without a doubt one of the nicest and smartest smartphones to use but with
other options out there like the iPhone 15 Pro Max the Galaxy s23 Ultra and the s24 ultra is
the Google pixel8 pro still a decent option in 2024 when it comes to a flagship [Music]
phones I'm Alex and a do down to earth Deck videos in my initial reviews of the pixel 8 Pro I really
didn't have much to complain about and just last week when I did my phone of the year for 2023 if
you watch that you know that the s23 ultra won't buy a mile in my opinion but from a cost benefit
perspective at that time and still up until now I have to give it to the pixel I think right now you
can get a pixel 8 Pro for $799 in the US and to me that's still pretty competitive like I said happen
to now things are about to change very quickly as you know later on and when I say this is one
of the nicest smartphones to use I really mean it it has so many cool features that I wish we had on
other phones as well and even though this is not my main phone I haven't ditched my s23 ultra for
this the pixel 8 Pro is ultimately is still very friendly to use with very intuitive software as
well definitely has me reaching for it a little bit more than usual because of how friendly
and how nice it is to use I'll talk about the processor and performance as well which there's
some concerns around that in a bit but there's a lot of software goodness pack in here that
we mustn't ignore when you comes to the design I have a bit of an annoyance you know which for me
was probably a an unpopular opinion actually my videos but I still stand by it you know the back
of the phone feels more slippery than the previous pixel models it looks nicer it doesn't collect
like a lot of fingerprints on it and everyone is saying that this matte finish is less slippery
not for me you know is really like a bar of soap right now and look Google didn't send me these
phones for review but even if they did I'd find this one quite hard to ignore you know it's one
of those things that is just fact you know it is more slippery but that really is a minor thing
because I actually like the design right it's it's got this visor in here which I use it as
a almost like a fidgety thing to hold the phone as well it is 100% the most ergonomic phone to use at
this level kind of this Flagship level you know when you're using it for a long periods of time
you know in 3 months on that's still the case for me it's very very comfortable to use in the
evenings when I'm relaxing you know it's either of the fold because of that you know that mini tablet
display and the bigger display that I do enjoy all the pixel8 pro because it's just that much
more comfortable to use even in comparison with my s23 ultra or the 15 Pro Max you know this is just
lighter it's got his rounded Corners a flatter design you know it's just nice to hold as well
it's just very well balanced some protective cases will completely make this argument null and void
right but I've been enjoying these cases here for Miles I mean I'm not sponsored by them or anything
they're just very nice and they don't kind of take away from the design you know they they feel even
nicer and grippier as well and they look cool as well now when it comes to Performance I compared
this with the s23 ultra and the 15 Pro Max and for everything that I do do either on content
creation or my admin work outside of YouTube you know the difference is really negligible in terms
of performance is it notably slower than other phones honestly only when you're playing really
intensive games or running something really kind of high-intensive editing photos watching content
multitasking or even playing games in general feel really Snappy actually now there's not a
lot to complain when it comes to Performance in here I do love oneui but Android here on
the pixel just feels very clean very smooth to use for the majority of people including myself I mean
99% of the time when I'm not like stress testing the phone you don't notice any loners at all I
love for the multi- window setup in here to be a little bit more fluid more modern looking but at
least it's there and it's something that I really miss when I hop on the 15 Pro Max for example you
know you can't run multiple apps at the same time on the same screen now this is Google's Flagship
and sure the processor is not the latest in terms of technology which is a shame you know what's
available in the market is not what's out here but like I said for normal day-to-day use is really
not going to be a problem for you and the reason I'm kind of hammering this point a little bit is
because if you watch a lot of the reviews out there everyone is complaining about this tensor
G3 and how slow it is but it's just slower than what's available out there it doesn't mean it's
going to be slow for you using it dayto day I do have to call out something that Google did
recently that caught my eye a little bit right I mentioned this in my previous review as well
Google basically blocked Benchmark software from running on the pixel and you know my opinion on
this hasn't really changed 3 months later but forgetting benchmarks and let's talk about Real
Performance benchmarks are cool but numbers on the screen don't really tell the whole story
right how a phone feels in your hand how apps run on it you know that's to me what really matters
on the days when I do decide to use the pixel almost exclusively I've been using this phone
pretty hard right I go out and I take photos I record videos and it's fast the battery could
be better and sure some games like Gan impact are not going to be running at the top frame rate and
Shader building is very slow to launch as well on first launch I can't deny that it's weird you know
even compared to other flagships but here's my theory some apps and games just are not optimized
for the stencil chip yet you know I'm not an expert the bottom line though when it comes to
how I review smartphones benchmarks are just part of the puzzle I never recommend a phone based on
numbers alone I might use it and kind of see how that translates in normal day-to-day use and I'll
tell you how it feels how it performs in everyday use and that's what really matters right at least
that's what I look for as a consumer myself when I'm watching these reviews now the display on
the pixel 8 Pro is extremely smooth I know some people complain about this but honestly I don't
see any issues with the display at all I think the Improvement they made in here is actually
quite noticeable as well especially when it comes to the brightness very responsive I don't have a
screen protector on most of my phones anyway but I really enjoy typing on the pixel you know the
haptics are great and the fingerprint sensor here you know works every time actually that's
true for face recognition as well very accurate and one thing of the display that I'm not quite
sure yet you know I keep switching between having adaptive brightness on and off but right now in
the winter months I mean this is 400 p.m. and it's as you can tell quite dim light already
so I find that turning the Adaptive brightness off works well for me but this will come down to
your preference of course but the reason I like it especially is because at night it seems that the
minimum brightness will also be really really dim and I enjoy that because at night I might want to
use my smartphones but I don't want to be exposed to a lot of Light which is not great for my sleep
anyway as I said the battery isn't great it does suit me fine and I appreciate that this might not
work for you if you're a kind of heavy user but I'm getting about 7 hours on a heavy day and for
me that's perfectly okay and being transparent as I said this is not my main device at all you know
it gets a fair amount of views when I do decide to use it but I still use my s23 ultra most days
as my main device when I'm doing these reviews I do spend some days you know with my main SIM
card on it you know and doing things that you would do normally like testing call Quality
as well as you've seen probably before but I just thought it was worth mentioning so that
you don't get the impression that you know I've switched from one phone to another I'm spending
enough time with it just to give you this review but yeah don't get the wrong impression there now
a lot of focus is put on cameras when it comes to any smartphones right and as a regular dad right
all I'm interested in sometimes when it comes to these phones is you know do the photos and
videos look good when I'm taking photos of my my child and my pets and the picture quality on the
pixel is you know it's hard to beat them I'm sure there are some weird limitations and quirks about
the cameras here but what I think you care about is the output and you know as you can see here
they really deliver on this but let me level with you we kind of already knew that about the pixel
8 Pro right it was always going to be amazing with photos that's always been the case but what about
video that hasn't been great in the past right well when it comes to video quality now I have to
say it's the first pixel that is able to compete maybe no it's not better than the iPhone or better
than the s23 ultra but there are situations depending on the lens of the lighting that
you're getting really decent videos now it's a lot smoother you don't see a lot of oversharpening at
all way more natural looking than the pixel 7 for example or pixel 6 even or the pixel 6 Pro
was horrendous for video in my opinion now with the pixel 8 Pro I'm really impressed but if you
want to you can take it up a level as well and use more kind of pro features and I got to say
they really don't disappoint here as you can see in these samples here you know some very smooth
footage you know great dynamic range as well you know had some really challenging situations here
sometimes with the sun in the background you know some darker areas and the detail is all there no
oversharpening very smooth footage they have this span mode which is really cool it basically adds
even more stabilization to your shots so great for product photography or maybe you know kind
of some portrait videos but honestly even the regular stabilization is already amazing for
me right in low light videos on the pixel yeah really good quality now and a little disclaimer
here in know the timer recording I was meant to have like the video boost feature that they they
claimed 3 months ago but here we are you know three months later and still not available for
me I've got the latest version of Android 14 downloaded the December update but I've heard
that some people got it already but it seems to be kind of a staged roll out and I'll have to
wait to report on that and talking of which we can't talk about the pixel8 pro cameras and not
mention AI features even though we can do some of these things on Samsung and other phones there's
a clear difference here in how friendly it is to use AI features on the pixel I'm excited for the
s24 ultra 100% behind that and what galaxy AI will bring to the party as well in these aspects but
I hope it's as friendly as the pixel is you know or even better of course from The Voice Assistant
which is amazing to the postprocessing of photos and videos and audio as well right pixel makes all
of these AI features super easy to use and quite fun to use as well there are some limitations like
with the audio feature there's a limit of I think 3 minutes videos but it's a start and for most of
these cases 3 minutes is long enough anyway but that fun aspect is really important to me you know
everything is moving really fast in this space and it's great to see that Google you know I embrace
it and making it part of the device because like I said it just makes it a lot more fun
to use which is something that's been missing with other brands now before we move on and talk about
my experience in connectivity and gaming and audio quality the connectivity on the pixel whenever I
take it outside and travel with it the pixel has been great I'm not exaggerating here I've had both
strong carrier and network connectivity here in the UK but also really decent Wi-Fi connectivity
no issues whatsoever whether I'm at home or a cafe or any random place that has a Wi-Fi it's
been consistently good it's not something that I can say about other devices or tablets right
I did a qu quality test as well in my original review which was really surprising too so if you
want to check that out I'll leave a link down below for you might be asking a Coe quality on
YouTube yeah I did do that I love playing games with smartphones whenever I get a bit of time
and a chance to play but there is one game that I use for testing smartphones that I have to say is
definitely noticeable how it performs worse on the pixel when I compare with other Flagship phones
even like the s23 ultra which is almost a year old now well it is a year old the game is ging
impact and you know some reviews may not even mention this because honestly you have to play
for a while to notice it within 10 15 minutes you might not see it but after you play for a little
while you definitely start to see that the pixel is just not pushing the same FPS as other phones
even without running like a scientific test here it's easy to notice just with a naked eye that
you're dropping some frames is a little bit laggy here you know I don't know if it's getting warm
and is the heat that is doing that and to be fair I'm kind of cranking up all the settings to the
max you know because I want to really push and see how high it performs so this tenser G3 chip does
feel like it could do with a bump for specific scenarios like playing you know high-intensive
games but for casual gaming as you can see here is absolutely fine it does get pretty warm like
I said after a good 30 to 40 minutes of game play but I wouldn't say overheats like the 15 Pro Max
does and just to clarify in case you're wondering the 15 Pro Max when I say overheats it goes above
115 fahit which for me is a little bit too high sometimes 120 fahit which is over 40° C is crazy
I almost forgot if you're enjoying this video please leave a like I mean it's one of those
things that I don't usually like to ask I don't ever like to ask but we're so close to getting to
100K and liking this video even though it feels insignificant it's a major help because that's
what gets the channel discovered out there and I mean don't like if you don't like the content
but if you are enjoying it it would really help me and if you're new here have a look around the
channel later on and if you like my stuff you'll be awesome if you subscribed I'm here at least
once a week with a new downto Earth Tech video for you if I was to summarize the things that I like
and dislike about the pixel 8 Pro so far in this 3 months of course there are there are a couple
of things first the things that I like the camera magic right Google's computational photography for
now and for me still reign supreme ask me again in a few weeks after the s24 ultra and we might
have a different opinion then but I've been able to achieve stunning low light shots and the new
new 5x telephoto lens has a really cool look to it almost to the point where you can't really tell it
was taken with the smartphone it's really really good not only from a zoom perspective or how close
you can get to stuff but purely from an Aesthetics perspective There's Something About This depth and
the natural look in this lens that I really really like and then there's the Google goodness shall
we say right from a software perspective it's one of the cleanest most intuitive Android experience
you will find I haven't tested every Android phone out there but I really really enjoy stock Android
you know I go as far as saying that it's got the best assistant out of all the smartphones right
now and I know that's not saying much because you know Bixby and Siri they're not they're not great
anyway now for my dislikes all the things that I think Google has room for improvement number one
is the performance hiccups some users myself included will never notice any moments of lag
whatsoever right but they are there especially in certain games as you seen here but I've also seen
people kind of launching resource intensive apps and having those little lags Google is saying that
they are working on software updates to optimize performance so hopefully these stutters and lags
will become a thing of the past soon but you know it's worth noting that you really have to
look for those things and as I said if you're considering this phone don't take that as the
one reason why you're not buying it because what I call normal usage you're really not going to
notice any stutter at all the second issue for me is the battery not really been an issue for
me personally but I can see this not being great if you're a heavy user it doesn't quite match the
endurance that we get in some of the competitors and if you're not able to get a decent deal that
seven sometimes 8 Hour battery could be a deal breaker again hopefully with some software updates
we can squeeze some extra juice out of this battery but for now if you're a heavy user i'
would say it's worth carrying a portable charge just in case actually reviewed a couple on the
channel and I'll leave a link to them if you're interested to answer the question I asked at the
beginning of the video is the Google pixel8 pro still worth it in the UK at the time of recording
if you're buying from Google directly I would say no even though it's being reduced to 8899
it's 100 pound cheaper it still feels a little bit expensive when you consider other options
out there in North America though you can get a brand new pixel8 Pro for $799 and that to me
starts to become interesting right that is an awesome deal actually if you can get a decent
deal like that it's definitely still worth it so if you're considering this phone just keep an
eye for those updates that I mentioned here what Google will do in the next couple of months and
if you already made your mind up and that's the phone you're getting just enjoy the that you're
going to have with all the you know the magic of AI that you already have on the pixel see you
soon it be one day we going to make it beig I say we going to
make it be just stay in there stay in the morning stay in the morning