Google Pixel 7 Pro Review: Sneaky Good
Retail praice: $899
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Disclaimer: Google sent us a unit of the Pixel 7 Pro free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
Product Specs +
- Tensor G2 CPU
- 12 GB Ram
- 128 GB Storage
- 6.7 Inch AMOLED Display
- 1440 x 3120 p (512 ppi)
- 120 Hz Refresh Rate
- 5,000 mAh Battery
Camera Specs +
Rear Cameras
- 50 MP, f/1.9 wide
- 48 MP, f/3.5 telephoto
- 12 MP, f/2.2 ultrawide
Selfie Cameras
- 10.8 MP, f/2.2 selfie
I’ve been using the Google Pixel 7 Pro as my daily driver for nearly 2 whole months now. During that time, I’ve had many people ask me what I thought about Google’s latest flagship device. I’m normally quite expressive with my opinions about features on products, but for some reason I was drawing a blank about how to summarize the phone in my pocket. All I’ve been mustering out is that the Pixel 7 Pro is good. So I took some time to reflect deeper on what I was experiencing and then I realized something. I didn’t have much to say about Google’s flagship not because it was uneventful, but because it did its job as a smartphone so well that it just blended into the background of my everyday life seamlessly. It’s sneaky good. While it isn’t perfect (no phone is), I think Google has finally found a recipe to follow for the long term.
A Mature Year
Physically, not much has changed with the design of the Pixel phones in 2022. This product lineup is distinguished by the camera bar on the glass back. This is a design choice that you either think is really cool looking or an eye sore. I lean more towards the latter as I much preferred the design language of the Pixel 2 and the glass window that housed the cameras. Regardless of one’s design preferences, it’s pretty obvious that Google did away with their playful two-toned approach this year and opted for a very formal appearance. They sent us the Obsidian Black color and it’s mixed with a smooth metallic camera bar and frame. In some ways this is the perfect symbolism for the overall Pixel experience in 2022. It’s mature and straight down to business. There really isn’t anything special or unique about the Pixel’s design, but that also applies to just about every candy bar phone nowadays not named Nothing Phone.
That camera bar houses the longstanding main selling points of Google Pixels as we have a 50 MP, f/1.9 wide sensor, sitting next to a 48 MP, f/3.5 telephoto lens, and a 12 MP f/2.2 ultra-wide. I’ve been able to test this camera out during Thanksgiving and on a trip up to beautiful Canada during autumn season for some good photo ops. To keep my analysis simple and straight to the point, the Pixel 7 Pro lived up to my expectations of how a Pixel camera should perform. In optimal lighting situations, the Pixel 7 Pro is still one of the best mobile phone cameras in picking up a good shot in automatic mode. This is a phone that just about anybody can pull out of their pocket and frame a good looking picture for their Instagram. Colors are distinct without being overly bold. In most cases, the photos have clear and defined sharpness around the edges of the subjects. It gets a little muddier with focal points when we get into macro situations as the AI still isn’t on par with a pair of human hands on a camera lens, but for the most part, I do see progress with every new generation.
Lowlight is where the Pixel phones get a lot of their acclaim from. Over the years, night sight has evolved into a legitimate feature that people buy the phone for. Taking my phone out to snap shots at night in downtown Toronto made me appreciate just how far Google’s AI has come in processing these shots. The sensors play a part in the perceived quality of photos, but Google really has tinkered the way the cameras accept light and processes the photos through software. The last few phones I’ve been reviewing didn’t have some of the software magic that I see here and I realized that I’ve innately just expected that from my smartphones. Lowlight isn’t the world ending obstacle that it was in the 2010’s. I’d be rewriting history if I didn’t acknowledge that the Pixels played a part in my perception of this reality. Scotiabank Arena looked fantastic through my Pixel camera lens at midnight.
The 10.8 MP, f/2.2 front facing camera on the other hand could probably use some more refining as I do think there are better selfie cameras from competitors than what I used here on the Pixel 7 Pro. Video recording is also a mixed bag. While it has the hardware capabilities to handle 4K @60 fps, the execution of how the camera picks up a video could be better. I struggle retaining focus on subjects when attempting to have any slight movement to the shot. Still, overall the Pixel 7 Pro is an absolutely terrific mobile camera package that shouldn’t leave owners disappointed.
just like magic
This year’s camera trick that Google is promoting heavily is the Magic Eraser. By simply using your finger to rub a person or thing you believe is ruining your shot in the background, the software will magically erase it from the picture. Look, this isn’t perfect by any means. If you really want to do this right, you have to throw this into Photoshop. However, not everybody is a Photoshop or Lightroom expert. In fact, many smartphone users who snap hundreds of photos a week just want to do these things in a general sense. This is where Google has made these traditional aspects of photo editing so simple.
I tested the Magic Eraser out on beautiful landscape photos I took of a park in Toronto. I specifically asked my Brother-In-Law to hike down about 100+ feet away for me to wipe him out of my picture. I got rid of him and a couple of other people nearby in a relatively clean manner. I’m quite impressed with how well it handled that section with just a press of a button. Where this feature struggled is with layers and depth of content. At a distant intersection of a road that gets lost in shrubbery, the software AI has trouble deciding what to replicate to cover that area once it removes the obstacles. In this case, it seems to just abruptly close off the road and fill it with more shrubbery. This makes it look like an illusion due to the depth perception forced by the tree branches in the foreground. Of course, this was an extreme case with a wide field of view to manage. In the long run, I found the Magic Eraser to actually be quite good for what it is. If you think of it as an Instagram filter more than a Photoshop tool, you’ll likely embrace this feature a lot more.
Magic Eraser Before And After
Gen 2 performance
The performance of the Pixel 7 Pro is another aspect of the phone that won’t leave users wishing for more. That’s largely thanks to the Tensor G2 SoC with 12 GB of ram and 128 GB of storage. With a year under their belt, Google was able to enhance certain proponents about their upgraded in-house chipset. While on paper, the Tensor G2 doesn’t stack up to Qualcomm’s juggernaut offering in terms of pure statistical power, I honestly didn’t notice a performance difference in everyday usage. Apps and web pages loaded up quickly and tasks flowed from one to another effortlessly. I didn’t come across any mobile games that would cause the Pixel 7 Pro grief either. There were occasional times where, after an hour of farming a game, that the rear of the phone would be a bit uncomfortable to hold due to the heat, but overall the Pixel 7 Pro handles smartphone work like a flagship phone should.
Android 13 chugs along as Google’s OS version for the year. I really haven’t come across anything detrimental to the Android experience with this current version of Android, but I do think there is a natural flow here with the Pixel 7 Pro. Part of the illusion of a great flow is due to the Pixel’s 120 Hz refresh rate on this 6.7 inch AMOLED display. It’s a sharp 1440p resolution with 512 ppi. Scrolling through Android 13 and reading apps is a remarkably smooth experience. Of course it isn’t the only thing out there that does this, but it’s still top notch nonetheless. I find the visual aspect of the Pixel 7 Pro to also be terrific. Colors are rich with distinction and the viewing angles are great from any direction. There’s a slight waterfall drop on the edges that aren’t really noticeable if you have a case on the phone. Viewing media on this AMOLED screen is immensely enjoyable. The phone gets plenty bright enough at full brightness. I find the range the Pixel offers in brightness to be quite drastic. I had no problem with visibility in glaring sunlight.
My two biggest gripes with the Pixel 7 Pro is the battery life and the in-display fingerprint scanner. Neither of them are terrible, but they do slightly lower my daily enjoyment. I’m not a fan of fingerprint sensors under the display. For me, it works 87% of the time. That’s not bad, but if my thumb is too sweaty or the display is a little damp, I max out on my attempts and have to input my pin. It is what it is with this technology. I have this issue with most in-display fingerprint scanners. Fortunately, there’s a face scanner to use as a login that is rather quick to unlock. I still have to wear a mask at my office so it isn’t fully reliable for my usage either.
can still use some improvements
The battery is a different story. There’s a lofty 5,000 mAh cell packed into the Pixel 7 Pro that should get most people through a full workday. If you’re like me and indulge yourself in some gacha games from time to time, the Pixel 7 Pro’s battery cannot handle farming sessions. I normally would say you are actually “gaming” on your mobile phone if you play more than 2 hours a day on it. Anything under is just regular app usage. I legitimately tried to farm on the Pixel 7 Pro and was forced to plug it in twice a day. Once I deleted that game and went back to my regular casual uses, I was hitting a good 4-5 hours of SOT and plenty of battery left before retiring to bed. So while the battery life is sufficient, if you actually game on your phone, I surprisingly found the Pixel 6a to handle that routine much better. There’s different reasons as to why this is, but that was an observation that stuck with me with how I used the Pixel 7 Pro later on in my testing period. Fortunately there’s 21W wireless charging that is extremely convenient.
While I’m nitpicking, I also found the Pixel 7 Pro to be a little too wide and heavy for my hands. It’s just at the brink of what I would consider usable with one hand even though it has what is essentially a standard aspect ratio nowadays of 19.5:9. I’m an average 5’8 male, but I do prefer slightly smaller form factors. Yes, there is a smaller Pixel 7 which I do like the size of, but with that size difference costs some benefits that the Pro embraces like an extra camera, ram and refresh rate. I do wish that OEMs would stop with these spec differences between phone sizes and just offer the same exact products at different sizes and price points. That’s just my personal pet peeve, but I’m looking forward to reviewing the next phone in my drawer, the Asus Zenfone 9 for this reason alone.
Final Verdict
I have to give the Google Pixel 7 Pro high remarks. I just think that this is a really well-rounded device with very few weaknesses. The things I didn’t like about it were minor or preferences that I could live with. Over time, the Pixel 7 Pro just blended into my everyday life and I just kind of forgot about it. I can’t remember the last time a phone fit into my life so nonchalantly without something being wildly interesting or detrimental to my user experience. If Google keeps producing products that are just above average on every category a smartphone functions on, then I don’t care if none of it is extraordinary. I’ll take a well rounded, above average phone everyday of the week over one that has only a single industry leading trait.
Alex
Caught in between the conundrum of his fascination with retro and the future, Alex has a very unique taste in technology. Never one to follow trends like his millennial peers yet constantly desiring to get ahead of the curve, he sees technology like he does his other love: comic books. Always looking for the best value or a hidden gem, his collector mindset reflects on some of his favorite gadgets: the Moto X (2015), HTC U11 and the Google Pixelbook. If there’s a good tech deal out there, Alex is on the hunt!