Google Pixel 8 Pro review: Is it still a sound choice in 2024?

Google’s flagship smartphone is the Pixel 8 Pro. The Pixel 8 Pro was announced in October 2023 and remains an affordable flagship option, offering some unique skills that – at the time of launch – were unmatched in the smartphone world.

I have used the Pixel 8 Pro since launch and that’s expanded my insight over the first run of excited discoveries. With a new wave of smartphones launching in 2024, is the Pixel 8 Pro still as impressive as it seemed when it first launched?

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The Disconnekt Downlow

The Pixel 8 Pro continues to dazzle with its smart features, and Magic Editor remains a highlight that you won’t (quite) find anywhere else. Without that novelty, the camera is excellent in day-to-day use, rarely failing to capture the image that you want to take.

Where the Pixel 8 Pro can struggle is in the average battery life (and not very fast charging) and some questionable connectivity at times. I’ve found the Pixel 8 Pro can sometimes struggle with Bluetooth connections and sometimes refuses to play nice with Wi-Fi, which can be frustrating. But at its core, the Pixel 8 Pro gives an uncluttered Android experience which many will find refreshing compared to many phones at this price. The unique features, driven by Google’s AI make it a phone I’d recommend, but others are catching up, and fast.

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Reasons to buy the Google Pixel 8 Pro

The biggest element of the Pixel 8 Pro is undoubtedly the AI that Google has thrown into the camera. This launched as a unique feature, with Google’s Magic Editor giving generative AI skills that give you the ability to edit images with skills you’d usually find in Photoshop on a desktop computer. Samsung has now stepped up with Galaxy AI, but at its core, much of this is also powered by Google.

What’s most amusing about features like Magic Editor is that it’s a constant topic of conversation. A waiter in a restaurant saw the Bay blue colour of my phone and immediately asked about it. That drew in others at the table because, like it or not, Magic Editor is what this phone is all about. Magic Editor is hugely impressive: I’ve had iPhone users send me photos asking for a quick tweak to make their photos look better. That’s about all the proof that this pudding needs.

I use Magic Editor on many photos that I share – it’s genuinely useful – but be aware that this AI processing doesn’t happen on the phone, it’s all cloud based, so your photos need to be backed up before any of this wizardry can take place.

All these features are designed to grab your attention and divert the conversation away from megapixels and lenses; Google has openly talked about computational photography for many years and the Pixel 8 Pro is just the latest manifestation of that. I suspect that, because so much of the camera’s skill depends on AI – or processing as it was once called – that it won’t remain unique to this model. It’s software, so why not boost all your phones to demonstrate how scalable your technology is?

Then there’s the HDR side of thing. The Pixel 8 Pro takes and displays HDR photos like no phone I’ve seen. I took some low light photos alongside a friend with the Vivo X90 Pro and the Pixel blew it away. Some of this comes down to the 2500 nit display. At launch it wasn’t exactly clear why Google had made this phone the brightest ever, but I can tell you it’s for HDR delivery. It’s sublime and really makes content pop.

As a package it’s hard to complain about the camera. If there’s a weakness, it’s in basic things like video white balance. Otherwise, I still think this is one of the best smartphone camera experiences out there.

What the Pixel 8 Pro could do better

The AI experience of the Pixel phone doesn’t stop with the camera; it’s seeded into apps like Google Lens, into the dialer to handle spam calls, or to live transcribe calls to automated services – or simply through Google Assistant. Backing up all this messaging about AI is a chip that Google says has been built to support it.

But that’s nothing unique: Qualcomm and MediaTek say the same thing and Google’s Tensor G3 doesn’t really bring anything with it that makes it shine. Sure, this is a flagship phone experience when it comes to the smoothness you get from the bloatware-free Android software and it’s fast enough, but it doesn’t feel like it flies. Beyond that, this phone is not without its problems.

Users report a wide range of issues with connectivity – both cellular and to Bluetooth devices – and I’ve experienced moments when the Pixel 8 Pro just doesn’t seem to be connected. That’s noticeable in apps that won’t refresh and I’ve got used to the dance through hitting aeroplane model to reconnect to the network.

But at those times when some Bluetooth devices just don’t want to connect (I have a pair of Bose headphones that it refuses to stay connected to; it wouldn’t connect to Meta Quest 3; it’s slower to connect to my car than the older Pixel 6 Pro) it’s frustrating – and perhaps a reflection that for all the AI in the world, sometimes you need to focus on the basics.

The rest of the Pixel 8 Pro experience

One of the substantial improvements over the Pixel 7 Pro is the expansion of the face unlocking. Previously this was limited to just the device. Now it can unlock things like banking apps or your password manager and it just makes the day to day experience better. It’s not as sophisticated as Apple’s Face ID, but I can’t help feeling the Pixel 9 will be.

Google’s Pixel Drops – which arrive quarterly – continue to be better than average updates, bringing great features to the Pixel phones. The latest is Circle to Search, a feature that took headlines at the Samsung Galaxy S24 launch, but then rapidly appeared on Google’s devices. It’s a Google-powered technology and it’s great that, a few months after launch, there’s an impressive new feature to play with.

What the Pixel 8 Pro did at launch was steal a march on its rivals. In terms of the camera, the AI powers that it offers arrived with a 3-month head-start over Samsung’s Galaxy AI and is leaps and bounds ahead of anything that the iPhone offers when it comes to editing photos.

Then there’s the price: as is often the case with Google’s devices, it was discounted almost as soon as it launched, so don’t ever pay full price for it. There will be a sale and it will be a great deal. If the Pixel 8 Pro remains too expensive, the smaller Pixel 8 offers many of the same skills, but with a smaller display and with no dedicated zoom lens.

Should you buy the Google Pixel 8 Pro?

The Google Pixel 8 Pro puts in a solid performance as a flagship device. On one hand it’s an incremental step over the Pixel 7 Pro from 2022, but on the other hand, this is a shining showcase of what AI can do for a camera experience. The overall performance is solid, but there are some shortcomings, like average battery life and charging and some connectivity foibles. It’s the camera that shines and Magic Editor, boosted by that bright display that offers a stunning delivery of HDR content. There’s a compelling price too, especially for a device that’s regularly updated and offers 7 years of software support.

So as we move into 2024, despite some shortcomings, the Pixel 8 Pro remains a great choice of phone – but fresh Android competition will challenge it.

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