Google Pixel 9 review: a fantastic phone* (*added fees may apply)

Google Pixel 9: Two-minute review

Welcome to the dawn of the AI phone. While past phones have had AI features, the Google Pixel 9 has it everywhere. You don’t need to look for the AI on the Pixel 9 – it will find you, and it will ask if you need any help with that. 

Are you ready for the mobile AI future? I’m not sure any of us are, and that includes Google. The approach to AI so far has been shotgun, scattering features all over until phone makers and tech companies manage to score a hit. And so it is on the Pixel 9, with every one good “Add Me” feature in the camera contrasting with five silly “Make me sound like Shakespeare” features in the Google keyboard. 

The good news is that the Pixel 9 is a very good phone, whether or not you care about the new AI features. You won’t be able to ignore them, but love them or hate them, they won’t stand in the way of a pleasing Pixel 9 experience. This is a very good phone, and it’s going to get even better, in more ways than one. 

The Google Pixel 9 will get Android OS updates, security patches, and new Pixel feature drops for the next seven years. That means there is a vast future ahead of the Pixel 9. Thankfully, Google says this phone is twice as durable as the Pixel 8, so it should hold up under daily use. Whether it will be just as good in seven years as it is today is another story. 

The Pixel 9 is totally redesigned this year, and it looks just as good as the pricier Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL phones. The differences are subtle: the Pixel 9 has a polished glass back and a matte, satin finish metal frame; the Pixel 9 Pro has a matte finish glass back and a polished metal frame. If you don’t have that memorized, you’ll get them mixed up, because otherwise these two phones could be twins. 

In fact, the Pixel 9 has the exact same dimensions and weight as the Pixel 9 Pro. It has the same screen size and the same size battery. It has the same processor. It has the same main and ultrawide cameras, down to the lenses and sensor modules. 

If I handed you the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro and you didn’t know to look for the third camera lens hidden in the Pro’s camera bar, you wouldn’t be able to tell these phones apart even after a solid hour using them both.

Does that make the Pixel 9 a great choice, or is the Pixel 9 Pro just underpowered? It’s a bit of both. The Pixel 9 is a great buy. The cameras really are the same, and photos look nearly identical, even though there are some notable differences. 

More importantly, the Pixel 9 doesn’t miss out on any of Google’s latest AI features. You can add yourself to group photos using Add Me in the camera. You can create a digital portfolio of your screen grabs with the Pixel-exclusive Screenshot app. You can while away the hours chatting to Gemini with the new conversational Gemini Live feature, just like you can with the Pixel 9 Pro. 

You’ll have to pay for it, though, because Gemini Live is part of Gemini Advanced, and Pixel 9 owners don’t get that for free like Pro buyers do. The Pixel 9 is cheaper than the Pixel 9 Pro at launch – a couple hundred less in the US and UK and $350 less in Australia – but the difference is more complicated if you consider subscribing to Google’s cloud service. 

You should also remember that Pixel devices often drop in price, especially around the holiday season. The last two Pixel 8 and Pixel 7 phones both saw price cuts in November, after launching a month earlier. If you need to save money, wait a few months, there might be even better deals on the way. 

Google Pixel 9 review: Price and availability

• Starts at $799 for 128GB, not including Advanced AI fees
• Available in four colors, including Wintergreen and Peony

Wow, that Peony. Sorry, I was distracted for a moment. The Pixel 9 is available starting at $799 / £799 / AU$1,349 with 128GB of storage. That would be enough storage if you use Google’s cloud to hold your photos and videos, otherwise you can double the storage for an extra $100 / £100 / AU$150 (there’s also a deal on the Pixel 9 in the UK at launch to double storage for free). Either way, you get 12GB of RAM inside, which is quite a bit for this price range, but less than the 16GB Pixel 9 Pro. 

The Pixel 9 comes in a striking pink Peony color, a very cool green Wintergreen, that Peony, a classy off-white Porcelain, Peony, and boring black Obsidian. Guess which one is my favorite? You can get every color in every storage configuration, too, unlike the Pixel 9 Pro, which limits the pink model to lower-storage capacities. 

The price is a bit high for the Pixel 9, though you get plenty of features found on the Pixel 9 Pro, so it isn’t a bad deal. The iPhone 15 and Samsung Galaxy S24, which are both around the same screen size, cost about the same. Those phones are admittedly more powerful, but they lack many of the AI features and much of the charm of the Google Pixel 9. 

Even better, the Pixel 9 is likely to drop in price soon enough. The Pixel 8 was launched in October, 2023, and by November it was already reduced by $150 in the US. I’d expect to see deals around the end of the year, in time for holiday shopping. 

• Value score: 4/5

Google Pixel 9 review: Specs

The Pixel 9 has impressive specs, mostly thanks to its similarity with the Google Pixel 9 Pro. The phones are nearly identical in dimensions; Google says the Pro model weighs 1 gram more, but they are the exact same size. 

Inside, you get the same Google Tensor G4 chipset as the Pixel 9 Pro, paired with 12GB of RAM, which is a considerable amount of memory. The Galaxy S24 only comes with 8GB of RAM on board, though its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy platform is arguably the fastest mobile platform on any smartphone. 

The Pixel 9 display is excellent, with leading specs for brightness in its price range at 2,700 nits peak. Google says that DXO Labs will rank the Pixel 9 highest among smartphone displays in its class, but the official rankings have not been revealed at press time. 

The Pixel 9 has a 4,700 mAh battery and can use a 45W fast charger, but don’t bother. I’ll explain in the battery section, but the benefits of the faster charger are miniscule, not even worth a few bucks extra for a nicer wall plug. 

Google Pixel 9 review: Design

• Fantastic Pixel redesign is the biggest change since the Pixel 6
• Durable and colorful, a nice combo

The Pixel 9 comes across as elegant and refined, even more than previous Pixel phones. The new design pops the camera bar out from the back, but offers smooth lines and a satisfying contrast between textures and shine. The camera bar is sanded to a satin finish, just like the frame, offering a contrast against the glossy glass back. 

I’m a big fan of the new colors, including my Wintergreen review unit hue and the new Peony (did I mention that?), which is the snazziest pink I’ve seen on a smartphone. It’s more reddish than Barbie pink, so it feels unique and very modern. The black Obsidian is fine, just like every black phone we’ve seen since the iPhone 3G. The porcelain retains the classy off-white look from last year, though there is a bit more depth and shine in the new glass compared directly against the Pixel 8 in the same color. 

The Pixel 9 simply feels fantastic to hold. It’s not quite as amazing as the Pixel 9 Pro, with its polished metal sides, but the curved edges spill over onto the display in a way that is pleasant and smooth. This phone is so satisfying to grip. 

The first thing Google told me about the Pixel 9 is that it’s twice as durable as the Pixel 8, which was no slouch itself. The phone uses Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front for extra durability and scratch resistance. It can withstand dust and a dunk underwater with IP68 protection. Thankfully, you’d never know it was that tough just by looking at it. 

• Design score: 5/5

Google Pixel 9 review: Display

• Excellent display, bright and colorful
• Very nice outdoors, but the Pro models are still much better

The Google Pixel 9 has one of the nicest phone displays you’ll ever see. Google is bragging about the so-called Actua display being the best in its price class, and it’s a shockingly bright, vibrant screen. The only smartphone screen I’ve seen recently that looks better is on the Pixel 9 Pro. 

The screen is one of the main differences between the Pro model and the Pixel 9, though the displays are the same size. That’s the only similarity, though. The Pixel 9 Pro is brighter, sharper, and more versatile. The Pixel 9 display can change refresh rates between 60Hz and 120Hz to save power, but the Pixel 9 Pro has an LTPO display that can refresh anywhere between 1-120Hz. 

In practice, you’ll see the difference if you hold the phones side-by-side, so don’t do that! Hold the Pixel 9 against a Galaxy S24 or iPhone 15 instead, and it will look like the best display of the bunch. It will certainly be the brightest. 

• Display score: 4/5

Google Pixel 9 review: Software

• Lots of AI, but you’ll have to pay for the coolest stuff
• Some software will require a change of habit … and trust

The Google Pixel 9 has so many amazing AI features, it would be impossible to recount them all. Some of these features are available and useful right away. Some require a subscription if you really want the good stuff. And some are available, but they may not become useful for a little while. I’ll explain. 

Whenever the Pixel 9 records people talking, the AI is useful. The Pixel voice Recorder app is amazing. The new Call Notes feature can take notes and send them to you after a call. Don’t worry about recording phone calls – it announces itself clearly to everybody, so there’s no legal trouble. I haven’t tried the translation features in depth, but the demonstrations I’ve seen have been very cool. It even does a good job summarizing a web page, or reading the subtext from an email. 

However, if you want to use the spotlight AI feature, the new Gemini Live conversation tool, you have to pay extra. Gemini Live is part of Gemini Advanced, which is available with a subscription plan, and you also get 2TB of cloud storage if you subscribe. 

That Google One AI Premium plan costs $19.99 / £18.99 / AU$32.99 per month, but here’s the rub – you get a year of this service for free if you buy the Pixel 9 Pro. So, if you are even remotely considering subscribing to get Gemini Advanced, you should really just buy the Pixel 9 Pro, since it will cost you less overall within the first year, and also you get the Pixel 9 Pro rather than the base model.

Is it worth paying extra to chat with Google Gemini? Absolutely not, I pay for the cloud storage, not the AI. Gemini Live is a total dud right now. It offers good advice if you just want to chat about life, but if you look for anything specific, it can lead you astray. 

I asked for recommendations for a dinner date and it directed me to a restaurant that closed years ago. Good thing I checked Google first, too bad Gemini can’t do the same. Gemini Live also shut down before I was finished, every time. The conversation ended when Gemini Live simply stopped working. That’s not AI worth paying for.

My biggest question mark surrounds the Pixel exclusive Screenshots app. I was not excited about this when we first learned about it, but then I took a look at my screenshots folder on Google Photos. I have 3,612 screenshots saved – the first is from 2013. 

Sadly – and I’m very sad about this – the Pixel 9 can’t index all of my old screenshots, even though they are saved on Google Photos as “screenshots.” It starts with the first screenshot you take with your new Pixel 9 and works with screens you grab from your phone, not other phones. You can manually add more photos, but I’m not adding 3,600 screenshots. 

Will Screenshots be valuable once I’ve taken 3,000 more screenshots? Only time will tell. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do with Screenshots, or what I’ll ask, or what it will be good for. I only know that it will have access to the largest collection of data that I collect, and that has to be useful for something. If not, what’s the point of all of this AI?!

• Display score: 4/5

Google Pixel 9 review: Cameras

• Image quality very similar to the Pixel 9 Pro
• Lacks Pro controls and high-resolution capabilities

The Pixel 9 has the same main and ultrawide cameras as the Pixel 9 Pro, and that’s remarkable, but it’s not the whole story. So yes, it has the same lenses and sensors as the more expensive phone, and those are very important – but it uses different software with those cameras. The results end up nearly identical, but the differences are real and worth considering. 

The Pixel 9 has a 50MP main camera, but it creates 12.5MP images using a pixel binning technique that combines data from four pixels into one. This is the same sensor as the Pixel 9 Pro, but the Pro phone has Pro controls in the camera that let you output a 50MP image. You cannot control the output resolution on the Pixel 9, though, surprisingly, you can choose to output RAW image files in addition to JPG images. 

The Camera app on the Pixel 9 is very hard to manage. There are many settings and features available, but not all the time, and the camera won’t explain why. For instance, there is a Top Shot feature that captures a large number of photo frames, then lets you choose the best. You can save the sequence as a video. Unfortunately, it was not available on my Pixel 9, and I couldn’t figure out why. 

When I tapped the tiny “?” next to Top Shot, it said “Top Shot can’t be used when one of these features is on” and then listed five different features, at least one of which isn’t ever available on the Pixel 9 (High-Resolution). It turned out the culprit was Social Media Depth Feature, which is a setting buried under a different menu, then under Advanced within that. It’s a miracle I found it. This is Samsung levels of bad interface design. 

Once you get shooting, the camera on the Pixel 9 is fantastic. It produced results that were almost indistinguishable from those of the Pixel 9 Pro, which has one of the best smartphone cameras I’ve ever tested. The color, lighting, and contrast on Pixel 9 images were so close to the Pixel 9 Pro, I could not tell them apart without zooming in a bit. 

Because I was testing for the absolute best quality, I used the Pixel 9 Pro at full 50MP resolution, but I’m sure if I dialed it back to 12MP (like when the phone overheated in bright sunlight), the images would have been completely the same.

If you shoot a lot of video, you may want to consider the Pixel 9 Pro instead. The Pro phone gets more AI video-boost features from Google, including a new Super Res Zoom that increases the resolution on videos shot at the digital zoom max of 20X.

Like the Pixel 9 Pro, the Pixel 9 gets the new night time panorama, and it’s incredibly effective. You can actually see fine details and color in night panoramas, unlike the sprawling wide shots you get from an iPhone 15, which are entirely black in the same conditions.

• Camera score: 4/5

Google Pixel 9 review: Camera samples

Image 1 of 13

Google Pixel 9 review: Performance

• Great with Google stuff, but don’t get too fancy
• Performance leaves me concerned about the seven year promise

Google Tensor chips get a bad rep when it comes to performance, but how bad is it, really? Well, the iPhone SE is the cheapest iPhone that Apple sells right now, for $429 / £429 / AU$719 – and the Google Pixel 9 can’t beat it in a single processor benchmark test, according to our Future Labs testing. The iPhone SE was launched 2.5 years ago with an Apple A15 Bionic chipset inside. The Pixel 9 wins on graphics quality, but not raw processing power. 

That’s … really sad. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a benchmark concern. The Pixel 9 feels sluggish, especially as Google adds more and more AI features. All of these clever tricks add a bottleneck to performance. Some of them rely on heavy processing and much of the phone’s 12GB of RAM. Some rely on contact to and from Google’s cloud AI servers. All of them are slower than your basic apps, interface, and Android games. 

It’s time for Google to take Tensor performance more seriously. The Pixel 9 worries me. The design is fantastic. The cameras are amazing. I’m not sure about the processor. This phone comes with a seven-year promise. That means seven years of Android OS updates, security patches, and Pixel feature drops. Will it really be able to keep up in seven years with the latest features? Will it keep up with any new features? I’m doubtful. 

Pushing the Pixel 9 to the limit causes delays. It causes apps to slow down and stutter. The buttons on screen might fail to respond in some apps. I noticed that the Google interface was always incredibly snappy and responsive. It feels highly optimized. All of the menus move faster than I can see them go. When I started using other software, though, I ran into problems, especially with multitasking.

I think the Pixel 9 is still powerful enough for everything it can do today, and as long as Google doesn’t overload it with new AI features that are constantly indexing data in the background, it should hold up for a while. It’s even possible Google could smooth out rough edges with new AI software and make this phone feel even faster. It’s happened before.

• Performance score: 3/5

Google Pixel 9 review: Battery

• Good battery life, no trouble lasting all day
• Charging could be faster, but don’t buy a faster charger

The Pixel 9 has the same size battery as the Pixel 9 Pro, and battery life is very similar between them. The Pixel 9 died less than 15 minutes earlier than the Pixel 9 Pro in our rundown tests, but both lasted more than 13 hours total, which is very impressive, especially for phones this size. 

In the real world, the Pixel 9 had no trouble surviving through a full day of usage. Even shooting a few photos, walking around outside with the screen turned up bright, and playing games on the train ride home, I was able to make it to bed without needing more juice. The Pixel 9 lasts longer than the similarly sized iPhone 15, but not quite as long as the Samsung Galaxy S24. 

Google says you can charge the phone with a 45W charger, but don’t bother shopping for one. In my tests, the charging speed was nearly identical whether I used a 25W charger or a 45W model. Google clarified by saying the Pixel 9 can charge up to 27W if you use a 45W charger. That’s not worth the extra cost for only a tiny bit more Wattage. 

No matter, because Google says the Pixel 9 can charge to 55% in 30 minutes, and that’s exactly what I saw in my tests. It charges fast enough, but if you really want to prioritize fast charging, you can find a OnePlus 12 that will charge to nearly 100% in the same time.

• Battery score: 4/5

Should you buy the Google Pixel 9?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Google Pixel 9 review: Also consider

How I tested the Google Pixel 9

I received the Pixel 9 from Google and spent one week with the phone before writing this review. Another Pixel 9 was also tested by Future Labs for benchmark and lab testing. I used the Pixel 9 as my primary personal phone, testing every feature, including calling and Call Notes, messaging, and web browsing. I also played games, listened to music, and played more games. 

I used the Pixel 9 in my car for music and navigation, using Bluetooth and Android Auto. I also used the Pixel 9 Pro with a number of accessories, including OnePlus Nord Buds Pro, a OnePlus Watch 2, Meta Ray Ban smart glasses, and an Xbox gaming controller. I streamed video to my Google Chromecast connected to my TV. 

I tested the Google Pixel 9 cameras alongside a Pixel 9 Pro and Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max, taking photos under the exact same conditions and comparing results. For each camera, I used the mode that produced the highest resolution image with the best image quality. I viewed these photos for comparison on a professional Dell monitor. 

Future Labs tests phones using a mix of third-party benchmark software and proprietary, real world tests. We use Geekbench, CrossMark, JetStream, WebXPRT and Mobile XPRT, and 3DMark for performance testing. We test the phones’ performance on tasks using Adobe Premiere Rush. We also measure display color output and brightness. 

For battery testing, we have proprietary rundown tests that are the same for every phone, and we determine how long it takes for the battery to run down. 

Read more about how we test

First reviewed August 2024