The Android phone you deserve

The Pixel 8 is Google’s eighth in-house smartphone and it shows. As seven years of making smartphones is seven years of experience in redefining and then refining what an Android smartphone should be. This has helped Google shape the future of Android in many ways. And is bringing more attention to the Pixel line than ever before.
Much of that is attributed to the even more intelligent features thanks to Google’s best AI work yet. But it’s also due to other factors like various hardware improvements, and refined design details.

Google has done things like improve the battery for an all-day phone that can actually stick it out an entire day. It’s also gone back to a flat panel display for a better and more comfortable viewing experience. By all accounts the Pixel 8 is Google’s best work. But does all that make it worthy of your $699? Let’s take a look at that in our full review below.

Google Pixel 8 review: Hardware and design

The Google Pixel 8 has a refined design that doesn’t deviate too much from last year’s Pixel 7 series. And that’s a good thing since last year’s designs were well-liked. This year, Google has only really changed up a couple of things with the way the Pixel 8 looks compared to the Pixel 7.

One of these things is the thicker camera housing, or the camera bump if you will. Additionally, the Pixel 8 comes with more rounded corners. This overall makes the phone more comfortable to hold and for people that handle their phone a lot during the day that’s going to be a big deal. It certainly was for me since I’m using the phone often.

The colors are of course different again this year so that’s an obvious change. All of the Pixel 8 colors are nice, but it is a shame that Google didn’t go with matte finishes on the Pixel 8 like it did with the Pixel 8 Pro. Having said that, the Hazel Pixel 8 even with the glossy finish is quite a stunning color choice and my personal favorite. It’s subtle yet also not more of the same boring black, white, or gray colors many phones come in.

Google is also using lighter materials this year for the overall build. And that contributes to the comfort factor as it’s not nearly as heavy. That should translate to less fatigue, although it’s safe to say some users won’t notice the weight difference. It’s definitely there though, and definitely appreciated. There’s slimmer bezels this year too. Slim enough to make the viewing experience better for content consumption. But not so slim you encounter a ton of accidental touches on the edges of the screen. Overall the design of the Pixel 8 is top-notch and quite honestly one of my favorite phones to look at.

Google Pixel 8 review: Display

Google has done something special this year with the displays on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. For the Pixel 8, Google is using what it calls the Actua Display. While it feels a little like nothing more than Google’s way of naming its displays, the display on the Pixel 8 is actually pretty good.

It doesn’t have the highest resolution at 1080p. But it does go up to 120Hz for the refresh rate now which is going to be super noticeable for games that support it. Plus it just makes scrolling around on web pages and social media that much smoother.

One of the bigger display highlights is the peak brightness. The display on the Pixel 8 has a peak brightness of 2,000 nits which is wild. Because that’s noticeably brighter than many monitors. You won’t generally need it that bright while indoors but you will definitely want it that bright while outside from time to time. At least in direct sunlight on bright, sunny days. Especially if you live in a region where it’s sunny most of the year.

With exception of the last few days where it’s been mostly gray and rainy outside, I’ve used the phone in direct sunlight quite a bit. And having the brightness up to near the maximum amount made it really easy to see and read everything on-screen. I didn’t have to worry about the glare from the sun washing everything else out and then do the usual search for shade so I could see what I was looking at.

And that’s a very enjoyable trait to have on any phone. Obviously it won’t matter to you as much if you don’t use the phone outside as often. But the same thing applies even if you’re using the phone in super bright rooms. Say you work in an office that has insanely bright overhead lights. Just crank the screen brightness up and there won’t be an issue.

A display that other OEMs should be envious of

At least from a brightness standpoint. Another one of my favorite phones, the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, has a really nice 1080p display. And it only has a peak brightness of 1,500 nits. That means the non-pro model of the Pixel 8 series gets brighter than a gaming phone that’s loaded with other top-end specs. It’s also right on par with the iPhone 15 Pro.

Suffice it to say, Google’s Actua Display on the Pixel 8 is quite good. Even if it doesn’t have the highest resolution, that doesn’t really matter with a display this small in my opinion. Sure it’s nice to have, but it’s far from required for a good experience. And the Pixel 8 definitely feels like a good display experience to me. And I’m certain many others will feel the same.

Google Pixel 8 Review: Performance

If there has ever been any reason to complain about Google’s more recent Pixel phones, like last year’s Pixel 7 series and 2021’s Pixel 6 series, it’s Tensor. Google’s in-house chipset that’s based on Exynos and fine-tuned to work really well with Google’s AI. Major issues included poor battery life, chipsets getting too warm, and just overall sluggishness compared to a flagship mobile platform from Qualcomm. Which at the time was the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.

Having spent the most of last year with the ROG Phone 6 Pro, and more recently the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, I never expected Google’s Tensor G3 to keep up in terms of performance. However, I have been pleasantly surprised. No, I’m not saying the Tensor G3 is equal to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or even last year’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processors. But, it is very noticeably better than the Tensor G2 and Tensor G1.

You might say, “yeah. It should be. It’s a third-gen chipset.” And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. But I strongly believe everyone expected the Tensor G3 to be another year of lackluster performance across the board. And that isn’t really the case here. At least not completely. After using the phone since last Thursday, I haven’t had any problems with the phone getting uncomfortably warm.

I’m talking as bad as it was with the ROG Phone 5 Ultimate warm. Where after an hour of gameplay it felt like you were holding a sizzling fajita pan instead of a smartphone. I’ve also noticed that there’s no sluggishness in my day-to-day use. Everything seemed pretty smooth no matter what I did. Extended camera use, watching an hour or two of video. It was all fine. Battery did leave something to be desired but we’ll get to that in a bit. First let’s go over what I feel like is a true measure of performance. The gaming.

A Google gaming phone if there ever was one

This certainly isn’t a gaming phone. But if there ever was going to be one you could consider a gaming phone based on how it performs playing games, this would fit. I have spent countless hours playing Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis on the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate and when the Pixel 8 came in, naturally I wanted to continue playing.

Not just because I wanted to progress the game further, but because I was very curious to see how well it would handle a game with some pretty excellent graphics during the combat scenes. And I wasn’t disappointed. On the contrary, I was quite happy. After booting up the game for the first time on the Pixel 8, I fully expected the graphics to be auto-selected on medium. When in fact they were automatically set to ultimate. The max graphics setting. And I rarely saw any dips in performance or frame rate. Now the game doesn’t go above 60 frames per second. But that’s still completely fine and the Pixel 8 seemed to continue running the game smoothly even after a couple of hours.

The experience was mostly the same with games like Genshin Impact. Although not quite as smooth with graphics running at the maximum allowed level after lengthy sessions. It is worth noting though that even the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate struggles to perform at its best after an hour or two of Genshin Impact gameplay. And that’s to be expected given how demanding the game is graphically at max settings. And because it’s a giant open world game. Long story short, the Pixel 8 plays games well and you will have no problem running them smoothly. We’ll see how well it holds up when Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile launches globally next year.

Google Pixel 8 Review: Battery life and charging

Anyone who has used a Pixel running on the older Tensor chips likely wants to know about one thing more than any other. How’s the battery life? Well it’s not great and it’s not terrible. Keep in mind that my previous phone was the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate and that has a massive battery which lasted forever on a single charge. There were days I had to question if I ever really used it based on how much battery was left by the time I’d go to bed.

That is definitely not the case with the Pixel 8 as I was lucky to get somewhere around 6 hours of screen-on time. It could probably last longer if I turned the brightness down and disabled the always-on display. I never usually use the AOD and my brightness is never at full rip. But I feel like most people would use these things so I left them on for the purposes of this review.

That being said I don’t think the AOD had a huge impact on the battery. Minimal at best, although it would be a noticeable difference with it off. Even if it was a small difference. Mostly the mediocre battery comes down to the still power in-efficient Tensor chip. While it has been upgraded and things are better, battery still sees the weakest improvement of things that needed to be improved.

That isn’t the worst thing in the world since the phone charges fast enough to not really worry about it. And if you work in an office at a desk or from home, you can easily just toss it on a charger or a wireless charger when you notice it needs to be juiced up. Then it’s ready to go should you have to leave the house. Google isn’t going to be recognized for battery life or charging here. But they have improved over last year’s phones and that’s a good thing.

Google Pixel 8 review: Software

Think of Google’s phones like a full meal. The camera is the meat. Outside of the camera, the software is the other main part of the meal. The potatoes. Android is Google’s software, and the Pixel is Google’s hardware. So naturally Google is going to focus a lot on the software experience for its latest phones every single year. It’s done so with every single iteration of the Pixel phone and it hasn’t stopped with the Pixel 8.

And that’s a good thing because the software is a great experience. It feels snappy and buttery smooth with lots of really cool features that make the phone shine. Like I said, the camera is one of the main reasons you buy a Pixel. The software is the other reason. And this year, it’s going to be good. Not just for this year though, for many years to come. Or so we’re told.

The Pixel 8 will get 7 years of software updates

This is one of the biggest bombshells Google dropped during the announcement. And while we can’t say for now how good these updates will be, 7 years of updates is wild for an Android device.

Not to mention this isn’t just security updates. It’s OS updates for 7 years. Then 7 years of both security updates and features as well. This is a big deal because no other Android phone does this. Although I imagine more manufacturers will start to try and support their phones longer after seeing Google up the support life cycle for its devices.

This means you can get a Pixel 8 and it will receive every new version of Android, plus new security updates, every year until 2030. It’s tough to say if it will get every new feature from every feature drop up until then. Cause I imagine some new features a few years down the line will require certain hardware like Google has done with past phones. But it will get feature drops for 7 years. Either way, it’s an exciting prospect to know that the majority of new software until 2030 will be available to the Pixel 8.

Generative AI is woven into every part of the software experience

Google is doubling down on generative AI. And really baking it into everything it can this year. And once you start using a Pixel 8, you’ll begin to see just how much it’s really being utilized. I’ve noticed it pop up more and more with each passing day and it’s very clear that Google wants AI to be one of the cornerstones of the Pixel 8 series and beyond. It’s what sets these phones apart from the competition after all.

One of the new features using AI is the AI wallpaper creator. We wrote about this last week, and it’s a unique new way to get some potentially interesting results for your wallpaper. You’ll find it in the wallpapers and style menu just like any of the other wallpaper categories. And once you tap on it you’re given a collection of categories to choose from. You then select a series of options to create a prompt and the AI will give you a wallpaper based on that prompt.

After a handful of attempts it seems to work mostly ok. But there are some combinations that don’t really give you the best results. Which to me says there are still some kinks to work out. However, it does sometimes produce some decent looking wallpapers. It does feel like kind of a niche feature but if you’re a huge fan of AI art then you will probably like the AI wallpaper creator. I’m not personally big on it but that’s because I am just not a fan of AI art. The feature does work though. And it does appear like Google has been steadily adding more options leading up to the consumer launch of the phone. So it may work even better with time.

Another new AI feature is ‘Summarize.’ You can use this to summarize important details of really any webpage you’re viewing. So you go to a webpage, then you just need to activate Google Assistant to get the summarize option to pop up. Once you tap it, it’ll summarize key points of the page. There’s also an option to have Google Assistant read the page aloud to you, with an option to have things translated into another language if you need or want that.

You can even pause the reading aloud and come back to it. The only downside is that this only works in Chrome it seems. For now at least. Which means you can’t access it if you use Edge, Firefox, Opera, or any other browsers. Though perhaps this will change down the line.

Android 14 gets even more useful

In addition to AI, the Pixel 8 is running on Android 14 out of the box. Which feels a lot like Android 13 to me personally but the software does feel a little snappier and just overall smoother. One of the best features I have found myself enjoying is the At a Glance widget. This sits in the top left corner of the screen and it can be extremely useful for getting quick glanceable information about stuff. For instance, if you place a food order through Uber Eats it can give you details about the order status.

It can do the same thing for flight and transit details, or even meetings coming up in your calendar. Mostly though I have just been using it to show the weather details and it’ll tell me if it’s going to be warmer or cooler than the day before. You can mix and match the information you want enabled and toggle off anything you aren’t interested in. Everything that’s left will surface once it actually has details to pull from.

Google has added a new monochrome theme with Android 14 as well. Plus there are new clock and wallpaper options for even deeper customization. One thing I’ve been using a lot that was kind of nice to have were the customizable quick actions from the lock screen. You get one quick action on the right and one on the left. With options for opening Wallet, enabling the flashlight, launching the Home app and more.

Once you have them set, you simply long press on that quick action icon and for things like the flashlight it’ll just turn on. Overall Android is really trying to make the user experience as useful and convenient as possible with Android 14. And most users are probably going to love these neat little features.

Google Pixel 8 review: The camera

As mentioned before this is the other big reason to buy a Pixel phone. The camera has always been and probably will always be the main focal point with Google for these Pixel phones. It’s refining the computational photography that Pixel phones offer with every Pixel phone release and this year things have gotten even better with all sorts of new features. All powered by AI.

Once again AI is more or less at the center of the experience. Though not all of the features are available on the Pixel 8. Some, like the Zoom Enhance feature, are exclusive to the Pixel 8 Pro. But many features are available on the Pixel 8. And it’s really going to change the way you think about taking photos. It might even get you to use the camera more knowing that you have more tools at your disposal to edit them.

New features include things like the Audio Eraser. You can use this to remove unwanted background noise from your videos to make a much clearer recording. How well this works might change from situation to situation. But in my initial testing it seems to work pretty good. I tested this by recording a short video while I was out having a beer in a popular crowded bar spot and to my surprise it got rid of basically all background noise. So you can imagine how this might be really useful for other even more crowded areas that might have ambient noise drowning out the audio you really want to hear.

The Magic Editor is going to blow users away

Then there’s the Magic Editor. And this is really where AI plays a big role in the camera this time around. With the Magic Editor you can adjust all sorts of stuff. You want it to remove people from the background? It can do that just like the Magic Eraser can but with better accuracy. It can also help you change the look and color of the sky. For example you can change out a dreary, more overcast setting for a sky that looks sunnier and brighter.

It can also shrink subjects and move them around to different parts of the photo. Letting you kind of create the image how you wanted it to be. It’s strange to see the first few times you use it. But I can already tell it’s going to be a fun and useful feature to have.

What I found myself using the most was just the auto generated Magic Editor. Instead of tapping on the image and circling or brushing part of it to start making edits, you can tap a button to allow the Magic Editor to generate image adjustments for you. In one image I took of the skyline, I tapped the Magic Editor and let it generate some new images for me using the ‘Golden Hour’ and ‘Stylized’ options.

Golden Hour completely changed the look of the sky to look more like it was just before sunset during the Summertime. And it actually looked really good. While Stylized made it look almost like a painting. And it even added some mountain ranges in the distance which weren’t there in the original image. Plus, once the Magic Editor generates an image for you, it gives you multiple images to choose from and you can select which one you like the best. It’s a super interesting tool and I can see myself using it often to play around with pictures to get some potentially cool tweaks.

How good is the camera?

Honestly, this is the best smartphone camera I’ve used in a long time. Without any editing whatsoever the picture quality just looks better than any other devices I have used more recently. Then you start looking at some of the additional features like the improved Macro Focus and you start to see how good the camera has become. Pulling out details in images that you wouldn’t expect from a camera that’s on a smartphone.

In short the camera is really, really good. And even people who aren’t into taking photos too often will likely find themselves starting to use the camera more. Because it just produces some really cool shots and you can take this camera with you anywhere. Is it going to completely replace legitimate cameras like DLSRs or mirrorless options? No. But is the image quality so good now that you might not care that the Pixel 8 images won’t quite match up? Yes.

The camera has gotten so good that you might find yourself questioning if you even really want to lug around a camera, extra lenses, a tripod and anything else you might normally carry. Of course if you’re a professional photographer then in most cases you will still probably bring all that gear with you. But for literally everyone else, trust me. The Pixel 8 camera will serve you well.

Should you buy the Google Pixel 8?

As always this is going to depend on multiple factors. If you don’t already have a Pixel phone and are wanting something with an industry-leading smartphone camera, in addition to really great software experiences, the Pixel 8 is going to be a great pickup. If you do have a Pixel phone currently, then it might be hard to justify spending the money unless you’re using an older model. That being said, you can easily save money on the upgrade through most carriers. And even Google Fi is offering an upgrade discount (without a trade-in) that can make spending the money more worth it.

You should buy the Google Pixel 8 if:

• You want a great camera in a slightly smaller package
• 7 years of software updates sounds good to you
• You want the best Android user experience available along with some nifty AI features

You shouldn’t buy the Google Pixel 8 if:

• You’d rather have the Pixel 8 Pro-exclusive features
• You want something more tailored to gaming (like a ROG device)
• Really good battery life is important to you.