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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RaistlinZ - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
$700 is the new mid-range?! Yikes.raystryker - Saturday, January 23, 2021 - link
Agree 1000% ....when you can build a decent gaming pc(when parts are available) for the cost of a "midrange" phone....TheinsanegamerN - Monday, January 25, 2021 - link
Sadly yes. People are willing to fork over $1500 for iphones and galaxy phones. People get them through contract plans "oh but its free" (no it isnt). People are not smart with money, look at all the people buying scalped consoles and GPUs, $50,000 cars, carrying tens of thousands in CC debt.People like you and me, who look at a $700 device and see an expensive proposition, are int he minority.
eastcoast_pete - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
My main problem with Google's Pixel phones has been and continues to be that they are, at heart, iPhones for people who don't like iPhones or iOS. While I can understand not like liking iOS (have to use an iPhone for work), I have a hard time to understand why one wants to give up some big upsides of Android, such as the ability to add cheap, removable storage. That BTW is a key reason why I never bought an iPhone, even though they are amazingly good at videos, something that is important to me. If I want a small-ish Phone from closed ecosystem that constantly reports back to HQ and has no expandable storage, I'd get the original - the current small iPhone, also with better photo and video. The Pixel 5 remains a not-as-good copy of that, unfortunately.GC2:CS - Saturday, January 23, 2021 - link
Is it possible that the SoC is deffective in hardware ?Like half of the GPU is burned out so they bought it for lower cost.
In my wiew, even if it costs 700, it looks like they tried to save on every oportunity like plastic build, low RAM delaminating displays.
But scrap SoC sounds too much for me.
vanish1 - Saturday, January 23, 2021 - link
$700 for the Pixel 5. How much of an Android fanboy do you have to be to buy this phone?? I'm being serious. Because for the price, the ip12 and 12 mini run circles around this phone in terms of value and will most likely outclass the performance of Pixel phones for a few years to come.nucc1 - Sunday, January 24, 2021 - link
Yup. I took one look at the specs and settled for an iPhone 12. I couldn't subject myself to using a midrange chip for the next two+ years with the low scores in web browsing benchmarks.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, January 25, 2021 - link
Who cares about benchmarks? A snapdragon 625 scores WAY lower and yet handles android browsing, AKA one window at a time, just fine. We crossed the point of "good enough" long ago.NewWestBC - Saturday, January 23, 2021 - link
My spouse has a Pixel 5. Yes it has the Snapdragon 765G and it might not be a phone for gamers or at least games that actually make use of high fps. Camera e how images turn out are still better than phones that cost 50% more. It's depends what you use your phone for... Benchmarking phone cpu or gpu tells a part of the story, that for some people is irrelevant. For the price I think it's one of the best options if you are looking for a solid, polished version of Android. On click amazing photos. Boring for some, but it just works well all around and the average user could not tell if it has a 765G compared to a much more expensive 888 unit.Google4Eva - Saturday, January 23, 2021 - link
Well I work for Google and I have the Pixel 4 which I love. Photos are fab facial recognition motion sense night vision and love the glass body. However what Google phones are NOT is a luxury phone. I would say they belong to Apple 13 Pro for design and features. Also Samsung S21 but Pixel is not aiming to be there anyway ditto Chromebooks too. They are mid range phones and value for money