Google's smartphones are built around the company's camera technology, and on paper the camera setup in the Pixel 6 Pro looks like the best from the company yet, with a 50MP wide camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera and a 48MP telephoto shooter. Samsung’s second-generation 5G modem, the Exynos 5123, also appeared in the global version of the Samsung Galaxy S20 series. It supports 800Hz mmWave connectivity and 200MHz of Sub-6 5G; as mentioned, the Verizon version of the Pixel 6 is the only model with mmWave antennae. The most important thing to note is that the Pixel 6 is the very first handset to be powered by Google’s in-house Tensor chipset. Ditching Qualcomm and avoiding Exynos and Kirin, Tensor promises a handful of performance and efficiency improvements over last year’s mid-range Snapdragon 765G, and it represents a bold new future for Google. The Pixel 6 Pro is a relatively affordable phone compared to other top-end handsets, but it’s still one of the more expensive smartphones you can buy. You may want to look elsewhere if your budget is tighter. But in side-by-side comparisons between the Pixel 6 and its pricier Pixel 6 Pro sibling – which does have a QHD (3120 x 1440) display – we couldn’t really determine much difference in detail watching identical media (a 4K YouTube video scaled to each phone’s respective resolution). In fact, it wasn’t until we got within inches of both phones that we could discern any difference, and even then, it was very minimal.

Pixel 6 5G (256 GB Storage, 50 MP Camera) Google Pixel 6 5G (256 GB Storage, 50 MP Camera)

It’s an impressive point-and-shoot camera, and we found that it delivered great results in a variety of scenarios.For example, we found the phone had around 10% leftover at the end of the day when we went to charge it. This isn’t the sort of phone that is going to last you multiple days, unless you’re a particularly light user. The Pixel 6 Pro is the first phone from the company to run on Google’s own silicon rather than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets. The chipset here is called Google Tensor.

Google Pixel 6 (Stromy Black, 8GB RAM, 256 Storage) Google Pixel 6 (Stromy Black, 8GB RAM, 256 Storage)

Magic Eraser, Real Tone, and Face Unblur are a few of the new camera features that the Tensor SoC makes possible. Except for Real Tone, which uses inclusive color science for more accurate representations of BIPOC people, none will fix a photo that's seriously messed up.

According to Google, Tensor delivers “up to 80% more performance than Pixel 5”, which runs on a Snapdragon 765G. In typical Google fashion, the search giant says its AI features enable better performance across a slew of machine-learning-specific tasks. This isn’t a must-have feature for many, but we enjoyed it, and it complements the impressive display quality, and you’ll notice a difference if you’re swapping from a phone with a 60Hz refresh rate.