Mario Bautista
Google Pixel 9 Pro review: Cameras
Cameras are always the standout of Pixel phones and a big part of that is the editing and processing software. Zoom Enhance is available from launch, tidying up your digitally cropped images to make them look more crisp (though I found that some results were too oversharpened for my liking) and Add Me allows you to get the whole family in a group shot by compositing in the photo-taker afterwards. It’s fairly seamless and also presents a great opportunity to stage your own Parent Trap-style shenanigans:
When it’s not being used for nonsense, the main camera is still a beautiful shooter, with excellent dynamic range, vibrant colours and a wealth of detail. Whether you’re taking shots on the brightest day…
…or darkest night, images are crisp and exposed just right. The night camera sometimes adds a little too much visual noise to big blocks of darkness like the sky and sea, but most of the time you’ll be left with clean and beautiful shots.
The 48MP (f/2.8) periscope telephoto camera delivers gorgeous 5x optical shots (below), plucking out plenty of details and keeping the exposure levels nice and even. Go to a 10x hybrid zoom and things still look decent, though beyond that you’re getting into oil-painting territory.
The 48MP ultrawide camera gets a new, wider f/1.7 aperture and you can see every penny on the page, with the wide shots packing in the details and matching the colouring of the main camera. There’s very minor smudging in the corners on occasion but this is still one of the best ultrawide cameras out there.
The video suite adds 8K at 30fps to the already expansive offering, as well as SuperRes Zoom Video, which essentially uses AI to upscale the quality of your zoomed footage, stabilising any shakes and sharpening the details. It takes quite a while (and isn’t all on-device, so you need to stay on Wi-Fi) but the results were notably smoother.
