GOOGLE PIXEL 7 & 7 PRO REVIEW RIDICULOUS.
The pixel 7 and 7 pro might just be the best smartphones I've ever used but they kind of have to be up against both their hardware and their software together to extract the most out of what they have Android has needed a company who can do the same who can show us what a truly built from the ground the ground up optimised Android experience look like.
And that's why it had to add somebody who makes the software to finally show us how now whether you go for the pixel 7 at 599 or the 7 pro at 899 the unboxing experience is about average for for 2022 you get the phones on top no charger.
But hey at least we get a USBC cable and an adapter that's going to help us with fast setup and then for some reason a 140 page manual in both and here we have them pixel 7 and pixel 7 pro so about a week before I switched over to these phones I decided to go back to last year's pixel 6 pro to see where Gogle left off and I was still even in 20 22 mostly blown away.
Is this fantastical software experience that just feels alive the phone takes some of the best point-and-click photos I've ever seen compared to not just 2022 smartphones.
But even professional cameras and it's all packaged in this slick but distinctive futuristic shell that just screams my name but there's three things that hold it back the chipset Google self-made tensor is pretty underpowered the battery life is mediocre and while the pixel 6 does take astonishing photos the video quality kind of sucks with graininess in every corner.
Well I'm happy to report that Google has not juts fixed all of these key weakness with the pixel 7s but on top of that created something so unbelievably good that it's shown me something I didn't even know I wanted so let's start with design I'm going to be honest with you when I first picked up these phones.
I thought to myself what have you done Google the two-tone colours that we had before were more interesting than the flat color options we have now and there was something quite cool and mysterious about how the last phones just had this entire continuous band that was filled with unspecified Google camera magic compared to now where it's a bit more standard like okay this bit.
Camera lens this bit is well empty but since the pixel 7s have grown on me quite a lot I've started to appreciate this slightly more rounded corners the clicker power button how the sides now seamlessly connect to the camera visor on the back as opposed to it feeling like a separate piece.
And how the back itself is now made of a more scratch resistant blaster last time more than anything I'm actually just realy glad that they've kept this visor at all it's a good design choice it gives your fingers a natural place to rest which isn't on the cameras even in landscape mode when I'm playing games on this phone I actually find that I'm using it as an addition way to grip the phone.
And actually the benefit of it being a matte finish this time makes that action feel a bit less icky not to mention that because the visor is even across the entire back it makes the phone sit flat when resting on a table the only thing that I can't get used to is the fact that the base pixel 7 which has a flat display compared to the curved one on the 7 pro does feel a little sharp where that screen intersects with the body which is not ideal given how much you're going to be swiping across it for gesture controls the screens themselves are good though you get a full HD panel on the pixel 7.
And a larger Quad HD panel on the pro and I'm not actually bothered by the resolution 1080p is plenty the only thing that I don't love about the base model is the new simply thicker chin at the bottom it's not terrible but having seen phones for less than 500 that have managed to get even borders all around would have been a nice touch.
But once you get inside the phones that's where things start to get juicy remember the pixel 7 and 7 pro are the first phones to be powered by Google's second generation tensor chip that's a big deal and yet nowhere has anyone mentioned how powerful it is not to worry we'll do it we pull up a quick geek bench on the pixel 7s you can see that tensor Gen 2 is actually very much neck.
And neck with Samsung's s22 Ultra and CPU performance which is impressive for two reasons one that speed was a serious limiting factor last time.
And they seemed to have fixed it and two that you're getting this top level performance not just on the 899 pixel 7 pro but also the 599 pixel and then to test the graphics capability I run the antutu Benchmark which shows us that the GPU within the pixels is about five percent behind Samsung and that if we run the test repeatedly.
This is the result from my third consecutive run of this antutu benchmark all phones get about as hot as each other and they all lose about the same amount of performance under sustained loads or in other words if you're a serious mobile gamer then you'll still get better performance on a proper gaming phone.
But at the same time it is a massive relief that we finally got enough power that it doesn't feel compromised you can still pull up even the most heavyweight games Android has to offer like apex legends Genji and impact and pretty much max out the settings.
But this tensor G2 chip is not just about gaming in fact I don't think Google mentioned gaming in their entire presentation the key things that they focused on are how it benefits the day-to-daysoftwrae experience and how it benefits the camera and these are no joke.
The two best things about the pixel 7s for one the improved Al Core added to it can make your phone better able to understand your voice I've tested this by the way and compared to the iPhone accuracy is definitely a grade above even nailing the punctuation I've tried talking quietly I've tried talking really loud same result.
And so that's already quite a big deal if your phone can understand your voice better then that means you're going to have better comms with your voice assistant you're going to be able to send messages faster you're going to be able to translate things more accurately.
But there's actually so many more times while using the software where I've just felt to myself wow Google has put some real care into this for example how you can change wallpapers in one tap from the home screen how the status bar matches the exact curvature of the phone's physical borders making it feel like software that was designed around the hardware.
How they always on displays clock gently transitions into the lock screen clock how they've spend up the fingerprint scanner and created this subtle blend of soft vibrations and sounds to make it feel like you're pressing a real button.
How simple the whole thing is how they give you everything you need to transfer your stuff quickly from your old phone how it comes with just the bare minimum apps installed with new bloatware and how it shows you demo videos of any features that might be little bit confusing the stuff this makes it.
So much easier to recommend to the less tech people that I know how accessible the phone is how it caters for the hard of hearing with live caption of literally anything that you can see on your phone.
And how it caters for the blind with guided access that makes sure that they can still take well-framed selfies how the phone can predict what apps you're going to use next and display them on your icon doc which by the way so far has been spot on or me.
Although I'm not hard to predict and it all just happens really quickly the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro both feel like well-oiled machines you Glide between apps each opens and closes gracefully and you're never really waiting for anything I'm still slightly salty that this same smoothness still doesn't apply to switching between the various camera lenses.
And I'm not super convinced by the stability of the software I mean the pixel 6 developed a bit of a reputation for being buggy then even here I've had two separate occasions where my phone seems to have minutes.
But I'm hopeful both pixel 7s do get three years of major OS updates which while not the best anymore thanks Samsung sweeping in and now offering 4 is still pretty good and Google does tend to eventually figure out and Patch the main bugs that any pixel releases with oh Also the battery life is good and a sub to this channel would be good.
That would be good that was horrendous I apologize no considering that the last phones had mediocre battery and that the battery capacities have not really gone up.
I was surprised with how much life I was getting out of them genuinely the smaller pixel 7 has got the battery life of most larger pro phones and then the seven pros right there with the iPhone and the seven pos right there with the iPhone 14 pro max is not quite the very best.
But in the highest tier and I'd be willing to bet that the new tensor chip has something to do with that just like it does with the cameras okay.
Let's talk about these cameras so the base pixel 7 has two cameras a 50 megapixel main one and a 12 megapixel ultroid and I think you could make a pretty strong argument that there is no better camera system available for less than 600.
And step one of that is the photo processing when you take a photo on the pixel 7 and open it up you'll always notice that it sends a second or two processing that image every phone does this to some extent but there is no phone that improves the result as much as this can like it's not just that it adds a bit of sharpness this thing applies noise reduction it stitches together photos from both your main Cam.
And your ultra wide to improve sharpness it uses Al to realistically reproduce your natural skin colour on any one of the cameras and not just limited to the default camera app it even optimises the shape of your face removing lens Distortion and it combs through after you've taken to unbar Features if you shook the camera too much you can also use this unbar feature on any photo.
Even not taken on his phone audit's kinda nutty not gonna lie like I purposefully took a blurry selfie on my Samsung Galaxy s22 Ultra and yet this pixel is better able to unblur it than the phone that took it it's got to the stage.
Now where the processing is so good that I've just come to trust the pixel 7. I trust that even though things may not necessarily look the best in the camera preview that when I click that shutter button the phone will figure it out and it's almost an exciting process waiting to see what it's going to do with your shots.
And it's almost an exciting process waiting to see what going to do with your shots and the fact this phone has no zoom camera and yet can still take photos this sharp at eight times magnification.
Thanks to the same Al is frankly absurd not to mention that in low light while this isn't a giant leap over last year's pixel the fact that it captures those night shots in less time leading to less burry photos combined with better dynamic range than the iPhone 14 pro.
That controls the bright spot keeps it very much on par with the best phones out there really caveats are a slight exaggerated color palette which I don't hate to be honest and a slightly weaker ultra wide camera which becomes apparent when you look at the sky in this shot.
But here's the even more important news Google has significantly improved the video it's not as good as the photos but they have taken it from one of the weakest android flagships for video to one of the strongest it's still not quite at the iPhone's level of clarity especially on that selfies camera like I have this regular Discord call that I do with some YouTube friends.
And my pictures has become a little fainter and a little fuzzier since I switched from the 14 pro but this is still not to be laugher at it picks up voices really clearly thanks to something Google called speech enhancement which gets rid of background noise the autofocus is now surprisingly precise like it can pick out really fine objects and still nail the focus.
And the if you want to focus on something moving you have literally the best tracked focus available on a smartphone the new cinematic mode also benefits from this impeccable focus tracking but the fact that it's capped at 1080p versus the iPhone which can ow do 4k it makes me not really want to use it and then you've got the pixel 7 pro.
Which has the same core but on top of that it has a five times zoom camera which paired with all the fancy optimisations the pixel 7s are doing to zoom shots anyways means that actually you can take a zoom photo all the way up to about 12 times.
And not even tell that it's not optical zoom way better than the iPhone 14 pro zoom but still not at the level os Samsung's and it also has a wider ultrawude camera than the base 7 which includes autofocus meaning that you can now get close to things and take macro shots.
Which are not quite as close as the iPhone but definitely as good as the iPhone's macros thanks to Google processing again just coming in clutch I could probably go on about the for another 10 minutes.
But the Crux of this Post is that the pixels this years are brilliant they are fast they are sturdy they are helpful and they capture your memories reliable and I know that not everyone's going to echo this sentiment but also think they're both priced really well for what they are.
And for the standard seven I think they've picked all the right things to trim down leaving you with less luxuries but more importantly functionally the same phone where nothing feels missing and then for the pro they've made sure they give you enough luxuries a more fluid body better screen bigger battery more advanced camera more RAM.
So that if you are willing to spend 300 more you're still definitely getting your money's worth now if you are about splash out on a pixel 7 and you want the absolute best of the best to protect it with this is the case to do it.
This is the dbrand grip and it's great for drop protection but that's not really what makes it special it's more than little touches the ultra grips micro dotted texture the arches that protect the frot of the phone the clickiest buttons I've ever experienced on a case and it's all dressed up in this brand new digital camo skin which comes in glitch camo navy camo.
And my favourite arctic hammer and it's not just for this phone you can get it for anything from MacBooks to iPhones pixels Samsung phones gearing consoles even a Rubik's cube.
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