REVIEW: Google Pixel 8 Pro is your new long-term phone

Rory Cashin

We’ve spent some time with the new Google device. Here are our findings.

The new Pixel 8 Pro is the flagship item on Google’s latest series of phones, and before you do anything with it, you’ll probably notice the price hike. Yep, it starts off around €200 more expensive than last year’s Pixel 7 Pro, which is quite the jump. You might initially think that you’ll hold out from this generation and wait for the next one, but one look under the hood will reveal there is quite a bit added here to definitely make it worth the higher price tag.

First of all, Google are guaranteeing that the Pixel 8 Pro won’t just be your phone for this year, but for the foreseeable future. While previous versions of the Pixel were capable of getting three OS updates, Google are promising SEVEN YEARS of OS updates for the Pixel 8 Pro. So that means that if you take care of your new phone, it could last you beyond the year 2030!

It also feels like Google is gearing up for what this phone might potentially be able to do in the week, months and maybe years ahead, once the appropriate technological developments have caught up and been rolled out. That includes the imminent arrival of Assistant with Bard (aka Google’s AI-powered personal assistant), and the Pixel 8 Pro is expected to get some high-end editing tools before the end of 2023.

The Pixel 8 Pro phone is absolutely the best Android phone on the market right now

As for the tech in the phone itself, it does feel like a substantially improved device from the last iteration. The screen brightness is significantly higher, the flattened ends make it more comfortable to hold and use, while the battery will absolutely last you the full day even after particularly heavy usage… but don’t try to push that too far into day two, everything has its limits.

With the ever-important camera, the main lens is now a 50MP behemoth, a full 2MP more than the latest iPhone, and the device also comes equipped with a 48-megapixel ultra-wide lens AND a 48-megapixel 5x optical zoom lens. That is a lot of camera to play around with, and with the ever-increasing suite of photo editing tools (including a huge uptick in AI options), this might be the best phone on the market for any aspiring shutterbugs.

The Pixel 8 Pro pricing starts at €1,099 (with 128GB memory) and tops out at €1,299 (with 512GB memory), and for a limited time, that purchase will come with either a free Google Pixel Watch 2 (regularly priced at €399) or a pair of Pixel Buds Pro (regularly priced at €229). Full details on the Google store right here.

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