Review: Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro

I can list a lot of things that make a smartphone great, but one of the most important—especially these days—is price. Google's new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro look and feel better than their $599 and $899 prices suggest. Every time I have one in my hand, I feel like I've just stepped off the runway. Every time I use one, it feels like somebody put the smart back in smartphone. No need to shell out $1,000 to get a superior mobile experience. Heck, at $599, the Pixel 7 feels like a downright steal. 

The Pixels 7

Photograph: Google

These Pixels aren't radically different from last year's Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. They've received a small cosmetic facelift that makes them look classy, with a metal camera band on the rear that's polished on the Pro and given a matte finish on the standard Pixel 7. I initially was disappointed there wasn't an eye-catching color like last year's Coral, but the Lemongrass Pixel 7 and Hazel Pixel 7 Pro have grown on me. They're unique and … did I mention they look luxe? They feel like a set of jewelry.

The Pixel 7 now has a smaller 6.3-inch AMOLED screen. It's a lovely size, and every part of the phone feels almost perfectly accessible in my hand. I'll take any size reduction we can get considering the Pixel 7 Pro's 6.7-inch screen still feels massive. Google did reduce just how much the edges of the Pixel 7 Pro's screen curve into its edges, which I appreciate. I'd still much prefer a completely flat screen like the one on the Pixel 7, but the change makes it feel nicer to use than the Pixel 6 Pro.

Screen brightness has always been a problem on Pixel phones. On sunny days, you usually had to squint to see anything. Google has upped the brightness a bit, but next to an iPhone 14 on a bright day, it's still relatively dim. At least both phones retain the 90- and 120-Hz screen refresh rate to make every interaction feel buttery smooth—a feature Apple gatekeeps for its $1,000-plus iPhones.

Battery-wise, the Pixel 7's 4,355-mAh cell has managed to last me roughly a full day with about six hours of screen-on time. If you're a heavy user, you may need to carry a battery pack. The Pixel 7 Pro's 5,000-mAh capacity gives you a bit more breathing room, usually lasting a day and a morning. As for charging speeds, it's nothing to write home about, but I still appreciate that both these devices have wireless charging. It's not too common on sub-$600 phones.

Pixel 7 Pro

Photograph: Google

One big new addition is Face Unlock on the selfie camera, which works in tandem with a new and improved fingerprint sensor that sits under the display. The sensor has generally been far more reliable for me than the one on the Pixel 6 series, and Face Unlock is quick to recognize my face. Once it does, swiping up on the lock screen unlocks the device. Just know that it won't work all that well in low light.

It's unfortunate that Face Unlock is restricted to unlocking the phone. You can't use the feature to access your banking app or to authenticate during a mobile payment. Google says it's secure but not that secure. The Pixel 4 already had a secure Face Unlock system. I'd love to see that come back.

I also just want you to know how annoying it was switching from an eSIM on the iPhone 14 to the Pixel 7. The whole idea of a digital SIM should have made switching phones a simple process. But my carrier, AT&T, wanted to ship me a physical QR code on a card to scan to activate the Pixel's eSIM, which would have taken two days to arrive. So I went to a store to pick up a physical SIM card, and when the store couldn't activate it, I had to hop on a live chat for 45 minutes until a rep activated it.

Apple has clout, and it made carriers make the process of transferring eSIMs between iPhones a simple task that can be done entirely on the iPhone. With Android, carriers like AT&T want to ship you a code to scan instead of making it all virtual. It's annoying, and I can't wait until Android phones get the ease of eSIM like iPhones.

Tensor G2

Photograph: Google

The reason why I like using Pixel phones revolves around the genuinely helpful features that seem to come into play every day. There are long-standing favorites like Now Playing—right as you wonder, “Huh, I wonder who sings this song,” the answer will populate on the lock screen. I'm a fan of Google Recorder, so much so that I played back a recording from my iPhone into the Pixel just so I could have the Google-powered voice service on the phone to automatically transcribe the audio to text. It's not perfect, but it's much better than typing out every word of a conversation from scratch. Assistant Voice Typing has been my favorite since it debuted on the Pixel 6. It lets me dictate messages quickly and with great accuracy, and it's even faster now. 

That's thanks to the new Tensor G2 chip powering these devices. It's the second generation of Google's custom processor. In terms of general, everyday performance, I've never seen a stutter or blip. It's not the most powerful chip for gaming, but it handled Genshin Impact, one of the most demanding titles, pretty well, with graphics settings set at medium and 60 frames per second. It's the next-gen Tensor Processing Unit in the G2 that impresses more because it makes all these smart features work a bit faster. Night Sight, for example, is twice as fast as it was on the Pixel 6, and the speed improvement is noticeable when you're standing still taking a low-light photo. 

One new G2-powered feature is Photo Unblur, which takes your old photos—shot from any camera, even an old point-and-shoot—and sharpens them using machine learning algorithms. It's impressive if a bit hit or miss. Some of these images look like a painter has gone in and tried to fill in some of the details to increase sharpness, but there are others where it decidedly improves the photos and makes them shareable.

Google has been leading the charge in making phone calls better, and one of its new additions is an update to Direct My Call. This feature launched last year and will transcribe the menu options when you call popular 1-800 numbers so you can see them on your phone screen. Now, Google's using its Duplex technology to cache this data so that when you call JetBlue's customer service, for example, you won't have to wait for the automated robot to run through all the menu options. The options will populate immediately on the phone screen. It worked with JetBlue for me, and it's absolutely awesome. Any time saved on a customer service call is a win.

Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro

Photograph: Google

You can read exactly what changes Google made to these Pixel cameras here, but in short, the Pixel 7 maintains the same dual-camera system as last year's model, and the Pixel 7 Pro sees more new updates, with a autofocus ultrawide camera for a new Macro Focus mode and an improved telephoto with 5X optical zoom for greater zoom levels. Both phones have a new 2X zoom mode that leverages the full sensor of the primary camera—not unlike what Apple introduced on the iPhone 14 Pro—and Google has upgraded its Super Res Zoom algorithm so that zoomed-in photos you take of objects far away look pretty impressive.

Honestly, these cameras are fantastic. I spent the past few days walking around New York City with them. I carried the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro, and the previous Pixel 6 Pro to see how they all fare in comparison. I analyzed all the photos on my monitor when I got back home. You won't notice a tremendous difference from the Pixel 6 series, but the Pixel 7 manages to match and beat out its Apple competitor in a number of situations, though naturally, Apple has some wins too. One thing is for sure: The Pixel 7 has a better camera than the standard iPhone 14. Apple put too many of its camera upgrades in the Pro models, and the results are evident. 

The highlights for me are the improvements Google has made to Real Tone, which uses image data sets curated by people of color around the world to help the Pixel camera take more color-accurate photos of skin tones. It still delivers here, easily besting the iPhone for skin tone accuracy, particularly in low light. My partner, who is Chinese, preferred the photos I took of her on the Pixel over ones taken with an iPhone. “I'm less red!" she said.

Google has also done some wizardry to make Portrait mode better. In recent years, I've noticed the Pixels tend to struggle with rogue hair strands when using Portrait mode, and it would make errors that could ruin a photo. I've seen that a lot less on the Pixel 7 series. In general, it also takes better low-light Portrait mode photos (and nighttime Portrait selfies) than the iPhone. The iPhone constantly says “needs more light” or urges me to move farther back, but it just works on the Pixel. 

I also love the Super Res Zoom improvements, particularly on the Pixel 7 Pro, which now goes up to 30X zoom. Basically, you can take sharper and clearer photos when you pinch and zoom in on the camera app. Google uses machine learning algorithms and the full 48-megapixel telephoto camera's sensor to improve the image, so at 10X zoom, for example, you can get images close to optical-level quality. The results aren't always perfect—I'd avoid 30X zoom, and you should ideally stick to using it in well-lit conditions—but 10X is pretty amazing. I compared it with the 10X optical camera on Samsung's Galaxy S22 Ultra, and while the latter was sharper, Google's photo wasn't too far off!

These improvements, and the excellent 5X optical zoom, offer more of a reason to upgrade to the Pixel 7 Pro than ever before. That and Macro Focus if you love to take close-up shots. I like having the option, even if only to take close-ups of my dog's snoot. It is disappointing that Google didn't update the selfie camera on both phones to feature autofocus. The image is, at times, not as sharp as what you'll get on the iPhone. 

Overall, video quality is still a few rungs below the iPhone, which offers smoother stabilization and brighter footage with less grain. Still, Google's new 10-bit HDR video mode shoots at 4K and 30 frames per second, and I recommend you set it as the default. When viewed on HDR screens, the footage looks more vibrant and has better exposure levels. The new Cinematic Mode is stuck at 1080p but lets you get some silky bokeh in your video clips, just like Portrait mode. (Apple recently upgraded its Cinematic mode to 4K.) You'll see some distortion here and there, and while it actually works in low light (unlike Apple's), you probably won't want to use it then.

If you're worried about bugs, especially after the rush of issues that plagued the Google Pixel 6 launch, well, Google says it is doing more rigorous quality testing to prevent issues like that. In my testing, I've run into only one major bug: Shooting normal video in the camera app resulted in white-noise footage. A restart fixes it, and Google says it has already patched this with an update to the Google camera app. (I haven't seen the flaw since.)

Google's first-ever smartwatch might steal the spotlight from its latest flagship phones, but its luxe new phones are well worth your attention too.