Google’s Pixel 9series marks the company’s most ambitious lineup yet, featuring the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold. With much of the attention going to the Pro phones, a question remains: How does the standard Pixel 9 fare against its more premium siblings? With its sleek design, upgraded camera system, and robust AI features, the Pixel 9 is unsurprisingly an excellent contender in the smartphone market that offers a very competitive price-to-value ratio.
Disclosure:Google Canada provided our review unit, but all thoughts and opinions are at our discretion. Google did not receive an early preview of this review.
Google Pixel 9
The Google Pixel 9 features a sleek design with a powerful Tensor G4 processor, 12 GB of RAM, and a vibrant 6.3-inch Actua display, making it ideal for capturing stunning photos and videos with its advanced 50 MP main lens and 48 MP ultrawide camera. With improved durability and a fast-charging all-day battery, the Pixel 9 is built to handle daily challenges while delivering top-notch performance and AI-driven capabilities.
Price and Availability
The Pixel 9 is available for $799 in the U.S. at most major online retailers, including Best Buy, Amazon, and directly through the Google Store. The device comes standard with 128GB of storage and can be bought with up to 256GB of non-expandable storage. It is available in Porcelain, Wintergreen, Obsidian, and Peony.
Specifications
Refreshing Industrial Design
Google has made a relatively subtle update to the Pixel 9’s design, but I love the direction they chose to pursue. Departing from its predecessor’s soft, pebble-like contours, this year’s design language has shifted to something more angular, with flat sides, back, and screen.
If you think this design reminds you of the iPhone, you won’t be alone; the Pixel 9 undeniably takes a page out of Apple’s design language, and this green color I have here almost looks like the same minty-green as the iPhone 12. But this isn’t to say the Pixel 9 looks bad by any means.
The camera bar on the back is still distinctly Pixel, but this time, Google has opted for a disconnected visor design, setting it apart from the more seamless designs of previous models. The previous design looked cleaner, but I think this disconnected camera bump makes the phone look more industrial.
The device feels both modern and robust; it’s a bit heavier but much better balanced with its weight distribution. I’m also very content with the size of the regular Pixel 9, as the device is in that sweet spot between being too big and too small; I can comfortably use it with one hand, but I don’t feel congested by the smaller screen.
The only issue I have with the Pixel 9 is the polished glass back. While the higher-end Pixel 9 Pro models get a satin-finish matte glass back, the Pixel 9’s polished glass really detracts from the otherwise commendable design.
It smudges and picks up fingerprints really easily. I’ve kept my devices free from skins and cases over the past year; the Pixel 9 would be the first phone I would recommend picking up something like a dbrand skin or a clear case for.
While it’s clear Google wants to differentiate its entry-level phone from its more premium Pro phones, the matte finish on the glass should be standard at this point, especially since both Apple’s iPhone 15 and Samsung’s Galaxy S24 and S24+ have matte finishes.
Brighter Display
Moving onto the display, the Pixel 9 features a 6.3-inch Actua display that is relatively sharp, vibrant, and noticeably bright. With a new peak brightness of 2,700 nits, it’s one of the brightest screens you’ll find on a smartphone and is easily visible in direct sunlight.
This 1080p OLED panel has a 20:9 aspect ratio and offers a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, but my only minor annoyance is that the higher refresh rate isn’t on by default, and you’ll need to go into display settings to enable it.
One thing I noticed right away was the uniform bezels spanning the display. They are ever so slightly thicker than the Pixel 9 Pro, but still relatively thin, which is great to see in an entry-model.
Using the phone day-to-day, I have no major complaints with the Pixel 9’s display—it’s very consistent and works great for general tasks, content consumption, and gaming. The one thing I will point out is that the phone has a slight yellow off-axis tint, but compared to previous Pixel models, this is not a major issue at all.
A Pixel Camera
When it comes to the camera, the Google Pixel 9 might not have the triple camera system of its Pro siblings, but it still packs a very capable dual camera system. The 50MP wide lens delivers sharp, vibrant images in almost any lighting condition, and the new 48MP ultrawide camera with Macro Focus lets you capture stunning close-ups, now with quality that’s comparable to the main sensor.
Google’s computational photography has always been top-notch, and the Pixel 9 is no different. Google does an excellent job balancing skin tones and making photos look sharp without giving them the over-processed look of other phones.
Something that I really like across the two lenses is the consistency in color science of both sensors. From my experience, aside from the iPhone and the Galaxy S24 Ultra, most phones still struggle to deliver accurate color or even the same color when switching between lenses.
With the Pixel 9, this issue is much improved, and that means this new ultrawide can be used more often to produce the same quality results as the primary lens, which is great to see.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that the lenses on the Pixel 9 are identical to those on the Pixel 9 Pro series. So, aside from optical zoom and a higher-resolution front camera, the Pixel 9 is more or less just as capable in most situations as its more premium siblings.
AI Everywhere, but Good
Pixels are never just about the hardware, and the Pixel 9 is by no means an exception—Google has jam-packed this phone with many AI-driven features, and while many of them can be gimmicky, some are genuinely very useful.
Let’s start with Gemini, Google’s latest AI assistant, which is somewhat of a hybrid between Gemini and the previous Google Assistant. Unlike the older iterations of Google Assistant, Gemini is more proactive and can do quite a lot more than Google Assistant alone.
Gemini is woven pretty well into things like Gmail, Docs, and Drive. I can ask it to summarize my emails or extract specific information from my documents and presentations, and it works very well. My only complaint isn’t necessarily surrounding the accuracy or limitations of the model but more about the fact that it mishears more often than I’d like.
That being said, I am content with how Google has decided to implement Gemini into the Pixel because it doesn’t fully disregard Google Assistant, which is also present on this phone. By default, both Gemini and Google Assistant are on, and depending on the query, one can take on the prompt where the other wouldn’t.
For example, I can ask the phone to “Turn off my flashlight” and use Google Assistant, but if I ask it to “Summarize my emails from today,” it’ll use Gemini to complete the task. It’s surprisingly seamless, and I’m glad to see that the phone can differentiate between prioritizing which assistant to use for a given task.
Magic Editor in the Photos app is another area Google heavily focuses on, and this is where the Pixel 9 shows off some interesting, albeit gimmicky, AI tricks. As before, you can circle, select, and move an object or person in your photos, but what’s new this year is the ability to completely change the photo. Google calls this feature “Reimagine,” and it can enhance the lighting, change the sky from cloudy to sunny, or do whatever you wish to change or add to the photo. I used it with a couple of the photos I took on the phone, and the results can vary from decent to looking like an amateur Photoshop job.
I wish Google hadn’t focused so heavily on changing the core image content through such a high degree of manipulation. It’s fun to mess around with at first, but after a while, it feels gimmicky and doesn’t have any real utility.
For a phone that is capable of taking photos with as much versatility as the Pixel, I think Google would’ve been better off using generative AI to enhance the processing further or giving us more fine-tuned control over how the processing occurs after the photo is taken.
The other generative image-generation feature on the Pixel 9 is Pixel Studios, and in contrast to what the Photos app does, I think Google did an excellent job here. Think of it as Midjourney or DALL-E built right into your phone. Google designed this for those who want to dabble in generative images.
The Pixel Studio app offers a suite of tools that let you create customizable AI artwork through prompts, and it allows you to be specific in choosing the style of artwork you’re looking for. The best aspect of this app is the fact that the image generation model Google is using is built to be run on-device, so not only is it surprisingly fast, it’s usable offline, which is great to see.
In terms of utility, this app is a nice way to create customized invites or something fun to share with friends and family, but it’s still very much in its early stages. While you may open images to edit, you can’t open images that have people in them. It’ll be interesting to see where Google goes with this and whether they’re able to incorporate even more advanced models on-device.
Finally, there’s the Pixel Screenshots app, which might seem minor at first glance but is quite handy. However, I wouldn’t want it as a separate app as it’s given here. The premise of the Pixel Screenshots app is that we all take screenshots to remember things—whether it’s an event, a location, or a piece of information we want to revisit later.
This app takes this a step further by organizing your screenshots automatically and allowing you to search through them using natural language. It works quite well—I screenshot a bunch of clothes from various websites, and I can parse them simply by searching for things like “yellow sweater from Zara,” which brings them up.
The app is quite seamless, but I don’t think it should be a separate entity. It would be much better served as a Google Photos feature that parses through all your photos with the right privacy guard rails and can do what it does in the native Photos app.
Overall, I’m quite impressed with Google’s suite of AI features on the Pixel 9, and I’m happy to see that at least some of them, like Gemini and Pixel Screenshots, are features I’ll find myself using regularly.
Run-of-the-Mill Performance and Battery
The Pixel 9 is commendable when it comes to performance and battery life. This year’s Pixel series is equipped with the Tensor G4 chip and has 12GB of RAM on the base Pixel 9. In my experience, using the Pixel felt relatively snappy, but it was always just a smidge behind the competition, and the Pixel 9 feels no different.
In day-to-day use, I had no issues navigating the UI, opening apps, editing photos, or watching content—it was just a beat slower than theGalaxy Z Flip 6I used last week or myiPhone 15 Pro.
I think that has a lot to do with Google’s smooth animations, but they tend to be inconsistent. For example, scrolling the app drawer is very fluid, but opening the multitasking window can be jagged. These small, noticeable differences make the Pixel feel just a bit slower, but Google seems to be improving.
For the first time, the Pixel finally gets an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, and compared to my previous Pixel, the 6 Pro, it is night and day. Not only is it noticeably faster, but it’s also much more reliable and accurate.
The Pixel 9 is excellent in terms of battery life. Equipped with a 4,700 mAh battery, this phone easily lasts through a full day of moderate to heavy use. I’d say you’re able to occasionally push it to be a two-day phone, but the Pixel 9 is consistent when you rely on it to be an all-day phone.
Paired with a 1080p OLED, with this massive battery and more efficient chip, I had no issues going a full day with taking photos, GPS, streaming videos, or browsing. It’s also nice to see that it supports fast charging, up to 55% in 30 minutes, with a 45W charger.
Overall, I think the Pixel 9 does a great job in the performance and battery life department for a device meant to maximize its value proposition compared to its more premium siblings.
Should You Buy the Google Pixel 9?
After spending time with theGoogle Pixel 9, I’m convinced that Google might have created the best-value AI phone of 2024 so far. Google has put serious thought into making the Pixel 9 a device that truly balances price and utility, even with its $100 price increase.
The AI-driven features, though not all equally useful in daily life, do have merit in ways that improve the user experience of owning this phone—at least when they work as expected.
Sure, the Pixel 9 might not have the triple-camera setup or the brighter displays of its Pro siblings, but this base model holds its own in all the areas that matter. The phone delivers a lot without asking you to pay the premium for features you might not need. If you’re looking for a smart, reliable phone packed with AI features that make a difference, the Pixel 9 is an easy recommendation that doesn’t sacrifice the essentials.
