If you’re looking for a simple, simplified phone, the Google Pixel 5 is one of the best options. It has a great camera, a clean Android interface, and battery life.
The phone is made from a recycled aluminum enclosure, and it feels good to hold, especially when you clasp the device’s edges together. It’s also much lighter than some of its rivals, and the fingerprint scanner is a simple and fast way to access your phone.
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Display
The display on the Google Pixel 5 significantly improved over previous Pixel models, thanks to its smaller bezels and punch-hole cutout. It’s also a little bigger and at a 19:9 aspect ratio, making it easier to see on the screen when watching videos or browsing the web.
It’s not perfect, though; the Pixel 5 has a few issues regarding brightness, non-uniformity (the greenish cast is visible), and skin tone rendering in HDR10 content. It also stutters a lot when playing video games and tends to pause when you rewind a video.
You’ll want to keep that adaptive higher refresh rate enabled by default to get the best performance out of your screen, and it’s worth keeping Night Light activated to warm up the screen colour temperature in the evenings. Otherwise, the Pixel 5 has all the visual features you’d expect from a premium flagship, including pleasant colours and contrast.
Camera
The Pixel 5 is a departure from the last few years’ Pixel phones, ditching experimental Motion Sense gesture tech and trading in a secondary telephoto camera for an ultra-wide sensor. It also doubles down on battery life for hours, even with a high-resolution display and lots of heavy use.
The camera isn’t the best on the market, but it offers a reliable and straightforward point-and-shoot experience. Its software is better than ever at capturing dynamic shots with great color, and it introduces some interesting new ways to treat photos after they’re taken.
Night Sight also works well in low light, retaining details in subjects and reducing noise. However, digital zoom maxes out at 7x, and pieces get muddied on faraway objects.
Performance
The Pixel 4 was a good-enough flagship phone that was hampered by its battery, and the Pixel 5’s big bump in battery capacity makes it a much better option. The OnePlus 8T, on the other hand, still has some of the best battery life around, but it’s also a little bit more expensive and not as well-rounded in terms of camera performance.
Android 11 is a big step forward for Google on the software front. It adds a lot of iterative features and improves on a lot of existing ones.
But while those features are great, they’re all backed up by hardware that isn’t as fast or as powerful as other modern phones like the Galaxy S21 Ultra or OnePlus 9 Pro.
The Snapdragon 765G processor feels smooth and responsive, but it can get bogged down if you take a photo and open another app. But the Pixel 5’s big battery life, combined with Android 11’s Extreme Battery Saver feature (coming to older Pixel devices in the future), makes it a decent choice.
Battery
Google has made a significant effort to improve the battery life of its latest Pixel devices. This has come from a wide range of power optimisations, including Adaptive Battery which intelligently regulates the amount of power your phone uses based on how you use it.
It also includes a new Extreme Battery Saver mode which disables all apps but the ones you whitelist. This is useful if you want to be especially careful about power draw.
The Pixel 5 has an average power efficiency in most of our standard usage scenarios, although it lags behind its rivals in gaming and 4G video streaming. However, it controls its power consumption well on the go.
The Pixel 5 lasted a solid day on moderate to heavy usage using social apps, YouTube video watching, messaging, and some Google Maps navigating. It would end the day with 3-5 hours of screen on time and still had about 40% battery left at 11PM.
