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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Ananke - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link
$700 is a lot of money without the corresponding value.In this regards "value for money" is iPhone SE for $400
otonieru - Sunday, January 24, 2021 - link
It would be stupid to pay $700 for this specifications.dontlistentome - Sunday, January 24, 2021 - link
Wife an I both have Pixel 5s to replace Samsung S8s. Perfect for what we needed - smallish, not too bothered about mega res screen, good battery, google sw, waterproof, wireless charging and the front camera was about as unintrusive as they get nowadays.On launch in the UK the phone was £600 but they bundled Bose QC35II headphones. Quick bit of ebaying netted £150 so the phones were a much more acceptable £450 (having said that, they gave the phones with the 4a too...).
Overpriced? Probably, but we paid for the lack of irritations and for those 3 or 4 features we'd got used to.
eclectech - Sunday, January 24, 2021 - link
I read this whole review on my Pixel 5. Fortunately the phone didn't consume a lot of power while doing it.Billjriv - Sunday, January 24, 2021 - link
Just buy the phone with an already cracked screen that way you save 2/3rds the cost it's like buying a Mustang from CopartPeskarik - Monday, January 25, 2021 - link
This phone is not worth upgrading from my Pixel XL which is why I did not upgrade.Put a better processor in it, put 3.5mm jack back in, put a good battery - I will buy.
Take Google camera and put it into a Sony Xperia 5II phone (you can take 5G out, for what I care) - I would buy that.
Zan Lynx - Monday, January 25, 2021 - link
I bought a Pixel 5 when it came out. I wanted the 5G and my older Pixel 3 XL was getting old and scratched up.I love the battery life. With my usage it can make it through almost two days without a charge.
The 90 Hz update was new to me and I really like it. When scrolling it feels so much better.
I haven't noticed any speed problems on web pages. They all seem fast enough for me. The sites that are slow are also chunky and slow on my Ryzen 5950X desktop, so the problem there really isn't with the phone. It's with the web developers.
I think it is about the same as the Pixel 3 but I also like the charge time. 30 minutes on the USB-C cable and it is up to 80%. With the great battery life that's enough for the rest of the day.
johnmartin123 - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link
.johnmartin123 - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link
I brought this phone few weeks ago and I have to say this one is far better than pixel 4 because the battery runtime is much better, the speed is better and I'm experiencing the best with the phone. I've a business in social media management Alexandria and I do most of my work with this phone. https://www.course1.com/ check our website.zsdersw - Thursday, January 28, 2021 - link
Google's UI on the Pixel phones is far superior to all other makers' UI skins, and that overcomes all of the idiotic "concerns" made in this article.