Google Pixel 8 & 8 Pro hands-on review

Camera

The Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro have revised cameras this year with a dual camera system on the Pixel 8 and a triple camera system on the Pixel 8 Pro.

The main camera on both phones is a new 50MP sensor with f1.68 aperture, multi-zone laser detect auto-focus with optical and electronic image stabilization. The Pixel 8 Pro also gets a new 48MP ultra-wide camera with f1.95 aperture and a 125.5-degree field of view. The Pixel 8, however, seemingly borrows the ultra-wide camera from last year's Pixel 7 Pro, with 12MP resolution and f2.2 aperture.

The Pixel 8 Pro also gets an updated 48MP 5x telephoto camera. It's unclear if it's the same sensor as on the Pixel 7 Pro but the new phone does get a brighter f2.8 aperture and a slightly wider 21.8 degree field of view.

Both new phones also get an updated 10.5MP front camera with f2.2 aperture. Only the Pro model gets autofocus.

Starting with the software, there are some interesting things on the new Pixel phones. The new camera app now houses the settings on the bottom and can be accessed by swiping up instead of down. The app is also split into dedicated photo and video modes, with each having its own sub-modes.

Pixel 8 Pro Camera app

An interesting change here is that the Pro and the non-Pro models have different camera settings. Both phones get the option to shoot in RAW but the Pro phone also lets you pick between 12MP and 50MP resolution. You also get the option to force a lens choice and the camera will use your chosen lens regardless of the light levels or distance from the subject. This way you can avoid the phone automatically switching lenses without your permission.

Both phones get a new menu with the ability to adjust brightness, shadow detail, and white balance but the Pro model also gets manual focus with focus peaking, shutter speed control, and ISO. This, along with the previously available RAW capture, finally brings full control over the image capture experience that was always missing on the Pixel phones. Having said that, these are all software features, and gatekeeping them to the Pro model only is disappointing.

The new Pixel 8 phones can also capture images in Display P3 color space. This option needs to be enabled from the advanced settings and is available on both phones. Enabling it will save the original raw data in a much wider Display P3 color space that can show a greater range of shades, especially in the green and red areas of visible light compared to sRGB but you need an appropriate display and subject to fully see the difference. All images shown below, however, are in standard sRGB for compatibility.

Another cool thing with the image capture experience is actually in the Photos app. Like the iPhones, the Pixel 8 phones now capture additional metadata regarding the luminance levels of the images they capture. This information is then used to generate HDR PQ-like effect in the Photos app, where image highlights are automatically brightened when you view them, creating a stunning high dynamic range effect. It was always a cool trick previously found only on the OLED iPhones and we are glad it is making its way to more devices.

Now moving on to the bread and butter of Pixel devices, and that is the image quality from the cameras. Starting with the main camera, both phones offer great image quality on the main camera with excellent dynamic range and a good amount of detail despite the now fairly limited 12MP image resolution. The images have the classic Pixel look with Google deploying its usual bag of tricks to achieve it, such as exposing for the highlights, boosting contrast in the mid-tones, sharpening edges, and a cooler white balance with a magenta bias.

Pixel 8 Pro main camera

Compared to the previous generation Pixel 7 models, the new phones show minor improvement in perceived detail although it could very well be a result of increased sharpening, which is noticeably higher this year. The shadow detail also seems slightly cleaner. Aside from that, however, the image quality doesn't show major changes from last year's models.

Main camera: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7

Compared to the new iPhone 15 Max camera, the Pixel 8 Pro images look sharper even when compared to the default 24MP images of the iPhone. Make no mistake, however, as the iPhone images are plenty detailed and Apple does not sharpen its images as much, which gives the impression of less detail on the iPhone even though they are largely identical.

Main camera: Pixel 8 Pro • iPhone 15 Pro

The color and dynamic range differences are much more significant. The iPhone camera leans towards warmer and greener tones compared to the Pixel's cooler and magenta. The Pixel phones do have a more consistent white balance, however, and the iPhone tends to sway considerably, which means when it misses it misses by a mile. It's very easy to get overly warm or overly cool images with the iPhone whereas the Pixel white balance is always consistent from shot to shot.

Moving to the ultra-wide exposes more differences. The Pixel 8 Pro has the best-looking ultra-wide images of this bunch. It has more detail than the 12MP ultra-wide images from the Pixel 7 Pro and the Pixel 8 and is also cleaner overall. The Pixel 8, while seemingly having the same ultra-wide camera as the Pixel 7 Pro, also has cleaner shadow detail, meaning the Tensor G3 image processing has improved over the G2. All three are better than the Pixel 7 ultra-wide, which was neither very wide nor had auto-focus.

Ultrawide: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7

Compared to the iPhone 15 Pro's ultra-wide, the Pixel 8 Pro scores an easy win. The iPhone's UW camera really hasn't improved much over the previous model and is still quite soft. It's the only real weak link in the iPhone's otherwise very capable camera system.

Ultrawide: Pixel 8 Pro • iPhone 15 Pro

The zoom results were quite interesting. First of all, the Pixel 8 phones have a very different idea of what 2x magnification is compared to the Pixel 7 phones and even the iPhone 15 Pro. While all phones have roughly similar main focal lengths, the Pixel 8 phones crop much more for 2x magnification compared to any of the other phones. This resulted in, for example, the 2x Pixel 8 images looking much more cropped than the Pixel 7 or iPhone images. It's quite likely this is unintentional or a bug.

Keeping that in mind, let's compare the 2x results first. This magnification isn't native to any of the phones compared here but is still commonly used. The Pixel 8 phones did not do particularly well here. The images are oversharpened and there is a decent amount of fizzling artifacts around high frequency detail. Both the Pixel 7 phones and the iPhone perform very well here.

2x zoom: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7

At 3x, our iPhone 15 Pro was operating at native quality and provided the cleanest, sharpest results. Having said that, the Pixel 8 Pro also did well and whatever was plaguing the 2x results didn't seem to be an issue here. The 3x crop was also accurate and not over-magnified as with 2x. Image quality was largely identical to the Pixel 7 Pro with only a slight boost to textural detail.

3x zoom: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7

However, while the Pixel 8 Pro was doing well, the Pixel 8 was really struggling at 3x. All images we captured at 3x just looked bad with a metric ton of artifacts and a poorly upscaled quality to them that made them unsightly on anything other than the phone's display without zooming in. We are not sure what is going on here but the image processing was clearly struggling and we do not think it's supposed to be this way.

Moving on to 5x, we are now in the native zoom range of the Pro Pixel models. The Pixel 8 Pro 5x shots looked excellent with very good detail and clarity across the image. The second best was surprisingly the iPhone 15 Pro, which even though does not have a native 5x lens, kept up admirably with the Pixel 8 Pro with a very good-looking image. The Pixel 7 Pro came third with a soft image that should be familiar to anyone who's used the phone. The non-Pro Pixels bring up the rear, with both looking pretty rough and the new phone being marginally better.

5x zoom: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7

Next is a brief look at low-light photography with this single scene shot with very dim warm LED ambient lighting with the most random assortment of objects. All shots were taken in the default photo mode but all phones automatically enable night mode in low light so it doesn't really matter.

The iPhone 15 Pro image has good detail and color but is ultimately fairly dark with a clearly visible luminance noise pattern. It's the only one that noticeably looks like it was shot in the dark. Meanwhile, all four Pixel images are beautifully lit to the point you can't even tell if they were shot in low light, with good detail and no noise.

Main camera: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7

Things get worse with the ultra-wide; the iPhone 15 Pro falls further behind and even the last year's Pixel phones are leagues ahead.

Ultrawide: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7

There is no visible improvement in low light performance in this particular test between the Pixel 8 series and Pixel 7 series phones. They all look good. If anything, the Pixel 7 phones had better white balance as both Pixel 8 phones leaned heavily towards magenta.

Finally, here's a look at the video from the Pixel 8 Pro compared to the iPhone 15 Pro shot at 4K 30FPS. The iPhone video still looks objectively superior as it had more accurate color reproduction of the original scene, greater detail, and also better stabilization. The Pixel 8 Pro had an overly warm color tone, noticeable warping and jitter in stabilization, and also a softer image overall.