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Here's [Music] Google's new top Pixel phone. It's the Pixel 10 Pro XL. What's new and is this a competitive camera phone to get these days? I'm Will Go for GSM Arena and let's find out in our Google Pixel 10 Pro XL review.
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The Pixel 10 Pro XL is a familiar site. In fact, you might even mistake it for last year's model. On the outside, it's virtually unchanged. What Google has in store for us this year is on the inside. A new and more powerful Tensor G5 chipset, a slightly larger battery, and shorter focus distance of the telephoto zoom camera. And probably the biggest new development is that the wireless charging has been upgraded. Now is CH2 charging with embedded magnets for alignment like Apple's MagSafe.
Like I mentioned, the design hasn't really changed. The Pixel 10 Pro XL looks just like last year with a horizontal camera housing, frosted back made of Gorilla Glass Victus 2, and glossy aluminum frame. There is a difference though. The new model is actually a bit heavier at 232 g. The XL is noticeably heavier and larger than the non-XL Google Pixel 10 Pro, but besides that, both offer the same looks and features, and all of the Pixels have IP68 rated ingress protection against dust and water.
The display of the Pixel 10 Pro XL is again a 6.8 in LTPO OLED with a high resolution, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection. While last year's model had one of the brightest screens around, the new model even manages to top that. We measured up to over 1350 nits with the manual brightness slider. And this could boost to nearly 2350 nits in auto mode. Compared to last year, this relatively small increase in brightness isn't noticeable, but it's still impressive. And the legibility out in the sun is as great as ever. Content looks quite sharp on this panel, which has a pixel density of 486 PPI. You get support for HDR10 plus video playback here as well as displaying ultra HDR compliant images with boosted highlights. And thanks to the LTPO tech, the display smooth 120 Hz refresh rate can dial down to as low as 1 Herz while the screen is idling to save some energy.
There's a pair of stereo speakers here for your audio and they have a very good loudness on par with last year. The sound quality is good with decent bass and vocals, but competitors these days have a bit fuller sound. You can listen for yourself with a comparison tool linked below. For biometrics, the phone has an ultrasonic underd display fingerprint reader. It's wellplaced and can wake up and unlock the phone quickly and easily. And the Pixel 10 Pro XL can come with 256 gigs, 512 gigs, or a terabyte of storage on board that's not expandable through memory card.
The user interface of the new Pixels is the latest Android 16 and is sprinkled with some custom features offered by Google. You might also notice that the animations here are smoother and more flashy than what we've seen before. That's thanks to the new Material 3 Expressive UI packed within Android 16. Another change is that the notification shade has a live update section. This is a space that showcases the status of things like timers, food delivery, and navigation. And to keep the notification shade less cluttered, notifications from individual apps are grouped together. The pixels also have something called magic Q, where Google's AI keeps track of and remembers the info within your apps, emails, and conversations. Then it can bring up the info you need when you need it. For example, it could pull up an address for a meeting you planned with a friend when they message you later asking you about it. While Gemini Live isn't unique to the Pixels, Google claims that they have an improved language model for more expressive conversations. The Pixels also have a camera coach feature where the AI guides you within the camera app on how to take the best photo in the situation. And there's also a new AI photo editing tool where you just describe what you want to change or remove and the AI will take care of the rest. But the feature only works for users in the USA. And for software support, Google promises seven years to the new Pixels.
All of the new Pixels run on the new Tensor G5 chipset made by Google. It's meant to bring a boost in performance over the previous generation, as well as better AI processing and better camera processing, too. In benchmarks, we do see an improvement over last year's Pixels, but the scores overall aren't impressive. The Pixel 10 Pro XL is seriously outclassed by other flagships running on the latest Snapdragon or Demenity chips. The sustained performance also leaves much to be desired. In our prolonged stress tests, the Pixel 10 Pro XL displayed significant thermal throttling, going down to 54% of its max CPU performance. With all that said though, in your everyday use, the Pixel doesn't feel slow. It's smooth and snappy.
The Pixel 10 Pro XL has a slightly larger battery than last year at 5200 mAh. But for some reason, the battery life is worse. With an overall active use score of just 10 hours and 11 minutes, the Pixel is way behind the competition when it comes to battery life. The charging rating has gone up this time around from 37 watts to 45. There's no charger included in the box. For whatever reason, this change in charging rating didn't improve the speed. In fact, the Pixel 10 Pro XL is slower than last year, charging from 0 to 59% in half an hour and taking an hour and 22 minutes to charge to full. One clear upgrade though is the capability for G2 wireless charging and magnetic attachment, which is like Apple's Mag Safe, but there is no reverse wireless charging this time around.
Now, we're on to the cameras. You get the same setup as last year with a 50 megapixel main cam, a 48 meap 5x telephoto zoom, and a 48 meap ultrawide cam, all with autofocus. During the day, the Pixel 10 Pro XL's main camera captures lovely images with a characteristic pixel look. Colors are vivid without looking cartoonish. Contrast is just right, and detail is great, too. Some fine textures like foliage do look a bit artificial up close, but it isn't really an issue. It also seems like the detail and sharpness are slightly better than last year, especially in indoor shots. When shooting people, we get greatl looking skin tones and a subtle naturally defocused background. Portrait mode does an okay job in separating subject from background, but the blur level can be a bit too much. Two times digital zoom isn't as good as what you can get from some competitors, but these results are still okay for casual consumption.
In low light, the Pixel 10 Pro XL's main camera is dependable, but its results aren't really class leading. Colors look great, and the white balance is consistent. The phone goes for a contrasty look, but the dynamic range is good, and there's plenty of detail, but it has a bit of a processed artificial rendition. Now, the telephoto camera. It five time zoom shots are good overall, but nothing too exciting. The rendition of fine details is a bit artificial looking and sharpness is a notch below the main camera, but neither of these is too big of a deal. Human subjects are captured nicely at five times as well. They're slightly softer than the main camera shots, but you get tighter framing, a compressed perspective, and a more comfortable shooting distance. As I mentioned earlier in the video, the telephoto cam has a closer focusing distance this year, so it can be used to shoot close-ups. However, the autofocus doesn't work up close. You'll have to fiddle around with the manual focus and potentially miss the focus altogether. These close-up shots could be sharper, but still, they're pretty decent. At night, the telephoto camera captures solid shots. There's a good amount of sharpness. Colors are on point, and the dynamic range is wide enough.
During the day, the ultrawide camera isn't half bad. Those photos could be a bit sharper. Colors and contrast remain in tune with the main camera, and they leave little to complain about. In low light, photos from the ultrawide camera are good for this sort of camera, on par with the competition. There's a decent amount of detail and wide dynamic range. Selfies come from the same 42 meap front-facing camera as last year, and they're pretty great. The camera has autofocus, and the photos are super wide, plenty sharp, and have excellent dynamic range and lively colors.
The Pixel 10 Pro XL records videos natively at up to 4K at 60fps with all of its cameras. The main camera's 4K output is very good, offering nice detail levels with reasonably natural rendition. The white balance is on point, and so is the color saturation. Five time zoom footage from the telephoto cam is solid overall, though slightly softer than the main cams. And while the ultra wide camera's 4K clips are nothing special, they're not bad either. Electronic stabilization works great when standing still or panning, but there is a bit of leftover jiggle when walking, though. In the dark, the main camera's footage comes out pretty great. Five time zoom clips at night tend to be pretty soft, but still decently usable. And the ultrawide's nighttime results are okay, about on par with other high-end phones.
So, there you have it, guys. The Pixel 10 Pro XL. As ever, it's a well-built Pixel phone with a large, bright display, good cameras, and Google software with plenty of AI features. However, there aren't too many impactful upgrades this year besides the magnetic wireless charging and new chipset. And the chipset's performance is still way behind the competition, and so is the battery life. So, in the end, while the Pixel 10 Pro XL is a good camera phone, for this amount of money, you can probably find better value elsewhere. Thanks for watching, guys. If you're considering alternatives, you could check out the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Let us know what you think, and I'll see you on the next one.