I’ve been reviewing phones since 2012 and have had the opportunity to either review or use almost every Pixel and Nexus device over the years. And when I say the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL are the best phones Google has put out, that’s saying quite a bit. Because the Nexus 6P (built by Huawei) was pretty incredible. I’ve absolutely loved the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL for a little over a week, and I’ve been using them. I especially love the Pixel 9 Pro because we now have a “pro” phone that isn’t enormous. While some like these larger phones, others don’t. And now you can choose the screen size you want.

I am reviewing both of the pro models together because they are the exact same phone, minus the screen size and battery size. Despite the screen sizes being different, both have the same panels. So they are as identical as possible. And pretty much everything that applies to the Pixel 9 Pro also applies to the Pixel 9 Pro XL. So, let’s find out if you should buy either of these phones in our full review.

Table of Contents

Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Hardware & Design

When we first started seeing leaks of the new Pixel 9 Pro models, I was one of those that thought the flat camera bar was pretty ugly, and wasn’t a fan of the flat sides. Since seeing it in person at the Made by Google event, and using it for the past week, I’ve completely changed my mind. I absolutely love this design.

This year, Google stuck with the flat display that they brought back on the Pixel 8 Pro last year. They also flattened the sides, which some people think looks like an iPhone. Though, I disagree. And that comes from someone who has used an iPhone as a daily driver for the past four years.

Thankfully, with these flat sides, Google did not make it sharp and uncomfortable to hold, like the iPhone 13 and iPhone 14. Instead, the edges are curved still, right where the sides melt into the back and front of the device. So it actually feels very comfortable in the hand. Speaking of the sides, it’s something that’s been rather interesting to see, for me at least. Is that the glossy sides don’t hold onto fingerprints as much. Especially on the Porcelain model, which has much lighter side rails. That’s one of my main complaints when it comes to glossy sides or backs on phones. Now it has only been a week, so this could change, but typically, within a few minutes of using a device, those glossy rails get pretty disgusting. Here, a case is not actually mandatory. However, I’d still recommend one because of that camera bump.

Speaking of the camera bump, it doesn’t melt into the sides of the phone anymore, as the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, and Pixel 8 did. Instead, it’s flat all around, which gives it a rather unique look, and still screams “Pixel”. Having it as a bar means you can lay this phone on a table and use it without it wobbling back and forth. This is especially an issue on the Galaxy Z Fold 6, and it’s nice to see Google is keeping that issue at bay. Because the camera bar on the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro are the same size, despite the Pixel 9 Pro having an extra camera, cases will fit both of those models since the dimensions are all exactly the same. That’s a nice move by Google.

Google continues to swap the volume rocker and power button, compared to other smartphones. Most smartphones have the power button lower and the volume rocker higher on the side of the phone – though iPhone has the volume rocker on the opposite side. If you’re coming from a non-Pixel phone to the Pixel 9 Pro, you will need some time to get used to that, unfortunately.

There’s an antenna at the top for mmWave, so, unfortunately,, most cases will have a cutout for that. On the bottom is the speaker grille on the left, a USB-C port in the middle, and a microphone hole as well as the SIM card slot on the right. I do wish that Google would move the SIM card slot, so people don’t accidentally stick the SIM ejection tool into the microphone hole and destroy the microphone.

Both of the Pro models are absolutely stunning. I really liked the porcelain Pixel 9 Pro XL, but since receiving the Hazel Pixel 9 Pro, that might be my go-to color for this cycle.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Display

Last year, Google debuted its new Actua and Super Actua displays. These are really marketing terms for the brightness that each panel can achieve. Think of it like “Retina Display” from Apple. Despite the name, these displays look incredible. The Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL both achieve up to 3,000 nits of peak brightness. Obviously, you’ll never really hit that level, as the conditions have to be perfect to achieve that. But in HDR, it can achieve 2,000 nits of brightness, which is something you will see.

Basically, this screen is bright af. After I picked up my review unit after the Made by Google event, I went up to San Francisco to take some photos and get some video before heading home. I was using the Pixel 9 Pro XL a lot, outdoors in direct sunlight, with 5G on and a lot of Google Maps. I was surprised at how well the phone handled the sunlight. It was bright and clear, without even being at full brightness. Additionally, the phone didn’t really get that hot either. That’s something we’ll talk about a bit more later on. But the phone stayed pretty cool and was visible, even while using dark mode at high brightness. So I’m impressed, and I really like this trend of smartphones going above and beyond for brightness, lately.

The colors on the display are also very good. By default, Google sets the color profile to Vivid, but Natural is available. I tend to stick to Vivid as it does look better to my eyes. Unfortunately, Google does not let you fine tune the display yourself, like some other manufacturers will. It’s been a joy to watch content on these two phones, playing games, and much more. While I’m not scientifically testing these displays (I’ll leave that up to the professionals like DisplayMate) I will say this is one of the best displays on a smartphone. The only one that’s probably better (so far) is the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Performance

Inside the Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL is the new Tensor G4 processor and 16GB of RAM. Which Google says that this is a big upgrade over the Tensor G3. Google talked quite a bit about how much faster the Tensor G4 processor is, when compared to Tensor G3, and I have to say, in day-to-day usage, I’ve noticed the difference. The phone is snappier, it doesn’t get as hot (thanks to the new vapor chamber), and battery life performance has also improved quite a bit for me, compared to the Pixel 8 Pro.

One area that is really noticeable is with pictures. You take a picture, then tap on the thumbnail to check it out. Pixel phones are “processing” the picture after it is taken. On the Pixel 9 Pro, the processing is almost instant, while the Pixel 8 Pro would take a bit longer to process. I’d say the time to process is probably about half or a third as long as the Pixel 8 Pro. That’s a real, everyday task that you can see the difference in here.

Benchmarks

Now, let’s talk about Benchmarks. We run three different benchmarks on every phone that we review. Two are benchmarking apps, while the third is a test that we designed ourselves so that phones can’t “cheat” on them.

First up is Geekbench 6. This benchmark will test the phone’s raw performance. There’s two tests here, a CPU and a GPU test. The CPU test also tests the multi-core of the Tensor G4. Here, on the Pixel 9 Pro, we were able to achieve a score of 1961 in the Geekbench 6 single-core test and 4,715 in the multi-core test. These numbers are higher than the Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Fold (Tensor G3 and Tensor G2, respectively). However, where you really see the difference is in the GPU test, in which the Pixel 9 Pro scored 6519. That actually puts it on par with some of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 phones we’ve tested recently. Though, the Galaxy S24 Ultra with its overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 does outperform it in every single test on Geekbench.

Geekbench 6

Next up is the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This is a benchmark that essentially runs a 60-second loop 20 times. It then provides us with the best loop score, the lowest loop score, and then a stability percentage. This benchmark is designed to push your phone to its limit and see how well it performs when it’s very hot. On the Pixel 9 Pro, we were able to get scores of 2,573 in the best loop and 2,051 in the lowest loop. The stability was 79.1%. That’s quite a bit higher than the previous Tensor-powered Pixels and very close to the Galaxy S24 Ultra (which had a stability of 51%).

Finally, we ran a video test. What we do here is import the same 60-second video into Capcut on every device that we review. We then export it at 1080p30 (since not all phones are capable of doing 1080p60 or 4K), and time how long it takes to export. On the Pixel 8 Pro last year, it had a very disappointing result; in fact it’s the worst result we’ve seen. But thankfully, this year Google has rectified that and we actually have a really good time. The Pixel 9 Pro was able to export the video in 13.1 seconds. That’s twice as fast last the Pixel Fold, and about 3x as fast as the Pixel 8 Pro. Though still a few seconds behind the Galaxy S24 Ultra. But again, keep in mind that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy is overclocked, so it should perform better in every test.

Capcut video test (seconds) vs Device

An important aspect here is that the Pixel 9 Pro actually beat the Pixel 9 Pro XL in most of these benchmarks. Though, the scores are all in the margin of error, but it does go to show you that the larger size of the Pixel 9 Pro XL doesn’t mean better heat management actually.

Thermals

Benchmarking isn’t the only thing that’s worth testing with a new phone; thermals are perhaps even more important. Because if a phone can’t stay cool enough, it’s going to slow down to a crawl, and no one wants that on a $1,000 phone. So to test thermals, we run three different tests. First off, after we run the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, we measure the temperature from the middle of the display. On the Pixel 9 Pro, that was 110.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s, surprisingly, a bit higher than the Pixel 8 Pro, despite the new vapor chamber this year.

The next test is playing Genshin Impact for a solid hour at full brightness and max settings. Surprisingly, this is usually not even the second-highest temperature in our thermal testing. However, for Genshin Impact on the Pixel 9 Pro, we measured the screen at 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Finally, this final test actually produces two temperatures. We record video at 4K30 (not 4K60 because not every phone supports it, and we want to be as fair as possible) for 10 minutes while recording the temperature 5 minutes in and 10 minutes in. The Pixel 9 Pro

The Pixel 9 Pro XL did score a bit better with thermals, though in most tests, the differences were less than half a degree.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Battery Life & Charging

Regarding the battery life of the Pixel 9 Pro, I’m going to talk mostly about the Pro XL, as I’ve spent more time with that phone since it was picked up at Made by Google. Battery life on the Pixel 9 Pro has been pretty good for me so far. I used it the day after Made by Google, on a heavy travel day. This gained me about 8 hours of screen time, which was mostly on 5G, with nearly max brightness and plenty of Google Maps (GPS) usage. That is honestly very impressive. Now, I don’t typically use my phone for that much in a single day, especially since I’m normally using multiple phones. But, I have been going to bed after about 16 hours of usage (not screen on time) and having around 40-50% charge left. The (mostly) same usage on my Pixel 8 Pro would be around 25-35% at the end of the day. So it’s a solid jump and pretty similar to the 20% number that Google touted during its event.

When it comes to charging, the Pixel 9 Pro can charge at 27W and the Pixel 9 Pro XL at 37W. Obviously, the Pixel 9 Pro XL can charge faster, with Google saying up to 70% in 30 minutes, which seems pretty accurate to me. Whenever I charged from around 1 or 2%, I was right around 70-72% after 30 minutes, while using a charger that is at least 45W. A full charge would take right about an hour, which is much faster than the Pixel 9 Pro’s charging time.

Benchmarks

For battery life and charging, we run a few more benchmarks on every phone we review. For battery life, what we do is we fully charge the phone, typically overnight, then start a 24-hour long video at full brightness. We then let it run down to about 1-2%, to try and record the time before it shuts down. After that, we charge the phone with the correct charger to get the maximum speed and record that time, too.

For the Pixel 9 Pro, I was honestly very impressed with the battery lifetime. It hit just over 22 hours. That’s a solid 8 hours longer than the Pixel 8 Pro but a few hours shorter than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. We have reviewed 40 flagship phones since we started this test, and only 15 of them have surpassed 20 hours in this test. So that is a pretty good number. While not a battery life champ, it’s pretty respectable.

Now on the charging front, the Pixel 9 Pro was able to fully charge in an hour and 19 minutes.

Moving over to the Pixel 9 Pro XL, it was able to run this battery test for 21 hours and 54 minutes

And it was able to charge in one hour and 18 minutes fully. Both are very similar to each other.

Overall, I’m pretty impressed with these results, being that this is Tensor, which is known for not being that efficient and does tend to overheat a lot, which impacts battery life, too.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Software

This year, with the Pixel 9 series launching earlier, it means that it is not launching with a new version of Android. Instead, it’s launching with Android 14 – the same version as Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. That’s not a huge deal, as Google seems to have all the major bugs worked out this time around, due to that move. Typically, Pixel devices launch with a ton of major bugs. I’ll never forget the Pixel 6 Pro launch which would have Google Assistant randomly start listening and ending up calling random people in your phone. It took Google nearly 4 months to fix that bug. Thankfully, I’ve had almost no issues with bugs on the Pixel 9 Pro or Pro XL so far.

Google has always been big with AI features, and this year is no different. Google has a number of new features available, though the biggest changes this year are in the form of new apps. First up is Pixel Screenshots. This is an actual app that stores your screenshots. I know, sounds crazy. But the point here is to organize your screenshots, and you can also ask Gemini to find some important info in those screenshots. I took a screenshot of an About page for a company I needed to call on Monday when they were actually opened. Instead of needing to go back and find that number, I asked Gemini to find it, and it did within seconds. Much faster than I would have. I’ve also been able to keep all my review screenshots together, which is really nice for putting this review together. Though, I’m not sure how much I’ll really use this. It will take some getting used to, for sure.

Then there’s the Pixel Studio. This is a new app that uses Generative AI to produce images for you. Just put in a prompt, and Pixel Studio will provide a picture. If you don’t like it, you can have it try again or edit the prompt. You can also add stickers to the picture inside Pixel Studio. Unfortunately, this does not work with humans yet. And the details aren’t 100%. For example, I asked it to create an image of the Ambassador Bridge with fireworks behind it at sunset. At first glance, it looks pretty good. However, if you look closer at the bridge, it’s a regular blue suspension bridge and is missing the red lettering for “Ambassador Bridge,” which normally sits at the top of the bridge.

Unlike Samsung, Google does not include any sort of watermark to tell people this was generated with AI. I hope Google does add that in the future, as it’s important that people know these images aren’t real and are, in fact, from AI.

Then there’s Call Notes. As someone who doesn’t talk on the phone much, this isn’t a feature I’ve used as much yet. But it is on by default and will ask if you want to transcribe and summarize your call from recording said call. Honestly, it’s a really nice feature to have. Because we’ve all been there, talked with someone, and then totally forgot some details. Now, with Call Notes, you can go back and check out what was said. This is the same underlying technology as the Recorder app, which works incredibly well. In fact, I use the recorder app for every briefing that I have. It takes better notes than I do most of the time.

Of course, there are all of the other cool features that you expect from Pixel, like Direct My Call, Hold for Me, Call Screen, and much more. While AI has become a big buzzword in the past year or two, Google has been including AI-powered features in its Pixels since the very first Pixel in 2016. And most of these features are very useful to have.

We also can’t forget that Google is promising 7 years of feature drops, OS updates, and security updates for the Pixel 9 series again this year. So it should get updated until Android 21 in 2031.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Camera

Every year, one of the biggest aspects of the Pixel launch is always the camera. Not only is Google’s computational photography top-notch, but it also includes some really cool AI features like Magic Editor, Audio Eraser, and many more. That’s no different this year. Google has added a few more features this year like Add Me, and Reimagine.

It’s a Pixel, so we basically know what to expect from this phone’s camera. And actually, the camera is the exact same on both the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL. That includes a 50-megapixel primary sensor, 48-megapixel 5x telephoto sensor and a 48-megapixel ultrawide. Some pretty beefy sensors there, so it should not surprise you that this camera setup can take some really great pictures. No matter the mode, and pretty much no matter the condition. So instead of writing 1,000 words on how well the camera performs. Instead, we’re going to talk about the other features Google has included, like Add Me, Zoom Enhance, Magic Editor and Reimagine.

Add Me is a new feature that actually addresses a real life problem. Say you’re out with your friends and want to get a group photo. Well, someone actually needs to take the photo and thus miss out on being in the photo. So instead of handing your phone to a complete stranger to take the photo, Add Me can do it for you. It uses a mixture of AI and AR to take two photos and merge them together. You’ll take one with the group, minus one person, but using AR the phone will tell you to leave some space for the photographer. After that photo is taken, the photographer goes and gets into that spot. Now, Pixel 9 will merge those two photos together, to form a single photo. But, Google does keep all three photos available to you. It’s a pretty cool feature, not one that I’d probably use that often since I’m a home body, but it is cool to use.

Next is Zoom Enhance, which was actually announced at Made by Google 2023. This feature was supposed to roll out last year, but it looks like Google overpromised with this one. It is a relatively cool feature, and it has provided some good results, but the picture does need to be well exposed, meaning this really only works outside when there’s lots of sun. I’ve tried it on a number of photos that I’ve taken. Basically, Zoom Enhance lets you crop into the photo and still provide a (mostly) clear picture. It can be hit or miss sometimes. But I’ll let you be the judge with the samples I’ve taken in the gallery below. These have been optimized, but you can see the full resolution in this Google Drive Folder.

Now Magic Editor and Reimagine. These are some really cool features. Magic Editor itself is not new, as Google debuted it last year on Pixel 8 series. But it has a few new options this year, like Auto Frame. Say you took a picture that wasn’t completely straight? Well with Auto Frame, it can reframe it properly. Which Google says it uses a number of different photographic techniques and loads of different AI models to make this happen. And it can actually do a really good job. Below are a few examples. The first one of the street car, it actually recreated a good bit of that photo, particularly on the left side, and it still looks pretty realistic. The second picture is of my dog, which AI actually recreated a portion of her, making her fur lighter than it actually is. And the church was a pretty easy one to auto frame, it just zoomed in and framed it better. It’s not mind-blowing, but it is a cool party trick to have up your sleeve.

Reimagine is another cool feature which uses Generative AI to reimagine the picture. Here, you can select an area of the picture, and then use the text prompt to reimagine it as something else. I used it on a photo of my dog to change the grass into wildflowers, which actually looked pretty good. I also used it in the same picture to add water, and honestly, it looked like she was standing near the Huron River at the Arb. The few times I’ve used reimagine, it has provided some pretty nice results. However, I do wish that Google would add some sort of watermark to the bottom of the photo to indicate that it was edited and/or generated with AI, like what Samsung is doing.

To wrap things up here, the cameras on the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL are really good. Of course, that’s what we expect from Google’s cameras these days. Very rarely did I take a photo that I felt I needed to delete because it did not look good. The only real time that happened is when my dog took off because of a squirrel, so the picture ended up being blurry. And that I can’t blame on Google, as the same thing would happen with my Sony mirrorless camera. If you want a phone with a great camera and some cool camera tricks, the Pixel 9 Pro (XL) is a good option. Here are many more pictures I’ve taken over the past week with the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL.

Should you buy the Google Pixel 9 Pro (XL)?

I started out this review by saying that I’ve been reviewing and using Google’s own phones for many, many years. I’ve used just about every Pixel and Nexus device minus the Nexus One, Nexus S and OG Pixel. And nearly a week after picking up these phones from Made by Google, it’s still hard to put them down. Typically by now, I would have switched to another device, or wanted to switch. But that’s not the case this year. Google really seemed to have nailed just about every aspect of the Pixel 9 Pro series this year. From the build, to the camera, to the software, and everything in between. Even the battery life has been really good, and on par with many other flagships so far this year.

You should buy the Google Pixel 9 Pro (XL) if:

You have a Pixel 7 or older.
You want a great Pixel camera.
You want Google’s awesome AI tricks.
You want a small “Pro” phone.

You should not buy the Google Pixel 9 Pro (XL) if:

You have a Pixel 8, 8 Pro or 8a.
You want the very best battery life.
You want the highest benchmark scores.