Google Pixel 9 Pro XL hands-on review

Diving straight into the feature that gave Google’s device its name and fame – the camera. The rear camera bump shaped like a pill sits a 50MP wide, a 48MP ultrawide with macro focus and a 48MP 5x telephoto lens. These updated new cameras get a new HDR pipeline thanks to the Tensor G4 processor, new and improved sensors with better autofocus. You can immediately tell that the Pixel 9 Pro XL camera has a noticeably improved sharpness and colour tones. The colour accuracy on the Pixel devices feels like it’s almost untouched by the AI (in a good way). What you see is what you get on your screen and that’s also a testament to Pixel’s superbly calibrated display which we’ll get to in a bit.

However something feels off about the Pixel camera experience. Firstly the viewfinder has an abnormal amount of noise before you click the photo. It’s something that has plagued the Pixel 6 smartphone as well so there should be a fix soon enough. Google also mentioned that there’s a new OIS in here but at 5x the camera sway is very noticeable compared to the competition and the lens shift while shooting videos is jittery and laggy. All of these seem to be bugs but something that isn’t one and really confuses us is the Portrait mode. It only works with the primary wide camera and weirdly uses digital crop in 1.5x and 2x modes. The Pixel 9 Pro XL doesn’t use portrait mode from the 5x telephoto lens. 

Things start to get weirder once you zoom into these portrait photos and notice a lot of artefacts and smudging, effectively losing details. We think it's from compression because even in high-resolution mode the Pixel 9 Pro XL gets beaten by the competition once you zoom in.

Albeit, the competition from Vivo, Xiaomi and OnePlus will not pinch the Pixel’s immaculate colour accuracy and texture (when not zoomed in) but Vivo and Xiaomi have been brute forcing their way to higher standards of smartphone photography though excellent hardware which software just can’t match. Take a look at this macro mode on the Vivo X100 Pro and the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. The Vivo’s Zeiss T star lens coating effectively eliminates all the reflections on the watch’s glass and captures the sharpness in great detail while not overprocessing it. The Pixel is trying but there’s a limit to what software can achieve.

That said these things are situational and you’ll rarely find yourself unhappy with the Pixel’s results in a point and shoot approach. The photos are consistent, natural and very good. Unlike the Xiaomi 14 Ultra which has a very vibrant colour and smoother textures, the Pixel 9 Pro XL excels at maintaining the overall composition by expertly tuning colour, tone, highlights and details.

Then you get the Cupertino juggernaut which absolutely mocks the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL with its use of 5x portrait. The difference in still photography between the two American companies still remains to be as little as that between a toad and a frog. The Apple focuses on using all its lenses to their fullest potential while keeping a warm tone while the Pixel likes to be as colour accurate as possible while keeping a cooler tone.

The Pro mode in the Pixel is also very impressive with focus peaking and a good range of controls. The granular control over the camera in different modes like Portrait and Night Sight have been pushed on the bottom right corner for easier one hand use. You can adjust shadow, white balance and brightness for these modes and have even more control with shutter speed, ISO and focus in regular capture. Manual mode is here as well if you want to take RAW photos with said granular controls. 

We’ll need more time to test out the front camera, video capabilities and Night Sight. Past Pixel smartphones have always been impressive with low-light, especially during astrophotography. While these camera modes and features will take time to test, the AI features inside the Google Photos app is ready from the start and that’s where most of Pixel 9 series’ feature set sits.

Arguably the highlight of the AI feature set on the Pixel is baked into the viewfinder called Add Me. Suppose you and your friends are socially awkward to approach any stranger to click a photo of your group. The Pixel 9 series smartphones will allow one friend to take a photo while the others pose and then switch with the photographer to add them in the photo. The person who switches (the new photographer) will see an opaque outline of the others to align the camera closer to the previous photo and then Google will run the two photos through its AI to superimpose the two into a single shot. Here’s a Reel we shot explaining the same feature.

There’s a long list of AI features inside the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL’s Photos app. While it retains all the features launched with the Pixel 8 series, the new ones will completely change your photos. You can add backgrounds that never existed and remove unwanted things from the photos as easily as pouring the last drops of ketchup from a bottle. It takes a few tries to get it right. But once you understand the tools available to you, it’s quite the mini-photoshop in your hand.

We were available to edit the entire background from this Audi photo parked in our studio. All it took was a few tries and understanding what keywords to feed the AI to get the desired result. Most impressively, the AI understands the shadows of objects and retains it in the background changing process. Almost a year ago we struggled to make a background for one of our special covers using AI in Midjourney and here a year or so later, we can do it on a phone effortlessly. That said, this AI feature doesn’t work offline, it needs to tap into the more intelligent source in the Google Cloud for clever edits.

Google’s Pixel 9 devices are made with Gemini, the AI assistant that can rival the likes of ChatGPT and Claude. With the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL you get access to Gemini Advanced free of charge for a year after which you have to cough up the extra dough to keep the AI from becoming senile. We’ve been using the base level Gemini for almost half a year and it’s basically a chatbot but Gemini Advanced is much better and has more features. You can attach photos and documents to ask for recommendations and adopt writing styles. It can generate images for you as well. I asked the Gemini Advanced model to create a profile photo of Batman in cyberpunk style with a pink background for my Steam account and it was quick and easy. If you want to just sit and make AI images all day, the Pixel Studio is a dedicated app for it.

I asked the Gemini AI for the Hindi name for a fish I saw in Dave the Diver and it helped me understand why that fish may not have a name in Hindi. Another instance, I clicked a photo of the Samsung Watch Ultra and asked it for outfit recommendations based on the watch’s style and it was pretty good. It’s not as forthcoming with answers and ideas as a human and still behaves like a chatbot so it definitely won’t replace my sister who is a fashion stylist and she would recommend outfits with screenshots as visual examples. 

That said, I do see myself using the Gemini Advanced a lot more than just small talk. If you move over to a computer, your gmail will now be supercharged with the AI. Emails will get a small summary and you can ask the AI for appropriate responses. Google Workspaces like Sheets and Docs will also get a dedicated column to help you work more efficiently. I like this application of the Gemini AI as a tool a lot more than anything out there. On the smartphone, the AI will summarise the email into a single line and you can even add a small prompt for the AI to draft a proper email response. 

Unfortunately, the Gemini Advance only works with personal Gmail IDs and doesn’t work with my work ID which is also in Gmail. You can’t even unlock the Pixel’s one year Gemini Advanced subscription on your work ID. Most of my email work happens on my work ID so I rather have these tools there and after buying a Pixel if you still can’t use the AI tool across the platform then it’s a massive roadblock to incorporating AI into your work life.

Another great application that uses AI successfully is the Screenshots app. It’s where all your screenshots get dumped and you can search for them quickly using a word or a reference text from the screenshot. It cannot find things if you define it vaguely. For example, I can’t find screenshots with the words ‘blue colour’ because that’s how I remember the photo of an outfit I took a screenshot of, I will have to type ‘blue outfit’ or something similar.

All of the AI stuff if possible thanks to the Google Tensor G4 processor, and sometimes the cloud. Albeit, as a smartphone, the Tensor G4 is still an underpowered processor. Running Diablo Immortal on 60FPS is not possible here and by default all the settings are set to low. For comparison, smartphones with half the price can offer a smoother gameplay experience but if you’ve made it far into this very detailed hands-on review, my guess is, gaming is not a top priority here. 

As per the Geekbench 6 benchmark the single core performance of the Tensor G4 is 1951 and multi-core performance is 4678. For comparison a similarly priced Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has 2172 in single core and 6782 in multi-core. Yes, benchmarks are not looking good on the Pixel 9 Pro XL. It gets worse in GPU scores where the Pixel gets 6544 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 has a 9192 score.

That said, we had no heating issue and everyday usage on the Pixel 9 Pro XL was buttery smooth. Apps open fast, like really fast, and scrolling through Instagram, checking emails and replying to WhatsApps was easy peasy. Lightroom was also handled smoothly too. Performance never felt like an issue here for daily tasks except gaming. But having a faster processor is always better for the long run so we can’t be sure how the phone will handle tasks in those 7 years of promised OS and security updates.

The Pixel 9 Pro XL feels like a proper premium flagship in the hand. It’s got silky matt back glass with boxy proportions and a polished metal frame that is slightly curved around the edges to not slit your digits. It’s protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 front and back so you can trust it more than an iPhone if your Pixel 9 Pro XL happens to have an unfortunate kiss with the pavement.

While the display will help keep minor scratches away, the display colours will not keep you away from bingeing Netflix. The 6.8-inch Super Actua display on the Pixel 9 Pro XL is really good. Sharpness and colours are judged impressively. The Hiding in Colour episode from Life in Colour with David Attenborough documentary on Netflix really pops even with neutral colour presentation thanks to impressive HDR, sharpness control and motion clarity. The image processing on the Pixel is very capable. The audio is also improved a lot from last year’s model. The subtly in the wind sounds layered with Attenborough’s trademark plosives within his narration is very well handled by the stereo speakers on the Pixel 9 Pro XL.

It’s also IP68 dust and water resistant so Mumbai monsoon can only ruin your mood and not your smartphone. Google’s also packed the phone in a box made with 100% recycled materials and you still don’t get a charger in the box. Even the USB A to C adaptor is missing now.

The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, while not without its flaws, focuses on significant advancements in AI photography and overall user experience. Its camera capabilities, though occasionally perplexing in portrait mode, deliver consistently impressive results with exceptional colour accuracy and texture. We’ll spend some more time with the videos and Night Sight features and update this review.

The integration of Gemini AI enhances productivity and has interesting features, but its limitations with work accounts pose a notable drawback. Performance, while sufficient for everyday use, lags behind competitors in benchmarks, particularly in gaming.