the Google Pixel 4 his the most hated smartphone of 2019 why
it lacks one of the most important features that we were all looking
forward to this year which was an ultra wide-angle camera it's got a smaller
battery and supposedly battery life according to many reviewers we're pretty
terrible starting price at $800 for 64 gigabytes of storage felt like a
complete ripoff though Google did drop the price of this phone by a couple
hundred dollars so that really pissed a lot of people who bought the phone in
the first place and it really goes to show that he should never never
pre-order for get the pixel for the date launches because the price is eventually
gonna get dropped and on top of that there been multiple issues with the
variable refresh rate face unlock motion sense and I'm pretty sure something's
gonna pop up as I'm talking to you guys right now so I guess I could conclude
this review right now by telling you to stay away from the pixel 4 or maybe not
maybe my experience after using it for more than eight weeks may change your
mind or again maybe not but let's get started right after this
your eyes haven't seen anything like it yet the new razor blade pro 17 packs a
beautiful and fast 4k 120 Hertz panel with gorgeous vibrancy and color
accuracy with incredible clarity awesome for creative work that will never
disappoint with a fantastic future-proof IO as well it's also a touchscreen so
your fingertips gets impaction the bezels are tiny the chassis is sleek the
fiery keyboard is perfect that tracked by this massive the hardware is epic
with RDX man the blade pro 17 is a complete package experience a smooth 4k
gaming link below alright so I'm gonna start with the display because to me
it's an important factor of a smart phone and boy it's a welcoming upgrade
for my pixel 3 quick disclaimer I've been using the pixel 4 xl as my
daily driver instead of these smaller pixel 4 because it has a bigger
battery and the size is just perfect for my hands the screen spends across 6.3
inches and it's really sure and color accurate seriously this is one
of the best displays I have seen on a smartphone I really enjoyed watching
videos and editing photos for the gram however I did wish if it was brighter
compared to the competition especially from Apple and Samsung I'm also not a
huge fan of the rounded corners around the display since the status bar up top
doesn't really line up with the corners and it just looks odd
maybe it's my OCD but yeah also I'm glad that this has a flat display versus
curved like some other Android flash chips out there it certainly complements
one-hand usage and you don't get that distortion when you're watching
something in landscape mode now let's talk about that variable refresh rate
and the huge Fiasco behind that you see by default the phone dynamically
switches between 60 Hertz and 90 Hertz depending on the type of content being
displayed in order to extend battery life but early adopters started
reporting then as soon as you lower the brightness below 75% the screen caps at
60 Hertz regardless of what you do now Google did roll out a patch later
addressing this issue but I just ended up forcing 90 Hertz on the display
through the developer options and it's been a flawless experience so far but
has that affected battery life yeah by a lot actually you see before I have
forced 90 Hertz I was actually getting over 6 hours of screen on time on a
heavy day browsing through mail Twitter Instagram playing music over Bluetooth
using GPS just a typical stuff but as soon as enabled that forced 90 Hertz
option my screen on time just dropped by an hour which was actually a lot now
that's my heavy use case scenario but on a regular workday I spend the majority
of my time editing a video or filming here in the studio so not constantly
string to my smartphone so by the end of the day I'm left with over 50% of
battery left on the pixel 4 xl which I can't really complain about
unless if you're like David Emmel who constantly depends on a smart phone
because he travels a lot then the pixel 4 might not be for the
ultimate power user of course you get support for wireless charging and
Google's three-year-old fast charge seriously the engineers at Google
slacked off in the department since the competition has advanced to higher
levels because if you look at what oneplus and Oppo does with warp charge
and super long charge this is it's kind of unacceptable to
have a free oral technology on a 2019 flagship smartphone by Google I think
there really need to step it up moving on to the nitty-gritty stuff starting
with the design and I love the matte black frame with the white power button
on the side there are other color options as well like white and orange
and if you recall watching my first impressions video on the pixel 4 I
ranted a little bit about the glass back on the black model whereas the other
color options came with a matte finish so in order to get over my frustration I
ended up getting this cheap Amazon matte black slim case which surprisingly
matches the frame of the phone and it prevents the back from grease and
fingerprints the speakers on the pixel 4 sound really good and call
quality was excellent throughout my testing period I didn't hear anyone
complain about the microphone quality so I guess that's a pass and now let's talk
about the gimmicks things like motion sense and face unlock let's actually
start with motion sense you see I extensively used this feature
when I got my hands on the pixel 4 xl especially when I was in the
kitchen cutting vegetables it was super convenient when I just
wanted to skip music tracks but it started eventually giving up on me and
that was super frustrating I was at the gym one day had my phone on the bench
and I wanted to skip a track because I wanted to listen to something different
and the thing just refused to do so even after waving it multiple times and it
almost got to a point where it started randomly skipping songs without my
knowledge and I was super frustrated I ended up tweeting about it and some of
my friends in the tech community ended up experiencing the same issue which was
definitely odd so I just ended up disabling it because I didn't want to
deal with it he was super annoying it was a complete flop if you recall
watching project soli and their promotional video they made it so
convincing to the user where they could just use their hands to adjust the
volume precisely and a lot more other things and I really wanted those to come
into the pixel 4 but that isn't the case in fact a few things that motion sense
offers is when your alarm goes off and when you're trying to reach for the
phone it'll automatically lower the volume you can also silence a phone call
by waving your hand provided that it works but realistically do you see
ourselves taking advantage of this feature
I'm really because if you deeply think about it
motion sense is more of a negative thing because if you're skipping a music track
you certainly don't like what you're listening to so that's a negative thing
and if you're trying to silence someone when someone's trying to reach you over
the phone that's also a negative thing because
you're ignoring that person so ultimately that is a negative thing then
there's face unlock which utilizes the two infrared sensors at the front along
with the titanum security chip built into the phone google opted for this
type of authentication instead of your traditional in display fingerprint
scanners that competitors fly on and I've kind of saying I love it it's super
fast like really fast and it never misses a beat when I pull out my phone
from my pocket and log in it works at night in pitch black thanks to the IR
tracking it also works with my sunglasses with hats on I also really
appreciate this wheat shirt during the winter when I'm wearing gloves outdoors
because I don't have to worry about using my finger print on the other hand
they're having concerns over how it unlocks with your eyes closed and that's
freaking out a lot of people plus there are some apps that require sign-in not
supporting facial recognition but let's just get real for a sec you either have
to be living around people whom you don't trust at all and if your
girlfriend's on that list stop watching this video get that sorted and come back
or the other case could be you're doing something completely illegal that would
get you in trouble but to me these are it's really not a deal-breaker a
supposedly Google is working on rolling on an update to address this issue so
we'll wait and see how that goes out the software experience is one of the best
on pixel devices it's pretty straightforward and easy to use they've
added a few gimmicks like live Pokemon wallpapers that use the motion sensor
which will significantly drain your battery side note if you enable
developer options the build number shows up on the quick settings tray which is
ridiculous and if you need to get rid of it you'll have to disable developer
options which means you lose the adjustments that you made there every
time when I switch smartphones I end up throwing a third-party launcher to make
my home screen clutter free and easy use Samsung is certainly on top of my list
for that but with pixel and oneplus devices I'm actually comfortable with
the stockily out because it's polished what we're free and I like that the
other benefits include receiving software updates regularly
cuz you'll be the first in line to receive them if you own a pixel device
plus you also get some Google AI enhancements like live transcribing that
transcribed your audio into real text and it's really fast as I'm going to
show you a demo right here I'm just talking to you guys in front of the
camera I actually really like this feature because say for instance you
want to have a communication if you want to have a conversation with someone
who's having trouble hearing then this is a great way to communicate plus it
picks up literally everything that I say so that's awesome I also speak more than
two languages so I've tested on both of them and understands which is great it
also goes to show how Google's actually worked really hard on the software side
to bring all these tools and I think that's really it's really nice I should
mention that live transcribing is available on the pixel 3 as well now how
has performance held up so far it's been good guys but it still feels a tad
slower compared to my oneplus 70 I think that has to do would be slightly lower
resolution display and a faster processor and of course more RAM plus
one plus does a fantastic job optimizing their software for their devices plus
you get more customization options and that's something that I truly miss on
the pixel 4 google has completely let me down on the specs Department for the
pixel 4 because it's using an outdated SOC the storage is a complete joke I
mean starts at 64 gigabytes which is ridiculous compared to what the
competition offers so for the spec enthusiasts people who need blazing fast
performance that you know they just need apps to load up the instant they you
know tap on it should probably look into one plus having said that the one factor
that makes me come back to the pixel 4 is the camera performance yes it doesn't
come with an ultra wide-angle camera but if you're willing to surpass that you'll
be very impressed with the outcome the pictures look really sharp with a good
balance of contrast and saturation and the dynamic range is just amazing
compared to pixel 3 the pixel 4 should slightly brighter photos and I love the
fact that you can simply open the camera app pointed a subject hit the shutter
button and be completely satisfied with the image I mean this shot right here
was taken inside an uber ride I didn't even think twice I just took it and I
loved the result this camera also shines in low-light
well there's less noise the colors turn out just as you expected to and it's
sharp portrait mode works really well regardless of subject I decided a tested
on however I'm not a fan of that crop factor because it still uses the main
sensor instead of utilizing the telephoto lens as well speaking of the
telephoto lens the results continued to surprise me and according to Google
people love zooming into things so if you fall into that category you won't be
disappointed but still they they really should have included an ultra wide-angle
camera then there's astrophotography mode which just blew my mind on the
pixel 4 it's just amazing to see how computational photography has come so
far now I still can't get around the fact that there's a weird halo or on the
center of the image when it's finally processed but if you shoot wrong you can
actually do a little bit of post-processing to get rid of that and
this is what the end result would look like now if you switch from photo mode
to video mode you will be disappointed with what the pixel 4 has to offer
because the rear camera can only shoot up to 4k at 30 frames per second it
doesn't even shoot 4k 24p and the front-facing camera is limited to 1080p
so that is very frustrating in fact if you look at the competition they offer a
variety of shooting options especially if you look at what Apple does with the
iPhone 11 that costs less than the pixel 4 it's just crazy to see the quality
coming out of a phone like that and this is Apple that we're talking about the
phone that used to be super expensive but there's actually something that
competes with this right now so if you shoot a lot of video on your smartphone
the pixel 4 is certainly not for you so to wrap things up I really enjoyed my
experience with the pixel 4 specifically the 4 xl it's not a perfect phone and
by no means does it deserve to be priced at $6.99 in fact if I were you I would
skip the pixel 4 the smaller version completely because it comes with a
smaller battery and the fact that when you have variable refresh rate enabled
that things just not gonna last for a day but if you're someone who's looking
for an Android smartphone with the latest at Google has to offer in terms
of software and the best camera for photos and I repeat for photos maybe you
should consider the pixel 4 xl because the camera is what gets me back
I think that's why I keep going back to the pixel 4 because
it's what I take with me when I'm traveling and when I'm doing anything
else just cuz I know for a fact that I'm gonna be happy with the end result and
that's what it is and if you've stayed with me until this part of the video I
have a surprise for you guys in fact I have a second opinion from
someone who is very popular in the tech industry let's jump right into it
Marquez thank you so much for taking the time to chime in on your thoughts about
the pixel 4 truly appreciate it but first off huge congrats on the streamys
thank and congrats on the 10 million subscribers it's it's really a huge
milestone I don't know yeah yeah it's it's really awesome but let's just kick
things off with with like what smartphone you're rocking right now your
daily driver yeah so I have a 1 plus 70 Pro the
McLaren edition so it's not 5g or anything but my daily phone is the the
oneplus 70 Pro Android 1090 Hertz like the only thing I really don't like about
it is the curved screen I really wish it was a flat screen because that's the one
thing I get bothered by but everything else about that phone has been pretty
solid ok so we're aware of how many issues the
pixel or how the pixel 4 was received by the tech community I mean its launch
price was pretty high and a lot of people were not happy about that and
Google did drop that later actually right now it's it starts at $6.99 so
it's $100 less and it's official launch price and we had a lot of user support
issues in terms of the variable refresh rate motion sense you know the list just
goes on I mean I was just reading an article like yesterday that some USBC
cables don't work with the pixel 4 which I mean how does that how does that
make you feel about about the pixel 4 and I have you actually experienced any
of these issues yeah yeah so I remember I was one of the first to like talked
about that variable refresh rate problem where you know the first wave of reviews
came out everyone seems fine with it but I felt like that was the only one who
was like I can't get this phone to stay at 90 Hertz like it keeps going back to
60 and I don't know why it eventually comes out that you know that the
brightness is tied to it and all these other weird
things that I didn't like that's why I looked for forcing 90 Hertz and that's
why I accepted the trash battery life I think you know what pixel has been for
the past couple years notoriously not the best hardware the pixel is a
software experience wrapped in whatever they can make you know and that's
typically been the best part about it is what I buy it for is you get the the
latest version of Android you get all these crazy things like screen calling
and the assistant that has the voice transcription model all on the phone
locally like all this stuff love that about it and I guess because I've seen
that for a while it doesn't really change my perspective of the pixel but
for someone who might have thought of pixel as like a flagship on par with the
Samsung's and apples of the world this should probably be a wake-up call
so I guess last question kind of ties in to do you think Google actually did a
better job with the pixel 4 this year or do you think they could have done
better I'm gonna go the the may be pessimistic sounding route that this is
probably something we're gonna keep seeing for a bit just because Google
Google is not a hardware company right yeah and it's not like we don't see
other issues with other phones but when you look at you know the iPhone they
have their gates once in a while and the Samsung phones exploded one time right
but pixel is always gonna be strong in a software department and whatever they
can sort of build around it using pieces that work well enough they'll do that
and it kind of reminds me of Tesla where Tesla as a car manufacturer they're it
they're more of a tech and software company they're always gonna have the
best tech and software in their cars they might not have this sweet leather
trim or all the the pristine interior finishings and if you like that stuff
get you know a Samsung or an iPhone right so yeah it's just kind of where
pixels at for me and maybe they will change but I feel like for the
foreseeable future they're a great software choice and the rest comes after
that's it that's basically the story with the pixel 4 I mean it's a tough
call but I just keep coming back to it because if it's camera performance and
that's that's why I'm sticking to it and I like the software experience
but it still had some issues and I don't think given its current price it's it's
a valuable choice but let me know what you guys think about the pixel 4 or the
4 xl in the comments down below i'm eber with hardware canucks thank you so
much for watching make sure to check out some relevant content over here
subscribe hit that notification button also huge shout out to marques Brownlee
for chiming in on his thoughts about the pixel 4 in the comments I'll you guys
should definitely know him but I'll talk to you guys in the next video