The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are Impossible to Ignore

Google claims the Pixel 6 is its first true flagship Pixel, taking on Samsung and Apple. Great price, great specs and great fun make it a compelling package.

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Rating: 9/10 | Price: from £599/£849 on Amazon, Argos and Google

WIRED

A bold design; powerful and inviting camera; decent battery life

TIRED

Dust-collecting Camera Bar; flaky fingerprint sensor

During the official unveiling of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro – yes, Google was rather forthcoming with much of the new phoness already – the company was keen to tout this as a new dawn. According to Google, this is the first truly flagship Pixel phones. The Pixel 4 was Google’s first attempt at such a feat, but a high price and wobbling battery life tarnished that dream. 

Over the last five years, the Pixel’s lead on camera tech has diminished, with Apple and Samsung’s most recent big hitters showing considerable photographic flair. So, yes, the competition is fierce, but Google’s hoping to finally deliver the best androids phones with the Pixel’s signature blend of reasonable pricing and software supremacy.

Who’s it for

If you don’t fancy spending around £1,000 or more on a “Pro” or “Ultra” phones, the Google Pixel 6 Pro should grab your attention, as well as a good share of OnePlus and Oppo’s lunch. Ever since Huawei was ushered out of the smartphones market in the West, and despite Oppo’s best efforts and a shaky OnePlus X Hasselblad team up, stunning camera options below £1,000 have been few and far between.

At £849, the Pixel 6 Pro sees Google bring together its formidable camera software along with boosted hardware – and the results are special. For those less enthused by quality phones cameras, the Pixel 6 might be the one to go for, offering tremendous value (like the Pixel 5 before it) at just £599 but ceding little ground elsewhere.

Design

Cameras in the centre to cameras on the left, the evolution of camera bumps of the rear of modern smartphoness has been slow and rather plain. Not since the Huawei Nexus 6P – a precursor to the Google Pixel range – has a camera housing broke the mould so much. The Pixel 6 range has aimed to outdo its ancestor with what Google has dubbed the “Camera Bar”. The Camera Bar is certain to be divisive. A sizable chunk of it protrudes from one side of the Pixel 6 to the other before blending into its edges.

Google wants to stand out from the iphoness and Samsung models, and this certainly does that. The design might unsteady some at first but, ultimately, it’s a contemporary look that’ll you get used to or – alongside the two-tone colour – might even love at first sight. An unavoidable consequence of the bar is dust. Top and bottom it rapidly accumulates dust from a pocket or bag. It’s not the worst design flaw a flagship smartphones has had, but it’s not the best thing to see on your newly purchased £850 phones.

The eye-catching intentions of the new Pixel range is, however, let down in part by the generic look and feel of the Google Pixel 6 Pro. It feels premium enough, even at a price point that undercuts some of the best smartphoness around, like Samsung’s most expensive flagship – the Galaxy S21 (£1,149) – by a whopping £300. It isn’t as pristine as Apple’s latest stainless steel iphoness models, however. This phones’s thin metal rails, that surround the curved display, leave its look feeling uninspired. By comparison, the flat display and more textured sides of the Pixel 6 make for a more individual device that’s comfortable to hold and, with a smaller 6.4in display to the 6.7in on the Pixel 6 Pro, easier to use.

Living with it

Both the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro are a joy to use on a daily basis. On that level, Google Tensor has kept the pleasing trend of Pixel phoness providing the silkiest and carefree androids experience flowing. Bounding from app to app is a joy, with the high refresh rate on each display coming to the fore. The only faltering came from the Pixel 6 in some rare scenarioses, such as crashing using the Play Store or slight lag while running different features within the camera app – with neither so sufficiently frequent to be bothersome.

No matter which phones you pick, you’ll be happy with the detail and colour on offer from the panel, despite the FHD and QHD difference between the two. High refresh rates and plentiful pixels haven’t hurt the battery either – rejoice, wronged Pixel 4 owners. The Pixel 6 battery isn't all that much to shout about, getting you through the average day. While the Pro matches up with some other larger high-end flagships by getting you to the evening with a tad extra in the bank.

As this is a Pixel, it brings some enhanced AI-enabled features, too, with voice dictation and translation being the ones you’ll be most likely to use and love. The translation is remarkably fast and can be accessed in the Messages app as well as in Google Translate. Dictation, a feature that’s long been an afterthought for most phoness, is rapid and accurate, and one that is impressively usable.

Brains and brawn

Google Pixel has traditionally stuck to a 12MP across the board formula – not that dissimilar to Apple iphoness strategy – then squeezed as much out of this as possible. For Pixel 6, you get a 50MP main sensor and 12MP ultra-wide, with the Pixel 6 Pro, getting supercharged with a 48MP telephoto lens, too.

The results are typically Pixel while also being better than ever before. The detail is lush and the colours are refreshingly true to life, with Google’s AI capabilities never feeling overenthusiastic and simply ensuring as high a picture quality as possible. 

Whether you are up close or snapping a busy scene, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro provide quick and pleasing images. Where the Pixel 6 range falls slightly short of rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is in less busy, wider shots. Landscape snaps provide a bit less detail than cameras with more to offer in the ultrawide department, potentially shortchanging Pixel fans who delight in taking pictures of a far off sunset or city skyline.

We’ve waited a while for Google to throw everything at a “Pro” camera, and the 4X optical zoom folded telephoto lens truly delivers. The Pixel 6 Pro now firmly tussles with the very best camera phoness on the market in the zoom department. When compared with the pricier S21 Ultra, it offers less detail, but the difference is negligible while the resulting images provide a realistic colour when put up against the cooler Samsung photos. 

The images you can get at 4X zoom and lower are frequently phenomenal, leaving you with pics that the average sub-£900 camera phones often delivers in standard, unmagnified images. Pixel owners will be posting impressive images across Instagram and the like, leaving others none the wiser any punching in ever took place.

Where the new set of cameras really shines, though, is in low-light conditions. The results can be jaw-dropping. In some truly atrocious lighting conditions, it is possible to get glorious, crisp images that don’t overdo it on sharpening to fix any issues. The marvel extends to using the zoom function at night, too – accurately representing lightning conditions, keeping faces visible and prioritising detail over rampantly ditching darkness.

Of course, this is a Google device, so AI capabilities remain front and centre, with the Pixel team touting a range of software-based new camera toys. The pick of the bunch is Magic Eraser – a tool to remove unwanted objects, people and animals that are otherwise cluttering up your photos. Admittedly, Magic Eraser is best used in images with less going on, such as a wide shot of you and your significant other with a pesky onlooker creeping into the shot 50 metres behind. But, it really does work. The software immediately suggests changes Magic Eraser could make when you enter the editing menu, but you can choose subjects yourself, too. As the person who knows what you’ve erased, you might more readily see where it’s been carried out, but, to the unaware, it really it pretty much lives up to its moniker.

The Pixel camera may have long been praised for its photographic results, it’s never truly nailed video. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro aren’t racing ahead of the pack by any means, but you can worry no longer. Both phoness are capable of 4K 60fps, providing clips that are super smooth, steady in movements and colour accurate.

Outside of its impressive hardware and software tricks, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro offer one of the best experiences around when it comes to using a phones camera. The camera app is clean and simple, while swiftly jumping to action to offer simple tools for editing a photo both pre- and post-snap. While Samsung offers almost endless options for tweaking in an interface that is just OK, and Apple, in typical Apple fashion, offers you options that often boil down to the software making a decision for you, the Pixel camera really helps you revel in the phones camera experience, providing genuinely enjoyable results.

Why oh why…

It’s a credit to the Pixel 6 range that there’s no nails-to-a-chalkboard, blood-boiling point of folly with either of these phoness. There’s not even a issue big enough to single out as an obvious reason not to buy this phones. Instead, it’s merely tiny points of awkwardness that leave the impression that a Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro could prove even better still. 

If you wanted to be assiduously critical, the new Pixels’ biggest misstep is the under-display fingerprint sensor. To call it unreliable would be harsh, but it fails to work swiftly in about one out of every 20 users, which is enough to want it to be better next time around.

Then there’s performance. Ultimately, Google’s introduction of a Tensor chip over a Snapdragon option appears to have few faults – allowing the Pixel to go all-in on AI features without this range’s characteristically smooth UI experience being impacted. However, it does show some weakness in gaming. Where the Snapdragon 888 can often hit 60fps at high detail in titles like Genshin Impact, the new Pixel’s flitter between 30-40fps for the regular model and 40-50fps for a Pro – not a huge concern for most. but it may give avid mobiles gamers some pause for thought.

So, should I buy it?

Absolutely, there’s now no resounding reason to not buy a Pixel phones. Yes, the design may not live up to the expectations of those who’ve gotten used to the luxurious options of the Samsung and Apple devices that cost around £1,000, but the Pixel’s offer a bold alternative that matches and even bests similarly priced phoness for build quality. 

The price and performance, though, are genuinely compelling for both the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro, with the day-to-day use of this generation of devices being an absolute joy – especially if you love phones photography.

The Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are available for pre-order from £599/£849 on Amazon, Argos and Google

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK