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| Full Video Review: https://youtu.be/Z1ENRWS0trg |
ONE… THOUSAND... DOLLARS... That’s what you’ll spend if you decide to buy the 128 GB variant of the Google Pixel 2 XL. In my case, the total price was $1,033.22 after tax, and this price could become the norm if this phone and competing high-end smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone X and the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 continue to sell well.
For that price, the iPhone usually provides around five years of support, and the Note series of phones are packed-to-the-brim with features such as the S-pen and expandable storage. Google’s Pixel 2 XL can’t compete on those terms, but what it does have may still be worth it for consumers looking to purchase a new device.
In the box, the included accessories are a welcome manual with a sim ejection tool hidden inside, a USB A to USB C adapter, a power brick with a double-sided USB C connection, and a 3.5 mm to USB C adapter for your standard headphones. What’s not included in the box is a pair of USB C headphones. This is a disappointing omission for a pricey phone without a built-in headphone jack, but I’m sure that Google would love to have you spend an extra $159 on their new wireless Pixel Buds as a fix.
The phone is tall, skinny, and slim, measuring at 6.2 inches tall, 3 inches wide, and 0.3 inches deep. Weighing in at 6.2 ounces means that it is about one-and-one-fifth times as heavy as a baseball according to bluebulbprojects.com/measureofthings.
Its body is constructed out of aluminum with a paint job that Google refers to as a “hybrid coating,” which is intended to make the phone less slippery in day-to-day use. If it does slip into the toilet, the IP67 rating allows it to survive about 30 minutes at depths of up to 1.5 meters, and makes it impervious to sand and dust.
The front-facing stereo speakers are a treat when listening to music or talking on the phone. The benefit being that you won’t have to cup your hands around the phone to be able to listen to in most conditions. Phone calls sound clear on both ends of a conversation, and the reception quality is excellent with the microphone doing a great job at filtering out background noise.
The new “Active Edge” feature is surprisingly useful in real world use. For example, when driving it’s far easier to squeeze the phone and issue a verbal command than to yell at the phone like a fool in hopes that it will wake up and respond. Furthermore, you get a choice of varying levels of pressure, or the option of turning the feature off altogether if it doesn’t suit your needs.
Moving on to the cameras, the back camera on the Pixel 2 XL is 12.2 MP, and the front camera is 8 MP. I’m not going to delve too deeply into camera specs, but in my experience, this is easily the best smartphone camera that I’ve used. An important metric that generally gets overlooked in daily use is speed, and this camera is fast. There is minimal delay in pressing the shutter button and getting a great shot. Colors in photos look great, even with less than optimal lighting conditions, and high definition videos look crisp and clean with minimal wobbliness due to the built-in hardware and software optical image stabilization.
This year’s gimmick among manufacturers is a portrait mode that blurs the background around the subject. In my tests, the phone does a fantastic job at recognizing what it is supposed to blur out via its machine learning algorithms, which will improve over time. Keep in mind that the awesome cameras aren’t even showing their full potential yet due to a custom chip inside the phone that has yet to be activated.
The 6-inch “pOLED” screen is bright for indoor use, and viewable even in direct sunlight. Pixel peepers will appreciate the deep blacks and color choices on the QHD screen. There is a slight blue tint when looking at the screen at an angle, and there’s a chance that the screen may develop “burn-in,” which is as bad as it sounds. In a statement to the Pixel user community issued by Vice President of Product Management, Mario Queiroz, Google doubled the warranty from one to two years, and will send software updates to safeguard the screen from damage. This does not mean that burn-in is automatically covered under that warranty. Don’t be fooled.
Battery life is fantastic, and will easily last you an entire day even with heavy use thanks to the 3,520 mAh battery and power saving features of the latest version of Android. As expected, since this is a Google phone, it will always receive software updates first for a minimum of three years.
Overall, the Pixel 2 XL is a fantastic unlocked phone that works on all carriers. It’s fast, smooth, has an excellent camera, great speakers, fast updates, great battery life, and water resistance. The downsides are that it doesn’t have a headphone jack, lacks wireless charging, and the screen has a potential flaw. I plan to keep mine, but ultimately, you’ll have to decide if the positives are worth $1000 to you.
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