Ultimate Camera Comparison! Google Pixel 7 Pro vs iPhone 14 Pro | Review 🔥
The Google Pixel 7 Pro. It’s got a glossy glass backing so it’s beautiful to look at, but also very slippery. But I have been using it naked for a while and I’m gonna give you a deep dive into what I think of it, versus the iPhone 14 Pro.
Much of the hype around the Pixel 7 Pro isn’t really about the specs of the device (although that is important). It’s really about the software, and Google has been hammering home that if you want the stock Android experience, if you want to be the among first to get software updates, use the most cutting edge Text to Speech, computational photography - it has to be a Pixel. But what really got me excited about the Pixel 7 Pro are some of the new camera features like Super Res Zoom, Photo Unblur, and Magic Eraser. Having tested those features, I have to say that they do work as advertised. Used to be that if you wanted to do similar things you’ll have to use third party apps like Photoshop. But with the latest Pixel, not anymore. I’ll be talking about these new features, as well as camera performance, speaker quality and more.
Super Res Zoom
Super Res zoom is easily the best digital zoom right now. With other phones, getting clean pictures with optical zoom is pretty common. But once the digital zoom kicks in, that’s when photos start to get noisy. That includes photos taken with the iPhone 14 Pro. It snaps clean pictures up to 5x telephoto. But the more you zoom in digitally, the noisier it gets.
I found that Super Res Zoom is able to denoise pictures quite effectively giving you this clean image at 15x digital zoom, which is the iPhone 14 Pro’s maximum range. And even beyond the iPhone’s max range at 30x digital zoom, the Pixel 7 Pro can denoise pictures pretty well.
Magic Eraser
You can erase people out of the picture with a tap with Magic Eraser, to make your pictures look prettier. It’s not perfect, because the AI can’t see what’s behind the item or the person you want to erase, so it has to guess what to fill into the blanks. But if you don’t focus your attention on those areas it does look very seamless. This give you one less reason to use Photoshop.
Photo Unblur
Photo Unblur actually got me to dig up some old blurry pictures, just to see if I can sharpen these images. It’s a feature that sort of works, but with a catch. The sharpened pictures look more like paintings than photographs. And I found that you will get the best results with pictures that are not too blurry.
For blurrier pictures, the result is still pretty decent but it didn’t sharpen it to the extent that I was expecting. Seems like even magic has its limits. Nonetheless all of these are very interesting, useful features that I wish the iPhone had. Let’s wait a few years. Apple will probably roll out these features and call them by a different name.
Main Camera Performance
In terms of main camera performance, in some ways I do prefer how pictures look on the Pixel. The colors are more vibrant, and somehow more color accurate to what my eyes are seeing.
In terms of shooting video, likewise the Pixel looks more color accurate, but the iPhone’s stabilization seems to be a little smoother, but not by a whole lot. You can watch the samples here.
Low Light Photography
In terms of low light photography, the Pixel 7 Pro’s shots do look cleaner and more color accurate - exactly how Google’s Night Sight should work.
But I found that shots from the iPhone 14 Pro look better. And here’s why. It captures more detail in the shot. You can see it from this signboard, how the iPhone 14 Pro captures the lines in the signboard that are simply not there on the Pixel.
I prioritize detail over color accuracy because color is something that you can fix in post processing. Even denoising is possible in post processing, but if the detail is not captured, it’s incredibly hard, if not impossible to extract details in the photo.
Pixel 7 Pro’s… Pros?
Now I’m gonna talk about some of the Pixel 7 Pro’s pros and cons. The biggest pro for me is obviously the camera and those new features we talked about. It feels very advanced and innovative. It’s also got great thermals. When I was shooting videos on both devices, the iPhone 14 Pro was heating up like crazy. I talked about that when I was reviewing it, but the Pixel 7 Pro only felt a bit warm in the main camera area. That’s awesome. (Edit: The Pixel 7 Pro does heat up a lot too when using the camera in a sustained manner, but the heat is better dissipated. Seems like its aluminum frame is acting as a radiator of sorts.)
Its battery life is pretty good. It’s got 5000 mAH of juice, so I could easily get a full day’s use out of this, watching videos, shooting pictures, or just scrolling through Twitter endlessly. I often skip a day before it needs to get charged back up.
In terms of the UX, the fingerprint sensor is snappy, so is the Face Unlock. In short, it feels like a powerful, polished device which is where Google wants to be with the new Tensor G2 SoC. But maybe a bit too polished physically.
As I said in the beginning, the hi-gloss backing of the 7 Pro makes it a very slippery device. Now, the glass may be durable, super durable, even. It is after all Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and back. But nobody wants to risk getting dings and scratches on their brand new phone, right? This means it needs a cover, but you’ll have to get that separately cause Google doesn’t supply one in the box. Nor do they supply a power adapter, it only has a type-C cable and a type-C converter in the box.
But of course, an argument can be made that it is precisely because there is no power adapter in the box, can Google charge a much lower price point for these devices. Cause how much it costs to get each device into the stores also plays a part into the overall price.
Display
The screen is great, spacious, sharp and vivid. Afterall it’s a QHD+ screen. And when you’re indoors or under the shade it’s bright enough. But it still struggles under harsh sunlight. You can still see what’s on the screen but it is very dim.
Speakers
And finally, the speakers. These are loud, stereo speakers, but it’s so unbalanced. There are two speakers, one on the top, one on the bottom, but the bottom speaker is a bit louder than the top one, and it throws off the center, especially when you’re watching videos or playing games in landscape. Listen to the sound sample here.
That is not what I would expect from Google’s flagship device. Still, for the price it's going for - $799, it’s looking like pretty good value for money for a flagship device from none other than Google.
If you’d like to check the latest price of this device you can visit the Pixel 7 Pro’s Amazon page through this link.
Google Pixel 7 Pro - https://amzn.to/3Cu5IlT
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