Google Pixel 9 Pro XL Review & Deep Dive - Unexpected Problems + New Surprises
this is the new Google pixel 99 Pro XL and yes yes it does look like an iPhone at first glance but other than the Aesthetics that's pretty much the only thing that's similar between this and an iOS device the new pixel stands out with its AI capabilities the beautiful photography and there's a very impressive battery in this thing and I have the test to back it up this phone starts at $10.99 for the 128 gig model and it goes all the way up to $15.49 if you're going for that massive 1 tbte storeage and for the colors Google is luckily offering several different options this time around you've got the classic obsidian black you've got the porcelain more white color there's that really pretty hazel green color that they came out with a couple of years ago and we have the brand new rose quartz now of course rose quartz is totally my jam so that's the one that I grabbed now I'm being a little nitpicky here but during pre-order you could get a free storage upgrade from 128 gigs to 256 gigs for that lower price but the pink color is only available in 256 so they did not even offer that one at 128 gigs for that price so why is the pink one only available in one storage size and why is there quite frankly a pink tax if I wanted to get the smallest pink version I'm kind of annoyed that I had to pay more a good a hundred bucks because I wanted a specific color and I'm also annoyed that the cutest color in my humble opinion was not even available at 512 or 1 tbte also why is there no pink case available for the third-party brands on the Google Store for the XL type phone now if you look at the website and the store it looks like there are pink cases available for the thirdparty brands but if you actually click into the listing they are not I wanted a magnetic pink case but the only options for the pink XL phone don't match the aesthetic unless you want to do a red on top of the pink phone I don't understand that choice unless Google just wanted to monopolize the pink case option I'm sorry I know I'm going on a tangent here but it's important to me I really like having a pink phone or a purple phone or something that is glittery and based on this reply that I got from threads it kind of sounds like Google just wanted their way by the way I did purchase this phone at my own expense for the purpose of reviewing it so if you want to watch this video and you think yeah that was a really good unbiased thorough review then hit the Subscribe button down below it definitely helps my channel so here's the packaging the pack packing is a little bit different this year it has a slip cover over the eco-friendly box it is 100% plastic free which I Love Inside the Box you will find the phone duh a USBC cable the usual paperwork and a Sim ejector tool the 45 watt compatible charger is sold separately I know wamp wamp in terms of the design the back of this is very silky and matte it's this gorgeous finish courtesy of Corning Gorilla Glass vicus 2 which is not only tough but but it also looks so polished it looks very very nice the aluminum housing is made of 100% recycled content so Google is definitely winning some brownie points there and it is also ip68 rated meaning that it is dust and water resistant so you won't have to worry if you accidentally drop this in your iced coffee or your pumpkin spice latte not that I've ever done that but maybe I'm speaking from experience when I'm holding this you can tell the phone itself is quite large it weighs almost 8 oz is it is a little skinnier than the s24 ultra but it is fairly close in size and weight if you have smaller hands I do have smaller hands but this will give you a pretty good idea of what it looks like in smaller hands if you do have smaller hands you don't want a heavy phone I would highly recommend considering the smaller regular 9 or the 9 Pro because the specs are extremely similar but they both weigh less and they are smaller on the front display you can see that front camera sensor it is bigger than the older models and it does take up a little bit more room meanwhile the camera housing on the rear of the phone is situated and separated from the rest of the casing now and the full-size bar which goes from side to side that keeps it from wobbling whenever you're just using it on a table it feels really solid in the hand without being a brick the matte finish keeps fingerprints at a minimum in fact I don't see any fingerprints on the back of this phone I love that feature this is definitely one of the best looking pixels that Google has ever released in my opinion it looks polished and premium the shiny aluminum in the same color tone as the back makes it look really refined now I am so proud of the work that I'm putting into this video even though it's like 15 minutes long maybe longer these videos generally take several days to create from brainstorming and research and writing all the way to editing and post- production work so if you've enjoyed it as much as I enjoy creating it I love making review videos a simple click of the Subscribe button really goes a long way and it supports my channel now moving on to the display and can we just say wow Google really went all out with the 6.8 in super actua display the aspect ratio is very comfortable to watch videos on the resolution is really lovely and crisp I think it looks great and the brightness can go up to a blinding 3,000 nits Peak brightness 2,000 nits High brightness mode so whether you're watching your favorite YouTuber hopefully it's me in HDR or just scrolling through your feet in a sunny environment everything looks ridiculously vibrant and very sharp now that I've been using my s24 ultra with the antireflective coating seeing reflections on other phones like this one is really obvious yeah those Reflections really stand out when you've used a anti-reflective display on a phone for months and months and months Also let's not forget about the smoothness the refresh rate goes up to 120 HZ so it's super responsive whenever you're gaming or just flipping through app all in all I would say it's a it's a visual Feast okay one of my favorite parts let's go ahead and talk about the cameras the pixel9 pro XL does have this Pro triple rear camera system that includes a 50 megapixel wide angle camera a 48 megapixel Ultra wide camera with macro focus and a 48 megapixel telephoto lens with five times optical zoom now whether you are taking close-ups of your fur babies or you're trying to capture far off Landscapes this phone has got you pretty much covered wherever you need it the super res Zoom goes up to 30 times and you still get nice Optical quality at5 1 2 5 and 10 time zoom Plus Google software magic with things like night sight Astro photography those are really big competition for other brands but portrait mode it could be a lot better the main 50 megapixel lens does give me some really nice detailed shots the color accuracy is really good but it is a little saturated highlights look really detailed and balanced it is a bit cooler if compare this side by side to an s24 ultra and it's not as sharpened or oversharpened as my s24 ultra and in a sense I kind of like that it's not as sharpened it still crops to 1.5 times for the portrait mode but I usually just stick with normal mode anyway I still notice a lot of Errors around the edges of my portrait so I just prefer the natural bokeh the macro photography looks really great and it will be especially useful for my sailor snubs YouTube channel subscribe if you like like Sailor Moon and weeb stuff cuz I review Sailor Moon merchandise over there all the time I'm always getting really close-up shots of the merchandise itself and color accuracy and focus on those macro photos and videos is very very important now for all the selfie lovers out there that 42 megapixel camera on the front that front-facing camera which again is a little bit larger it's a 42 megapixel front camera with a new wider 103° Ultra wide field of view that will make sure that you and all your friends can fit in your shot selfies look really great as well I love the skin tone that it gives me and the skin color so it looks excellent portrait mode is also still quite computational and I do prefer that natural bokeh again it just looks so much better whenever I'm using that natural bokeh now the lower field of view on the s24 has bugged me this year it's kind of annoyed me every time I want to take a group photo so I'm very excited to use this selfie camera a lot more video is also getting better and better and I've noticed this year over-year I can use this camera for Vlogs and video boost is supposed to help your videos look better by using AI I also love all the magic editing you can do with audio whenever you're recording videos on a pixel phone it helps tremendously now I keep on forgetting to turn on video boost every single time I use this phone for videos so that's a problem I keep on forgetting to turn it on because you have to do it manually every single time and here are some video examples for you to judge let me know what you think of the audio as well as as the video and the stabilization Yep this is terrifying can you see the shaking next to me this is a little scary this is awesome though it's really cool we're very very high up you can see the mountains behind us and it looks amazing out here um yeah before I um Plum it to my death how does this video look I know five time zoom two time zoom one time zoom and P five how far in can we Zoom 20 time zoom see those cops Zoom that cops oh yeah what's up coopas hello Hi friend you're really cute look how angle is yeah it's really nice I can do 1.4 Zoom or one time zoom oh look at that W Angle now I am so glad I'm so glad that Google did not skimp on the ram this is a powerful phone under the hood the pixel 9 Pro XL is powered by the new Google tensor G4 chip with a whopping 16 gigs of RAM whether you're multitasking or you're playing games or just keeping a million tabs open which guilty I've done that a lot this phone handles all of it like a champ and for the storage you can choose between that 128 256 512 or 1 terabyte storage options now keep in mind all of those storage options do not come in all of the different colors I have got 3D Mark scores right here for you to see overall if you're comparing these to other phones that are on the market currently it's very much on par with the flip six that I recently reviewed too and the stability is very very good when I was using those 3D mark testing tools gaming was beautiful on the screen genin impact is my favorite mobile game right now and surprisingly it does not run very hot on this phone I think that new Vapor chamber is really helping here because the phone is staying cooler under high-intensive Usage Now you can still feel some heat especially right here in the center of the phone but it's not as bad and it's not as obvious as it was on my Samsung Galaxy Z flip 6 now just to pause here a big shout out to all of my newest patreon supporters my s'mores you can join them and support my channel by going to patreon.com Shannon
Moores for perks like early video access to videos like this one and a private Discord as usual all the videos on my channel are free to watch completely free and I thank my YouTube members and patrons for making that possible let's talk about the battery battery life is pretty impressive on here Google promises 24 plus hours of juice on a full charge and with the extreme battery saver you can apparently stretch this to 100 hours I don't think that's possible but I have also not had a chance to test it yet so I couldn't tell you with extreme confidence that that is possible or not my best day with battery test though was 10 hours and 20 minutes of screen on time and I still had 44% left before I finally passed out and went to sleep at the end of the night that's ridiculously good compared to last year's models and I was doing things like Google Maps and I was in the camera taking pictures I was watching tons and tons of YouTube videos so I was not just leaving this thing like on a browsing page I was using it actively for those 10 hours and it was doing really good so I'm very impressed you got fast charging which is on point two you can charge up to 70% in just 30 minutes with Google's 45 wat charger though of course again you got to buy that separately and why does it only come in this color they should make a pink charger too and then it can be all matchy matchy and yes it does support wireless charging battery Shar so you can be that hero and charge your friend's phone in a pinch wired it will do 37 watts wireless it does 27 watts and that is also an increase as well security is always a top priority and with the pixel9 pro XL that's no slouch in that department it's got the Titan M2 security co-processor it's got Google's VPN at no extra cost and 7 years of os security and pixel drop updates now they intro the seven years of updates with the 8 series so it's still fairly new for that kind kind of upgrade but will this phone physically last that long OD time will tell but I am happy to see this being a secure choice for folks that do keep their phones for a long time and if you are into safety features you will be glad to know it's got satellite SOS it's got car crash detection which is not new and even an Android earthquake alerts warning system now I've been in earthquakes I don't really want to test that but given that I've experienced it having a warning system sounds really really useful but satellite SOS is also really cool and I could absolutely take advantage of that in a pitch like I ski and I hike here in Colorado so this phone will absolutely be on me when I brave the mountains just to see if satellite SOS is a thing that I could actually use satellite SOS and demos looks really amazing but will it work in real life again that's something that I hope i' never have to use but it's there if I needed it the biometric options are awesome we finally have a Qualcomm ultrasonic fingerprint sensor under the display specifically it's the Qualcomm 3D Sonic Gen 2 which is qfs 48 if you want to look up the white paper which is the same as the s24 ultra it loads faster it does not require light to unlock since it works differently than any Optical scanner so it won't go full-on bright whenever you're trying to check this thing in the middle of the night now keep in mind qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprint sensors sometimes don't Fair well whenever you put a screen protector on here so what I would advise and what I've done on previous generations of the pixel phone phones is once you put your screen protector on re-register your fingers and do them more than once re-register that fingerprint like two or three times and you should get a better experience we also have face unlock on the pixel it's the most secure face unlocking option on Android and you can use it to unlock your banking app as well because it is biometrically more secure Android 14 is the included OS AI is all over this phone I know that is a debatable subject I know but some of these are very useful features so the first thing we have is searching screenshots with pixel screenshots now this app will search through screenshots that you have taken for relevant information and pull them up for you it doesn't recognize and know which app I took a photo in like it didn't find 3D Mark when I just searched for 3D Mark but it did find Wildlife which was text from the screenshot all of this is done locally on the device so that's going to help a lot when it comes to privacy pixel studio will generate images from text prompts I was able to generate some really cute anime style images of a little luna like kitty and a rainbow-haired unicorn you can definitely see my vibe in these pictures yeah that's totally the vibe I like it doesn't generate humans though and it's very cute but I'm not going to use it a lot like practically it just I I don't think it would come in useful that often I generally hire artists for new artwork whenever I'm doing like logo designs or pin designs or whatever it might be I'm hiring artists for a lot of that stuff the new weather app is really gorgeous an AI generated weather report will give you quick info about the day and when I looked up weather in Tokyo I was able to use Circle to search to quickly translate that warning message up at the top that's really cool Google good job in the camera app is this new setting called add me I know you've seen info about this a ton you've seen the advertisements but it does work and given that I'm about to take a trip with my husband to Scotland this will help us get photos together it's going to help us create memory so both of us can be in the photo and I won't have to take a tripod stand or a selfie stick which I don't anyway because they're often banned in touristy spots now I will say with the add me functionality if you sit too close together or if you get two people too close together then it might crop or cut off a portion of the first person so keep that in mind magic editor in Google photos has new editing capabilities there's autof frame which lets you reframe a photo for better composition and reimagine lets you Circle a section of your photo and then type in some reimagined visual image to change it into like this photo of my studio why yes of course I adopted a long-haired cat with two tails and all of her kittens but also of course I'm starting to plant some Greenery in the middle of my floor in my studio that completely makes sense now there are very valid reasons that people are quite concerned with this feature and I have to say myself as well but I've been having a lot of fun with it so that's always cool we have clear calling which will improve the audio quality of your calls there's also this new call notes feature that sends you a private summary and full transcript of your phone call shortly after you hang up this runs locally on the device for privacy and everybody on the phone call will know that it is currently active now keep in mind though you only get one free year of Gemini Advanced which has some app Integrations with Google Apps and Gemini live which is Google's new chatbot I will most likely not pay for Gemini Advanced I don't buy a phone for the AI advancements I think they're cool and they're fun but it's not the main reason that I'm buying one I buy a smartphone to do smartphone things you know like watch YouTube videos and play games do not forget to hit that subscribe button and ring the bell so you never miss a review again this is a purchase phone so truly truly thank you for sticking around simply watching this video helps fund future reviews so thank you I appreciate you now moving on we have Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.3 NFC and even an Ultra wideband chip for accurate ranging spatial orientation these are all included you can see some of my speed tests on the screen now keep in mind I'm on fiber it's a Wi-Fi 6 setup so it's definitely taking advantage of my network for sure the stereo speakers sound really good better than the 8 series one of them is a little bit louder than the other and the mic does seem to pick up my voice great for calls I've had no drops on my cell phone service so the radio appears to work well too and the 5G speeds are in incredibly fast so far given it's not the end of the year yet this is easily one of my favorite phones of 2024 aesthetically it's beautiful and for my job as a tech reviewer and a content creator the Google pixel9 pro XL is an absolute Powerhouse the camera system is topnotch the display is gorgeous the battery is epic it's on the pricier side yes but if you are looking for a phone that does a lot of the things and does them all well then the pixel9 pro XL is absolutely a solid choice now I have a comment question for you before I wrap this up if you've got to choose between this or a folding phone which one would you choose and why if you're thinking about upgrading this might be the phone to beat in 2024 thank you so much for watching I'll catch you in the next video bye y'all
2024-09-13 08:56