Review: Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro

“Hey Google, type.” 

I've composed much of this review with my voice. That’s thanks to Assistant voice typing, one of many new software features in Google’s new Pixel 6 smartphone. In any text field, you can say the magic command above and start talking. It even works when the phone is offline. It might sound like an ordinary voice dictation feature, but it's incredibly fast on the Pixel. It’s also surprisingly accurate, and it can adapt to your speech as you use it. For example, it didn’t understand when I spoke out my Korean friend’s last name, but after typing it out twice, the phone now spells the name correctly every time. 

I'm suddenly voice-typing everywhere. Emails, Slacks, text messages. It's just so much faster than typing. Voice typing is not perfect—I've had to quickly clarify to a colleague why I said “sex” when I meant “six”—but the Pixel can understand context to a certain degree. When I want to send a message I can say “Send,” and I can say “Next” when I want to go to another paragraph. The phone can differentiate between when I want to include those words in a sentence and when I mean them as commands. That's pretty rad.

This all stems from a new processor powering the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Instead of using a Qualcomm chip like nearly every other Android phone, these phones run on a Tensor chip, which has been custom-built by Google to efficiently run sophisticated machine-learning models without needing to rely on a cloud server. You can read more about it in our story from August, but to put it briefly, nearly every existing feature on a Pixel, from the night mode in the camera to voice dictation, runs markedly better thanks to this chip. 

Tensor is the glue that helps create some rather magical experiences on Google's new phones, and it's aided by the best hardware in a Pixel ever. That's no exaggeration. Flaws are few here, and Google's respectable prices—$599 for the Pixel 6 and $899 for the Pixel 6 Pro—make for a wonderful combo. The Pixel 6 is undeniably the best top-end Android phone for most people.

You might be wondering how the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro fare with the standard phone stuff. Well, you can find all the nitty-gritty technical details right here, including their differences, but the two pretty much have every feature you'd want in a high-end smartphone.

The OLED screens are sharp and vivid, with respective 90- and 120-Hz screen refresh rates that are wonderfully smooth. Both phones comfortably lasted me a full day on a single charge. I was usually left with less than 40 percent in the tank before bed (around five hours of screen-on time). Actually, they're so efficient, they lose far less power when sitting idly on standby than their predecessor.

Stereo speakers flank the screen, and while they don't sound as rich as the drivers on the iPhone 13 Pro, they're still pretty darn good and loud. As on most of today's high-end phones, there's no headphone jack, MicroSD card slot, or charging adapter in the box, but there's wireless charging, fast wired charging, 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, and water resistance. All the marquee features are here.

I'm happy to say the Tensor chip's day-to-day performance is excellent. I've yet to see any slowdowns or stutters launching and switching between apps, and if it helps for reference, benchmark tests put it only slightly behind Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra. 

I only ran into some resistance with the most graphically demanding game I could think of, Genshin Impact. I had to drop the graphics settings to low to be able to play it at around 60 frames per second (medium at 30 fps). The iPhone 13 Pro Max had trouble with the same title and needed some fiddling with the settings too, but Apple's top-end phone is certainly more powerful than the Pixel, and gameplay wasn't as choppy. The vast majority of games I tried, like Pokémon Unite, Hyperburner, and Dead Trigger 2, all ran flawlessly on the Pixels. 

I just have a few gripes. Most importantly, the fingerprint sensor: The physical, capacitive sensor on the back of the phone is gone, and now biometric authentication is handled by a fingerprint sensor built into the screen. It's not very good. Sometimes it unlocks on the first try, but most of the time you need to tap your finger twice. I also have very rarely noticed some choppiness in Twitter specifically, but this isn't always the case. Usually, the phone scrolls very smoothly. 

Then there's the OLED screen. It's readable outdoors, but it doesn't get as bright as competing flagships, so you might find yourself squinting on sunny days. Also, the Pixel 6 is 6.4 inches and the Pixel 6 Pro is 6.7 inches, but they feel very similar because the latter has slimmer bezels and curved glass edges, maximizing the display's real estate. That's all well and good if you're a fan of big-screen phones, but it would’ve been nice to have a noticeably smaller Pixel. 

Google's phones have always taken excellent photos. But the hardware hasn't changed much over the years, and that's allowed competitors to sail ahead of the Pixel with regards to photo quality. Things will be different now that the Pixel's camera has finally gotten a major overhaul. Both new models have a 50-megapixel main camera with a large sensor joined by a 12-megapixel ultrawide. The Pro adds its own 4X optical zoom telephoto for a versatile triple-camera array and optical image stabilization on all its lenses.

I've taken more than 300 photos over the past two weeks in an effort to compare photos from these two Pixels against their predecessor and competitors like the iPhone 13 Pro Max and Galaxy S21 Ultra. It's tough to say the Pixels are the best camera phones around, only because they're competing with the iPhone 13 Pro for that top spot. There are times when the iPhone pulled ahead and times when the Pixel came out on top. 

I did run into a few weird issues with the camera system. There's a good deal of lens flare, particularly with streetlights, and the telephoto camera sometimes struggles to focus in low light. But a lot of this is nitpicking—these two Pixels deliver fantastic photos whether you're using night mode, portrait mode, or just shooting on the fly. I got a great picture pretty much all the time.

iPhone 13 Pro Max, main camera with Night mode. The iPhone photo darkened up my face a lot and made my skin tone slightly more reddish than it should be. 

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Google Pixel 6 Pro, main camera with Night Sight. Google's Real Tone image processing attempts to properly expose darker skin tones, and it does an exceptional job in this nighttime scene, especially compared to the iPhone. 

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

But what blew me away the most? Real Tone. A bevy of diverse image-makers from film and media with experience capturing people with darker skin tones helped Google create more imaging data sets for the Pixel camera to pull from. That means the Pixel 6 is much more adept at accurately determining the right exposure and color balancing for people with dark skin. Frankly, the results are astounding.

When a camera struggles to capture my face in low light, I've always just shrugged it off. It's just the nature of having dark skin. But when I look at photos of myself from the Pixel next to the iPhone, I get emotional. The Pixel, particularly in high-contrast scenarios, exposes me much better and comes closer to matching my real skin tone. I look like me! The iPhone a lot of the time either makes my skin reddish or eclipses my face in darkness. It's not a problem with my skin. It's a problem with the camera. It's just a shame this feature took this long to arrive. 

Google's new mobile processor, called Tensor, was adapted from the chips the company uses for its machine intelligence cloud services.Photograph: Google

Pixels have long struggled in their video capabilities, but you'll be happy to hear they finally can take great videos. In HDR scenes alongside the iPhone 13 Pro and S21 Ultra, the Pixel often delivered richer colors and maintained shadows and highlights instead of brightening it all up. The iPhone still has better image stabilization, and the Pixel sometimes has some quirks with its processing, but video quality is no longer a problem. These improvements are thanks to Tensor, which can now apply the imaging algorithms Google uses to enhance photos to each frame in a video. 

But Tensor goes further than the camera. It powers myriad new features like Direct My Call, which transcribes menu options when you're on a call with a 1-800 number. When I called JetBlue, the transcription was at times incorrect, but the menu options were perfect. I ignored much of the call and just looked at the screen to pick a number. (It doesn't work with every 1-800 number.) Google even shows the busiest call times, so you can pick a better time to avoid getting stuck on hold. And of course, you don't even have to wait on hold when you do call. The Assistant listens to that terrible hold music for you and alerts you when a human is finally speaking on the other end.

Courtesy of Google

More fun was Live Translate, which can identify when someone messages you in a different language and allows you to respond in the same language without opening a separate translation app. I had a whole conversation with my partner's mother in Chinese. (I don't speak Chinese.) The translations are far from perfect, but she said messaging with me in that way will be easier for her going forward, which is huge. It only works with a few languages though; I can't wait to try Malayalam with my parents and hopefully make them proud. (I kid, I kid. They love me.)

And I can't forget Magic Eraser. It's a new editing tool in Google Photos for Pixel 6 that lets you erase unwanted objects in the background of your photos. For me, that's often the leash when I try to get my dog to stay still for a photo. Begone, ye ugly cord!

Photograph: Google

Google's software is still dumb in many ways. Once, when washing the dishes, I tried to use Google Assistant to open the Telegram messaging app, but my nearby Nest Hub smart display took the reins and took me to a webpage for Telegram. Er, thanks. And despite its ability to learn your habits, Android's share menu remains awful. It never shows the people I want to share content with, or the apps I commonly use to share content.

But I have to give Google credit for always trying something different. I love the bold new design of these phones (especially the Kinda Coral color). Android 12 is beautiful and never feels like a chore to interact with. Instead, it's fun. And these are also the only Android phones with a promise of five years of security updates (though Google only guarantees three OS upgrades). 

Which should you choose? I'm a sucker for the Pro's telephoto cameras, but I can't stop marveling at what you get for $599 in the Pixel 6. That's easily the best phone for the money, period.