Google Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL hands-on review: the best Al phone now in two sizes

It's easier to recommend Google's 'Pro' features and Al now that it comes in two sizes with shared specs

Tuesday’s 5-story newsletter is below our Google Pixel 9 Pro XL hands-on ⤵️
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Pros

• ✅ 🏆 Google’s superb AI phone with shared specs in two sizes

• ✅ 🤖 Gemini Advanced is free for a year with these phones

• ✅ 🤳 42MP selfie camera offers wider, brighter group photos

• ✅ 🪄 New AI camera magic tricks like ‘Add Me’ are promising

• ✅ 💡 Extremely bright display and thinner bezels

• ✅ 🤯 Tons more: Satelite SOS, new fingerprint sensor, super fast charging

Cons

• ❌ 💰 $100 more for the 9 Pro XL vs last year’s 8 Pro

• ❌ 🗄️ 128GB of base storage size falls short of rivals

• ❌ 📆 The ‘Add Me’ camera feature may come post-launch

• ❌ ⚡ Fastest charging on 9 Pro XL only & no magnetic Qi2 charging

Pricing and where to buy

• 💰 Pixel 9 Pro: $999 ($200 gift card offer at Best Buy)

• 💰 Pixel 9 Pro XL: $1,099 ($200 gift card offer at Best Buy)

• 📆 Pre-order today. Ships August 22

The Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL are the best AI phones you can buy. Its new features I’m testing now are strong enough that this may hold true even when Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro launches next month.

Google, which leapfrogged Apple’s event by launching in August instead of its usual October, is pushing its Gemini AI features out to consumers before Apple Intelligence even has a chance. And it has an offer Android fans can’t refuse: Gemini Advanced, a $20-a-month subscription, is free for a year with any Pixel 9 Pro phone purchase.

It’s more than an AI model that rivals ChatGPT-4o, though. My favorite AI camera trick is called “Add Me,” which creates composite group photos so the camera taker can jump in a later picture. It’s a promising feature for that parent or friend, often behind the camera and never in the family photo.

I love the fact that Google’s “Pro” phone finally comes in two sizes with shared specs. If you find a smaller screen more comfortable, you, too, can enjoy the fruits of the best Pixel upgrade I’ve tested in years. Here’s why.

Pricing

🆓 🤖 Gemini AI for free. A full year of Gemini Advanced, Google’s AI answer to ChatGPT-4o, comes with the Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL (as well as the Pixel 9 Pro Fold). That’s a $ 20-a-month value and includes Google One Premium for 2TB of storage for a year.

💰 Trade-in offers. Best Buy offered solid trade-in deals last year, and a free Pixel Watch 2. I’ll update the web version of this page as soon as the specific trade-in deals and freebies go live.

💸 Sneaky $100 price increase. At first glance, the 6.8-inch Google Pixel Pro 9 XL seems like a whole new tier that didn’t exist before, so it’s higher $1,099 price makes sense. But if you’re upgrading from last year’s $999 6.7-inch Google Pixel 8 Pro, you’re paying $100 more. Really, the 6.3-inch Google Pixel Pro at $999 is the new model – don’t let the name fool you.

Design

📐 Pro in two sizes. Small hands, rejoice! 6.3-inch and 6.8-inch screens offer the same specs (aside from battery life and charging speeds) whether or not you want a big display. You can have Google’s top Pixel camera without stretching your thumbs or cutting back on specs.

👀 Refined looks. I’m a fan of the soft-touch matte finish on the back and the polished metal frame along the sides compared to the glossy finish on other phones (including the Pixel 9). The “camera visor,” which no longer stretches the entire width of the Pixel, has also changed.

🪨 Strong glass. Corning’s scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass Victus 2 returns, though it was previously only on the Pixel 8 Pro among Google’s phones. So we’re getting it in a smaller size for the first time ever. 

🎨 Four new likable colors. Google wins on Pixel 9 Pro colors. It offers the standard Obsidian (black) and Porcelain (white) alongside a pop of color: Hazel and Rose Quartz. It’s something I appreciate when so many Samsung and Apple “Pro” phones skip out on the truly fun colors.

Display

📱15% thinner bezels. The border that surrounds the screen has shrunk and is more uniform, which makes a small, but meaningful difference. If you care about screen-to-body ratios, you’ll enjoy this upgrade. It makes the thicker bezel in our Google Pixel 8a review seem huge.

💡 Extremely bright display. Google’s phone is officially brighter than my iPhone 15 Pro Max when outdoors (3,000 nits vs Apple’s 2,000 nits of peak brightness). When viewing normal HDR content, brightness maxes out at 2,000 nits vs the iPhone’s 1,600 nits. Your move, Apple. Bring on the iPhone 16 Pro.

🏃‍♂️ 1-120Hz screen refresh rate. Google’s “Super Actua” LPTO OLED display returns with the same adaptive refresh rate we saw last year, but it was limited to the Pixel 8 Pro. Now it’s included in both sizes, offering a 120Hz refresh rate that can be dialed down to 1Hz automatically when the action isn’t intense, saving battery life.

👇 Ultrasonic under-screen fingerprint sensor. I’ve seen your complaints about the optical fingerprint sensor found in Pixel phones. That should be solved as Google has ditched that tech in favor of an undersonic sensor that’s faster and more accurate. Testing to come.

Specs and AI

📶 Faster 5G, no upcharge. Something I spotted in my review last year was that there was a special Verizon model of the Pixel 8 with Verizon’s mmWave 5G that cost $50 more than the base sub6 5G used by everyone else. Now there’s no split – mmWave + sub6 are both here.

🛜 WiFi 7 upgrade. Have a WiFi 7 router? Google’s latest phone steps up this spec from WiFi 6e seen in last year’s phones.

🐏 More RAM for AI. 16GB of RAM (up from 12GB) is designed for one thing: pulling off AI. Previously, high RAM in phones was a bit of a snake oil specs boast. But we’re starting to see AI require higher memory – see the Apple Intelligence compatibility list for more on that.

🗄️ 128GB to 1TB storage. Google’s Pro phones start at 128GB, weaker than expected given the stealthy price increase. Let’s compare: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, S24 Plus and iPhone 15 Pro Max all start at 256GB. Since the base iPhone 15 Pro has 128GB, at least start off the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL at 256GB (spoiler: it’ll cost you).

⚙️ Tensor G4 chip. Google is promising 20% faster browsing and 17% faster app launches along with more power efficiency. While prior Tensor chips have struggled to keep up with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phones when gaming (not to mention Apple iPhones), this one puts a lot of emphasis on AI compute power. Benchmarks to come soon.

🤖 Gemini Live’s debut. Google wants its Gemini Nano with multimodality and conversational Gemini Live (first seen at Google IO 2024) to enable your phone to understand everything in context – text, images, audio and speech, then act on that within Google’s software products. It reminds me of what I wanted when I reviewed the Rabbit R1, which was supposed to be a Large Action Model (LAM) but focused more on working with Google’s vast suite of services.

🥶 Vapor chamber. Notably, Google redesigned the cooling of the Pixel 9 Pro, so multi-tasking, AI, and gaming while charging shouldn’t overheat this phone. The extra space may be why we see charge charging speeds on the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL only.

📡 Satelite SOS. Catching up with Apple’s iPhone SOS feature, Google is finally offering a way to make a connection in an emergency. Both Qualcomm and MediaTek unveiled plans for this, but this is the first time we’ve seen it in a Google-owned smartphone.

Cameras

Reviewer’s note: When my full Google Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 XL reviews launch, I’ll have a lot more time to test the cameras. An update, exclusive to The Shortcut subscribers, will launch this week as I test the smartphone against other devices in comparison. Stay tuned for that, subscribers.

📸 50MP main, 48MP ultrawide & telephoto. Its camera megapixels and sensor sizes are the same as the Pixel 8 Pro, but Google says it rebuilt the HDR pipeline. My bigger question is: how does it stack up next to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and, soon, iPhone 16 Pro Max? Testing incoming, first to The Shortcut premium subscribers this week.

🤳 Wide group selfies. I love Google Pixel’s wide 103° field of view selfie camera. It reminds me of the fan-favorite (for its time), LG V10, which had a 120° field of view. It captures everyone and everything in your group shots.

🤩 I’m ready for my 42MP selfie. This is a big upgrade over last year’s 10.5MP front camera, offering 30% more light sensitivity. The main cameras didn’t change a lot, but the front one did.

🤗 ‘Add Me’ uses AI to insert you in pics. The camera taker and subject can swap roles and appear together in a composite shot, which sounds extremely handy for moms and dads behind the camera who can’t always get the entire family in a vacation photo. Google says it uses 15 on-device AI models to pull off its latest photo magic trick.

🖼️ ‘Auto Frame’ in Magic Editor. Ever wish you could zoom out of a photo? This AI editing tool lets you simulate that by recomposing the shot with a new border that’s based on known photo techniques. Generative AI fills in the blanks around the outline of the original photo.

🪄 Reimagine in Magic Editor. You can prompt changes to a photo with “Reimagine as… butterflies, fireworks, pink clouds, etc” – whatever comes to mind as you type. The image will be modified to add effects at your command.

🤪😃🙄 Best Take returns. This AI head-swapping feature premiered in the entire Pixel 8 series, as we noted in our Pixel 8a review (Google isn’t holding back on its AI), and I need to highlight it again. No one else has copied this feature, and it remains priceless for friends and families trying to get the perfect group photo.

📹 Video Boost rivals iPhone. Google is putting a lot of emphasis on its video upgrade for one reason: Apple’s video capabilities remain unbeatable. The Pixel 9 Pro series offers 2x as fast video rendering as the Pixel 8 Pro and HDR+ across all zoom levels, from 5x optical to 20x.

🎥 8K upscaling. I’ll have to test this out, as the video recording remains 4K, but Google says that its 8K video upscaling is so high quality and convincing that you can pull out 30MP HDR stills from its AI upscaled videos. Impressive if true.

Battery

🔋 24+ hour battery. Google is touting more than all-day battery life for the first time, and while this is another benchmark that will have to wait for my full Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL review to fully test, I can already tell you it’s poised to be an improvement. Both the 5,060mAh capacity (up from 5,050mAh) and Tensor G4 chipset efficiency combine to break that 24-hour threshold.

🪫 100-hour Extreme Battery Saver. This mode will get you through a rough patch by limiting your phone usage to core apps like the phone, camera, text messages, and the clock (so your alarms won’t turn off). Everything else will be in grayscale.

⚡ 70% charge in 30 mins. Only in the Pixel 9 Pro XL will you find Google’s fastest charging speeds via a 45W charger. Use a laptop charger if you have one because going to 70% in just a half hour is something we tend to see only from phones out of China.

🆚 Only in the Pixel 9 Pro XL. The Pixel 9 Pro (and Pixel 9) can charge to 55% in 30 mins with a 45W charger, and note they have smaller batteries, so for the Pixel 9 Pro XL to get to this level is something. It may be the best reason to buy this phone.

• Up next: Check out our hands-on Google Pixel Watch 3 review

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2. Pixel Watch 3 hands-on: a sizable upgrade for Google’s circular smartwatch

(credit: Google)

Pros

• ✅ ⌚ Google’s stylish circular watch comes in a bigger size

• ✅ 📐 Not only is it bigger, but there’s less screen bezel for a fuller face

• ✅ 💡 Brighter screen that can also get really dim want needed

• ✅ 🔋 New dual-engine processor promises long battery life

• ✅ 🏃‍♂️ Fewer fitness and sleep metrics locked behind a paywall

Cons

• ❌ 😴 Lacks some sleep features seen in the Galaxy Watch Ultra

• ❌ 🪨 Not as durable as Apple or Samsung’s Ultra

• ❌ 💡 Brighter, yes, but outshined by its competition

• ❌ 💸 The LTE version is where things get more expensive

Pricing and where to buy

• 💰 45mm: $399 for WiFi / $449 for LTE

• 💰 41mm: $349 for WiFi / $449 for LTE

• 📆 Pre-order today. Ships September 10

The Google Pixel Watch 3 is my dream smartwatch. Its circular, domed-glass display offers the styling of a classic timepiece combined with the digital smarts and fitness capabilities that rival any smartwatch I’ve reviewed – this includes my Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra review.

When I first reviewed the Google Pixel Watch two years ago, I liked it, but the small size meant the touchscreen was tiny on my wrist and the battery life was weak. Google has fixed that this year with a larger 45mm watch size (while still keeping the 41mm size around as an option for smaller wrists).

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3. Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold hands-on: new design, bigger screens, and lots of AI

Pros

• ✅ 📐 A bigger, better, and lighter 8-inch design

• ✅ ⚙️ Faster performance than ever before

• ✅ ✨ Google Gemini AI gets deeper integration

• ✅ 🤖 7 years of software updates

Cons

• ❌ 🪫 Smaller battery than before

• ❌ 📸 Better camera but not Pixel 9 Pro level

• ❌ 💰 Remains extremely expensive

• ❌ 📱 Samsung leads in refinement & reliability

Pricing and where to buy

• 💰 $1,799

• 📆 Pre-order today. Ships September 4

One of my favorite phones is the original Pixel Fold. It was Google’s first attempt at its own foldable phone with a big inner display, great performance, and a design that felt like you were carrying around a passport. At the company’s Made By Google event in Mountain View, we got our first look at Google’s next foldable called the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and while it makes all the generational upgrades you’d expect, it also gives the device a complete redesign that’s eerily reminiscent of a folding phone from a totally separate company (see my OnePlus Open review).

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4. Pixel 9 hands-on: Google is coming after the iPhone 16

Pros

• ✅ 📐 Refined design that feels more premium

• ✅ ⚙️ Faster performance

• ✅ 📸 Upgraded ultrawide camera

• ✅ ✨ Google Gemini gets deeper integration

• ✅ 🤖 Seven years of software updates

Cons

• ❌ 💰 Price went up by $100

• ❌ 📸 No telephoto camera

• ❌ 🧠 Doesn’t have all AI features of Pros

Pricing and where to buy

• 💰 $799

• 📆 Pre-order today. Ships August 22

Google held a big event at its headquarters in Mountain View to unveil not one, not two, but four new Pixel 9 phones. We had a chance to check them out ahead of the event, and one of the more interesting entries is the standard Pixel 9.

It sits at the bottom of the lineup as the most affordable option, but it’s still plenty powerful compared to its more expensive siblings. I had time to play with it and see what it’s like to use, and you know what? It seems really solid.

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5. Pixel Buds Pro 2 hands-on: these AI earbuds are a better fit

Pros

• ✅ 🤏 Pocket-friendly 27% smaller design

• ✅ 🪶 24% lighter and smaller for a comfortable fit

• ✅ 🤖 AI-powered sound and ANC-tuning

• ✅ 🔍 Find my Device support with an audio cue

• ✅ 🔋 Longer than average battery life

Cons

• ❌ 🙂‍↔️ Spatial audio with head-tracking limited to Pixel devices

• ❌ 📲 Many other features are limited to Android or Pixel devices

• ❌ 🪫 Fast charging only returns 1.5 hours of ANC-off battery life

Price and where to buy

• 💰 $229 ($30 gift card offer at Best Buy)

• 📆 Preorder today. Ships September 26