Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs. Pixel 8 Pro: A flagship by any other name
by Chris Thomas · Android PoliceGoogle Pixel 9 Pro XL
Nearly 8 years removed from the series' introduction, the Pixel 9 Pro XL represents the most complete, refined smartphone Google's ever released. A bold, bright display, competent hardware, and increasingly effective software make it a strong contender for best phone of the year.
Pros
- The peak camera experience we're used to
- Improved performance and heat management
- Impressive battery life
- Constantly evolving AI feature set
Cons
- Ships with last year's Android 14
- Hard-to-swallow price for the storage size
- Qi2 charging support would've been nice
Google Pixel 8 Pro
The Pixel 8 Pro clearly indicated Google's vision of software as the elevating factor in a high-end smartphone, with AI tools and a highly curated interface taking center stage. The Pixel 9 Pro XL directly supplants it, but doesn't make it obsolete, especially since it's now often heavily discounted.
Pros
- Suitable performance for most users' needs
- The same Android lifespan as the Pixel 9 family
- Often costs hundreds less than its successor
Cons
- Hardware lags behind competitors and newer Pixels
- Less-than-ideal charging speed
- Inconsistent battery life, especially on 5G networks
The Pixel 8 Pro wasn't perfect, but it showed tons of promise, and the trade-offs it made were far from dealbreakers. It handily won the Android Police community vote for best phone of 2023, and it's still popular among staff here today.
While none of the shortcomings of Google's 2023 flagship came close to ruining it, they were pretty clear. A minor lack of refinement in both the software and hardware gave the tech giant a clear path forward, which it not only followed, but even branched out from, releasing the smaller, but almost identically equipped, Pixel 9 Pro alongside the Pixel 9 Pro XL that fulfills Google's true flagship role.
Getting to really know a phone's strengths and weaknesses takes time, but early results paint a definitively positive picture. Where Google needed to improve its biggest phone, it did. At this point, though, one of the biggest downsides is the cost, making the Pixel 8 Pro still worthwhile if you want to save a little and aren't too demanding.
Price, availability, and specifications
Getting the hardest part out of the way early
Google's top-shelf handset finally cracked the $1,000 mark last year, which had nobody jumping for joy. The phone mostly justified the cost, especially with Google charting new AI territory that only its high-dollar device could navigate initially (although Gemini did come to the standard Pixel 8 after a small outcry).
The 9 Pro XL has, unfortunately, a bit of the same story. Another $100 increase puts its sticker price at $1,100, and even that gets you just 128GB of storage — a less-than-great figure for a device that costs so much and is supposed to lead its class. We're not saying it's not worth it, because there are plenty of worthwhile upgrades, but it's not quite the slam dunk it'd be if the MSRP had stayed put.
You can still buy the Pixel 8 Pro from Google in a few configurations at list price, but keep an eye out for deals. At press time, both Amazon and Best Buy offered $250 off the 128GB and 256GB, but discounts on new 512GB and 1TB models are tough to find, and you won't have quite the same choice of colors as you did at launch.
The Pixel 9 Pro XL is available in more configurations from both Google and third-party retailers, although some are already out of stock. You also won't find every storage option in every color, with 1TB exclusive to the Obsidian model, and the Rose Quarts available with exclusively 256GB.
Moving from 128GB to 256GB tacks on $100, too; the 512GB upgrade another $120; the full 1TB black an additional $230, for a grand total of $1,549. As usual, you'll also have various carrier tie-in options for trade-ins and new contract provisions.
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL Google Pixel 8 Pro SoC Google Tensor G4 Google Tensor G3 Display type LTPO OLED, 1-120Hz LTPO OLED, 1-120Hz Display dimensions 6.8" 6.7" Display resolution 2992 x 1344 1344 × 2992 RAM 16GB 12GB Storage 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB Battery 5,060mAh 5,050mAh Charge speed 37W wired, 23W wireless 30W wired, 18W wireless Charge options USB-C wired, Qi wireless Wired, Wireless Ports USB-C USB-C SIM support Nano SIM and eSIM Dual SIM (Nano SIM and eSIM) Operating System Android 14 Android 14 Front camera 42MP f/2.2 10.5MP Rear camera 50MP, f/1.7, OIS main; 48MP, f/1.7 ultrawide; 48MP, f/2.8, 5x telephoto 50MP main; 48MP ultrawide; 48MP telephoto Cellular connectivity LTE, Sub-6 & mmWave 5G (market dependent) 5G, mmWave, LTE Wi-Fi connectivity Wi-Fi 7 Wi-Fi 7 (Except certain markets) Connectivity UWB, NFC, Satellite SOS UWB, NFC Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.3 Bluetooth 5.3 Dimensions 162.8 x 76.6 x 8.5mm 162.6 × 76.5 × 8.8mm Weight 221g 213g IP Rating IP68 IP68 Colors Obsidian, Porcelain, Hazel, Rose Quartz Obsidian, Porcelain, Bay Price From $1,099 From $999 Stylus No No
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Design
Clearly a Pixel, but also a brand-new phone
The Pixel 7 and 8 lineups really leaned into a curve-heavy design language reminiscent of, if you ask me, a marshmallow (the Pixel Buds 2 case is arguably the best example). The Pixel 8a was basically the culmination of that almost cheery, friendly curvature, but the Pixel 8 Pro had it in spades, too.
With the advent of the Pixel 9 family, said curvature is history. The 9 Pro XL and its relatives have adopted a considerably more clean-cut, professional stature, with flat sides, a flat back, and — get ready for this — a perfectly flat screen that won't lead a screen protector to peel off if it's installed 0.2mm off center. Curved screens are finally, actually dead, and we're here for it.
More than just ensuring better screen protector adherence, the multiple newly flat surfaces make the phone easier to hold, allow for more consistent touch response on the edges, and look significantly better. Does it look a ton more like an iPhone? Yes. Is it taking design cues from others, just like some have criticized Samsung for doing? Also yes. But it's clearly a more functional, classier-looking design.
Fluffy curves aren't the only iconic feature to get a makeover. The camera visor that's been practically synonymous with Pixels for three years also lost its frame, with the triple-lens array now housed in a floating shape called a stadium, or a rectangle with a semicircle on either end.
The camera housing still stretches across nearly the entire back, and retains a little of the visor feel, but is once again worlds of refinement ahead of the previous design (subjectively speaking, of course). And you can't be upset it's mimicking the iPhone if the Pixel does it better — set a caseless Pixel 9 Pro XL on a table, and it stays flat, with no rocking or tilting.
You can argue the 9 Pro XL's polished aluminum frame doesn't look quite as nice as the base Pixel 9's less glossy metal, but it's a minor difference. The 9 Pro XL's matte glass back is still a little slippery, much like the 8 Pro's, but it really does look and feel premium. By comparison, the Pixel 8 Pro's rounded sides look and feel more like an extension of the body. And the 9 Pro XL's edges and corners still have just the right rounded touch for comfortable use.
Source: iFixit
Physically speaking, the Pixel 9 Pro XL retains the previous generation's IP68 rating while improving durability and repair simplicity . Zack Nelson, of JerryRigEverything fame, has already pushed the 9 Pro XL to its limits, where it even passed the flame-on-the-screen test with flying colors.
To be clear, the Pixel 8 Pro passed similar tests with no issue, so we're confident either can physically withstand the intended 7+ years of use if not unreasonably abused. But it's reassuring to know that despite rearranging some internals, there are no antenna crease faults or overly sensitive display panels to worry about, and battery replacement won't be a pipe dream (although you'll still want to have a technician do it).
Display
The best gets better, with a special nugget of great news
The sun at high noon measures a whopping 1.6 billion nits, but the Pixel 8 Pro's 1,600-nit high brightness mode was more than enough for comfortable viewing in some of the most well-lit conditions. That wasn't good enough for Google, which upped the output to 2,000 nits HBM with a claimed 3,000-nit peak.
Brightness measurement methodology (for peak claims, in particular) varies greatly across manufacturers , but the measurements are useful in comparing generational upgrades and different models from the same family. In the Pixel 9 Pro XL's case, a 25% increase to peak brightness means it'll produce some of the best HDR10+ highlights you've ever held in your hand.
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Sadly, the newer Pixel still lacks Dolby Vision, so you won't see dynamic HDR processing from all the best sources — but these are phones, not home theaters. And you absolutely won't be using most of those nits most of the time. Adaptive Brightness is a must-use setting for most people, and it gradually learns your preferences until, ideally, your phone's always perfectly bright to your liking, with no input needed.
Otherwise, the display remains almost identical between the 8 Pro and 9 Pro XL, but with an early Christmas present for many: Google's use of a notoriously slow optical in-display fingerprint reader has ended, at long last. The ultrasonic sensor now implanted in the front works notably more quickly and consistently, eliminating one of the 8 Pro's few frustrations. It certainly took long enough.
Software
Even more prepared for the Gemini AI onslaught
We've written many thousands of words critiquing, praising, and sometimes criticizing Google's heavily tailored Android implementation here at Android Police (in just the last couple of weeks, no less), so I won't dig up all the most granular arguments. Anyway, these two devices sport extremely similar software right out of the gate.
Indeed, Google's decision to push the Pixel release two months earlier in the year had an unfortunate side effect. The Pixel 9 series launched with the same Android 14 OS as the Pixel 8 series, essentially negating the final year of its 7-year update promise. I wouldn't necessarily call that shady, but it is a little disappointing. That is, it would be, if I planned to use a Pixel (or any phone) for 7 years straight without upgrading.
I don't plan to do that, nor do most others, so the lag year won't rear its ugly head until 2030 rolls around and the secondhand market starts to take issue with being stuck on Android 21, or whatever it's called by then.
Hurry up, we really want to hear about all the AI
Lead AP Phones Editor Will Sattelberg goes in-depth on a variety of currently available AI tools in his review of the Pixel 9 Pro, which is mostly identical to the XL outside of size, battery life, and charging speed. To sum up, some show a lot of promise, some are pretty gimmicky, and some land in between. I recommend you check out his rundown.
As with many things Gemini, some features are half-baked at the moment. For example, the dream is to someday employ a wide-ranging, AI-based voice assistant to provide comprehensive voice control of your device and cloud services using plain English, including slang and regional dialects. A quick jaunt around settings and customizations using Gemini Live — which is supposed to be that AI voice assistant — indicates we're far from that dream.
With that in mind, it's new (and subscription-based, although you get a year for free), and Google will get a little grace period before people start balking at any failures to deliver. One thing we're hoping works in Gemini's favor is the 2.64GB of RAM partitioned for AI processing.
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Holding huge databases of ML parameters in high-speed RAM is central to on-device AI processing — which is why the base Pixel 8 didn't get on-device Gemini at first — and that 2.64GB partition on the 9 Pro and Pro XL is nothing to sneeze at. Carve out an additional partition for the operating system, and you're left with 13GB of system memory for apps, which is more than enough for nearly any use case.
Given the Pixel 8 Pro's 12GB total, the 9 Pro XL is poised to make quicker work of the increasingly pervasive AI everybody's so excited about. The latest Pixel Pros will come preloaded with the latest tools, some of which will filter down to the Pixel 8 family. But you shouldn't expect all of them to. And a note for non-US readers: Gemini features vary by region and country, and it's surprisingly tough to nail down exactly what's available where.
Taken as a whole, The Pixel 9 Pro XL's Android experience is very much more of the same, which isn't a bad thing. The new software push puts an extreme focus on specialty ML-based tools, which everybody and their financial advisor expected after Google's exclusively AI-focused I/O event earlier this year.
If you're a fan of the general Android interface found on the Pixel 8 Pro, you'll get it with the 9 Pro XL. But if you don't care much for AI, you won't get the most out of what Google's put into its new flagship. Considering the price difference between a new Pixel 9 Pro XL and a discounted Pixel 8 Pro, it's worth asking yourself if you just love the general Pixel experience (which is reasonable), or if you're ready to go all-in on cutting-edge software tricks.
Performance
The 8 Pro didn't stink, but the 9 Pro XL is starting to smell like roses
Nobody buys Pixels for their industry-leading blazing speed, as it's common knowledge they fall short of Qualcomm-powered phones. The Pixel 8 Pro and its Tensor G3 worked just fine for the many everyday tasks that make smartphones so useful. Outside of ultra-demanding enthusiasts (an important group, no doubt), you'll find relatively few complaints about the Pixel 8 Pro's interface and general performance.
But it is far from the fastest, most efficient, best thermally managed set of hardware out there. It does tend to heat up a little more than some find comfortable. Repeated, heavy multitasking might not exactly bring it to its knees — until you dig into the most advanced AI tools and really push the SoC and RAM.
The Tensor G4 is better. It's not perfect . It actually loses a CPU core compared to the G3, but ups the frequency of the remaining 8 cores. The 3 performance and 4 efficiency cores get the biggest boost, with the high-speed AI core seeing just a 100MHz bump compared to the G3's. Benchmarks aren't always indicative of real life, but multiple metrics place the G4's performance behind previous-generation flagship SoCs from Qualcomm and Mediatek.
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The truth is, not everybody will notice. Heck, you might not even care. But you will pay a significant premium for the Pixel 9 Pro XL, only to get a chip that's far from being an industry leader. If your main concern is general stock interface navigation and non-AI app performance, it's worth considering dipping into the Pixel 8 Pro market, instead of shelling out top dollar for a marginal increase in real world, non-ML processing power.
Battery life
Weeding out the cons and harvesting more pros
Just like the earlier gaming performance example, Pixels aren't popular because their battery life leads the pack. Quite the opposite, plenty of consumers (including many diehard Pixel fans) had less-than-stellar things to say about the Pixel 8 Pro's battery life. We've seen some shockingly poor numbers in user commentary, and while we didn't actually face any debilitating battery drain issues, at least some folks did face them in the 2023 flagship.
Consistency is king in a lot of ways, and the Tensor G4 goes a long way to mitigate some of the problems people faced. It sips power more slowly, doesn't suffer from significant hot spots, and is generally easier on the battery than its predecessor. It's easily the most mature-feeling hardware/software implementation from Google yet, which is why senior AP Expert Daniel Bader gave it such high praise in AP's initial hands-on review.
Only time will tell just how great the 9 Pro XL's endurance is, but it's clearly a rung above the 8 Pros, and can only get better as the Adaptive Battery management feature learns the user's habits. Daniel's following that aspect closely, so keep an eye out for long-term updates to his review in coming months.
A long-desired charging upgrade, and one the Pixel 9s miss out on
We, like a lot of enthusiasts, periodically criticize big manufacturers for failing to jump onboard the global fast-charging train. Samsung, for example, gets a lot of grief for its 25W limitation, and Pixel phones' typical 27-30W peak isn't really any better. The 9 Pro XL is the first to exceed that, with a charging algorithm able to deliver up to 37W.
It won't deliver that entire amount throughout the charging process, but the increased rate will apply more at the low end. The 9 Pro XL can go from empty to 70% in roughly a half-hour using a 45W USB PD charger, which isn't bad at all. While some of us are a little neurotic about keeping our batteries in the 40-80% range for long-term health, everybody has long days or occasionally forgets to plug in until the last minute.
While we'll probably never see Google adopt the blistering rates that manufacturers like OnePlus use, those aren't only bad for batteries, they're also not really necessary.
Camera
Don't fix what isn't broken (or do, by dressing it up with AI trimmings)
Google basically follows a tick/tock camera update schedule, providing significant upgrades every other year and only minor refinements in off years. This time, the only apparent change to the camera hardware is a larger ultrawide sensor. It lets in more light and increases overall ultrawide image quality somewhat, but the real magic is in the newly enabled macro mode. Interestingly, the ultrawide lens sports a 3-degree narrower field of view, but that's negligible.
Otherwise, the Pixel 9 Pro XL sports the same fantastic, stabilized 5× telephoto lens that we've breathlessly touted for many months (and rightfully so). Nobody does image processing algorithms as well as Google, so combined with the premium hardware, you won't find anything better for easy long-range smartphone photography. Likewise, the primary lens remains unchanged, as does our number of complaints about it, which is roughly zero.
Where the 9 Pro XL excels is, once again, in software. Google completely revamped HDR processing, and it's absolutely noticeable.
Not only are images even more crisp and consistently, perfectly contrasted (in auto mode, no less, without messing around in the camera Pro Controls), but opening the app and switching lenses is snappier, too. Those are somewhat unsung, but very important factors in capturing the most important memories with a device that spends most of its time in your pocket with a blank screen.
You'll find more great photo samples in our Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL reviews
The Pixel 8 Pro seemed like it was at the top of the picture-taking mountain, but the 9 Pro XL managed to peak higher. And it'll continue to benefit from ever-improving image capture and AI editing algorithms. With that said, if this year's Pixel is the best point-and-shoot smartphone camera, last year's Pixel arguably comes in second.
Which is right for you?
The answer to "Which Pixel Pro is better?" is obvious. The Pixel 9 Pro XL doesn't blow the Pixel 8 Pro out of the water in any one area, but surpasses it a little bit nearly everywhere. It's a better phone that will perform more quickly and age more gracefully in the long term. The design hearkens back to previous Pixel generations, but clearly forges ahead to form its own identity.
If you want the best big slab phone Google has to offer, the Pixel 9 Pro XL is undoubtedly the right choice.
Top pick
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL
Google reimagined its full-size phone's design, touched up the hardware almost perfectly, and continues to improve the already great software experience with the Pixel 9 Pro XL. It's one of the best phones we've ever reviewed.
$1099 at Amazon $1099 at Best Buy $1099 at Google Store
But the 9 Pro XL is also more expensive, and brand-new, so less likely to see big discounts soon. The Pixel 8 Pro's essentially identical Android update lifespan and durability mean that, as far as long-term, AI-excluded smartphone use is concerned, the older model is actually not far behind the newer one. It might see the odd slowdown or dropped frame more frequently than the 9 Pro XL, but the Pixel 8 Pro remains a fantastic device.
If you can get it at a good discount, such as the $750 asking price as of press time, you'll very likely be happy with it.
Still excellent
Google Pixel 8 Pro
2023's Pixel 8 Pro is still one of the top Android phones available today. It's not the easiest sell at MSRP, but frequent discounts make it an especially great choice if you're not interested in the absolute latest AI features.
$999 at Amazon $999 at Google Store
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