Google Pixel 7 review

Clean Android 13 with a Pixel twist

This is one of the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro's key selling points - the clean, burden-less Android experience without heavy customizations and overlays. Just how Google intended it to be. But that doesn't mean the Pixel 7 Pro lacks exclusive features. Quite the opposite, actually. Many functionalities can only be found on Pixel devices as Google wants to stand out from the crowd.

The Pixel 7 is, of course, running the latest Android 13, which leads us to the next big advantage - updates. Google Pixel phones offer the fastest Android updates on the market, and the company promises at least three years of major Android updates and 5 years of security patches.

Lock screen, home scren, recent apps, notification shade, app drawer

If you are familiar with the stock Android look, you will easily feel right at home. The quick toggles are now pill-shaped in the notification shade, and there's still no toggle for the automatic screen brightness.

One of the biggest new additions to the stock Android is support for theming - of the icons too. Music players now change their appearance based on the album art too. Last but not least, swiping up from the home screen opens up the app drawer along with the keyboard for an instant search - though if that's not how you like to operate your app drawer, you can disable the auto keyboard behavior.

General settings and theme support

Speaking of music, Android 13 has native support for Spatial Audio as long as you have the appropriate headphones. The same goes for Bluetooth LE Audio, which improves quality and offers lower latency connection and broadcasting to multiple devices.

Those, however, are features found in other Android 13-powered devices. To stand out, Google decided to focus on the "smarts". Some even call the Pixel "the smartest smartphone around," and they may have a point there. Most of the features rely on machine learning algorithms leveraging the Tensor G2 SoC. On paper, the SoC doesn't seem all that impressive, but in reality, it has a pretty powerful NPU.

One of the most interesting features involves calling and speech. Call screening, for example, lets Google's voice assistant take the call for you and even lets you know what the call is all about. When calling a service or a business that requires you to select options using the dial-pad, the assistant will transcribe all options, which the robot lists, on the screen and let you choose. No more guessing and remembering options from the voice menu. The dialer will even suggest calling at another time if you are calling the business at a busy time.

Smart calling features

Call captions are also an option. You can answer a call during a meeting or class without having to talk. The AI will transcribe what the person is saying on the other end, and you can answer by typing. The voice assistant will read out what you are typing to the other party in the call. Sadly, many of these features are limited to certain markets and languages, such as the Call screening, for example. The best part is that none of these features require an internet connection - the computational heavy lifting is carried out locally by the Tensor G2's NPU.

While we are still on the subject of calls, we have to mention the advertised noise-suppression feature during phone calls. It works both ways - the other end can hear you more clearly when you're in a noisy environment, while the Tensor G2 can remove the background noise from the other end of the call coming into your ear.

Other AI-based features include the ability to transcribe a whole real-life conversation with speaker labels, even if the phone is in your pocket. It's a built-in function of the audio recorder app. It works really well for English speakers, and it might come in handy to journalists or people often making voice memos. There's also a search function inside the app that would help you find certain parts of a conversation.

Recorder transcription of a podcast playing on speakers

The audio recognition capabilities of the Pixel 7 Pro include the long-standing 'Now playing' feature, of course. Former Pixel users will be familiar, but newcomers may be surprised by the built-in Shazam-like functionality. You just flick a switch in the Sound settings menu, and the phone will now look for music playing around you and automatically display the name of the track on the lockscreen or Always-on display. It will use Google's audio search in case it can't recognize the track.

Now Playing music

The AI can also extract text and images on the go. In the recent apps menu, you will find two buttons - one for screenshot and one called "Select". Once you tap it, you can select, copy, share or select text from the screen, even if it's an image. You can even extract images using this feature. Interestingly, the selection also works in the default recent apps menu with a tap-and-hold action.

Text and image recognition in apps

Blurry photos in the default gallery app, which is still Google's Photos app, can be easily fixed using machine learning algorithms. Let's just say that your mileage will vary with this one.

Unblur photos

The NPU is supposedly put to work to help improve the default face unlock. Since the latter uses the standard selfie camera, it's still unreliable in low-lighting conditions or when half of your face is covered. It's still blazingly fast in ideal conditions, though.

Speaking of fast, the fingerprint reader is still a bit disappointing at times. It's a noticeable improvement over the Pixel 6 generation, but it's also sensibly slower than competing optical fingerprint reader solutions. And when compared to ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, the difference is even bigger. Don't get us wrong, though; the fingerprint reader is decently fast. It's just that we expected more from a premium device like the Pixel 7. Additionally, we noticed that after a second failed attempt at unlocking, the system would prompt us with a PIN input even though a couple more tries were left. It's a bit annoying, and we would want the PIN input to appear only after all tries are exhausted.

Performance-wise, the stock Android ran like one. We didn't notice any hiccups, hangs or slow-downs. The device ran fast and smooth during the time we had it.

Synthetic benchmark performance

The Google Pixel 7 series is powered by the second-gen in-house Tensor chip, and when we say in-house, we mean that it's designed by Google's engineering team and tailored to the Pixel's needs. It's co-developed with Samsung, and it comes out of Samsung's factory manufacturing 5nm 5LPE chips.

The Tensor G2's CPU is in the same principal configuration as the previous one - 2+2+4 setup - which is still a bit unusual in the industry. The changes for this year include new mid-tier cores - Cortex A78 in place of A76, and they're clocked a wee bit higher - 2.35GHz vs. 2.25GHz. The high-performance X1 cores have gotten a minor nudge from 2.80GHz to 2.85GHz. The quad-core efficiency-focused cluster remains the same - 4xCortex-A55 at 1.8GHz.

The GPU is new now - the Mali-G710 MP7 sits behind the wheel promising gains in the graphics department compared to last year's model. That said, the MP7 designation is 3 fewer than the Mali-G710 MC10 in the Dimensity 9000, and fewer can't be better in this context (not to mention the P vs. C discrepancy).

While the CPU improvements seem incremental on paper, Google promises a much-improved Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which is capable of some serious number crunching when it comes to AI-related tasks. The camera and machine learning algorithms run about 60% faster here than last year's Tensor G1 TPU. Many of the standout features we outlined in the software section might only be possible because of the new TPU.

We ran the usual set of benchmarks on the Pixel 7 Pro, and here's how it compares to rivals powered by the latest and greatest from Samsung, Qualcomm and MediaTek.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  4338
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  4300
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  4265
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  4081
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  3839
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  3657
• ROG Phone 6D
  3531
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  3528
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  3512
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  3505
• vivo X80 Pro
  3505
• Realme GT2 Pro
  3501
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  3447
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  3433
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  3403
• Google Pixel 7
  3288
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  3187
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  2831
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  2659

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  1324
• Asus Zenfone 9
  1313
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  1277
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  1276
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  1238
• Realme GT2 Pro
  1238
• vivo X80 Pro
  1184
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  1180
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  1165
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  1160
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  1127
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  1110
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  1056
• Google Pixel 7
  1051
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  1042
• ROG Phone 6D
  1015
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  1002
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  1001
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  975

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  1083092
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  1074722
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  1039412
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  1032185
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  1012896
• vivo X80 Pro
  1002570
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  980755
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  968359
• Realme GT2 Pro
  966251
• ROG Phone 6D
  948594
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  931170
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  886916
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  886248
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  838832
• Google Pixel 7
  813114
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  796369
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  762090
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  719815

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  67
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  65
• ROG Phone 6D
  61
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  59
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  58
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  52
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  50
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  50
• Google Pixel 7
  49
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  43
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  40
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  38
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  37
• Realme GT2 Pro
  36
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  35
• vivo X80 Pro
  34
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  30
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  28
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  26

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  46
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  46
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  45
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  45
• ROG Phone 6D
  43
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  43
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  43
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  43
• Realme GT2 Pro
  42
• vivo X80 Pro
  41
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  40
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  40
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  37
• Google Pixel 7
  31
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  31
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  31
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  31
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  29
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  26

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  69
• ROG Phone 6D
  64
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  63
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  62
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  58
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  56
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  55
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  51
• Google Pixel 7
  46
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  45
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  41
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  39
• Realme GT2 Pro
  39
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  36
• vivo X80 Pro
  34
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  31
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  29
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  26
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  25

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  52
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  51
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  51
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  50
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  48
• ROG Phone 6D
  46
• Realme GT2 Pro
  46
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  44
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  44
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  43
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  38
• vivo X80 Pro
  37
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  35
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  34
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  32
• Google Pixel 7
  31
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  30
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  30
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  26

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  89
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  79
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  74
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  73
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  72
• ROG Phone 6D
  71
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  68
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  68
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  65
• Google Pixel 7
  59
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  59
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  51
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  48
• Realme GT2 Pro
  48
• vivo X80 Pro
  44
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  44
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  39
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  37
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  34

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9
  104
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  104
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  102
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  101
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  100
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  97
• Realme GT2 Pro
  95
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  94
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  93
• vivo X80 Pro
  90
• ROG Phone 6D
  84
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  82
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  79
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  76
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  76
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  72
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  70
• Google Pixel 7
  66
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  63

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  10533
• Asus Zenfone 9
  10469
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  10248
• Honor Magic4 Pro
  10183
• Sony Xperia 1 IV
  9794
• vivo X80 Pro
  9778
• Oppo Find X5 Pro
  9758
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  9610
• Realme GT2 Pro
  9487
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  8687
• ROG Phone 6D
  8666
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (1440p)
  7437
• Samsung Galaxy S22+
  7405
• Google Pixel 6 Pro
  6602
• Google Pixel 7
  6569
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  6470

3DMark Wild Life Extreme (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  2740
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  2611
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  2599
• ROG Phone 6D
  2555
• Google Pixel 7
  1848
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  1835

As you can see from the results, the Tensor G2 is no slouch, but it's also dragging behind the current competition. To be frank, Google Pixel phones have never been particularly strong performers in synthetic benchmarks. What we can report, anecdotally, is that the Pixel 7 feels pleasantly smooth in use, so benchmark scores don't tell the whole story.

Sustained performance

Last year's Pixel 6 lineup had a bit of troublesome heat management, and subsequent updates fixed the issue to some extent. We also found that both the Pixel 6 and the 6 Pro were not very good at sustaining prolonged workloads.

We were pleasantly surprised that the Pixel 7 had none of those issues.

The Pixel 7, in particular, shows a big improvement in sustained load scenario compared to its predecessor, even though it's still rather unimpressive. The CPU throttled down to around 70% of the theoretical maximum performance in the first 30 minutes of the test, and the graph shows some sharp spikes here and there.

CPU Throttling test: 30 min • 60 min

After an hour-long run of the CPU Throttling test, the overall performance didn't change much. The system maintained 70% of the maximum performance throughout the whole test period. We also noticed that the chassis doesn't get all that hot. Sure, it's warm, but we've seen way worse.

As far as the GPU stress test goes, we got suboptimal but still okay-ish results. Similarly to the CPU, the GPU maintained about 68% of its theoretical performance over the course of 20 loops of 3DMark's Wild Life Stress Test.

GPU stress test