Google Pixel 8 Smartphone Review

The Google Pixel 8 Pro may stand out as Google’s best smartphone for 2023 in terms of capabilities, but the smaller Pixel 8 has its own place. At $699, a full $300 less than its bigger sibling, the Google Pixel 8 has a more value-forward premise, and though it may lack some exciting features — like a telephoto camera and “Pro” camera controls — it has similar core features. And that might be enough to help it stand out next to the Android competition.

Google Pixel 8 – Design and Features

The Pixel 8 Pro made some more visually apparent changes from its predecessor, the Pixel 7 Pro. The Pixel 8 did not. I’d be left scratching my head for hours if you set the Pixel 8 alongside a Pixel 7 and asked me which one is which. The new Pixel 8 is a little smaller, squeezing in a 6.2-inch display instead of 6.3-inch, and trimming a few millimeters of the height and width, though actually adding a little thickness.

Beyond that, it looks much the same as last year’s model, except in different colors. The blacked-out Obsidian color is still around, but the alternatives are a sandy-looking Rose or a Hazel that looks more like a drab gray that feels like it’s lost all the life Google used to put into its Pixel color scheme. Between this and the limited saturation of iPhone 15 shades, I guess color vibrancy decided to take a break in 2023.

Aside from the disappointing color, the lack of much revision isn’t too bad a thing. The Pixel 7 was well designed and an elegant iteration on the Pixel 6, and the Pixel 8 just keeps that design going. It’s made of sturdy Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and back, and it has an aluminum frame that looks as good as it feels in the hand. The new, smaller size just makes the phone that much easier to wield. Coming from the Pixel 8 Pro, I feel a lot more comfortable one-handing this phone, aside from it being kind of slippery. Should it slip into water, though, it should survive thanks to its IP68 rating — effectively the industry standard for flagship smartphones.

The lack of much revision isn’t too bad a thing.

The screen may not sound like an upgrade over the Pixel 7, but it is. The resolution is identical, but the OLED panel can get much brighter, achieving a peak of 2,000 nits for viewing in direct sunlight (much like the iPhone 15). It’s also jumped to a 120Hz refresh rate (also matching the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max) and can still automatically switch to 60Hz for battery conservation. These upgrades make the smaller display useful in more scenarios. It also makes for a great little display for watching TV and movies or gaming.

The stereo speakers pair decently with the display, putting out enough sound for a casual movie viewing or to play a podcast while I take a shower or cook in the kitchen, but they’re not impressively loud.

Google continues to offer an under-display fingerprint scanner that works as well as ever, which is to say it’s okay but kind of slow. Facial unlock is also available, and upgraded by extra AI processing. It proves fairly quick, though without infrared scanning it’s incapable of working well in the dark.

Just like last year’s phone, the standard Pixel 8 supports 5G networks but not the same ones the Pro model does. The $699 model lacks mmWave support, though it’s available in Verizon and AT&T models that sell for $799, narrowing the gap between it and the $999 Pro down by $100. My initial experience with mmWave led me to feel it’s not a feature worth the extra money, as it wasn’t very reliable even in the few circumstances it was available. Support for Wi-Fi 7 provides some future-proofing, at least.

Google Pixel 8 – Software

The Pixel 8 comes with Android 14, which is hard to distinguish from Android 13. What Google has upgraded this go around is longevity, as it promises seven years of OS, security, and feature updates. That’s a large promise and could add tremendously to the value of the Pixel 8 for anyone who’s not a regular upgrader (as long as Google lives up to that promise). However, Google’s premise that the Pixel 8 will be a device that gets better over time may be a little more dubious. I haven’t felt my Pixel 7 Pro getting significantly better in the last year; to the contrary, I’ve so far witnessed it even getting left behind in software updates, such as when the Pro camera mode for the Pixel 8 Pro was not handed down to the 7 Pro as well. So maybe the Pixel 8 will get better over the next 11 months, but when it comes time for a Pixel 9, I imagine Google will conveniently forget some upgrades for the Pixel 8.

I haven’t felt my Pixel 7 Pro getting significantly better in the last year.

Other big software upgrades have less promise. Google has introduced a few new camera features that use machine learning to make “Magic” edits to photos, much like the Magic Eraser introduced on the Pixel 6. But much like the Magic Eraser, the features can have some all-too-plain shortcomings. Magic Editor allows for quick selection of subjects for resizing, repositioning, or removal, and AI will go and fill in background details that were missing. But the edge detection is hit or miss, making it hard to guarantee you get the subject selected perfectly, and the background fill is almost always a little off when viewed under any scrutiny. It’s a similar story for the face-swapping Best Take tool that lets you snap a succession of photos and then create a blended photo by selecting different faces for everyone in the photos. The intention is to get one image with everyone smiling and no one blinking without having to composit the photos yourself, but it can run into unsightly glitches as well.

Pixel 8 Magic Editor Before/After Comparison

By far the most effective of these tools is the Audio Eraser, which can split different sounds in a video recording into separate channels for individual adjustment. It’s handy for removing wind and environmental noise, and fairly impressive for how simple it makes the task. But like the others, it’s not perfect, and it doesn’t provide a lot of flexibility with tweaking how it separates channels. In one case, it got most of my voice into the correct channel except one word I said, and there was no getting it back unless I wanted to bring all of the room noise back with it.

These features could improve over time, but as they stand, I wouldn’t call them a compelling reason to upgrade.

Google Pixel 8 – Gaming and performance

In everyday use, the new Tensor G3 at the heart of the Pixel 8 is proving an admirable chip. It keeps processes on the phone running smoothly with hardly a hitch. In regular use, I haven’t had any notable hiccups aside from some misbehavior in a third-party launcher, Nova, that I also ran into on my personal Pixel 7 Pro. Even in gaming it musters respectable performance, playing Honkai Star Rail at maxed settings and holding up 60fps fairly well, though I noticed dips here and there even in simpler environments.

If you’re looking for the most powerful hardware, this isn’t it.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for the most powerful hardware, this isn’t it. It’s certainly an upgrade over the Tensor G2 chip in the earlier phones, but it still has some room for improvement when it comes to catching up to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips for top-end smartphones. I tested the Nothing Phone 2 earlier this year, which ran on last year’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, and it achieved higher speeds in Geekbench 6 for single-core, multi-core, and GPU tests, and in 3DMark for graphics tests. The difference in CPU testing was minor – just a few percentage points – but graphics performance ranged from 15-33% better for the Nothing Phone 2. Never mind that this year’s Galaxy S23 phones are running a newer Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that should further widen the gap. If you’re after gaming capabilities and shear performance, Google is lagging behind.

It would help if the AI focus of Google’s Tensor chips was actually adding more to the package, but the most meaningful and effective tool I have encountered with them is simply the improved speech-to-text, which I already felt was good enough on the Pixel 6. For a quick text it’s miles ahead of tapping out the message with my thumbs, though it’s not quite up to the task of handling dictation for whole articles without close observation to make sure it gets the punctuation and sentence breaks correct.

Casually browsing the web had the phone getting notably warm in my hand.

While the Tensor G3 is an improvement on the G2 as far as efficiency goes, the Pixel 8 has a harder time contending with heat than the Pixel 8 Pro did in my testing. Just casually browsing the web had the phone getting notably warm in my hand – warmer than I remember the Pixel 8 Pro getting even while gaming – and this wasn’t even with the screen running at a bright level. This makes sense, as the similar material and same chip mean the Pixel 8 doesn’t have any way to dissipate heat better than the 8 Pro, and it has less surface area to do so.

Google Pixel 8 – Camera

When it comes to photography, Google is separating the standard and Pro models even further this year. Both cameras received the same upgrade to the main rear sensor, and their selfie cameras are nearly identical, but the Pixel 8 Pro received a more capable ultra-wide sensor that comes in addition to the exclusive telephoto sensor. This leaves the Pixel 8 more akin to the Pixel 7 than the Pixel 8 Pro was to the Pixel 7 Pro.

Here are the cameras the Google Pixel 8 packs:

50MP (binned to 12.5MP) Wide, f/1.68, 1.2-micron, Laser AF, OIS12MP ultrawide, f/2.2, 1.25-micron, 125.8-degree FOV10.5MP Selfie, f/2.2, 1.22-micron, 95-degree FOV

Pixel 8 Main Camera Gallery

For the Pixel 8, it’s all about that main sensor. It’s sharp and soaks in light, letting it hold up quite well even in dim environments — or even dark environments, as long as photos are taken with a fairly steady hand. It captures scenes with a natural look, not exaggerating any colors or struggling too much with motion. The sensor can handle a 2x zoom decently, not immediately becoming a mess of digitally zoomed pixels, but it doesn’t hold up when pushed to the 8x limit. The laser AF is also quite snappy, helping get subjects in focus quickly. However, if the phone thinks it should switch to macro mode for a very close-up subject, it can be annoyingly slow to switch back to focus on something farther out.

Pixel 8 Ultrawide Camera Gallery

By comparison, the ultrawide feels like the weaker beast that it is. Detail is softer, especially with noise that’s all the easier to see when zooming in on photos. It does capture a bit more of a subject, even adding 11.8 degrees extra field of view compared to last year’s UW sensor, and it can work well in the daytime under bright lighting, but it’s enough of a difference between it and the main shooter that I’d always try to back up and use the main rear camera instead if I want a good looking photo. That’s a bit of a shame, too, since the macro mode relies on the ultra-wide sensor, which means you’re just not going to get macro shots on this phone anywhere close to as good as they are on the Pixel 8 Pro.

Pixel 8 selfie camera example.

The selfie camera sees the smallest changes, actually decreasing in resolution slightly but bumping up FOV by a couple degrees. It’s still a clear shooter with a nice, wide angle good for getting a few people into a shot.

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