical dimensions:

• Folded – The Pixel 9 Pro Fold measures 155.2 x 77.1 x 10.5 mm
• Unfolded – The Pixel 9 Pro Fold measures 155.2 x 150.2 x 5.1 mm

As a starting point, I was surprised at how little of an adjustment it took to move from a standard phone to the folding device. An ease that I didn’t experience when I did the same last year with another brand of device, so this is a well played to the Google team for building a phone that works well as a standard form factor; while still encouraging the larger screen use.

That internal screen takes me back to the joyous days of the Nexus 7 tablet. It’s light, responsive and useful for productivity without being the size and weight of a laptop. In fact a reasonable portion of this review has been written on the phone itself. To achieve this, I used both the dual screen keyboard and the voice to text which thanks to the Tensor G4 is again more accurate and faster than the previous year’s phone.

It wasn’t just the internal 8″ screen that performed well either, the external screen is pretty mighty too giving a great user interface. Perhaps the only disappointment here is that it (the external screen) refresh isn’t as broad — 60 – 120 Hz — as the internal which goes from 1 – 120 Hz.

Viewing pleasure for productivity and entertainment

It didn’t take long for me to start using the Fold as a viewing device. I’m always ont he move and usually carrying my iPad with me around the house to watch Kayo Sports on the weekend, but that pretty much stopped once the Fold was in my pocket. Paired with my Pixel Buds Pro I was listening on the move and would prop my phone up in view while doing household chores.

The other feature that I found surprisingly useful on this front, was split screen. Being able to utilise that larger space, having my notes on one half and a website or PDF on the other was remarkably useful; adding to the productivity capabilities of the phone.

Performance in daily life

Much like the Pixel 9 Pro XL review a couple of weeks ago, the performance of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is really snappy and consistent thanks to the Tensor G4 and abundance — 16GB — of RAM. From a connectivity standpoint, I’m excited to see that 5G, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 are all included to give the best of all options.

Battery life and charging

Because of the short turn around between receiving the device and the embargo dropping, I definitely gave it quite a hard time for a few days. Particularly over the weekend, I had multiple hours straight of screen on time with streaming running while I was doing other things on the phone. During this time I saw consistent battery life, and impressively, even though the screen was on for a lot longer than I would normally have during the day, the battery lasted through the day until bedtime.

I know that if you tried hard enough, you would be able to drain this battery and need to charge before the end of the day. If you actually manage that, the charging is pretty speedy, and you’ll get multiple hours of screen on time and relatively heavy use from half an hour of charging. It’s worth noting that you don’t get googles fast charge brick in the Box, and that third party GaN charges do a very good job of charging the phone at a reasonably quick rate.

The camera: There’s so much to explore…

I’m not going to cover the same features I did in the Pixel 9 Pro XL review including add me, Magic Editor, Zoom enhance and some of the AI that touches up your photos. What’s been done really well are some of the specific features to the Folding device like ‘Made you look”; a simple and effective way of capturing the attention of little ones to take a photo by utilising the outer screen to play some cartoon figures to the photo subjects.

You can also utilise the outer screen for Dual Screen Preview: Where your outer screen becomes a preview screen to the folks you’re photographing. A slight sidestep from this, is the rear camera selfie; letting you frame the photo better, and know you’ve got your best angle.

A couple of highlights I’ve enjoyed so far are the Audio magic eraser, allowing you to filter (not perfectly, but very well) out the background noise of the world from your videos. Everything form wind, cars, general distracting noises and even reducing the impact of a passing emergency vehicle on your video is simple.

I’m impressed too, with the panorama capability of the unit. It gives you a lot of flexibility to both capture the scene around you, while also letting you utilise the expanse of screen space to enjoy your captured images.

The big question: Should you buy one?

This is a big budget question, with the 256GB version costing $2,699.00 and the 512GB version costing $2,899.00 there’s no shying away from the fact it’s a really expensive device. When it comes down to the crunch, if I needed a new phone and wanted a small tablet – This fits the bill. Putting the cost of a tablet and phone together, this isn’t actually too bad in terms of cost.

Then when you look at the features and capabilities, there’s so much to genuinely like about the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. This is the first folding phone that I’d genuinely consider using daily as a long term solution because the performance hits the marks, the screens are stunning and the array of features is extensive.

It’s a truly outstanding tool for productivity, and is delightfully versatile for entertainment. I can’t, in good conscience, recommend someone spends approaching three grand on a phone. But if you can pick one up closer to two during sales, that’s something I honestly believe is pretty good value.

You can check out the Google Pixel 9 Pro fold online at the Google Store, through all the usual retail channels and, of course via carriers.