Google Pixel 9 Pro review: This small phone casts a large shadow

The Google Pixel 9 Pro marks a turning point for Google’s traditionally uncomplicated lineup of flagship smartphones. Where once there were just two mainline Pixel handsets released at this time of the year, now there are four, and the Pro handset is no longer just one handset but three. Coming in alongside the standard Pixel 9 Pro is now the big-screened Pixel 9 Pro XL and the foldable Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Of these three Pros, the standard Pixel 9 Pro is actually the unprecedented one, being Google’s first compact Pro phone. It’s also the best of the bunch. Offering more for your money than the Pixel 9 while being friendlier to your wallet than either the XL or the Fold, the Google Pixel 9 Pro is the best Pixel handset going this year – so long as you’re after a compact handset.

Google Pixel 9 Pro review: What you need to know

Considering the £100 gulf between their starting prices, it’s impressive just how much hardware the Pixel 9 Pro shares with the XL model. Both run on the new 3.1GHz Tensor G4 chipset, backed up by a whopping 16GB of RAM and 128GB, 256GB or 512GB of storage space – the XL also gets a 1TB option, which is absent here.

The cameras are identical as well; the 50MP (f/1.7) main camera is joined by a 48MP ultrawide shooter with a much wider f/1.7 aperture (compared to last year’s f/2.2) and a 48MP (f/2.8) 5x optical telephoto lens. Over on the front of the phone is a much larger 42MP (f/2.2) selfie shooter, up from the Pixel 8 Pro’s 10.5MP number.

The only differences of note are the display and the battery. The former is a 6.3in OLED panel with a sharp 2,856 x 1,280 resolution and the same adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate as the XL. The battery, meanwhile, is a fair bit smaller (4,700mAh vs 5,060mAh) and charging speeds are a little weaker, with 27W wired and 15W wireless with a Pixel Stand charger or 12W wireless with any other compatible Qi charger.

The most prominent additions this year are all AI-based, and on this front, the Pixel 9 Pro matches the XL beat for beat. Among the new toys to play with is a dedicated screenshots app that collects your captures together and allows you to sort them into groups and search through them by keyword. There’s also a late-to-the-party image generator in the Pixel Studio and a redesigned weather app that includes AI summaries that can be quickly scanned.

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Google Pixel 9 Pro review: Price and competition

The Pixel 9 Pro starts at the same price as the Pixel 8 Pro, with the 128GB model costing £999. Both the 256GB and 512GB variants are £40 more than last year, however, now priced at £1,099 and £1,219, respectively.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus is technically the closest Android competitor, launching for the same £999 asking price, but the Pixel 9 Pro shares more similarities with the Galaxy S24. Samsung’s compact flagship starts at just £799 for the 128GB model, with the 256GB version costing £859 – there’s no 512GB version here, so Google has that advantage.

Over on the other side of the fence, you see the clear inspiration for Google’s new approach to its Pro phones with Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro. Even the pricing is mostly the same with the 128GB model at £999 and the 256GB at £1,099. The 512GB is a slightly pricier £1,299 and there’s also a 1TB variant for £1,499.

Google Pixel 9 Pro review: Design and key features

Google’s also been copying Apple’s homework with this new design, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. With so many brands competing for your attention and money in the smartphone arena, the temptation to mimic the biggest players is understandable. Yet, I think that ditching the rounded edges and full-width camera bar in one fell swoop has made the Pixel 9 Pro marginally less comfortable in the hand and more generic in design.

The finishes are also the wrong way round: the shiny edges are nearly impossible to keep free of fingerprints, while the matte camera housing blends too much into the rear. This is most notable on the Obsidian style reviewed here, which is just a slab of black, but the Porcelain, Hazel and Rose Quartz colourways aren’t much better, either. Compared to last year’s polished aluminium camera bar, the Pixel 9 Pro feels like much less of a statement.

One final gripe about the camera housing is that it’s thicker than last year’s model too, bulging out a good couple of millimetres from the flat rear. The phone itself is still nice and thin, at least, measuring 72 x 8.5 x 158mm (WDH) and weighing in at a solid but not uncomfortable 199g. It’s also nicely robust, with the IP68 weather resistance rating returning and a sheet of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protecting both the display and the rear of the handset.

In terms of features, we’ve got a new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor beneath the screen, which should prove more secure than the previous optical scanner and face unlocking returns. Then there’s a host of new AI features with the further integration of Gemini, including a new weather app that provides daily summaries, generative AI images via the Pixel Studio app and a new app for your screenshots that allows you to search through them quickly via keywords.

Software starts out with Android 14 and the roadmap promises seven years of updates. As I mentioned in my Pixel 9 Pro XL review, the phones are launching before Android 15 is ready, so this means that they could end up getting no more updates than the Pixel 8, since last year’s phones also launched with Android 14. Given that we’re talking past the year 2030 at this point, however, it seems unlikely that many people will still be using the Pixel 9 Pro to be mad about this.

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Google Pixel 9 Pro review: Display

The display being smaller than the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s shouldn’t be mistaken for it being weaker. The manual peak of 543cd/m² is fairly standard for a modern flagship but switching to adaptive brightness and shining a torch on the light sensor blasted that number up to an outstanding 1,466cd/m². It got even better when displaying HDR content, going all the way up to 1,894cd/m² – these figures are nothing short of exceptional and so close to the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s results that the differences are negligible.

The Adaptive colour profile kept things looking punchy when I was streaming, while the Natural setting achieved a total sRGB gamut coverage of 98.5% and a volume of 99.9%. The average Delta E colour variance score came back at 0.85, which is a little higher than the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s result of 0.62 but anything below 1 still indicates excellent colour accuracy.

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Google Pixel 9 Pro review: Performance and battery life

The Pixel 9 Pro uses the same 3.1GHz Tensor G4 chipset as the rest of the 9-series, so unsurprisingly, it performs near-enough identically to the Pixel 9 Pro XL. That means a small improvement over the Pixel 8 Pro but still falls well short of the Galaxy S24 and iPhone 15 Pro.

It’s the same story on the gaming front, with the Pixel 9 Pro barely surpassing the 8 Pro in the GFXBench tests. The Galaxy S24 is by far the best bet here but the Pixel 9 Pro still performed well in the rest of my tests, running Asphalt Legends Unite without stuttering.

Battery life was a key consideration on whether or not I’d consider the Pixel 9 Pro to be superior to the 9 Pro XL, which scored very well here. As it turned out, so did the 9 Pro, squeezing a massive 27hrs 39mins out of its smaller battery. That’s only a couple of hours short of the XL model and a huge leap over all of the Pixel 8 series.

Google Pixel 9 Pro review: Cameras

Cameras are always the standout of Pixel phones and a big part of that is the editing and processing software. Zoom Enhance is available from launch, tidying up your digitally cropped images to make them look more crisp (though I found that some results were too oversharpened for my liking) and Add Me allows you to get the whole family in a group shot by compositing in the photo-taker afterwards. It’s fairly seamless and also presents a great opportunity to stage your own Parent Trap-style shenanigans:

When it’s not being used for nonsense, the main camera is still a beautiful shooter, with excellent dynamic range, vibrant colours and a wealth of detail. Whether you’re taking shots on the brightest day…

…or darkest night, images are crisp and exposed just right. The night camera sometimes adds a little too much visual noise to big blocks of darkness like the sky and sea, but most of the time you’ll be left with clean and beautiful shots.

The 48MP (f/2.8) periscope telephoto camera delivers gorgeous 5x optical shots (below), plucking out plenty of details and keeping the exposure levels nice and even. Go to a 10x hybrid zoom and things still look decent, though beyond that you’re getting into oil-painting territory.

The 48MP ultrawide camera gets a new, wider f/1.7 aperture and you can see every penny on the page, with the wide shots packing in the details and matching the colouring of the main camera. There’s very minor smudging in the corners on occasion but this is still one of the best ultrawide cameras out there.

The video suite adds 8K at 30fps to the already expansive offering, as well as SuperRes Zoom Video, which essentially uses AI to upscale the quality of your zoomed footage, stabilising any shakes and sharpening the details. It takes quite a while (and isn’t all on-device, so you need to stay on Wi-Fi) but the results were notably smoother.

Google Pixel 9 Pro review: Verdict

Admittedly, I’m a big fan of a compact flagship so I was already primed to prefer the Pixel 9 Pro to the Pixel 9 Pro XL. But the fact that all the XL has over this one is a bigger display and an extra couple of hours’ battery life cements my initial instinct that the compact Pixel 9 Pro is the Google phone to beat for this generation.

The cameras are as exceptional as we’ve come to expect from Pixels, the display is vibrant, colour-accurate and incredibly bright and the Gemini AI features are plentiful and intuitive – even if I disagree on the necessity of some of them. I don’t love the new design, and you can get better performance from the Samsung Galaxy S24, but the Pixel 9 Pro offers more than enough speed for most users. This is Google’s best phone of the year and it sets a high standard for compact flagships moving forwards.