Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: Improved but not yet perfected

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is an interesting phone, in as much as it doesn’t have particularly large shoes to fill. Google phones usually set a very high bar but the search giant’s previous foldable phone – the Google Pixel Fold – had a laundry list of issues that should make it relatively easy to surpass.

For the most part, the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a big step up. The build is better, performance and battery life are stronger, software support is more extensive and it unfolds to the largest internal display on any current folding phone.

Some major issues remain, though, and despite being the same price as the previous generation, it’s still very expensive. Ultimately, while a solid improvement, the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold still feels like a step along the way to the Google foldable you will eventually want to buy.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: What you need to know

The biggest change compared to the original Pixel Fold is the overall design. Where the first model was quite short and squat, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold lands much closer to the competition, with a folded aspect ratio that better resembles a standard smartphone. The cover display is a 6.3in OLED unit with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,424 and a 120Hz refresh rate – although there’s no LTPO dynamic adjustment on this panel.

The inner display can adjust between 1Hz and 120Hz and, to be fair, this one is the area in which you really want that kind of power-saving. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s massive 8in screen is the largest on any current foldable phone and offers up a crisp 2,152 x 2,076 resolution.

Sitting in the top right corner of the internal display is one of the phone’s 10MP (f/2.2) selfie cameras, with its twin sitting centrally at the top of the external display. On the rear, we have a redesigned square-ish camera module housing the same 48MP (f/1.7) main camera and 10.8MP (f/3.1) telephoto camera as the previous generation, alongside a new 10.5MP (f/2.2) ultrawide camera.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold runs on the latest Google Tensor G4 chipset, paired with 16GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage space. The battery is a little smaller than last time, now a 4,650mAh unit, and charging speeds once again extend to 21W wired and 7.5W wireless.

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Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: Price and competition

There are two variants of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the good news is that both are exactly the same price as last year’s Google Pixel Fold. The bad news is that these prices are still incredibly expensive. The 256GB model is £1,749 or you can double the onboard storage, lifting the price to a hefty £1,849.

Google has two main competitors at this price. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 starts a little higher, with the 256GB model costing £1,799, and there are a couple of even more expensive options with a 512GB variant at £1,899 and a 1TB model coming in at £2,099.

Cheaper than both is the Honor Magic V3, with the single 16GB/512GB configuration priced at £1,699. This is the thinnest foldable on the market right now and beats the Pixel 9 Pro Fold in raw performance, but battery life is around an hour lower than either the Pixel or the Galaxy and software support isn’t as extensive.

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Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: Design and key features

It’s unfortunate for the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold that it launched around the same time as the Honor Magic V3, as the latter’s incredibly slim proportions make the Pixel look fairly chunky by comparison. In actuality, it’s slimmer (albeit taller) than the first Pixel Fold, measuring 77 x 10.5 x 155mm when folded and 150 x 5.1 x 155mm unfolded. It’s also lighter, dropping from 283g to 257g, although it is still the heaviest of any current book-style foldable.

It has the same IPX8 water-resistance rating but the scratch resistance has been upgraded, with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 covering the rear and the external display. The bezels around the cover screen are still quite thick, especially compared to the Magic V3, and there’s a fair amount of wasted space on the hinge side. If the cover screen could have stretched more to the edge, I think it would have helped to make the phone’s profile appear less chunky.

Unfortunately, the colour options are no more interesting than the first Pixel Fold, with only Google’s standard Obsidian (black) and Porcelain (white) styles to choose from. Compared with the lush green and brown the Honor Magic V3 comes in, the new deep red of the OnePlus Open and the pastel pink of the Galaxy Z Fold 6, it does feel a bit boring.

A big step up over the original Pixel Fold is software support. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold starts out with Android 14 and is set for seven years of updates – the same as the rest of the Pixel 9 series. We’ve also got Gemini AI from launch here, meaning you get the new AI-powered assistant, as well as features like daily summaries in the new weather app, image generation with Pixel Studio and the ability to search through your screenshots by keyword.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: Displays

There’s a lot of good things to say about the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s displays, so I’ll just get the main drawback out of the way up top: the hinge crease that runs down the centre of the main display is better here than it was on the first Pixel Fold, but it’s still not as discreet as those found on the Galaxy Z Fold 6, OnePlus Open and Honor Magic V3.

Now onto the good stuff. Just like the rest of the Pixel 9 series, the 9 Pro Fold has among the brightest displays I’ve ever tested. The 8in main panel hit a peak of 989cd/m2 with auto-brightness disabled, while switching to adaptive pushed it to 1,587cd/m2 and HDR content topped out at 1,664cd/m2. The external display is even better, hitting 1,156cd/m2 with auto-brightness disabled, 1,994cd/m2 on adaptive and 1,838cd/m2 in the HDR test.

Both displays are also brilliantly colour-accurate. With the Natural colour profile selected, I measured an sRGB gamut reproduction of 95.7%, with an excellent average Delta E colour variance score of just 0.7 (anything under 1 is essentially perfect). The external display was even better, reproducing up to 98.8% of the gamut and an average Delta E of 0.65. In short, these are crisp, bright and incredibly well-coloured displays, easily some of the best on any foldable going right now.

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Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: Performance and battery life

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is fitted with the same Google Tensor G4 chipset as the rest of the Pixel 9 series and, like its siblings, it scored solid benchmark results but still falls some way behind the best in the business. As you can see below, the fastest foldable is the Galaxy Z Fold 6, pulling 5% ahead of the Pixel in the single-core benchmarks and a massive 73% in the multi-core benchmarks.

Despite languishing in the benchmarks, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is still nippy enough in general use, and the same holds true on the gaming side of things. The massive 8in display is fantastic for gaming when the app stretches out to cover the entire display. Some titles – Asphalt Legends Unite, for example – have thick black bars above and below the play area, however, so your favourites may not make full use of the space.

Once again, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold performs reasonably well in the gaming benchmarks but it can’t hold a candle to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6’s performance, with the latter being the only entry on this list that managed to surpass 60fps in the on-screen portion. I still consider the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s gaming performance to be solid enough but when you’re paying this much money, is that really acceptable?

Battery life shows a big leap over the first Pixel Fold, with the main display lasting 22hrs 30mins – an improvement of nearly six hours over the Pixel Fold – and the cover screen lasting 28hrs 33mins. That puts it neck-and-neck with the Galaxy Z Fold 6, an hour ahead of the Magic V3 and just over three hours better than the OnePlus Open.

Charging speeds still aren’t great, though, with the 21W wired capacity bringing the battery to 50% in around 29 minutes and filling it up in roughly 1hr 15mins. That’s in the same ballpark as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 (25W) but the Honor Magic V3 (66W) and OnePlus Open (67W) both achieve a full charge in under an hour.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: Cameras

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold doesn’t get the same new suite of cameras as the rest of the 9 series but what we do get is still solid. The 48MP (f/1.7) main camera is the same shooter found on the first Pixel Fold, which is a bit of a disappointment but at least it’s still a solid performer, capturing a decent amount of detail in good lighting.

The difference comes from Google’s improved image processing, which effectively fine-tunes the exposure and expands the dynamic range after the picture is taken. The result is images that feel close to the quality of the Pixel 9 Pro XL, even if they aren’t quite equal.

The 5x optical zoom yields solid enough images but between the 10.8MP resolution and the fairly narrow f/3.8 aperture, the levels of detail captured aren’t anything spectacular. The 20x maximum hybrid zoom range isn’t as exciting as the Magic V3’s 100x or even the Galaxy Z Fold 6’s 30x but neither of those look great at maximum magnification so I don’t think there’s anything lost here by topping out at a lower level.

Night photography is lovely, as well, with great colours, effective brightening and a minimum of noise in the big blocks of darkness. The detail in the far background is a little weaker than the rest of the Pixel 9 series, but compared to other foldables, this is a great effort.

The 10.5MP (f/2.2) ultrawide camera is the biggest weak spot and a lot worse than the other Pixel 9 phones, all of which have higher resolutions and wider apertures on their ultrawide shooters. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s ultrawide works fine but the detail is fairly weak and the colours are less vibrant than the main lens is capable of capturing.

Video, once again, is captured in 4K resolution at up to 60fps with the option to record 10-bit HDR footage at 30fps. There’s no 8K recording – the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 stands alone on that front – but otherwise this is a solid lin up of video capabilities. More to the point, the camera selection as a whole is enhanced with fun new features, including Add Me – which allows you to composite the photo taker into group shots after the fact – and Made You Look, which shows an animated character on the external display to keep children looking towards the camera when you take their photo.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: Verdict

In terms of advancement over its predecessor, I’d argue the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is more of a step up than any other foldable this year. The 8in main display is the largest around, impressively bright and wonderfully colour accurate, the design is sleeker and more comfortable in general use and performance is stronger across the board.

The problem is the main competitors were already working from fairly solid standings, so their small upgrades result in phones that are still superior to Google’s latest effort. The Honor Magic V3 is ludicrously slim and lightweight, while still offering great performance and solid cameras, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 leads the class in performance and matches Google’s excellent seven years of software support.

With this kind of quality in the field, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold struggles to keep up and is tough to recommend over either of those options. If Google can keep the momentum going, however, the Pixel Fold has a decent shot at being a serious threat in the next generation.