Google Pixel 9 Pro Review: Google’s best Pixel yet

It would be easy to write the Pixel 9 Pro off as just “the small Pixel 9 Pro XL” — but that would be doing this phone a serious disservice.

Score: 4/5

In this review

Specifications
Design
Camera
Performance
Battery
Conclusion

For reasons it hasn’t in fact specified – but that I can guess had to do with factory production – Google ever-so-slightly delayed release of the Google Pixel 9 Pro until after the Google Pixel 9, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold were available.

Which means, amongst other things, that it feels like I’ve been reviewing Pixel 9 phones for a long time now, even though it’s only been a couple of months.

In many important respects, the Google Pixel 9 Pro is the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, just with a smaller screen, smaller battery and lower price point.

So it’s the same phone, but slightly less – can I go now?

No?

Well, actually, that’s fine, because while the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL are definitely stablemates, there are some significant differences that lead to the Pixel 9 Pro being my favoured model of the non-folding Pixels this year.

Also read:
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review

Google Pixel 9 Pro XL Review

Google Pixel 9 Review

Design

While it’s part of Google’s Pro lineup, visually the Pixel 9 Pro is much more similar to the cheaper Google Pixel 9, built around a 6.3 inch 1280x2856 pixel 120Hz LTPO display, which means it can shift from 1Hz up to 120Hz refresh rates depending on the content on display at the time.

Read a lot of eBooks and you’ll be at the lower-end of that range, but if you play a lot of higher-end games you’re more likely to be playing in 120Hz territory.

That variable refresh rate screen does mark it out from the regular Pixel 9, which only supports 60Hz or 120Hz refresh rates with no variability between them. Google doesn’t give you a lot of granularity with choices, however, with only the option for “Smooth Mode” – which enables up to 120hz – to choose from.

The Pixel 9 Pro does borrow its colour schemes from the Pixel 9 Pro XL, however, rather than the Pixel 9, which means you’ve got a choice of Porcelain (white) Obsidian (Black), Hazel (Grey/Green) or Rose Quartz (Pink) to choose from. Google sent a Hazel model my way, which would probably be my choice of what’s available.

Then again, I’m me, and a case is going to go on any phone I’d use long-term, and I’d advise you to do the same, especially at the prices you pay for one.

The big design change that Google brought to the Pixel family isn’t that much of a change.

The camera bar that’s defined previous Pixel generations has been rounded at the sides, giving it more of a “pill” look (or, technically a “stadium” shape). Having a case on does reduce the impact of that pill/stadium a little, giving it a flatter feel in the hand.

Google’s claims for the new generation of Pixels are that they’re “twice as durable” as the older models, though this is mostly likely to inner frame changes rather than a radical uptick in water and dust resistance.

The Pixel 9 Pro is rated at IP68, though the specifications page on Google’s Australian store doesn’t actually list its test conditions. In terms of its glass, it’s wrapped in Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which should help with minimising breaks and scratches to an extent.

Basically, it should survive an accidental dunking and maybe a few drops, but don’t go crazy and take it to go explore where the wreck of the Hesperus might lie*. That would end poorly. There’s a reason why I don’t test phones to the point of destruction. Several, actually.

Camera

Remember in the introduction when I said that the Google Pixel 9 Pro was the Pixel 9 Pro XL, only smaller?

Good, you’re paying attention.

Often with “Pro” phones, it’s only the biggest phone in the room that gets the very best camera specifications, largely as an upsell to that specific model.

However, that’s not what Google’s done here, because it shares the exact same camera specifications as the Pixel 9 Pro XL, just in a smaller physical body.

What that means is that at the rear you get a 50MP Wide sensor, 48MP Ultrawide and 48MP 5x Telephoto lenses, while your selfie taking is managed via a 42MP front-facing sensor that’s also accurate enough to handle proper biometric unlocking – which means you can use facial identification to authenticate purchases with it, something that isn’t supported for simpler phones that use flat images for easier phone unlocking purposes.

What all of this adds up to is a phone that shoots as well as the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and in some ways a little better.

Why better? It’s because at that 6.3 inch size, it’s a much easier phone to handle for shot composition and holding the camera steady.

If you’ve got truly gigantic hands at a Paul Wight level, that’s maybe moot, but for us regular humans, a camera that’s easier to handle is one that’s easier to use, whether that’s for those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shots, or for more delicate shot work, across all three rear lenses and the front-facing selfie camera.

Nyssa cannot hide in the low light and on the carpet from the Pixel 9 Pro's cameras.

Good close-up detail -- and again, this was shot in murky light, but you wouldn't pick that.

Selfies are good, though I could wish for a prettier selfie subject. 

Oh look, a Pelican, shot on the wide lens. Let's get in a little closer, shall we?

Standard wide lens makes the Pelican look quite lonely.

Zooming in shows that it's  just hungry.

Full 30x zoom is... not superb. That's true of most extreme digital hybrid zooms.

The obligatory cat portrait photo. Of course it's obligatory, it's the Internet, the Internet loves cats.

You also get access to Google's suite of AI enhancement features, and while I still do like the sharpening that Google's Zoom Enhance offers, the rest of the suite is a lot less thrilling. Take reimagine, for example, which lets you alter an image via a text prompt.

So say, for example, I have a photo of a duck (as you do), and I wanted to change it up a bit. Oh look, here's one:

A duck, just as nature intended, as shot by the Pixel 9 Pro

Let's reimagine this duck, but with scales instead of feathers. How does reimagine do with that?

The answer is... not well. At all.

Performance

The Pixel 9 Pro really is just the Pixel 9 Pro XL with a smaller display, and that means that it packs in the same Tensor G4 processor and 16GB of onboard RAM.

In Australia, it’s available with either 128GB, 256GB or 512GB of fixed storage, though there is a 1TB model available in other markets. If you want 1TB on an model in Australia, it’ll have to either be a grey import or a Pixel 9 Pro XL. I’ve no idea why the 1TB model isn’t being sold here, Google sometimes moves in mysterious ways…

The Pixel 9 Pro’s performance is, therefore – and not surprisingly – very similar to that of its Pixel 9 companions, sitting a little lower than you’ll see on other flagship phones, because Tensor is a lower performance chip. Here’s how it compares using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:

Before anyone complains, the Galaxy S24 FE isn’t quite the comparable phone ideally; that would (for now, at least) be the Samsung Galaxy S24 – but Samsung Australia never provided those for review in Australia so I don’t have any figures to use, and the S24 FE is the closest equivalent.

Also read:
Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Review

It’s a mostly similar story in the GPU department, where the Pixels lie in a performance bracket below their Samsung and Apple counterparts:

Technically the Pixel 9 Pro bested its siblings there, but by such a small margin that it means essentially nothing in real-world performance terms. While the Tensor G4 handles most Android apps well enough, if you’re after performance power, it’s not the processor you want.

Which is a problem if you’re looking widely at all your available Pixel options. While it's cheaper than the Pixel 9 Pro XL or Pixel 9 Pro Fold, with pricing starting at $1,699, it’s by no means a “cheap” phone, and critically it’s not as competitively priced as some prior Pixel generations have been.

For years now I’ve recommended Pixels at least partly because you were getting near-premium performance at a significant discount to premium prices, and that’s no longer the case.

Google’s contention is that concerns about performance are moot, because the Pixel 9 series phone’s secret sauce is AI, and slatherings of it. To prove this the Pixel 9 Pro (and the Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, but not the regular Pixel 9) all come with a one-year Gemini Advanced subscription, giving you access to Google’s more advanced, more conversational cloud-based AI.

My general position on consumer-facing AI on devices hasn’t really changed all year long, because while it is an evolving field, right now I tend to hit more snags of miscomprehension or weird results than I do genuinely useful content that I’d pay real money for.

The best part in my view of that Gemini Advanced 12 month subscription is the fact that it’s actually a Google One plan, and that means you get 2TB of Google Drive storage along with it.

Google is betting big on AI, both on-device and in the cloud, and it clearly sees it as the way forward – but right I would strongly argue that it’s not quite there.

While we wait to see if AI will take over the world, this review has taken some serious work and time (if that wasn’t obvious), and one thing you could spend just a little money on is supporting AlexReviewsTech
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The catch here if you are besotted with all things Gemini Advanced is that once that 12 month period is finished, you’ll have to pay for access, priced currently at $32.99.

That’s per month, not per year, so if you used Gemini Advanced for the full six years of Android updates that the Pixel 9 Pro will get past that first free year, you’d end up paying an additional $2,375.28, or more than the cost of any given model of the Pixel 9 Pro again.

I’m not sure I see the value there myself.

For example, you get access to Google’s “Pixel Studio” AI image creation app, but again I’m more struck by the limitations and implications than I am wowed by the technology.

As someone who makes their living writing and creating content such as video, podcasts and the like, I can’t love AI-generated art simply for the work it’s taking away from actual human creative professionals.

But even if you don’t care that way at all, Pixel Studio has some notable issues. At the time of writing it still won’t create images of humans, and while I appreciate that avoids issues of deepfakes, it also limits what you can do.

Google is putting the final touches on human images. That doesn't sound at all creepy, right?

Even past those limitations,  the results can still be somewhat "off" in that now-standard AI way.

While it won’t do people, it doesn’t seem to care about copyrighted characters, so I could send Godzilla merrily on a worldwide holiday/rampage. Here he is in Hawaii:

And I can have him in different art styles for that same prompt:

Here he is in Paris, though for some reason Pixel Studio seems to think that the French built the Eiffel Tower… three times.

How about Sydney?

The Harbour Bridge is fine, but Godzilla walking on the water isn’t right…

Nobody tell Toho about this, alright? Though if you are going to sue, Toho, Google has way more money than I do…

Like the other Pixel 9 phones, Google’s promise for the Pixel 9 Pro is for seven years of OS upgrades, security updates and Pixel feature drops, though this starts with Android 14, not Android 15. It’ll be interesting to see quite how far the Pixel 9 Pro gets in Android feature terms, though it has already been bumped up to Android 15 at the time of writing.

I’m also deeply annoyed with Google for making the call that this year’s Pixel phones, excluding the Pixel 9 Pro Fold are 5G Sub-6Ghz phones only in Australia.

If you want a 5G mmWave phone in Australia right now, your only new option is the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, or buying a slightly older Pixel 8 Pro or Pixel 8 Pro XL. So, yeah… the older Pixels are technically the better phones when it comes to mobile networks, and this is not how it’s meant to work, Google!

I would gladly have kept mmWave and opted away from the truly weird thermometer that’s built into the Pixel 9 Pro. It’s there, and sure, I can measure the temperature of my desk if I wanted to (25.3 degrees Celsius, and you cared exactly as much as I do), but it’s not TGA-certified, which means it’s not technically suitable for measuring my own body temperature if I’m unwell.

Checking it against my skin, it reckons on a warm day that I’m around 31 degrees, which would suggest I’m chilly, so I have my doubts about its accuracy in any case.

Battery

Putting googly eyes (optional) makes it look like a terrified child.

The Pixel 9 Pro has a 4,700mAh battery, a touch lower than the Android standard these days of 5,000mAh, though as I always note, it’s not the size that counts – it’s how economically a given combination of processor, screen and app usage chews through the power available.

Here I turn to my standard YouTube One Hour battery test at first, pitting it against the same crop of smartphone benchmark contenders. Here’s how it fared:

That result surprised me, if only because the Pixel 9 shares the same battery size and doesn’t have the advantage of a full LTPO 1-120Hz display to help it conserve battery – though again, with video playing the odds of falling to 1Hz are quite low. 96% remaining isn’t a bad score to speak of, however, and it should point to an easy all-day battery life for most users by itself.

Where battery matters got interesting was when I threw it through my extended three hour YouTube battery test. I’ve only recently started using that expanded test, but I have been able to throw it against many of the same phones – and here the Pixel 9 Pro did a lot better:

The regular Pixel 9 is still the better overall battery performer, but the Pixel 9 Pro’s three hour figure puts it ahead of the larger Pixel 9 Pro XL, which is truly pleasing to see.

Rather predictably, you don’t get a charger in the box with the Pixel 9 Pro, though it does support 45W USB-C charging or Qi charging at up to 21W.

Google Pixel 9 Pro: Alex’s Verdict

Google’s Pixel lines exist in their own particular Android niche; they’re not quite powerful enough to be the absolute flagship standards, and (sadly) they’re not quite so competitively priced as they used to be to make them absolute slam-dunk recommendations either.

However, if I was picking a non-folding Pixel to buy this year, it would be the Pixel 9 Pro.

You’re not getting the larger display of the Pixel 9 Pro XL, but you are getting better longer term battery life, the same excellent camera array and the same year’s worth of 2TB Google Drive storage that also has Gemini Advanced attached to it. Though I suspect Google sees that latter point the other way round, but why quibble?

The regular Google Pixel 9 is still a fine phone, but once you take out the cost of the Gemini Advanced subscription that’s free for a year only on the Pixel 9 Pro/Pro XL/Fold phones, you’re in essentially the same pricing territory for a phone with a better display and better cameras — and all of that adds up to making the Pixel 9 Pro the best of this year’s Pixel 9 crop.

Or in other words, no, it’s not just a smaller Pixel 9 Pro XL after all.

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* Spoiler: That poem is fiction, you wouldn’t find it anyway.