Google Pixel 6 overview: The neatest, best-value Pixel but

There isn’t a lot that wasn’t already leaked in regards to the Google Pixel 6 previous to launch, however right here’s affirmation of 1 key reality. In some way undercutting all of this 12 months’s high-end flagship launches to this point, the Pixel 6 is an absolute cut price with only a few compromises.

Showing alongside the costlier Pixel 6 Professional, the common Pixel 6 remains to be what Google is looking its “premium tier” Pixel for 2021. Weirdly, it additionally says it’s a cellphone that has “simply the correct amount of all the things”, however that actually doesn’t do the Pixel 6 justice.

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Google Pixel 6 overview: What it’s essential know

That’s as a result of, regardless of the worth, the Pixel 6 doesn’t lack key options. The flag-bearer for the latest model of Google’s cellular working system, Android 12, the Pixel 6 is nearly as good because it will get. It’s stuffed to the brim with flagship trappings, with a handful of one-of-a-kind extras dotted alongside the way in which.

An important factor to notice is that the Pixel 6 is the very first handset to be powered by Google’s in-house Tensor chipset. Ditching Qualcomm and avoiding Exynos and Kirin, Tensor guarantees a handful of efficiency and effectivity enhancements over final 12 months’s mid-range Snapdragon 765G, and it represents a daring new future for Google.

The corporate is once more focusing its efforts on strengthening the Pixel’s digital camera capabilities. The rear digital camera is now a 50MP affair (up from 12.2MP), complemented by a 12MP ultrawide unit and a 12MP selfie snapper on the entrance. The digital camera’s new “Magic Eraser” instrument now permits you to take away objects and folks from the picture simply by circling them within the edit, too.

Elsewhere, the Pixel 6’s 6.4in AMOLED show is barely bigger this 12 months, supporting a most 90Hz refresh price and HDR10+ playback. It comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of inside storage as customary, and whereas there’s additionally alleged to be a 256GB possibility, this doesn’t appear to be that can be purchased within the UK on the time of writing.

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Google Pixel 6 overview: Value and competitors

There’s little question that the Pixel 6’s killer characteristic is its cut-throat value. Beginning at simply £599 for the 128GB model (I don’t but have costs for the elusive 256GB mannequin), the Pixel 6 is remarkably low-cost. Put it subsequent to the iPhone 13 (£779) and Samsung Galaxy S21 (£769) and I’m certain you’ve already made your thoughts up.

However you must put your pockets again in your pocket for only a second. There’s additionally the Pixel 6 Professional to contemplate, which provides a barely bigger (6.71in), 120Hz show into the combination, with a boosted decision (3,120 x 1,440) alongside a 3rd 48MP 4x optical zoom digital camera and a much bigger battery. You get all this further stuff for £250 extra (£849).

On the different finish of the worth scale, there’s the Pixel 4a, which at simply £299 is half the worth of the Pixel 6. It’s an older cellphone and it doesn’t share the Pixel 6’s high-end options (it lacks 5G, for a begin), however the Pixel 4a is a robust contender if cash is tight.

Google Pixel 6 overview: Design and key options

The Pixel 6 appears as much as snuff and isn’t all that totally different in measurement in contrast with the Pixel 6 Professional, with a display screen that’s a mere 0.3in smaller. In fact, which means that it’s nonetheless a huge slab of a handset – measuring 159 x 75 x 8.9mm (WHD) – and it’s not the lightest of telephones, both, tipping the scales at 207g.

I’m unsure everybody will get on with the whacking nice “digital camera bar” that stretches throughout the total width of the cellphone and provides a substantial quantity of thickness, however all the things else in regards to the Pixel 6 feels suitably excessive finish.

There’s glass on the entrance and rear, which is sort of a departure from the current plastic-bodied Pixel telephones, and each panels are constructed from Corning’s hardest cellphone glass but: Gorilla Glass Victus. There’s additionally IP68 mud and water resistance, in addition to an optical under-screen fingerprint reader in a change from the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor of current Pixels.

On that word, the Pixel doesn’t assist face unlocking for the second 12 months working. I’m certain there’s technique to Google’s insanity, however at a time once we’re already aware of throwing our telephones as much as our faces to unlock them, its absence feels unusual.

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Elsewhere, the Pixel 6’s wired charging speeds have been upped to 30W, delivering 50% of cost in simply half-hour. Wi-fi charging has additionally doubled to 21W, and the Pixel 6 helps reverse wi-fi charging. As for colors, at launch the Pixel 6 is available in Stormy Black (pictured right here), Kinda Coral and Sorta Seafoam.

Google Pixel 6 overview: Show

Like its predecessor, the Pixel 6’s AMOLED show has a variable refresh price of as much as 90Hz, with a decision of two,400 x 1,080 and assist for HDR10+ content material. It’s bigger in measurement, although, measuring 6.4in from nook to nook to the Pixel 5’s 6in. The notch-placed selfie digital camera cutout now sits in the midst of the display screen, switching positions from the top-left nook of the earlier cellphone.

By way of color efficiency, the Pixel 6 is close to faultless. With a measured Delta E (color accuracy) of 1.73 in sRGB with the cellphone’s Pure show setting chosen, colors appeared just about bang on, with only some minor inconsistencies in some greyscale tones. Swap over to the Tailored or Boosted show modes and these dial up the color saturation to a substantial diploma.

The Pixel 6’s display screen will get lots vibrant in sunny situations, too, reaching a peak luminance of 490cd/m² with a torch aimed toward its ambient mild sensor and the cellphone’s auto-brightness setting switched on. It doesn’t lack brightness when viewing HDR10+ materials, both, hitting a peak of 758cd/m², which is 13% brighter than final 12 months’s mannequin.

Google Pixel 6 overview: Efficiency and battery life

Maybe probably the most intriguing improve to this 12 months’s Google telephones is the least seen. Contained in the Pixel 6 resides the primary Google-produced processor: the Google Tensor. That is an octa-core half that appears related in make-up to the Snapdragon 888. Constructed on a 5nm manufacturing course of, it has a pair of two.8GHz ARM-X1 cores for working high-performance jobs, two “medium” 2.25GHz ARM A76 cores and 4 low-power ARM A55 effectivity cores working at 1.8GHz.

In accordance with Google, Tensor delivers “as much as 80% extra efficiency than Pixel 5”, which runs on a Snapdragon 765G. In typical Google trend, the search big says its AI options allow higher efficiency throughout a slew of machine-learning-specific duties.

These embrace the power to do on-the-fly translation, the “most superior speech recognition ever” – full with the power to insert punctuation – and a handful of intelligent new computational pictures methods for the digital camera. Now you can take away distracting objects and options, comparable to overhead electrical cables or folks within the background, from pictures in publish with a dab of the finger. Extra on this new characteristic in a bit.

Whereas this isn’t one thing I can check, Google can also be promising a lift to safety, due to a devoted “Tensor Safety Core” that works in tandem with the Titan M2 safety chip to guard your PINs and passwords.

What I can check, nevertheless, is whether or not the Pixel 6 lives as much as Google’s lofty efficiency claims. Working the Geekbench 5 check, which scores each single- and multicore CPU efficiency, the Pixel 6 scored 1,031 and a pair of,843 respectively. Examine these figures to the Pixel 5 and we’re a roughly 75% enhance in uncooked speeds.

So how does Tensor compete with the competitors? Wanting on the comparability, single-core speeds are matched with the Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100, however Qualcomm and Samsung’s top-end cellular chipsets each outperform Google’s with regard to multi-core processing. The Apple A15 Bionic discovered contained in the iPhone 13 remains to be prime canine in each metrics.

The Pixel 6 additionally will get a major leg up in the case of gaming. Within the GFXBench onscreen Manhattan 3 check, the Pixel 6 achieved a mean body price of 79fps, which, if you happen to check out the graph beneath, is nearly thrice quicker than final 12 months’s cellphone. Blimey.

However, battery life isn’t the Pixel 6’s robust swimsuit. Lasting only a bit longer than the Pixel 6 Professional, the common mannequin topped out at simply 18hrs 34mins in our video-rundown check, which represents a stamina lower of 19% in comparison with 2020’s Pixel 5 (22hrs 54mins). You’ll be charging the cellphone extra typically, which is a disgrace.

Google Pixel 6 overview: Software program

It isn’t simply the {hardware} that’s seen a major overhaul. The Pixel 6 additionally comes with Android 12, which brings with it a radically up to date feel and look, courtesy of Google’s new “Materials You” design language.

This sees new pastel colour-themes and revamped pull-down menu icons, alongside a bunch of different new options. Essentially the most noticeable change in visuals is that once you change your wallpaper, sure icons will decide up on the general color tone and mirror that.

Different enhancements inside Android 12 embrace adjustments to widget settings, a one-handed mode and a brand new AppSearch characteristic. This lets you seek for stuff inside an app within the cellphone’s settings menu, fairly than launching the app itself.

Not solely do you get all of those adjustments, however Google can also be promising anybody shopping for a brand new Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Professional 5 years of safety updates. That’s an unlimited enchancment on Google’s earlier telephones, with which it “solely” promised three years of updates.

Google Pixel 6 overview: Cameras

Like final 12 months, the Pixel 6 has a twin rear digital camera setup, though this now consists of a 50MP fundamental digital camera that captures 150% extra mild than earlier than and a 12MP ultrawide digital camera. Observe that the sensor on the principle digital camera is a whopping 1/1.3in in measurement (greater than the iPhone 13 Professional Max’s fundamental digital camera sensor) and has pixels which can be 1.2um broad.

Which means the Pixel 6 lacks the tertiary 4x telephoto zoom digital camera of the Pixel 6 Professional. The Pixel 6 does have a “2x” setting within the digital camera app, however that is merely a digital zoom and nothing extra – if you need optical zoom, you’re going to should pay an additional £250.

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The excellent news is that what you get in your cash nonetheless units the usual for the business in the case of smartphone pictures. Element seize has been severely improved, capturing pores and skin textures and wavy hair in portrait pictures nearly precisely as your eyes may see them. Pores and skin tone is pleasingly impartial as properly, and there’s a superb quantity of definition separating my topic from the substitute bokeh blur within the background.

The Pixel 6’s new “Face Unblur” characteristic additionally works tremendously properly. When it detects a face within the body whereas capturing in portrait mode, the ultrawide digital camera captures a picture with a quicker shutter velocity than the first lens as quickly as you press the button. The Pixel 6 then combines the 2 footage in an effort to cut back blur on a shifting topic. Right here’s the ultimate picture after telling my fiancée to spin round for a bit.

There’s additionally quite a bit to be mentioned for the way in which you employ the Pixel 6’s digital camera. Shutter delay is non-existent (the iPhone 12 Professional is painfully sluggish by comparability) and you’ll faucet the shutter as many instances as you need in fast succession with out the Pixel 6 throwing a match. The digital camera app is effortlessly easy to make use of, too.

I used to be impressed with the Pixel 6’s HDR implementation. At sundown with the digital camera going through in the direction of the solar and my topic subsequently backlit, the Pixel 6 did an excellent job at dimming the sunshine and slicing by the shade with out introducing an excessive amount of visible noise. As you’ll be able to see from the image beneath, nevertheless, lens flare remains to be a little bit of a difficulty.

How about that Magic Eraser instrument? In a phrase, it’s magic. If a stranger, overhead cable or lamppost is photobombing what would in any other case be an Insta-worthy image, all you’ve acquired to do is edit the picture, choose Magic Eraser within the Instruments part and draw an overview along with your finger round what you need eliminated. The Pixel 6 then takes care of the remainder in a few seconds.

It’s actually fairly efficient at eradicating stuff, too. Within the beneath examples, I’ve eliminated each a lamppost and a skyscraper, and whereas it’s not utterly seamless – you’ll be able to see some clues the place they’ve been deleted – the Pixel 6 removed what I needed fairly properly.

As ever, the Pixel smashes the competitors in the case of low-light photographs. Evening Sight footage lack the unnaturally heat tint supplied by the iPhone 12 Professional, with subdued colors and loads of element even in actually darkish situations. It’s additionally exceptionally quick at taking these footage.

Lastly, with the Pixel 6 you’re nonetheless getting 4K video at as much as 60fps absolutely stabilised and photographs is rock-steady with loads of element. Nevertheless, I did discover some display screen flickering when panning in the direction of and away from daylight, nearly as if the Pixel 6 was struggling to resolve which stage of publicity to go for.

Google Pixel 6 overview: Verdict

The Google Pixel 6 represents fairly a departure from current Pixel cellphone launches. Not solely is it unashamedly premium in its design, however it prices the identical quantity because the Pixel 5 did at launch, is considerably quicker and comes with improved cameras and a revamped UI.

At such an affordable value and with such a tempting array of options, Google has a winner on its palms. Apart from the “adore it or hate it” design, the one actual fly within the ointment is the Pixel 6’s battery life, which is available in properly underneath its opponents. But it surely’s hardly a deal-breaker at slightly below 20 hours.

In case you can abdomen the stamina hit and also you’re after the (nearly) finest that Android can at the moment muster, Google’s Android-waving Pixel 6 is a agency selection that’s properly definitely worth the cash.