Google Pixel 5 long-term review

Punch-hole display

The display continues to be one of the best parts of the Pixel 5's experience. From the thin bezels to its manageable compact size, its 90Hz refresh rate and its bright screen, the Pixel 5 has a wonderful display. It doesn't have chart-topping brightness, or QHD resolution, but it's bright enough, renders colors very nicely, and looks great from all angles.

The 6-inch OLED screen has a resolution of 1080 x 2340 px and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. The 90Hz refresh rate is a nice touch, but it's not the 'smoothest' implementation around. We're not sure what it is, but there's a noticeable difference in smoothness compared to, say, the OnePlus 7 Pro. The display does support HDR10+ content, and it has always-on capabilities.

Ambient display settings • Tap to check • Now playing • Smooth Display

To keep things simple, the Pixel never really had advanced control over the color reproduction and the Pixel 5 isn't different. To keep it simple, there are only three profiles to choose from: Natural, Boosted, and Adaptive. Adaptive is the most saturated profile, and is the one you need to use to watch HDR10+ content. Meanwhile, the Natural profile is the closest to sRGB accuracy, and the Boosted profile offers a slight boost in saturation over the Natural setting.

Display settings • Adaptive brightness • Screen attention • Color profiles

One of the features added to the December update was an option to increase the touchscreen's sensitivity, meant to aid in touchscreen issues users experienced with screen protectors.

Midrange performance

Although Google decided against using a high-end chipset in the Pixel 5, it did not detract from the overall experience. Would it be nice to have the latest and greatest silicon? Yes. Does the Snapdragon 765G impress? It doesn't impress, but it does not disappoint either.

When comparing its benchmark scores with the Pixel 4a's Snapdragon 730G we noticed that in some graphics-intensive benchmarks, the Pixel 5 was scoring about the same or below the Pixel 4A with a Snapdragon 730G. We noticed a disparity in GPU scores between the Adreno 618 on the 4a and the Adreno 620 on the Pixel - the latter of which scored lower than the 4a in GPU scores on AnTuTu.

We suggested that Google may have tuned the chipset this way to improve battery efficiency and offset the added draw from 5G connectivity. Whatever the case for this difference in numbers, benchmarks are just numbers and don't tell the full story. Numbers alone can't speak for a device's real-world performance.

Despite what we saw in raw numbers, we were content with the performance of the Pixel 5. Android 11 is very well-optimized on the Pixel 5 and it's such a fun little device to use. Switching between apps is snappy and 8GB of RAM is ample enough for juggling between multiple messaging and productivity apps, even while a Zoom meeting rambles in the background.

The Pixel 5 handles graphic-intensive games with ease, although these days mobile game engines are optimized enough to run smoothly on all ranges of hardware. The Pixel 5 will handle both casual and action-packed games with a dropped frame or two here and there, but if you rely on precision and speed for competitive eSports leagues, there are other, higher-end gaming phones more suited and better-equipped to handle those needs.

Even comparing the Pixel 5 with the Pixel 4 XL by opening apps side by side, there's no discernable difference - even opening heavier games. We're impressed that Google has come all this way with software optimization to the point where a high-end chipset isn't a necessity. Either that or the Pixel 4 XL isn't well-optimized.

Where the Pixel does stutter is in the way that it handles image processing. If you recall, Google introduced the Pixel Visual Core co-processor with the Pixel 2, which aided the CPU with processing Google's imaging algorithms, which require heave processing to capture an image. That said, Google has removed the Pixel Visual Core because it was able to leverage about the same HDR+ processing without it.

The long processing times between shots is perhaps the only complaint we have with the Pixel 5's performance. This doesn't exclude older Pixels. The Pixel 5 captures multiple frames at once before churning out a final image, resulting in these wait times. This can vary from image to image (anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds per image), depending on the number of details in a scene, the amount of light available, and the kind of photo you are capturing (Night Sight, portrait, or a selfie).

This is one of the Pixel's quirks, and its one that we've learned to live with because the resulting images are what makes the Pixel 5's camera fun to use. We'll reserve more about the camera in its corresponding section so let's move on and talk a bit about software.