
Last year we raved about the Google Pixel 8, calling it the best ‘small’ Android phone. This year’s follow up isn’t as small, but it delivers on the fundamentals, making for a phone that looks, feels, and performs almost flawlessly. We’ll break down what you can expect in our Google Pixel 9 review, and what you’ll be getting my upgrading to the Google Pixel 9 Pro or Google Pixel 9 Pro XL.
Design and Build
The Google Pixel 9 dispenses with the curved back of last year’s Pixel 8, taking on a more rectangular shape that still feels comfortable in hand. Even though the Pixel 9 is a bit thinner than the previous Pixel on paper, it feels more substantial in hand than its predecessor – likely from the slight bump to a 6.3″ display, making the phone a bit heavier as a result.
The smaller profile is something we liked about the Pixel 8, and while the Pixel 9 is still a comfortable phone in pocket, it’s not a phone that strikes one as small and light just from picking it up.
Google has moved to a glass back on the Pixel 9, giving the phone a smooth, glossy feel in hand. Catches a lot of fingerprints as a result, but the phone does feel very comfortable to hold, even for longer periods of time.
The large camera bump on the back no longer runs across the entire back of the phone, but it still juts out a lot, making it an odd phone to lay down on a table. That bump can still catch other things in your pocket like payment and transit cards, too.
Like last year, the Google Pixel 9 is rated IP68, making it dust and waterproof. The front glass has been upgraded to Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which is one generation behind the most recent. It’s still more than enough to help the display to survive quite a few drops, even on hard ground.
Good thing to note if you’re considering the Google Pixel 9 Pro this year: unlike last year, the Pro model is the same size as the base model, with a 6.3″ display. Google has introduced a third option, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, which has a 6.8″ display.
Performance
As it’s been since the Google Pixel 6, Google uses their own chipset in the Pixel 9: the Google Tensor G4 chipset (with 12GB of RAM). That’s different from most other current flagship Android phones, which use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. While the Tensor chipset excels at powering Google’s suite of AI features, it’s been criticized in the past for not holding up as well on everyday tasks.
I didn’t feel like that was as true this year – when using multiple apps simultaneously (like listening to music and web browsing with lots of tabs open), I didn’t notice any hitches. Things get a little slower when AI features are used, but that’s more due to the nature of the AI features themselves, which we’ll get into in the next section.
The Pixel 9 holds up just fine for gaming, too – I played Genshin Impact for an hour using max brightness, the highest settings, and a 120Hz refresh rate, and gameplay remained smooth throughout, even with multiple enemies on screen. The phone warmed up a little, but not as much as I was expecting, and not enough to make holding the phone uncomfortable.
eSIM compatibility once again returns, making things simple for folks who travel frequently and don’t want to fuss with physical SIM cards. The Pixel 9 has the full suite of current-gen connectivity features, including 5G, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, and NFC, and the phone is capable of using satellite connectivity for calling if you don’t have cellular reception.
One great feature that matches what the iPhone 15 series has going on is Clear Calling, which can intelligently filter out background noise on calls. My mom is hearing impaired, and talking with her on the phone (especially when I’m outside) can be pretty tough for her – the Google Pixel 9 made a noticeable difference, whether I was outside with the sounds of traffic or inside with music playing in the background.
Software and AI features
The Google Pixel 9 represents Google going all-in on the Pixel being an AI phone. While the Pixel 8 introduced a suite of AI features for the camera, including Magic Editor, the Pixel 9 has AI baked into everything with Gemini, Google’s AI assistant (and, essentially, a replacement for Google Assistant).
That starts with search – while you can type a search into the phone’s search bar like before, you can press and hold on the bar to enable Circle to Search, using AI to perform a search on the text or image that you draw a circle around. Like usual with AI, results vary – if it’s a very clear picture of someone, it works well, but I circled someone wearing a hat, I usually got a bunch of shopping suggestions for hats on Amazon.
Once you agree to use Gemini, it’ll always be there in the background. Hop on a call, and you can have it take notes and summarize that call afterwards. You can ask it (verbally or by typing) to summarize emails, search through screenshots you’ve taken (instead of the Microsoft approach of taking screenshots for you, which they were forced to retreat from), or generate images or alternate backgrounds for photos you’ve taken. Music playing in the background? Gemini can pull a Shazam and display what song is playing (so, turn that off for bar trivia). Looking at a website in a different language? Up comes a little bar offering to help translate. All those AI features take a few beats to work, but it’s nothing dealbreaking.
The AI suggestions are very smoothly presented – I was impressed that the AI features were robust, but not intrusive. But, at the same time, I didn’t feel like any of it was essential. I still came away more impressed with the Pixel 9 as a phone than as an AI device, and most of the core AI features – call summaries, email summaries, and search – are filled with mistakes so often that I can’t trust them.
Using Gemini, or any AI, is sort of like dealing with the lazy person in the group project. You want to give them something to do, but you know you’re better off just doing the work yourself instead of having to fix their mistakes three or four times.
This might all get better! And the Pixel 9 is backed by a guarantee of 7 OS updates, so maybe AI does get better in the next few years, making the Pixel 9 all the more valuable as a result. But that’s a question mark, and it’s hard to recommend buying things on potential.
Or, you can pay a little extra to unlock some of that potential – you can subscribe to Google One AI Premium, which nets you more storage space, access to better AI models, and more tokens for generating images, video, lines of code, and documents. But, that’s an add-on, and it’s $20/month after a one-month free trial, which isn’t cheap.
Beyond AI, there’s a lot to like – it’s a Pixel phone, so you know you’re getting pure Android (Android 14 out of the box, with an upgrade to Android 15 ready to go). Face unlock and fingerprint unlock are both fantastic, and unlock the phone faster than most devices I’ve tested this year. Google moved to an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor this year, and the upgrade was well worth it.
Every year I feel like I find one weird niche thing to complain about, and the Pixel 9 is no different. The Pixel 9 has a suite of phone wake features – lift to wake, tap to wake, and adaptive touch, the latter of which can make the phone more usable when the screen is wet, for example. All that works well!
But, things get very bad if you carry your phone in your pocket. With all those features turned on, the Pixel 9 is the worst pocket dialer I have ever used. Just walking around for a half hour, I had the phone turn on airplane mode, skip ahead in songs, and almost call 911 multiple times. I turned all those features off and had no problems after that.
Display and audio
The Google Pixel 9 keeps its 1080p OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support from last year, only slightly larger at 6.3″. The screen is brighter this year, with a peak of 2700 nits, and 1800 nits when used with HDR. As before, the Pro model (and the Pro XL model) get an upgrade to an LTPO OLED display, which is a little more efficient, and are slightly brighter with higher resolutions. While the increase in efficiency is nice, the display looks gorgeous regardless – while gaming and watching videos, with and without HDR, everything looked smooth, and color reproduction was on point.
But, Google missed the mark a little with the on-device stereo speakers. They don’t do the wonderful display justice – this is a phone you’ll always want to use with a good pair of headphones. The speakers don’t get all that loud at the high end, but the audio sounds weirdly distant at lower volumes. While the audio got more crisp as the volume went up, bass performance never improved.
Google Pixel 9 battery life
The Google Pixel 9 comes with a 4,700mAH battery, and while that’s only slightly better on paper compared to the Pixel 8, it’s a huge jump forward in practice. I’m not sure what tweaks Google made, but the Pixel went from a phone that barely lasted a day to one I was able to stretch into three days on one charge. Still depends on how much you use it, but it seems like idle battery use is much more efficient this year.
I assume that’s the case, anyway, because battery testing yielded the same results as last year. Watching video for one hour with full brightness used up 7% of the battery, same as last year, while an hour of playing Genshin Impact on max settings, 120Hz refresh rate, and full brightness used up 18%, only slightly less than the Pixel 8.
Good thing the battery life is better, because the Pixel 9 still charges on the slower side. It can only work with up to 27W charging, and there’s no charging brick included, only the charging cable. Using a fast charging brick, I charged the battery from 1%, and got to 4% in five minutes, 6% in 10 minutes, 19% in 30 minutes, 37% in one hour, and only got a full charge after 3 hours. That’s slow compared to the Android competition – keep it charged, because an emergency charge of a few minutes isn’t going to do much for you.
Google Pixel 9 camera
The base Pixel 9 comes with two cameras set into the camera bump, along with an LED flash. The main camera is the same as the Pixel 8’s, a 50MP sensor with a f/1.7 25mm wide angle lens, dual pixel phase detection autofocus, laser autofocus, and optical image stabilization. The ultrawide camera now has a 48MP sensor with a 123-degree field of vision and dual pixel phase detection.
While the Pixel 9 has the same main and ultrawide camera as the Pixel 9 Pro, the Pixel 9’s camera array once again lacks a periscope zoom camera, which is found only on the Pixel 9 Pro models. Same deal when it comes to the iPhone 15 vs the iPhone 15 Pro, but it’s worth pointing out you can get a zoom camera on the base Samsung Galaxy S24. Considering most other differences are minor, the lack of a zoom camera is the biggest difference between the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro this year.
The cameras are solid enough, although certainly not best in class. For well-lit shots with the main camera, results are terrific. I wish the point-and-shoot shots I took with the ultrawide had been a tad bit sharper, but otherwise wasn’t too disappointed. Portrait mode does a good but not perfect job at outlining subjects while blurring just the background – you can still notice a little fuzziness at the edges of subjects. Portrait mode does seem to make the subject pop a little more than the same shot taken with the normal settings, in a generally pleasant way.
Night Sight was solid, and did a great job getting accurate color in low-light shots, but as you can see in the example of the horribly unkempt backyard, the camera can struggle to outline objects like leaves and branches.

A lot of the best AI features are related to the camera. The Magic Editor, which allows you to move or remove objects or people in your pictures, and Best Take, which takes several shots and combines the best faces from all attempts into one perfect picture, return. The marquee new feature is Add Me – gone are the days of the unfortunate photographer left out of the scenic group photo! Add Me guides you through taking two photos of the same background – one with the group, and one just with you.
For best results, you’ll want to pose just right and have the photo with you in it taken from the same distance. It’s a little finicky – it might take a few tries to get something that doesn’t look obviously fake.
Google has also expanded background replacement with Gemini. By using the Magic Editor and tracing around a picture’s subject, you can use the Reimagine feature to replace the background with something else entirely. I took a picture of a loaf of bread I made, and told Gemini to change the background to a bakery. I got several results back, some of which with the usual hallmarks of AI, like muddied details in the background, but some turned out OK.

Things got a little wilder when I took a picture of a pair of Nike shoes and told Gemini to put them in a Nike store, which resulted in shoes melted together in the background, and what looks like a store-brand version of a Nike box in the foreground. Amusing, but not a feature I’d use much.

Sustainability
As before, Google earns as high of marks as a phone can on sustainability. They’ve remained committed to minimal packaging, using only paper and no plastic. While not shipping with a charging brick might be inconvenient for some, most folks will have one laying around, so it’s good to not create the extra e-waste.
On top of that, the IP68 rating, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, and all-around sturdy build will help the Pixel 9 keep working after multiple drops. A guarantee of 7 OS updates and 7 years of security upgrades help ensure that this is a phone you’ll be able to use for at least that long. Google is still at the top of the game with phone sustainability, although that’s to be expected from the company that makes the OS in the first place!
Pricing and availability
The Google Pixel 9 starts at $800, that’s more expensive than last year’s $700 price tag. That’s still an excellent deal for something that performs like a flagship Android phone, although the lack of a zoom camera at this price should be considered. Storage options are still at 128GB and 256GB – given that the premium AI subscription comes with up to 2TB of storage, that’s probably where Google wants to push you.
You can buy the Pixel 9 directly from Google. It comes in peony (pink), wintergreen (light green), porcelain (off-white), and obsidian (black).
Google Pixel 9 verdict
If you’re shopping for a new phone this year, you absolutely should consider the Pixel 9 – and that has nothing to do with AI! If Gemini appeals to you, so much the better, but the improvements to battery efficiency and performance have cemented the entire Pixel 9 series as a genuine top option, alongside the iPhone 15 series and the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, and the price is pretty competitive.
The only big disapointment of the Pixel 9 is the lack of a zoom camera – you’ll need to upgrade to one of the Pro models for that, which takes you to a much more hefty $1,000 starting price. If you want a zoom camera at a lower price, the base Samsung Galaxy S24 suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
But, zoom camera aside, the Google Pixel 9 has a great price and stock Android going for it, without all the downsides we’ve seen on Pixel phones in the past. This is the most competitive the Pixel line of phones has ever been, and if you’re looking for the best of the best, the Pixel 9 should definitely be on your list.
The Google Pixel 9 can be purchased at Amazon for $785.