Google launched its latest Pixel 10 series, including the standard model and the more powerful Pixel 10 Pro, back in September, offering iterative hardware upgrades and new AI features. But for those of us who love to burn through our battery life playing games on premium phones, there's another concern: How is gaming on the Pixel 10 Pro?
As a flagship phone with the most powerful specs Google has ever put into a (nonfolding) phone, the Pixel 10 Pro exceeds the baseline expectations for a $999 phone. (As I write this, you can buy a Pixel 10 Pro for $799 -- $200 off.) It has a sharp OLED display and high-performance specs, so it has little trouble playing the latest games.
But some of Google's hardware choices make the Pixel 10 Pro limited in ways that the OnePlus 15 and iPhone 17 Pro are not -- namely, in storage and charging. Google's phone also has a lot to live up to with its gaming capabilities, as previous Pixel phones haven't been known for their processing power and graphics rendering, regularly scoring lower on performance benchmarks than Apple's and OnePlus' flagship phones, which pack some of the most powerful processors available today. Ultimately, the Pixel 10 Pro isn't quite the absolute best pick for gaming among the best phones you can buy today.
Yet there are a few ways the phone shines as bright as -- if not literally brighter -- than the best Android phones and iPhones. Its gaming aptitude adds value to an already powerful phone with standout photo and AI capabilities.
The Google Pixel 10 Pro fits snugly inside the Backbone One controller, providing handy button controls for games that require precision like Dead Cells (pictured). David Lumb/CNET
How it feels to play games on the Pixel 10 Pro
On a basic level, the Pixel 10 Pro is great for firing up games and playing to your heart's content. Its design is easy to hold, with flat metallic sides and curved corners that fit my fingers nicely when I rotate the phone horizontally to play most games. When I want more analog control with buttons and triggers, the handset slides in securely to my Backbone One external controller.
Games on the Pixel 10 Pro are a sight to behold. Its 6.3-inch OLED display shows sharp details with its 2,856x1,280-pixel resolution, and colors are vivid with its HDR10 Plus support. Action is smooth with the screen's 120Hz refresh rate, whether in slower platformers or fast-moving first-person shooters like Call of Duty: Mobile.
Best of all, its 3,300-nit maximum brightness makes the screen easily seen in full daylight and nearly lights up a room in full darkness. This makes hues really pop in vibrant games like Dead Cells -- it's a true leg up over other smartphones with screens that don't get as bright. The latest premium phones have gotten similarly bright (the iPhone 17 Pro Max tops out at 3,000 nits), but even phones a year or two older are substantially dimmer, with my personal iPhone 15 Pro Max reaching up to 2,000 nits brightness.
The Pixel 10 Pro's Tensor G5 chip may not have topped our charts in benchmark tests, falling more in line with performance from 2024's flagships, but it's plenty powerful enough to run the games I tested on it. The phone's 16GB of RAM contributes to that smoothness: I cranked Genshin Impact up to its maximum graphics settings, and despite a warning that my phone might overheat (I didn't notice it get that much warmer), it handled 60 frames per second gameplay just fine.
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