Google Pixel 7 Pro review: Spending a week with Google’s latest flagship phone

As someone who has been in a family using Apple products for as far as I could remember, I’ve never really had a feel of phones from the other side of the fence. Maybe aside from the occasional handling my friends’ Android phones.

So when I got my hands on Google’s Pixel 7 pro, a flagship phone with the software and hardware made by the same company, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to put the phone through its paces in daily tasks.

Priced at $1299, the Google Pixel 7 pro sports the latest Tensor G2 chip, a new pro-camera array with Samsung image sensors and a smooth 120 Hz display.

Unboxing the phone, the first thing that caught my attention was the premium materials used which had the right amount of heft to make it feel satisfying to hold. The back of the phone is made of a glossy glass and it also has a shiny aluminium frame surrounding the phone.

As good as the shiny glossy materials look, it is also a fingerprint magnet – especially in the obsidian black colour. This however, should not be an issue once the phone is covered with a case (which Google offers at $49.99).

The Pixel 7 Pro has a 6.7-inch display, with a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz, making scrolling through social media and playing games smooth and immersive.

Coupled with the Tensor G2 chip, navigating and scrolling through media is satisfyingly smooth and snappy.

The camera was thoroughly impressive. Images were sharp, colourful, and had a good amount of detail especially in bright conditions. The portrait photo mode and video cinematic mode both blurred the backgrounds really accurately, giving a really pleasing effect. Having a macro mode and a 5x zoom lens also made the camera very versatile.

The new photo unblur feature was also very helpful in saving those blurry shots that would otherwise have been deleted.

However, my main gripe was that portrait images sometimes seemed overprocessed, as if someone had gone into Adobe Lightroom and raised the clarity and contrast a bit too much.

Demanding games is where a phone’s processing power is really put to the test. Running graphically intensive games such as Genshin Impact, latency was fast and the refresh rate was sufficient even with maximum settings. 

The game Mobile Legends ran without a hitch and looked just as stunning and smooth as expected. The phone managed to run all games continuously for an hour without becoming uncomfortably hot.

The Google Pixel 7 is secured with two biometric scan methods – an under-display fingerprint scanner and facial recognition. The fingerprint scanner is fast and effective, but the facial recognition may not be as secure as it utilises only the selfie camera in comparison to the sensors of Apple’s more advanced FaceID scanning system. 

An issue that has plagued Android users is the inferior software update duration as compared to Apple’s. However, with Google’s promise of five years of support, users can be assured that devices will not be less secure over time.

The phone features an Adaptive Battery that can last over 24 hours on a single charge. Despite the intensive usage, the battery still has plenty of juice for the rest of the day. With the Extreme Battery Saver mode, the battery can last up to 72 hours on a single charge, perfect for those camping trips.

With stiff competition from the iPhone 14 pro and Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra in the flagship smartphone category, time will tell whether the Google Pixel 7 pro will be the phone to have. 

But should the phone be above your budget, you can consider the Pixel 7 or even the wallet-friendlier Pixel 6a.