The Google Pixel 6 & 6 Pro: Review After The Review

Coming from the more or less same old same old design/features from the Pixel 4a 5G and the Pixel 5, Google went for a completely different approach for their latest Pixels. Now the Pixel 6 series has been a tumultuous ride from its initial reviews to the many updates there afterward.

Some things got better & some things got worse after a new monthly system update – depending on your particular device. Of course, your mileage may vary. Now months later as Google I/O 2022 has come and gone, now is the perfect time to revisit the Pixel 6 & 6 Pro.

Both Pixels still offer OLED panels but you get 2 different displays here. The 6 gives you a 6.4inch 90Hz 1080p flat panel while the 6 Pro gives you a 6.7inch 120Hz QHD panel w/ curved edges. I get why they did it but I would have preferred a flat panel on both devices. But that’s just me. Outside of that, it still is a Pixel so it isn’t the best in direct sunlight and doesn’t get as bright as I would like to it be.

Both Pixels offer a high-end, premium look w/ an aluminum frame and a distinctive camera bar on the rear that’s reminiscent of the visor on the Nexus 6P. You got the latest in scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass Victus on the front + edgeless Gorilla Glass 6 on the rear. Using glass + metal gives it a bit more heft than what we’re used to from Google. All while having a less than 10oz difference between the 2 phones. You still got IP68 dust/water resistance as well.

Please bring back that Face Unlock.

And one ugly piece about the hardware that we have to bring up is their in-display fingerprint reader. It is optical-based as it lights up to read or attempt to read your finger. Don’t let some dust or water get on your finger because it ain’t reading it. It wasn’t fast at launch as it only got slightly faster after several updates. Still lagging (pun intended) behind the rest of the pack. Still uncertain as to why they get rid of their Face ID-level Face Unlock from the Pixel 4 series. Fingers crossed it returns to the Pixel 7.

Pixel 6:

6.4inch OLED 90Hz HDR display w/ 1080 x 2400 resolution
A dual-camera setup w/ f/1.8 50 MP main wide camera + f/2.2 12 MP ultrawide camera
An f/2.0 8MP selfie camera
8GB of RAM
4614 mAh battery w/ 30W fast-charging, fast wireless charging, & reverse wireless charging

Pixel 6 Pro:

6.7inch curved OLED 120Hz HDR display w/ 3120 x 1440 resolution
A rear triple camera setup w/ f/1.8 50MP main wide sensor, f/2.2 12MP ultrawide sensor, & a f/3.5 48MP telephoto sensor
An f/2.2 11.1MP selfie camera
12GB of RAM
5003 mAh battery w/ 30W fast-charging, fast wireless charging, & reverse wireless charging

Both:

Google Tensor CPU
128GB of storage
Under display fingerprint sensor
IP68 dust/water-resistant body
Stereo speakers
3 mics
Android 12 w/ Pixel Experience

Google’s in-house Tensor CPU was the wild card to see how well it can compute, process, handle gaming/everyday performance over time. Low and behold, its doing it really well half a year in. Everyday things like streaming media, multitasking, & gaming like Call of Duty Mobile runs w/ ease and zero hiccups/lockups.

However, Tensor ain’t made for more graphical intense games though. Lets not forget about 8GB of RAM on the Pixel 6 + the 12GB of RAM on the Pixel 6 Pro. And keep in mind, Tensor is doing more here than the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Google’s chip is also handling things like image processing, speech recognition, on-chip translating, & more – all w/o missing a step.

Google Tensor w/ the equipped RAM runs like breeze. For gaming, translating, multitasking, etc.

On the battery side of things, Google’s Tensor chip has held up pretty well for its inaugural outing. This lives up to the ‘all-day battery’ claim on both Pixels w/ heavy usage. The 6’s 4614 mAh battery got me between 6-8 hours of juice.
While the 6 Pro’s 5003 mAh battery got me up between 8-10 hours of juice. The advertised 30W fast wired charging is supposed to help to top off your battery but definitely takes longer to fully charge. I can charge my iPhone 13 Pro Max from low to full before the Pixels reach 50% of juice charging. Could be better as this can be chalked up to one step forward & a few steps back category.

As everyone has stepped their photography game on the smartphone arena, Google stepped up to shooters & image processing to compete for another year. The 6th-gen Pixels are armed w/ a larger f/1.8 50MP sensor hard-wired to a 12.5MP image, an f/2.2 12MP ultrawide sensor, and a f/ 3.5 48MP telephoto sensor (only on the 6 Pro).

Despite still producing 12.5MP images, the new sensor still offers more colors, details, and 150% more light than the Pixel 5. The results are excellent in my opinion and what you would expect from Google. You still get good color reproduction, the right amount of sharpness, and amazing dynamic range. While retaining the sharp + cool color temperature Google is known for w/ their image processing.

The Pixel camera is still shooting great like it normally does and the video is catching up to Samsung.

Same goes for the selfie camera – within good lighting. It can get noisy in little to no light though. And speaking of little-to-no light, Night Sight is still really good as well as its Astrophotography mode. The big camera features like Magic Eraser, Motion Mode w/ Action Pan + Long Exposure options, and Real Tone rendering for more accurate skin tones for us people of color are all still amazing BTW.

And the 6 lacking a telephoto doesn’t mean it can zoom in at all. You can get up to 7x digital zoom w/ Super Res Zoom. The sweet spot in getting the best results is around 3x digital zoom. While the periscope telephoto lens on the 6 Pro gives you 4x optical zoom & up to 20x digital w/ Super Res Zoom. The sweet spot there is around 10x digital zoom. Still a great addition but still only use the Telephoto lens sparingly. I can count on one hand the amount of times using outside of the original review testing.

And last but not least, video quality on the Pixel 6 series. Still happy to not have to only use my iPhone 13 Pro Max for video. Google did a moderate step up in 4K@60fps to get closer to Samsung video quality. The video stabilization is really good and when you add Cinematic Pan and Audio Zoom for better audio. Curious to see if Google can get to iPhone-level video quality on the Pixel 7 or 8 series.

Overall, I think this is a great combination of sensors despite the ultrawide could be a bit better. Also if you read/watched our recent camera battle (between the Galaxy S22 Ultra, Pixel 6 Pro, & the iPhone 13 Pro Max), you’ve seen how the Pixel fares against the competition.

Google added some more customization to the Pixel Experience on Android 12 here. Specifically a wallpaper theming system which sounds small but you can make the look of your phone more yours. There are other things like scrolling screenshots, new widgets, face detection for auto-rotation, and double tap on the back to access Google Assistant.

Then you got the many of the AI-powered features you can only get on a Pixel smartphone. Like Now Playing, Call Screening, Hold For Me, voice commands w/o saying ‘Hey Google’, Live Captions + Live Transcribing in more languages, & more. Making it a little bit harder to leave if you swear by these software features. The feature drops have been a gift and a curse for the 1st time. While adding and repairs previous bug fixes, it sometimes creates new issues.

My experience w/ the Pixel 6 series has been great save for the slow fingerprint reader but your mileage may vary.

It was good to experience an actual premium Pixel experience for the 1st time ever. And despite the issues, it’s still the best Pixel Google has made – both from a hardware + software experience. Some might say it was a good execution save for several hiccups while others might say Google took one step forward & several steps back.

Now my experience has been good but my wife’s Pixel 6 has been just OK. Despite everything I mentioned here, you’re experience may vary so keep that in mind. I wonder how big or incremental the updates will be on the Pixel 7 series. Hopefully Google can tighten up on the overall software for a better experience for all across the board.