I reviewed the Google Pixel 10 Pro. It’s better than I first thought

By Nirave Gondhia Updated September 18, 2025

The Pixel 10 Pro is a fantastic phone, but it has one key problem: it offers only iterative changes over last year’s Pixel 9 Pro, which was a significantly upgraded phone compared to the Pixel 8 Pro. 

This year, phones like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy S25 Edge, as well as the upcoming iPhone 17 Air, have raised customer expectations for thinner phones that offer a more impressive wow factor. The problem for the Pixel 10 Pro is that it bucks these trends: it’s slightly heavier, and while that’s for good reason, the improvements that it facilitates are not easy to see or explain. 

The new Tensor G5 processor represents a welcome upgrade over the Tensor G4, offering significantly faster on-device AI responses, enhanced CPU performance, and improved camera algorithms. 

Yet, the camera modules are the same ones found in the Pixel 9 Pro, and there’s just one key difference: a new AI-powered 100x zoom to compete with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It’s not enough to truly stand out, as other phones already offer this feature, even though Google’s implementation is among the best. 

Then there’s the battery; the Pixel 10 Pro features a larger battery with faster charging. There’s also a new Pixelsnap magnetic wireless charging solution, which means the Pixel 10 series is the first to offer native Qi2 magnetic charging. At first, I wrote off the Pixel 10 Pro’s battery life, but as the phone has learnt my usage, overall screen time on a single charge has improved by over an hour.

The key issue is that the upgrades on the Pixel 10 Pro don’t feel as meaningful, especially at first. That was my first opinion, but one month later, the Pixel 10 Pro proved me wrong. It’s forgettable at first, but as I’ve learnt over the past month, the Pixel 10 Pro grows on you.

Google has another polished flagship phone, albeit one that lacks the wow factor of its key competitors. For many people, this makes it ideal, precisely because it blends effortlessly into your life, and doesn’t immediately stand out, unlike rival phones such as the bright orange iPhone 17 Pro, ultra-thin iPhone Air, stunning Galaxy Z Fold 7, or uber-thin Galaxy S25 Edge.

The Pixel 10 Pro is identical to the Pixel 9 Pro, featuring a frosted glass rear design and the distinctive camera bar that has become a hallmark of Google’s smartphone lineup. 

The major difference this year is the absence of a SIM card slot. Several years after Apple went esim only in the US, an Android phone maker has followed suit, and it’s still as frustrating for those who travel. The latest version of Android makes it easier than ever to transfer or convert an eSIM, but it is still far less convenient than supporting both a physical SIM card and an eSIM. 

Measuring 8.5mm thick, the Pixel 10 Pro is the same thickness as the Pixel 9 Pro, but it’s eight grams heavier, likely due in part to the magnets for Qi 2 charging. It does feel more balanced than the Pixel 9 Pro, but it’s hard to ignore that it bucks a key trend of thinner and lighter smartphones.

First, there’s the Galaxy S25 Edge, which measures 5.8 mm thick and weighs 163 grams. Then there’s Apple’s upcoming iPhone 17 Air, which is expected to be even thinner at 5.4 mm thick. Lastly, the best folding phones, such as the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Honor Magic V5, prove that foldables can be indistinguishable from the best smartphones. Samsung’s folding phone measures just 0.4mm thicker when folded, and is only eight grams heavier.

Overall, the Pixel 10 Pro features a tried-and-tested design with minimal changes compared to last year’s model, but it lacks the wow factor of its rival phones, as well as the Pixel 9 Pro. Magnets for Qi-charging are wonderful, but it’s uncertain whether this is a trade-off that’s worth it, or whether customers will find the design trade-offs worthwhile.

Update: Initially, I expected the heavier Pixel 10 Pro

Design score: 9/10

Given there are no changes to the size of the Pixel 10 Pro, it’ll come as no surprise that it has the same 6.3-inch OLED display as last year’s model. The Super Actua display — Google’s branding for its display makeup and technology — is bright, vibrant, and superb, and I have no complaints with its performance.

The Pixel 10 Pro’s Super Actua display actually is super.

Google has slightly increased the peak brightness of the display to 3,300 nits, but the 300-nit increase isn’t that perceptible. However, I’ve had no problems using the Pixel 10 Pro display on a moving train, during a flight, and even on a bright day in New York City. It’s brighter than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but it doesn’t compare to the OnePlus 13, which is 36% brighter with a peak brightness of 4,500 nits.

Any increase in brightness is always welcome, as is Google’s small effort to improve the display’s accessibility by doubling the PWM — Pulse-Width Modulation, a display technology used to dim many OLED displays — frequency rate. A higher frequency rate can reduce the impact of PWM on almost ten percent of smartphone users.

I love the size of the Pixel 10 Pro’s display, as 6.3 inches is the ideal size for my hands. The 120Hz dynamic refresh rate works fairly well, and the OLED panel can make some Material 3 Expressive color themes look fantastic. Overall, this is a great phone display.

Update: After a month with it, the Pixel 10 Pro has my favorite smartphone screen right now. The Super Actua display actually is super, the right size, and vibrant when used outdoors. It’s particularly enjoyable compared to last year’s iPhone 16 Pro, although the iPhone 17 Pro features the same 3,000 nits peak brightness.

Display score: 9/10

The highlight of the new Pixel 10 Pro is the Tensor G5 chipset. The fifth generation of Google’s in-house chipset marks a shift from Samsung Foundry to TSMC, the world’s leading chipmaker. 

The new Tensor G5 is built on the 3nm process and delivers the same benefits as the Snapdragon 8 Elite, namely a significantly higher performance threshold. The Tensor G5 offers up to 34% higher CPU performance, 60% faster machine learning performance, and improvements to the camera’s ISP.

Those are Google’s claims, and the Pixel 10 Pro mostly delivers. Day-to-day performance is rapid, and the phone generally handles everything you ask of it. It is a significant upgrade to the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 Pro, but the overall experience still feels a short step behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite and A18 Pro. Granted, some of these can be related to software, and the experience has already improved as Google optimizes the overall experience.

The Tensor G5 doesn’t support all the Vulkan features necessary to run the most extreme 3DMark benchmarks, which means we can’t directly compare the performance to most of its rivals. The lack of Vulkan support isn’t necessarily a concern. However, as the API is designed to reduce the resources required for intensive graphics rendering, it may result in higher battery consumption during intensive gaming.

However, we were able to test the Tensor G5 using the CPU and GPU benchmarks as part of the GeekBench 6 app. 

In the CPU test, the Pixel 10 Pro scores 2282 in the single-core result and 6249 in the multi-core result. Both rank considerably lower than the competition, as does the GPU test score of 3178. In particular, the Tensor G5 seems to struggle with graphics and scores poorly compared to many of the best phones.

The Tensor G5 is paired with 16GB of RAM, but the Pixel 10 Pro starts at 128GB of storage, which is far too low. After transferring my apps to the Pixel 10 Pro, I was left with around 48GB of storage, which poses a challenge for long-term use. Yes, you can back up photos to Google Photos, but consider purchasing the 256GB or 512GB versions, which will increase the overall cost, even with the best Pixel 10 deals.

The Tensor G5 is a great step towards the Pixel experience we deliver, but I have reservations about its overall performance, as is evident in the benchmarks. As with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Tensor G5 represents a significant step forward for the Tensor lineup; however, some reservations remain regarding its optimization.

Performance score: 8/10

One of the overriding themes of the Pixel 10 Pro is that the improvements made are not easily visible, and this is most apparent in the battery size and charging improvements. 

The Pixel 9 Pro featured a 4,700 mAh battery that delivered excellent battery life, and the Pixel 10 Pro features a three-percent larger battery at 4,870 mAh. Yet, the power requirements of the Tensor G5 make any improvement to battery life negligible, and instead, I’ve had several challenges with battery life.

I’ve used the Pixel 10 Pro for eight days, and screen time has varied between four and six hours. However, there have been days when it lasted less than four hours, particularly when using the camera. The extensive use of AI features — such as Magic Cue or those in the camera app — also significantly affects battery life. 

The puzzling battery life is also likely affected by the fact that I’m using a phone with US network bands while traveling in Europe ahead of IFA 2025 next week, and roaming with two US eSIMs. Given the variability of the battery life, it’s likely that the puzzling battery life issue has at least one root cause that’s isolated to my specific use case. 

One particularly frustrating feature of the Pixel 10 Pro is its battery saver mode, which completely disables the 5G radio on your phone. This feels particularly strange as Google is clearly trying to prevent the phone from searching for mmWave networks, but LTE performance can be much weaker than 5G in key areas. I wish there were a way to change this setting, but in the meantime, I’ve stopped enabling the battery saver mode.

Instead, I seek out a charger, and when I do, the Pixel 10 Pro delivers good overall charging performance. The 30W wired charging is three watts faster than the Pixel 9 Pro, but this doesn’t make a marked improvement to the charging speeds; the Pixel 10 Pro charges to full in 1 hour and 29 minutes, which is five minutes slower than the Pixel 9 Pro, but this equates to a similar charging rate. 

The significant improvement comes in the form of Pixelsnap, Google’s new Qi 2-magnetic charging solution. However, Google confirmed that the Pixel 10 Pro only features 15W magnetic charging — and not the faster 25W Qi 2.2 charging offered by the Pixel 10 Pro XL — thanks to thermal constraints.

Overall, battery life has varied, but I’m fairly confident that the Pixel 10 Pro will deliver solid battery life when I’m not traveling. It’ll take a couple of weeks to test this when I’m back from Berlin, and I will update this review if there’s anything pertinent to share.

Update: One month later, the battery life has improved as the Pixel 10 Pro has stabilized and learned my usage patterns. As I type this, I’m at 40% remaining with 4 hours and 20 minutes of screen time, and it will likely last around six hours. During my first week with the Pixel 10 Pro, six hours was the maximum I could achieve, but over the past three weeks, it’s become the minimum or close to it. The battery life is considerably better, but it simply bridges the gap to the competition, rather than setting new benchmarks for battery life.

Battery score: 8/10

The Pixel 10 Pro cameras are fantastic, but this was also the case with the Pixel 9 Pro.

 The major difference this year is the introduction of a new ProRes Zoom feature designed to compete with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. We’ve asked Google for many years to build an Ultra competitor, and by using the same camera hardware on both Pro models, it means you can get this great camera zoom in a smaller form factor. 

If you’ve been looking for a smaller Galaxy S25 Ultra with a similar zoom capability, consider the Pixel 10 Pro. When you do, you’ll find fantastic zoom performance at both 30x and 100x. It’s not great at optimizing for text at a distance, but it can take great photos that are heavily improved using AI. One notable point to consider is that Google also displays a before-and-after comparison for the 100x photos, as shown above and below.

Additionally, you receive the same camera as the Pixel 9 Pro. Photos are vibrant, detailed, and natural, and Google does particularly well at handling different skin tones. This was a particular point of focus for the Pixel 9 Pro, and it’s great to see that this continues. 

Overall, I’m thoroughly enjoying the Pixel 10 Pro camera. That said, I’ve had a few glitches where the camera app needed to be restarted, but these issues were caused by an outdated version of the camera app that I updated via the Google Play Store. Optimizing photos in the camera app can take several seconds after capture, making it more challenging to capture multiple images at once, especially when capturing them in RAW.

Despite these frustrations, the Google Pixel 10 Pro is my current favorite smartphone camera. Many of the product photos in this review were captured on the Pixel 10 Pro XL, which has the same camera, and I’m thoroughly impressed by Google’s Pro camera this year. 

Camera score: 9/10

With so few hardware changes, Google has to rely on software experiences to make its phones stand out. This year, the ProRes Zoom feature in the camera is joined by two Pixel 10 Pro features that demonstrate how AI can be truly useful when it works.

Magic Cue is designed to offer suggestive replies based on the contents of your email, calendar, and other personal information in a handful of Google apps. When someone asks specific prompts — such as what time your flight lands, your ETA for a meeting, or someone’s contact number — a small suggested reply surfaces the information for you. 

The prompts must be extremely specific, and they only work with personal Gmail.com accounts, meaning you’ll need to duplicate any pertinent information from a Google Workspace account. These limitations make it less useful, but Google has confirmed that it’s working on controls for Workspace owners and IT admins to set, so that Workspace accounts can be used for features like Magic Cue. 

Then there’s Daily Hub, and bizarrely, this feature works across all the email accounts on your phone. This feature adds a concise summary of pertinent information — such as news, videos, and calendar appointments — to a single screen, similar to Now Brief on the best Samsung phones. 

Unlike those flagships, however, Daily Hub is only available at specific times during the day, with no way to set them, and is not a feature that can be accessed on demand. As I work odd hours and travel frequently, I don’t always notice it in time, but when I do, Daily Hub is a truly useful feature, and I look forward to seeing how Google expands it in the future. 

Beyond these AI features, the Pixel 10 Pro comes equipped with Android 16 and Google’s new Material 3 Expressive UI. It’s clear, well-designed, and the new theming engine makes it easy to personalize your phone with your own colors. It won’t be for everyone — and I still prefer One Ui 8 — but Google’s software is a compelling take on the smartphone experience. Seven years of software and security updates ensure that it’ll likely remain that way for years to come.

Software score: 9/10

The Google Pixel 10 Pro is a great phone that will appeal to most people. Yet, there’s no denying that the battery life can vary considerably, and that the Tensor G5 isn’t as performant as the key competition.

You should buy the Pixel 10 Pro if:

You should not buy the Pixel 10 Pro if:

If you’re looking for alternatives to the Pixel 10 Pro that address some of these issues, consider these key Pixel 10 Pro alternatives.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra offers an equally capable smartphone zoom camera in a larger phone, complete with a bigger 200MP main camera and an S-Pen stylus. The OnePlus 13 offers outstanding battery life and incredible charging, as well as a camera that’s just as capable even at high zoom distances.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 demonstrates that folding phones can be indistinguishable from regular phones, and features a 200MP main camera as well as two screens. However, its zoom performance isn’t as capable as that of the Pixel 10 Pro. Alternatively, there’s the world’s thinnest folding phone, the Honor Magic V5, which has a much more capable camera.

Lastly, there’s the new iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, and Apple took a large step forward with a larger battery, brighter displays, stunning new iPhone colors, and a new telephoto lens complete with 4x optical zoom, 8x hybrid zoom, and an increased maximum zoom of 40x.