The Google Pixel 5: A Mini-Review - Small Package, Small Value?
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 22, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Pixel 5
Camera - A Quick Recap
I’m skipping the camera comparisons for this piece as it’s out of the scope of the short-form review today (they are very time consuming!). We’ve included the Pixel 5 in low-light photography in recent reviews such as the iPhone 12 piece and we’ll be publishing a more extensive camera investigation article in the coming weeks as well as the upcoming Galaxy S21 article coming soon, so I’ll reserve myself to just posting camera samples and commentary of the Pixel 5 performance.
In daylight, where the Pixel 5 seems to perform better than its predecessors is seemingly in terms of colours and colour temperature. Whereas the Pixel 4 and previous iterations seemed to have had a tendency towards warmer colours, the Pixel 5 more often tends to get things in a more natural and correct colour – at least in my own subjective experience.
One area that’s still prevalent in the Pixel processing is that I feel that it doesn’t do as well in preserving highlights of textures, giving them a flatter look compared to what we’re now seeing from the processing of the likes of Apple and Samsung.
The ultra-wide-angle module on the Pixel 5 is a definitive great addition to the phone and really augments the capture experience of this generation of Pixel phones, addressing a much lacklustre aspect of Google’s devices last year. The optics of the UWA isn’t as great as some of other competitors, but decent enough.
What is weird about the UWA is that although Google advertises as employing a 16MP sensor, the actual pictures coming out are sampled down to 12.2MP, matching the resolution of the main sensor. I’m not sure what the rationale is here, and I’m generally never a fan of this matching of resolution across different sensors in a phone as it never actually ends up in good quality results.
In low-light scenarios, the Pixel 5 is a bit of a mixed bag by today’s standards. On one hand, Google’s Night Sight computational photography mode is excellent in terms of bringing out light in very dark situations, but on the other hand the camera processing here doesn’t seem to have changed much since the Pixel 3. Night Sight in this sense can be a two-edged sword – produces high quality low-light photos, but sometimes it overdoes it in terms of brightening a scene too much, it no longer being representative of the subject. Night Sight also has a particular tendency to grossly over-correct for colour-temperature, losing the actual ambience of a scene.
In scenarios where there’s very low light, Google’s aging camera hardware really cannot compete against the newer generation sensors from the competition, which by now have caught up or also even surpassed Google in computational photography.
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Citypoint725 - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
Best Pixel phone yet...in my experience. Been a Google phone owner since the G1.drmrzmom - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
Don't waste your money! I feel like I paid $699 for extra storage, a smaller phone and no measureable upgrades. It sucks.Pixel owner - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
The selling point for me on the Pixel 5 was the battery life. I owned a Pixel XL, Pixel 3 XL, and now the 5. My only issue is the size. It's kinda small. My vision is getting bad so reading the small print on certain games is difficult. If the games had a way to change the font size it wouldn't be a problem. I like the fact that it's super lightweight. I haven't noticed the performance being slower then the 3 XL. It actually seems faster. I love the calling feature screen call. No other flagship phones have it. That being said overall I'm happy to own a pixel 5 and would recommend getting one. As long as your not one of those I need the best of everything types. If you are then go spend $1300 on a flagship. I bet you won't be as happy.patel21 - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
The phone would provide a lot more value of they would have just kept telephoto lens from Pixel 4, and added Ultra wide.Spunjji - Monday, January 25, 2021 - link
Yeah, I'm confused by the people who were happy with them removing a lens. My personal preference is for telephoto, though, so I'm biased 😬DocDAT2 - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
To me the pixel 5 is close to the perfect phone. It's at the maximum size that I want (can't find any comparable phones in the same size. I could easily afford a phone twice the cost but would never buy one of the modern brick sized "super" phones and I can't stand iOS.It has great quality construction, awesome camera and camera software (the best of the android phones IMO), and the battery easily lasts a whole day of heavy usage. It's plenty fast for all I've used it for - I've never understood people who use their phone for 3D gaming, so I couldn't care less about the 3d performance.
Broonsby - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
Pixel 5 is like a Camry: nothing special to look at, but is a solid daily user. It just works and gets out of the way while being fuel efficient. I manage an average of 2 days usage before charging w/ roughly 40% battery capacity left. If you don't like the package then there are you spoiled for choice right now. But this is the kind of phone you'll have in 3 years & finally upgrade because of the battery finally fading.shady28 - Sunday, January 24, 2021 - link
A Camry that costs the same as a BMW. This is a midrange spec phone with, as far as I can tell, an $680 MSRP price tag and going for $800. For that you can buy an S21 5G, or an iPhone 11 128GB is $30 less, or an iPhone 12 is $70 more. You can get an LG 5G with similar specs for half this price? This phone makes no sense, just like a $60,000 Camry.1_rick - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
For six hundos you can get a Galaxy S20 FE 5G. I don't remember if it has mmWave or not but isn't that the one that's really only available for a few blocks in the downtown of major cities? But you get super-fast charging, an actual flagship SoC, and a 120Hz display.supdawgwtfd - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
What's interesting is that in my Country even though they are meant to have the same MSRP the Samsung costs $100 more.Plus who really likes Samsung software....