Google Pixel 10 Pro review: Same Pixel, new AI

Looking at my year-old Pixel 9 Pro XL, the finish remained pretty flawless, however, grime can accumulate in the seam between the glass back and metal surround; something I hope Google has tightened up with its 2025 entries.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Despite looking just like their predecessors, there’s one hardware addition across the Pixel 10 series that isn’t immediately apparent, but is worth getting excited about: Pixelsnap.

One of my favourite upgrades in the history of the iPhone has to be MagSafe (introduced on the iPhone 12 series back in 2020), and the diverse magnetic accessory ecosystem it’s given rise to in the years since. When I learnt that the Qi2 wireless charging standard, which was introduced in January 2023, was going to embrace the same magnetic ring (allowing for compatibility with MagSafe accessories), I couldn’t wait to see which Android manufacturer would jump on the standard first.

Aside from last years HMD Skyline, however, Qi2 adoption has been non-existent, until the Pixel 10 series, that is. Pixelsnap is Google’s branded take on the Qi2 standard, which as well as compliant charging (more on that later), suddenly opens up the likes of the Pixel 10 Pro to thousands of MagSafe and Qi2 cross-compatible accessories: from chargers to stands, wallets, mounts and more.

In order to justify the name Google has, of course, introduced a limited line of its own-brand add-ons. We’ve collated a list of every Pixelsnap accessory available right now, if you’re curious about what’s on offer. Pixelsnap might quietly be one of the Pixel 10 Pro’s most meaningful hardware upgrades.

Screen & Speakers

• 6.3-inch Super Actua 1-120Hz LTPO AMOLED display
• Sharpest display in the Pixel 10 series
• Improved earpiece speaker

Google has taken to putting some really nice screens on its most recent Pixels and that’s as true as ever this year. Technically, the Pixel 10 Pro has the same ‘Super Actua’ display as its predecessor, save for the fact that it now shines even brighter than before (a 10% increase), meaning HDR content looks even better and outdoor viewing is even clearer – something I’ve massively appreciated against the generous summer sun we’re experiencing in the UK as I write this.

A 2200-nit high-brightness mode ceiling (up from 2000 on the Pixel 9 Pro) and a 3300-nit peak brightness for HDR content (up from 3000 on the 9 Pro), place it ahead of both of its most like-minded rivals in the iPhone 16 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S25, in this regard.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Coming from the larger Pixel 9 Pro XL’s display, it took me a little while to acclimatise to typing on the 10 Pro’s narrower 6.3-inch panel, but as someone who appreciates a rare high-end compact Android, I was happy to deal with the learning curve.

The same 495ppi density means it’s plenty sharp (the sharpest amongst the Pixel 10 lineup), while that dynamic refresh rate works hard to balance power consumption with visual fluidity (between 1Hz and 120Hz), for the best viewing experience possible. Unlike some other phones, the 10 Pro’s display doesn’t seem to fetter games either, meaning you can expect the highest frame rates the hardware and software is capable of delivering.

You have a nice amount of control over the display too, with a reworked display settings menu that offers greater control over brightness, plus what shows up on your lock screen, lock screen shortcuts and more. You can toggle the display’s colour profile between ‘Natural’ and ‘Adaptive’ but I preferred the punchier look of the latter (which is the default setting).

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

It’s worth noting that, like many phones with high fidelity displays, the Pixel 10 Pro doesn’t use the panel’s native 1280 x 2856 resolution out of the box (it runs at 1080 x 2410). If you want to sharpest viewing experience possible, you’ll have to toggle on the ‘Max resolution’ option in settings; provided you’re comfortable with the additional battery drain.

A tip of the hat also goes to the reliable ultrasonic fingerprint sensor in the Pixel 10 Pro’s possession, (Google ditched optical in-display sensors with the Pixel 9 series), which even works with damp fingers.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

One of the less discussed upgrades to the Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL is speaker arrangement. Unfortunately, while both models boast a revised earpiece speaker, only the XL model gains a bolstered down-firing speaker.

Even so, in side-by-side testing, my Pixel 10 Pro served up a notably fuller and louder sound than the Pixel 9 Pro XL at the same volume level. The 10 Pro’s sound profile would benefit from more prominent bass (perhaps something the 10 Pro XL’s improved audio delivers on), but it otherwise comes with decent loudspeaker audio

Specs & Performance

• 3nm Google Tensor G5 chipset
• 16GB RAM across all storage variants
• Different storage speed depending on capacity and region

AI (and before this, machine learning) has become the main focus of the Pixel phones, and this year Google is promising some major strides in performance on this front.

First, the company’s own-brand Tensor chips are now being manufactured by TSMC, with the Pixel 10 line’s new Tensor G5 using the foundry’s 3nm process. On paper, the G5 promises a 34% improvement to CPU performance and a 60% boost to TPU (AI-based) performance; those are not-insignificant gains.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

What’s more, if you’re willing to splash the cash, internal space now comes in a new ZUFS (Z for ‘Zoned’) flavour: an optimised type of NAND storage (from a company called SK Hynix, if you’re interested) tailored to AI usage on mobile; it more efficiently groups tasks and types of data, compared to conventional UFS standards. Cracks start to appear, however, when you look at the various storage variants the Pixel 10 Pro come in, internationally.

Wherever you are in the world, you can expect this new, more efficient ZUFS standard if you choose the top-tier 1TB model (priced at £1,449 / $1,449 / €1,589), and in the US, it also applies to the 512GB model too. Elsewhere, however, you get more conventional UFS 4.0 on the 512GB model, while the 256GB variant uses UFS 4.0 worldwide, as well.

While not as egregious as the base iPhone’s persistent 60Hz display refresh rate cap, on the storage front, Google has – until now – held the Pixel line back across all storage variants, with older, less efficient, slower UFS 3.1 tech, compared to rivals who’ve used UFS 4.0 (and in some cases UFS 4.1) for at least a generation or two.

So, while the move to UFS 4.0 is a step in the right direction for the Pixel line as a whole, the fact that not every version of the company’s latest ‘Pro’-branded phones comes with the best available storage standard on offer seems disingenuous. Especially when the official Pixel 10 Pro product page doesn’t even inform potential buyers that they might be about to purchase a model using an inferior storage standard, just because they don’t need a larger capacity phone.

As for the base 128GB capacity option, Google should have nixed it completely this year, as it has with the Pixel 10 Pro XL (and dropped the subsequent storage variants down in price too). It’s the version I’ve been reviewing, and only when it came to downloading large files during setup did I realise something was ‘wrong’.

Aside from the fact that I was able to fill about 70% of the phone’s storage just by downloading my standard repertoire of apps, and a pair of high profile games (namely Call of Duty: Mobile and Zenless Zone Zero), the assets for said games took noticeably longer to pull onto the Pixel 10 Pro than I’ve grown used to from the majority of Android phones I’ve tested over the last couple of years.

Google Pixel 10 Pro benchmarks

Google’s Tensor silicon has always been AI-first, offering more clout to on-device AI processing than competing chipsets, with TPU gains being the biggest upgrade between the Tensor G4 and the Tensor G5 powering the Pixel 10 series. This focus, however, has meant they’ve been left lacking in other areas; at the very least when comparing artificial benchmark scores.

In testing, the Pixel 10 Pro’s G5 chipset is about a year behind Qualcomm’s current top-tier mobile silicon – the Snapdragon 8 Elite – scoring closer to 2023’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (which powered the majority of 2024’s best phones), in terms of CPU performance.

As for gaming, right now the Pixel 10 Pro feels more behind the curve than it ought to be, defaulting to ‘Low’ graphical settings in demanding games like ZZZ, dropping frames consistently when upping those graphical settings, and scoring the same or lower than its predecessor in GFX Bench comparisons.

There are a few possible reasons for the Pixel 10 Pro’s lacklustre gaming performance and the only remedy right now seems to be time. Moving from the Tensor G4 to the G5 also meant a shift from a Mali to a PowerVR GPU, with support for the latter seemingly lagging behind the Mali (the likes of Genshin Impact’s minimum Android system requirements don’t even cite support PowerVR GPUs, for example).

Separately, initial system tests suggest that the Pixel 10 Pro (and presumably all Pixel 10 models) aren’t yet running on the latest Vulkan API, which means the GPU isn’t likely being leveraged to its fullest, especially when tasked with benchmarking.

While it might sound like I’m bashing the heart of the Pixel 10 Pro pretty hard, in real-world use it actually makes for a pretty pleasurable, premium-feeling experience – as with previous Pixels.

This is perhaps the biggest conundrum for prospective Pixel owners: are you willing to pay a premium for Google’s specific flavour of Android and all the functionality that entails, knowing that – when using conventional metrics – the hardware at these phones’ core lags behind the competition by a meaningful amount from the get-go?

Cameras

• 50Mp main, 48Mp ultrawide and 48Mp 5x telephoto sensors
• 42Mp selfie camera
• New features include Camera Coach, up to 100x Pro Res Zoom and more

I love the Pixel camera experience, so much so that it was the driving force behind my choice to mainline Pixel phones since the Pixel 4 series (even with that generation’s abysmal battery life). However, that allegiance started to wane with the Pixel 8 Pro, and ground to a halt with the 9 Pro.

Don’t get me wrong, last year’s Pixel has excellent cameras, capable of holding their own (as proven against the Galaxy S25 Ultra, in my recent camera comparison) but they don’t offer the clear lead that they once did.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Apple has gone from strength to strength in the video department, the cameras on Samsung’s top phones just make different decisions to Google’s, rather than better or worse choices, while buyers outside the US also have a slew of outlandishly good camera phones from Chinese phone makers (2025’s Xiaomi 15 Ultra, Vivo X200 Ultra, Oppo Find X8 Ultra and Huawei Pura 80 Ultra spring to mind) to consider as well.

With this in mind, competition amongst the best camera phones is arguably tougher than it’s ever been, so why choose the Pixel 10 Pro?

As with other facets of the Pixel user experience, AI is fundamental to shooting on the Pixel 10 Pro, and this generation gets a suite of related new features. The Tensor G5 also features a new ISP (image signal processor), which focuses on improved low-light performance – including video.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Camera Coach (above) analyses whatever’s in the viewfinder and, after asking about what it is you’re trying to photograph, provides step-by-step guidance in the camera app. I actually thought it was legitimately useful. If you don’t feel like a confident photographer when shooting with your phone, and you’re willing to give it the time, Camera Coach looks to be an incredibly powerful tool that can at least teach you photography fundamentals, and isn’t available on anything other than Pixel.

Super Res Zoom was introduced on the Pixel 3 series and has served to preserve or improve image fidelity at higher focal lengths; most recently between 5x and 30x. The Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL blow this out of the water, with their new Pro Res Zoom, which promised capture at up to 100x.

While Super Res Zoom used various techniques to create the best image possible, the further you zoom in, the more original image data you’re losing. So, how did the Pixel 10 Pro gain such powerful new zoom functionality? The answer is generative AI. Essentially, when you capture a high-zoom image on the Pixel 10 Pro, Super Res Zoom does its best to understand what it is you’re trying to photograph and, using its training data, generates the image details it ‘thinks’ you’d expect to see in the final image.

It’s a forward-looking, software-centric alternative to adding a detachable telephoto lens (a solution the Vivo X200 Ultra turned to) and – provided you’re happy with your phone effectively making up parts of an image – means far greater versatility from the Pixel 10 Pro’s camera experience than its predecessors.

While Google’s take appears to deliver desirable results more consistently, when compared to the likes of Honor’s AI Super Zoom tech (comparison made at 100x using the Honor Magic 7 Pro), it does still stumble. The 100x wind turbine shot, for example, sees the foamy crests of waves turned into what resemble the favelas of Rio. That said, this technology will only get better with time.

The company already dipped into generative AI in its photography experience, with features such as last year’s Reimagine, meaning that the Pro Res Zoom’s approach shouldn’t feel too shocking. However, if you’re looking for authenticity in your photos, shoot at closer distances or simply uninstall the Pro Res Zoom model within the camera app, and the limit will return to 30x when shooting stills.

The Pixel 10 Pro now also adds C2PA verification, letting you see whether a captured image was edited, how it was likely edited, and thus whether AI was used in the image’s creation. In our AI era, image provenance is only becoming more important. I just hope this is a case of Google leading by example, and more phone makers follow.

It’s worth noting that new features like Camera Coach and Pro Res Zoom haven’t yet progressed to video capture, but capable off-device 8K HDR upscaling in the form of Video Boost persists from previous entries in the Pixel line.

Looking more broadly at the images the Pixel 10 Pro can capture, it’s up there with the best and has particular strengths in low light, against noise and grain (not to mention a capable astrophotography capture mode), as well as macro shooting, whether shooting using the main sensor, or in a dedicated capture mode that relies on the phone’s autofocus-capable 48MP ultrawide sensor.

Selfies also offer pleasingly accurate colours and detail, and portrait mode bokeh (background blur) looks to have improved, coming closer in quality to that of Samsung’s portrait mode, as well as the shots possible from some of those aforementioned Chinese rivals.

This is a great camera experience for those who don’t want to have to think about getting a good looking shot, but for those after the very best image quality, other entries can produce better results.

Battery Life & Charging

• 4870mAh battery
• 30W wired + 15W wireless charging (Qi2)
• 50% charge in 30 minutes (based on testing)

Despite being a compact phone by Android standards, and practically the same dimensions as its predecessor, Google was able to squeeze in a fractionally larger 4870mAh cell into this year’s smaller Pro model. Pair that with the new, smaller 3nm process used by the Tensor G5, storage efficiency gains at those higher capacities, the fully dynamic LTPO display and software optimisations from Android 16, and the Pixel 10 Pro looks made to deliver on the battery front.

Longevity-wise I was pleasantly surprised by the Pixel 10 Pro’s efforts. Outside of foldables, sub-5000mAh capacity batteries have become something of a rarity in the Android space, and don’t usually instil a whole lot of confidence, but in this Pixel proved dependable.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

A score of 13 hours 3 minutes with PCMark’s Battery 3.0 test puts it on-par with its predecessor, whilst outclassing other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge (12:18), and Honor Magic 7 Pro (12:37). Real-world usage served up a screen-on time of around 7.25 hours, meaning a day and a half of use on a single charge, or day-long intensive use, without concern.

There’s a world in which the higher storage models – with their more advanced storage – might yield better power efficiency, but without those units to hand to test, that’s simply speculation.

As for charging, Google quotes the same 55% charge in 30 minutes using the correct charger (a 30W minimum USB-PD PPS power adapter) as with the Pixel 9 Pro, and in testing I came close to this figure. The phone refilled to more than 25% in 15 minutes, passing 50% at the 30-minute mark, slowing to 70% charge after 45 minutes and then rolling over the 100% finish line after exactly 90 minutes.

That’s not blistering as far as fast charging goes, but it outpaces the iPhone 16 Pro’s 20W and the base Galaxy S25’s 25W quoted wired charging speeds. As ever, look outside this trio of phone makers and you’ll likely be envious of the battery capacities, technology (like silicon-carbon anodes) and charging speeds that rivals offer up. Motorola’s Edge 60 Pro and Xiaomi’s capable Poco F7 – two of the best mid-range phones available right now – both come with 90W wired charging, for example.

As well as gaining access to a vast, established magnetic accessory ecosystem, Pixelsnap also operates on the Qi2 standard, which means wireless charging speeds up to 15W. Once again, there are rivals boasting faster proprietary wireless speeds, but the openness of Qi2 within Pixelsnap isn’t to be overlooked.

Software & Apps

• Android 16 w/ Material 3 Expressive at launch
• Strong 7 years OS + security update support
• New AI-based features, including Magic Cue and Journal app

Google’s clean interpretation of Android gets a fresh coat of paint on the Pixel 10 series, in the form of Android 16. This latest release debuts what the company has dubbed Material 3 Expressive, which focuses on greater personalisation, as well as more engaging UI elements, animations and interactions.

There are visible tweaks all over the place, with varying degrees of subtlety. For example, each entry within the Settings menu is now dressed in a gradient of colour (as opposed to monochrome, as before), while toggles now come with an added ‘✔’ or ‘✘’ for greater transparency and improved glanceability. All in all, Android 16 on the 10 Pro has a more distinct and divisive look. It’s not as clean or minimalist as it once was, but this visual revision is arguably easier to parse, despite a higher degree of clutter.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Although the Pixel 10 Pro runs Android 16 out the box, Google’s ongoing commitment to seven generations of both operating system and security updates remains among the best in the business too.

As touched on before, AI is the main thrust of any Pixel phone and in the case of the Pixel 10 Pro, that Tensor G5 chip is equipped to service the latest iteration of the company’s Gemini Nano model, faster than any previous rendition (the company promises an 2.6x uptick in processing on the Pixel Screenshots app, for example).

On the subject of apps, I spotted a number of new first-party additions. NotebookLM, Google’s impressive AI-powered research app – which you can share data with and ask questions of – makes an appearance out-the-box, as does a new dedicated Password Manager app. Meanwhile, the new My Pixel app replaces the native Tips app; boasting a more refined interface that surfaces feature highlights, explainers and grants quick access to support resources. All good stuff.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

There’s also the new Journal app, which as you might expect, is meant for daily reflection, packing support for images, health data and locations, as well as text. This being a Google experience, however, the app also comes with a sizeable side of AI. After choosing some pre-defined goals during setup, AI then uses context and past topics to help inspire future entries.

The AI suggestions to get things started with each post are helpful, and the generated insightful summaries are novel too, but I question whether something as explicitly personal as a journal should have any form of AI integration at all? Especially if your entries have a chance of being processed off-device.

Magic Cue is one of the main pillars of the Pixel 10 Pro’s new AI functionality. It’s an experience that highlights Google’s ability to leverage available user data across the majority of its app suite; offering up pertinent, context-aware information, as and when you need it.

At the 10 Pro’s launch, we saw Fallon responding to messages (above) asking about dinner reservations, photos with a particular subject, at a particular time and place, flight details, general conversation topics and more, each with just a single tap, provided by Magic Cue. Jumping into the Phone app to amend that dinner reservation, meanwhile, resulted in Magic Cue appearing with a special card on top of the dialler, containing the current booking details, to help make the change.

The potential is clear, and it’s a defining Pixel exclusive that really goes beyond anything we’ve from rivals, largely thanks to its pervasiveness across the Pixel 10 Pro’s user experience.

Samsung’s Now Brief and AI Select – as they feature on the likes of the Galaxy S25 series – have a degree of context-awareness, like Magic Cue, but they’re active solutions that require you go and initiate both features to leverage their dynamic functionality. Magic Cue is passive, in that by just using the phone, you will find uses for the feature as and when it chooses to appear.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

The flip side is that you have to be committed to Google’s app suite to maximise Magic Cue’s usefulness and be willing to open up more of your personal data for the feature’s cross-app interaction. Google says, “your Magic Cue app data and recent screen activity are protected in a secure environment,” and that it’s all handled on-device.

The feature also gets its own entry within the phone’s settings app, where you can tailor the kinds of suggestions it offers, the first-party apps it can source data from (at the time of writing, that’s Calendar, Contacts, Gmail, Keep, Messages and Pixel Screenshots), as well as its ability to suggest useful information – such as surfacing flight information from your emails when talking about it in your messages – and its ability to finish tasks more efficiently – for example, surfacing your calendar when someone asks about your upcoming availability.

One other feature worth shouting about frustratingly remains a US exclusive for the time being, but in the same way that Camera Coach serves to help burgeoning mobile photographers refine their skills, the reworked Photos editor now lets you simply say what sort of edit you want to achieve with an image, using natural language. It’s ideal for those who don’t know how to achieve a certain look or what to fix a photographic faux pas without knowing which settings to alter and features to use. This is another Pixel-exclusive feature with huge potential (although its integration into the Photos app has me hoping it’ll become a wider Android staple in due time).

Price & Availability

The Pixel 10 series hit pre-order on August 20, with every new member bar the Pixel 10 Pro Fold going on sale in the likes of the US and UK, on August 28 (although Google cites a ship date of August 29 in the UK, at the time of writing).