Google Pixel 6 Pro review: Magically erasing Pixels past

The storied past of Pixel phones has long been wrought with failures and compromise, yet peppered with promising bits that have slowly paved the way for the future we’re now finally able to behold. Google finally went all-out for its sixth-generation phone, packing in everything and the kitchen sink, including its first-ever in-house developed chipset, the Google Tensor.

The result is a phone that’s just about perfect in every way and, instead of being held back by compromise or poor decisions on Google’s part, its biggest weaknesses are down to preference. It’s the best Android smartphone you can buy right now with little exception, and it represents an on-point Google we’ve simply never seen before. Everything from the software to the hardware feels like a purposeful, bespoke experience in a way that’s truly magical.

The Google Pixel 6 Pro is the larger, more full-featured version of the Google Pixel 6. For $300 more than a standard Pixel 6, the Pixel 6 Pro features a larger screen with curved edges, more RAM, more maximum storage space, UWB radios, a higher-res front-facing camera, and a 4x telephoto lens on the back. It fits right along with what we’ve come to expect from the “Pro” version of a product, and it’s the single best phone Google has ever made.

For our Pixel 6 Pro review, I used the Google Pixel 6 Pro 128GB in the Sorta Sunny colorway.

The Google Pixel 6 Pro starts at $899 for the model with 128GB of storage. $999 will net you 256GB of storage, while $1,099 ups the storage to 512GB. Once you’ve decided on the storage amount you’ll need, you can choose from one of three colorways: Stormy Black, Cloudy White, and Sorta Sunny.

You can buy the Pixel 6 Pro directly from Google, from major retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, or from your carrier of choice. As is the case with many phone launches, many carriers are running deals that will net you several hundred dollars off a Pixel 6 Pro.

All Pixel 6 Pro models ship with the capability to connect to 5G mmWave and sub-6 networks.

Google Pixel 6 Pro: Hardware and design

The Google Pixel 6 Pro represents Google’s vision for a Pixel phone with top specs. At $300 more than the Pixel 6 with the same storage configuration, you’ll be getting a larger, souped-up phone that will make more sense for some folks than others.

When putting the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro side-by-side, the only design difference you’ll see is the Pixel 6 Pro’s taller forehead above the camera bar on the back. In fact, if you sit them side by side, the camera bars align perfectly between the two models, showing just how much care Google has put into making the designs near-identical.

Google’s striking design will undoubtedly turn heads. It’s probably the most unique-looking phone of the year and certainly the most unique design Google has ever made for a Pixel.

The camera bar, in particular, is a bold design piece that feels like a natural evolution of the camera bar from the Nexus 6P. It’s not just great-looking though, it’s also much more utilitarian than a camera bump as it makes the device lay evenly on a surface when placed down. Conversely, most other camera bumps are usually off-center and end up making phones wobble when placed on a surface.

Similarly, Google reversed the side curve in-between the power and volume rocker buttons from a convex to a concave curve. This makes it easy to identify where the buttons are and make them easier to press without looking; another subtle design touch that shows quite a bit of thought went into every inch of the device.

It’s also the most well-made Pixel the company has ever produced. The Pixel 6 Pro ups the glam factor by making everything very shiny, including the side rails — which are a matte color on the regular Pixel 6. The unfortunate side of the shine is that it also makes things very slippery. If you live in a colder climate, be sure to put a case on this one, as it’s extremely easy to drop.

If I’m going to be nitpicky, there are a few areas where it becomes apparent that Google’s build quality isn’t 100% up to Samsung’s. Upon closer inspection, you can see extremely slight gaps between the glass back meets the camera bar on my unit. The plastic bar at the top of the phone, which hides the mmWave antennas, also has very slight raised edges on my review unit where it meets the metal rails.

Android Central received a few different review units, and these tolerance levels appear to be different on each one. It’s more than likely there’s just a bit of variation in some units, and it could show that Google’s quality control still needs a bit of work.

These are slight inconsistencies that I doubt most people will notice, but they show that Google still has a little bit of work to do. It’s also worth noting that comparable phones — like the iPhone 13 Pro Max and Galaxy S21 Ultra — are $200-300 more than the Pixel 6 Pro with the same amount of storage. Corners most certainly had to be cut to achieve those more affordable prices.

The $200-300 lower price than the comparable iPhone or Galaxy can be seen in a few extremely minor build inconsistencies.

The earpiece and bottom-facing speakers play sweet, sweet tones in conjunction to create a stereo experience despite the bezels being tiny around all four sides. The bottom bezel is the thickest one, making the phone slightly uneven if you’re extremely OCD, but it likely isn’t enough of a difference to bother most people.

As has been the case for a while, you’ll only find a single USB Type-C connection on the phone and no other ports of any kind. The Pixel 6 Pro supports wireless charging and reverse wireless charging, so you can charge your wireless headphones or another device if needed.

Inside the phone is the most wonderful haptic feedback motor I’ve ever used on an Android phone. Of course, Google has long had excellent haptic motors since the Pixel 3, but this is a noticeable step up in quality. Every vibration feels wonderful and solid, and things like tapping on the keyboard feel much more thought out than a typical phone vibration motor.

Along the front is a curved display panel utilizing LTPO OLED technology. Like other phones with LTPO tech, the Pixel 6 Pro can change its refresh rate on the fly, dynamically adjusting between 10Hz on screens with no movement or animation and all the way up to 120Hz whenever movement occurs.

The 120Hz display is superbly smooth but doesn’t feature as many refresh rate stops as Samsung or OnePlus displays.

Google’s use of LTPO OLED tech isn’t quite as efficient as some other manufacturers, as the Pixel 6 Pro can only switch between 120Hz, 60Hz, and 10Hz depending on what’s happening on screen.

If you’ve ever used a phone with a 120Hz display, you’ll know just how incredibly smooth everything feels. It’s hard to go back to 60Hz — which will happen automatically in battery saver mode — but it can be chosen if you prefer to prioritize longer battery life over an ultra-smooth experience.

The display gets plenty bright and is usually easy enough to see outside, but it doesn’t hold up as well under extreme direct sunlight. That’s because the display only reaches a peak of 800 nits brightness while other phones, like the Galaxy S21 Ultra, can reach a peak brightness of 1,500 nits. The average max brightness on both Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro is only 500 nits, a dim comparison to the 900+ nits of the Galaxy S21 Ultra.

But this is only a problem in direct sunlight, and Google has done an exceptional job of balancing HDR tones on the display while watching videos. Case in point, Netflix HDR content like The Witcher looks absolutely superb on the Pixel 6 Pro’s display. It exhibits a wonderful color range, superbly bright highlights, and excellently detailed shadows without the black crush that some mobile OLED panels suffer from.

Phones with curved or “waterfall” displays often tend to have extreme color aberrations toward the edges of the glass curve, but, curiously, this one doesn’t seem to suffer from such issues.

The curved display is a bane for screen protectors but a boon for gesture navigation

Even if you’re not crazy about curved displays, this design at least makes it easier to use Google’s gesture-based navigation, which is enabled out of the box for the Pixel 6.

Nestled within the bottom-third portion of the screen is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, similar to phones from Samsung and OnePlus. Unfortunately for Google, this particular fingerprint scanner isn’t very good, and I found it failing more often than I appreciated.

It’s not terrible in the way many of the first-generation in-display fingerprint scanners were, but it’s also not particularly great. Accuracy is a bit suspect at times and would fail even when I was indoors. Direct sunlight usually made the accuracy drop further, although it was usually when the sun hit the display at an angle.

I also found the sensor to be a bit slow when compared to other phones with similar tech. There’s a noticeable one or two-second delay where you’ll need to press and hold before it registers your fingerprint. It’s most assuredly a far cry from the dedicated rear sensors Google has almost always used on Pixels (sans the Pixel 4, of course).

As the Pixel line has matured over the years, it has gained a number of exclusive features you won’t find anywhere else. At the core of nearly all of these features is a reliance on AI — usually in the form of Google Assistant — which drives many convenient experiences.

The core of Google’s Pixel 6 software features revolve around reliance on AI, of which Tensor is an extremely capable processing partner.

Most of these experiences aren’t Pixel 6-exclusive — specifically live captions, voice and speech translation, the recorder app that transcribes audio as it’s being recorded, device search, call screening, quick phrases, and At a Glance — but Google has added a few enhancements that are powered by the Google Tensor processor.

In short, that means that most of these features you might have loved from previous Pixel phones are now using onboard processing instead of relaying it to the cloud all the time. That reduces the time it takes for a response and ensures that the phone is using the most private way to compute your visual and voice data.

One of the coolest new features is the ability to translate entire conversations in any supported messaging app. So if you happen to be using Android Messages, Whatsapp, Signal, Line, Twitter, Instagram, FB Messenger Lite,…