Google Pixel XL Review – Features, Specs and Price

So we’re going to go ahead and start this Google Pixel XL Review by addressing the elephant in the room: the Pixel XL design – a lot of people seem really divided on the design right now and while some have been “saying it”, others have been thinking it: the pixel phones look a lot like the iPhone and whether you like this or not is going to be a matter of perspective.

If you’re coming from a Nexus phone, which brought a really unique design to the table each and every year, then you’re going to be a little bit disappointed with the Pixel phone’s design.

On the flip side, there’s a lot of people out there that really enjoy the iPhones hardware but always wished that it ran Google’s software and if you wanted an iPhone running Android, this is the best phone running android you can buy.

Another part about the design is that it looks really generic, especially from the front, and a lot of that has to do with the big bottom chin. Not necessarily the fact that it’s a big chin but because it feels like an empty void space, it looks very underutilized.

The front and back of the Pixel XL by Google.

We know that that space is housing some very important components but there could have been a button on there or a speaker but instead, the speaker is actually on the bottom and for a single bottom firing speaker it actually sounds really good and gets very loud but it definitely could have benefited from being on the front.

That might honestly be the only problems that this phone has – the fact that the design is so understated. Even without the iPhone comparison, the Google Pixel XL just looks kind of generic. That can actually be a good thing for the Pixel mainly because you don’t necessarily assume a whole lot about the phone and then when you turn on the phone there’s a lot of amazing stuff that can come out of this device.

The display shows a 5.0” 1080P panel on the regular Pixel and a 5.5” inch quadHD panel on the pixel XL. Both of them are super AMOLED and the display on the pixel XL looks absolutely fantastic.

Swipe the Google G button on the top left to start a new search.

It has excellent colors, great viewing angles and it gets extremely bright while being outdoors, especially on a sunny day, it’s not an issue whatsoever and because it’s super AMOLED you get the inky deep blacks and high contrast ratio which makes it perfect for watching movies, playing games or anything that you really want to do on this bone, it’s great for it. You won’t be disappointed.

Performance has been very top notch especially because of the Snapdragon 821 but the thing is we’re still dealing with pure Android here and even though the Snapdragon 821 is supposed to be the most powerful one out there, pure android doesn’t necessarily need too much to provide a great experience.

It’s up to Google to make that feel the way it should be and it definitely does. There’s an attention to detail when it comes to the transitions and all of the different animations that definitely shows when you’re using this phone and it just feels like the fastest version of Android out there.

Also keep in mind that Google is going to keep this version of android updated for the Google Pixel so that makes this already one of the most reliable devices out there.

The Pixel XL comes with the best Qualcomm processor, the Snapdragon 821.

We even did some gaming with recent apps and games and we’re provided, again, a top-notch experience. Rest assured that is not just because of the Snapdragon 821, but also because of the Android version itself, this is one of the most reliable and smooth experiences out there.

It’s probably no surprise that one of our main gripes with the Pixel phones is the lack of expandable storage. With a 32 GB base models of either phone you might run out of space consistently if you’re doing 4K video recording and taking a lot of pictures. That has definitely been the case for us over the last number of days trying out the the camera features.

You can also use Google Photos in order to store some of that by using their unlimited full-resolution storage in the cloud but even if you’re using mobile data to upload it takes a long time to upload 4K clips.

You can always get the 128 GB version of this phone but that’s a lot of money to put down and I honestly don’t think a lot of people out there will be willing to put down that much money for that much storage.

Battery life has been for the most part above average, maybe a little bit lower on that spectrum, because we got 3:30h to 4:30h of screen on time. Our usage included GPS navigation, a lot of music listening and podcasts and we also watched a lot of YouTube but with all that in mind, we did use a battery testing app on this phone and using its most intensive test, which is a gaming test, it got 4:45h.

That makes this phone for the most part average or maybe slightly above average but even then if you started to run out of juice throughout your day, which shouldn’t really be an issue, then you can always use it up real quick using the quick charging feature..

When it comes to cameras you have an 8MP camera on the front and a 12.3MP camera on the back and it’s crazy to think that Google has gone from having some of the worst cameras on a smartphone, to having some of the best cameras on a smartphone.

I would say the pixel phones are easily in the top 3 when it comes to image quality. In daylight the images are very sharp, very well detailed and the camera has excellent dynamic range. Especially with the HDR+ mode it does a great job of turning down the highlights and the shadows, without making the images look unnatural or fake, which is a problem that some android cameras tend to have.

The best part about the HDR image processing is that it’s actually fast now, whereas on the Nexus 6P it was a little bit on the slow side.

When it comes to low light photography, low-light shots on the Google Pixel XL are still really grainy and the lack the kind of stabilization that optical image stabilization brings. Some of the photos come out quite grainy and if your hands are not all that steady you could get a kind of blurry shot because of the slower shutter speed that ends up showing motion blur.

That said however, this does do a pretty good job in low light compared to plenty of other Android different devices out there. We’ve been using the Pixel XL camera for the last few days and it did a very good job. The stabilization feature is actually really good but it won’t be able to perform miracles if you’re running with the device.

The reason why is because the camera uses information from the gyroscope module and if the gyroscope is going all over the place it just won’t be able to keep up.

Since this is a Google made device you’re getting the latest version of Android that google has to offer with Android 7.1 Nougat.

The first and biggest feature to the Pixel phones is Google Assistant which is basically an improvement upon Google Now but a lot smarter. It’s much more conversational, meaning you can say a lot more things to it. You can joke with it and you can even ask it to read you a poem if you want to.

You can still do all the basic stuff like set a timer and alarm, hey calendar event, check sports scores, the weather, all the basic stuff that you would expect, it can still do and it still has all the Google Now on tap features from before.

Google Assistant is a lot faster than Google Now, which was always really slow to load because of that long animation. Google Assistant pretty much loads up instantaneously and, sure, it’s not perfect but it’s definitely a huge step in the right direction working extremely well.

Next it’s the Pixel launcher which is exclusive to the Pixel phones, at least for now, and it brings a lot of changes. You still have the Google Now home screen on the left most home screen but to conduct a search you need to tap on the G logo in the upper left corner and the App Store is now accessible with a swipe up from the bottom which means there’s no App Store icon anymore and this frees up an additional space in your dock for another appt of your choice.

The other big change here is the app icons themselves they’re all circles now and it’s not completely consistent across the board, some of the apps still have their own icons, but it’s a huge step in the right direction and at least all the apps now are all the same size.

The fingerprint sensor is on the back of the Pixel XL.

There’s a few minor features in this new version of Android but I actually think they make a pretty significant impact to the overall user experience. First, Google has finally added a reboot option. After all these years of refusing to add this feature it is now baked into stock Android and it was definitely long-overdue.

Second, there’s a new long-press feature that is similar to Apple’s 3D touch minus the 3D touch. Basically, a long press on an application will give you access to certain functions without actually having to open up the app.

The last thing we want to mention with the software is if you have the Verizon version of the Google Pixel, it does come with a few bloatware applications but all of them can be easily uninstalled.

The Pixel XL costs $769 for the 32 GB version and $869 for the 128 GB. For now, the phone is available only to US users, on a multitude of sites like the Google Shop or the Verizon site.