Google Pixel 10 Google has struck a great balance between its baseline and Pro-tier flagships with the Pixel 10. While it doesn't have absolutely everything found in its bigger siblings, the more flexible camera package, new AI tools, great design, and faster processor make for a compact flagship phone with few compromises. Best of all, it still costs the same as last year. The Pixel 10 really is one of the best phones Google has ever made.
For my daily driver, I typically pick a hulking great big powerhouse Android flagship — think the OnePlus 13, Galaxy S25 Ultra, or even a Pixel XL model. But for the past two weeks, I’ve been using the new Google Pixel 10 and, honestly, Google’s little flagship has converted me.
While there is obviously still a feature gap between the Pixel 10 and its Pro siblings, I haven’t felt anything missing while putting the phone through my usual daily paces. Whether I’m blitzing through apps, editing photos, asking AI to check some code, grabbing some family snaps, or even dabbing in some light gaming, the Pixel 10 feels like a top-tier phone, only in a smaller shell.
This isn’t to say the handset is fundamentally different from models that have come before; the Pixel 10 looks and feels very familiar to a series fan like me. Google’s UI is slick, there’s seven years of OS support, and battery life still just about lasts me a full day on a single charge. Plus, there’s a new camera package that I’ve found far more fun than last year’s compact model, and the phone now also supports all the magnetic accessories without resorting to a Magsafe case adapter.
This is the baseline Pixel flagship we’ve come to love, just even better.
The camera upgrade I’ve always wanted
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
If you’re looking for hardware changes this year, I wouldn’t focus on the new Tensor G5 processor. Yes, it has some new AI and imaging pipeline tricks, which certainly matter, but the performance uplift, while decent, still leaves the phone some way behind the fastest on the market. It’s fine for some light gaming, but blitzing benchmarks isn’t why you should buy a Pixel.
Instead, I’ve been far more excited by the Pixel 10’s camera revamp; specifically, the addition of a 5x telephoto camera. The little 10.8 MP, f/3.1, 1/3.4-inch sensor isn’t as potent as the zoom camera in the Pro models, which boast a larger sensor, more megapixels, and features like 100x Pro Res zoom. Still, the added long-range capabilities are just part of its charm. You can’t beat a bit of natural bokeh and depth of field when it comes to having fun with any camera — and the Pixel 10 is finally a camera phone I’m pleased to call enjoyable rather than just functional.
1x 7x 10x
Daylight Low Light Night Sight
The new zoom camera is very robust in terms of quality, offering the same consistent exposure and color capabilities as the main lens. It’s more prone to noise than the Pro model’s, particularly in anything other than bright outdoor lighting. Still, even 10x outdoor shots are solid, but 20x is beyond the camera’s capabilities, even with bright lighting.
The Pixel 10's camera remains reliable and is now even more flexible.
Equally, there are some detail issues when shooting at 3x and 4x. Google appears to be using some form of lens fusion, but it can’t compensate for the main camera’s lack of detail at this range before the 5x optical zoom kicks in. There’s definitely a sharpness difference between 4.9x and 5x, which is a bit of a shame as the focal length is a tad long in a lot of instances. But I’m nitpicking, the full-frame shots look great close up and at long distances.
5x zoom 10x zoom 20x zoom Pixel 10 (Macro Focus) Pixel 10 (Macro Focus) Pixel 10 (Macro Focus)
Unfortunately, what Google gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. The main and ultrawide cameras are both smaller this year, leaving them more prone to noise in low light. The ultrawide is certainly left worse off here; it struggled to capture fine detail in the landscape shots I took. The edge distortion is also quite nasty. Instead, the phone’s panorama mode works wonders with the 5x camera, allowing you to grab far more detail if you want a wide field of view with enough detail to blow up on your wall.
Ultrawide 5x Panorama
Thankfully, Google’s low-light and HDR algorithms ensure that these cameras never look outright bad. The Pixel 10’s color science is still a little flat, but it’s easy enough to add more punch with a light edit when needed, and Google’s vice-like grip on processing means it is unbelievably consistent. I doubt many will notice the minor downgrades to fine detail, at least not without a direct comparison to the Pro or Pro XL.
If I have one bigger camera complaint that Google continues to fail to address, it’s portrait photos. Sadly, the 5x telephoto doesn’t improve the level of detail, resulting in overly rough skin textures and artificial-looking bokeh when using the default 3x setting. Likewise, the small selfie camera struggles a little bit with dynamic range, resulting in pictures that are either a little dim or washed out. Neither mode is bad, but they’re not the package’s strongest suits.
Portrait selfie Portrait selfie 3x portrait 3x portrait
Overall, it’s hard to quibble about the image quality for this price. While the quality doesn’t quite match phones that cost $999 or more, the Pixel 10 is more flexible than the Apple iPhone 16 and a bit more consistent than the Samsung Galaxy S25. For me, this year’s slight trade-offs in fine detail are worth the added fun of the new 5x zoom lens, though you will feel differently if you’re an avid wide-angle photographer.
Accessories galore
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Now I’m not really an accessories person. Slapping on a case and reaching for the fastest USB-C plug I can find is where my journey usually ends. But if you are a fan of the Magsafe ecosystem and want your new phone to play nicely with it out of the box, then the Pixel 10 is now on board.
In addition to Google’s own Pixelsnap accessories, the Pixel 10 will clip straight onto magnetic battery packs, car mounts, tripods, wallets, and more without having to rely on a case. Thankfully, this luxury isn’t limited to Google’s more expensive Pro Pixels.
Pixelsnap sacrifices charging times for convenience.
That said, I’m not sold on the Google Pixelsnap Charger, but that could just be my general dislike of wireless accessories. The dangling cable, warm handset, and sluggish charge times beg the question: Why not just use USB-C? Despite handshaking for up to 27W of power, the wireless charger never pulled more than 18W from the wall and often just 9W (with even less reaching the phone). This turns the already sluggish wired charging time of around 85 minutes into an agonizing, over three-hour ordeal. It’s OK to charge overnight or spend a few minutes on your desk, but I wouldn’t want to use Pixelsnap all the time.
A proper stand might offer more convenient placement, and Google sells a rather expensive add-on to hold the Pixelsnap Charger upright, but that doesn’t address any of its other problems. Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with a cable.
More AI, but little I want to use
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
A chief reason to buy a Pixel over any other brand is its Google-exclusive features, many of which increasingly revolve around AI. There are loads of new features this year, including a more capable Gemini Nano model, visual overlays for Gemini Live, and access to the Imagen 4 model in Pixel Studio, but those are arguably the least exciting improvements — you can chat with AI everywhere these days.
One of the first features I spotted in the app drawer is the new Pixel Journal app, designed to help you record your thoughts and feelings, with AI prompts to help you get your thoughts down on paper. I’m not one for jotting down daily boredoms, but my impression is that it does the job it sets out to. However, colleagues found the feature set lacking compared to better-established options, so this feels like a case of Google reinventing the wheel just because it can.
What I need more is a productivity boost, and I was hoping that NotebookLM’s integration with Pixel Recorder and Pixel Screenshots would be a game-changer. Sadly, I haven’t found it all that useful. Sharing Recorder transcriptions directly is helpful, but I don’t record all that much, and it was never too hard to copy a transcription if I needed to. Screenshot integration doesn’t seem to work, and honestly, sifting through the images to share the one you want is more busywork than it’s worth to me. Honestly, I’d forgotten that Screenshots existed until I re-read through all Google’s AI features, and I still think it’s just a security risk waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the only missing feature in my two weeks with the Pixel 10. While my US colleagues have been trying out Help me edit in Photos, I’ve been unable to get it to show, despite adjusting all the required settings. Based on what I’ve seen, it’s surprisingly competent, despite the usual AI pitfalls, and making semi-decent edits with nothing more than a simple voice prompt is undoubtedly better than laborious manual editing. If I had it, I could certainly see myself using it to quickly take out background nuisances, if nothing else.
Daily Hub was also conspicuously absent from my phone, so I ended up sideloading the APK to give it a shot. Unfortunately, I can’t help but agree with my colleague’s assessment — it’s pretty awful. The weather and upcoming calendar event summaries are OK, but they’re essentially just window dressing that gets in the way of the info you actually need. The less said about the inappropriate YouTube recommendations stuffed in there, the better.
One new feature that was actually ready to go out of the box is Camera Coach. Despite being an experienced photographer, I gave it a try and found it can certainly help you take some more interesting shots. It doesn’t recommend anything groundbreaking, but subtle improvements like “move closer,” “focus on the closest part,” and “align to create a line” will undoubtedly help novices come away with better-looking snaps. Honestly, though, in the several seconds it takes for Camera Coach to recognise what you’re trying to shoot, you could have taken 10 or more variations and grabbed something decent. It doesn’t work offline either, so it is pretty useless if you want to use it for interesting wildlife snaps.
A lot of AI tools are missing and I doubt I'll return to the few that work.
It’s worth noting that, unlike last year, the Pixel 10 locks away around 3GB of RAM exclusively for AI use. That’s fine as long as you regularly make the most of Google’s latest tools, but if not, you’re paying a bit of a premium for around 8-9GB of usable RAM for your apps.
With that in mind, I think AI is still a solution in search of a problem. While some of the Pixel 10’s latest functions are quite impressive, I can’t see myself returning to many of them in the long term. Call Screening is the only Pixel exclusive I want on every other phone I use, and that’s been around for what seems like forever. The new on-device real-time call translation feature is also incredibly powerful, and I’d love to always have it in my back pocket. Still, I wish it was also baked into Google Translate’s real-time conversation feature and third-party messaging apps rather than just Google’s Phone app.
Testing bits and benchmarks
As is standard practice for an Android Authority review, I’ve run the Pixel 10 through our suite of lab tests, which include industry-standard benchmarks, our in-house battery life test, and charging capability metrics. If you’re interested in the specifics, click the dropdown boxes below to read more.
Google’s custom Tensor silicon has never been a traditional performance leader, and that remains very much the case with the Pixel 10 and its Tensor G5 chip. It benchmarks well behind similarly priced rivals, including the iPhone 16 and Galaxy S25. It looks bad on paper, but this doesn’t affect the phone’s ability to deliver plenty of performance for everyday tasks. I haven’t experienced a hiccup or slowdown in the past two weeks. Still, if you’re a big gamer or use your phone for more demanding workloads, the Pixel 10 definitely isn’t the fastest around. If there’s a silver lining, CPU and GPU performance are up by at least 25% over the previous generation. There’s also virtually no performance gap between the Pro XL model and the Pixel 10, other than additional heat buildup owing to the Pixel 10’s smaller chassis, which can make the phone a little uncomfortable to hold while gaming. Tensor G5 benchmarks
Robert Triggs / Android Authority The Google Pixel 10 has a slightly larger battery this year, 4970mAh versus 4,700mAh. Paired with moving its Tensor G5 to a more efficient 3nm process at TSMC, the little phone should last longer than its predecessor, but that’s not strictly the case. The phone’s web browsing score flies past the competition, and its content capture and playback results rival phones with even larger cells. However, it scored worse in our Zoom, 4K recording, and gaming benchmark tests than last year’s Pixel 9, so mileage definitely varies depending on your use cases. It’s not the longest-enduring handset out there, but it should last most users a full day — it did for me. I just hope Google’s mandatory Battery Health Assistance feature doesn’t cannibalize the battery capacity in a couple of years. Battery life tests
Robert Triggs / Android Authority Just like last year’s model, the Pixel 10 charges over a wire using USB Power Delivery PPS at up to 27W. This is achieved by a very commonplace 9V, 3A connection that most modern plugs support. In terms of charge times, the Pixel 10 takes around 85 minutes to fill from empty, which is on the slow side for a battery of this size. Google’s latest charging algorithm is also more conservative regarding temperatures, which means that the phone takes a little longer to reach 50% and 75% capacities than its predecessor. Fast charging times
Should you buy the Pixel 10?
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
While the Pixel 10 Pro might be the phone that compact Pixel fans gravitate towards, the Pixel 10 is the model I’d urge everyone to look at first. It makes several key changes to last year’s already solid package, and in many ways feels like a steal compared to pricier Pros.
The Pixel 10 now feels closer to a Pro model in terms of everyday use. There’s no Tensor G5 Pro-model gap this year, and its lack of UFS 4.0 doesn’t affect app performance compared to the bigger models. On top of that, you now get a more flexible camera setup, Pixelsnap accessory support, and most of the important new Google AI features — if you’re sold on such things. After two weeks with the phone, I didn’t feel I missed out on any of Google’s Pro-tier features.
For me, it's the best baseline Pixel flagship that Google has ever made.
I have a few reservations about the phone, however. It’s warmer than its predecessor during benchmarking and gaming. Battery life is also not any better than last year, and that doesn’t fill me with confidence, given Google’s mandatory Battery Health Assistance feature will eventually sacrifice long-term battery capacity to ensure the thing doesn’t blow up in my hands. The phone’s fast charging is also more finicky, making it slightly less useful at getting you back on your feet quickly. The fact that not all of the new software features that Google has talked about are available outside of the US or are even in a finished state also knocks some points off the otherwise polished package.
Putting it all together, I wouldn’t recommend you buy the Pixel 10 if you’re coming from a recent Google model. However, if you’re upgrading from the Pixel 6 or 7 or want to dabble in the wonderful Pixel ecosystem for the first time, the Pixel 10 brandishes some of the smartest tools that the series has ever had to offer. Best of all, it’s still an incredible buy with the same very approachable $799 price tag as last year.
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