The Google Pixel 5: A Mini-Review - Small Package, Small Value?
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 22, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Pixel 5
Camera - A Quick Recap
I’m skipping the camera comparisons for this piece as it’s out of the scope of the short-form review today (they are very time consuming!). We’ve included the Pixel 5 in low-light photography in recent reviews such as the iPhone 12 piece and we’ll be publishing a more extensive camera investigation article in the coming weeks as well as the upcoming Galaxy S21 article coming soon, so I’ll reserve myself to just posting camera samples and commentary of the Pixel 5 performance.
In daylight, where the Pixel 5 seems to perform better than its predecessors is seemingly in terms of colours and colour temperature. Whereas the Pixel 4 and previous iterations seemed to have had a tendency towards warmer colours, the Pixel 5 more often tends to get things in a more natural and correct colour – at least in my own subjective experience.
One area that’s still prevalent in the Pixel processing is that I feel that it doesn’t do as well in preserving highlights of textures, giving them a flatter look compared to what we’re now seeing from the processing of the likes of Apple and Samsung.
The ultra-wide-angle module on the Pixel 5 is a definitive great addition to the phone and really augments the capture experience of this generation of Pixel phones, addressing a much lacklustre aspect of Google’s devices last year. The optics of the UWA isn’t as great as some of other competitors, but decent enough.
What is weird about the UWA is that although Google advertises as employing a 16MP sensor, the actual pictures coming out are sampled down to 12.2MP, matching the resolution of the main sensor. I’m not sure what the rationale is here, and I’m generally never a fan of this matching of resolution across different sensors in a phone as it never actually ends up in good quality results.
In low-light scenarios, the Pixel 5 is a bit of a mixed bag by today’s standards. On one hand, Google’s Night Sight computational photography mode is excellent in terms of bringing out light in very dark situations, but on the other hand the camera processing here doesn’t seem to have changed much since the Pixel 3. Night Sight in this sense can be a two-edged sword – produces high quality low-light photos, but sometimes it overdoes it in terms of brightening a scene too much, it no longer being representative of the subject. Night Sight also has a particular tendency to grossly over-correct for colour-temperature, losing the actual ambience of a scene.
In scenarios where there’s very low light, Google’s aging camera hardware really cannot compete against the newer generation sensors from the competition, which by now have caught up or also even surpassed Google in computational photography.
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shabby - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
So after looking at the chart it's $200 more for 2gb of ram, 90hz screen, ip68 rating, wireless charging and headphone jack deletion? Go home Google you're drunk.cbm80 - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
It's a luxury product for people who don't care about price.Operandi - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
That might be ok if had the look and feel of a high-end phone but its plastic, at least what you touch and feel is. BTW Google if you want wireless charging but want to avoid glass there are all kinds of materials that would work; carbon fiber, Kevlar, wood, maybe even ceramic all of which would look and feel better than plastic.I like what Google tries to do with the Pixel phones but the 5 is pretty disappointing.
MattMe - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
I bought a Pixel 5 a couple weeks back and have to say I much prefer the feel of this over other glass devices I've used recently. It's contoured nicely, is a good size and the textured resin material feels very firm with a nice textured feel to it. It certainly doesn't feel cheap at all, but it does feel more robust meaning I'm less concerned about it cracking or smashing like many glass-backed devices I've owned.BedfordTim - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
I will agree, but glass devices are easily fixed with a case.vuvaldi - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
If you would put a case on the look or feel of the material doesn't matter, and glass is heavier than plastic so plastic wins clearly here.BedfordTim - Monday, January 25, 2021 - link
I fully agree that plastic is a far more sensible material for phones. To me design peaked with the Nokia 735. Unfortunately all the best phones now have a glass back and rather than reject them, there is a partial work around.at_clucks - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
With a *plastic* case. So just pretend there's glass under the Pixel's and that plastic case, you just never want to take it down and look. Fixed it for you.This whole "glass=premium feel" thing was started by reviewers who ran out of things to write and just bought the hype from manufacturers that glass must be something awesome. On the other hand reading reviews of plastic phones made you think touching them will give you the plague. By the time they figured out how fragile the phone gets most people were already trained that glass=premium and manufacturers were happy to deliver on it.
We ended up having super fragile phones that have to be wrapped in armored cases just to survive. We never see their back once we take them out of the box and slap on the case but deep down inside we live with that warm fuzzy feeling that they're premium underneath.
Plastic is just fine and cheaper. It can be made too feel pleasant and sturdy, certainly more so than glass. Whoever had a Lumia 1020 can confirm just how nice that polycarbonate casing was, no case needed. And plastic is cheaper so you can have a phone that's just as good but lighter and cheaper.
DougMcC - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
+1000. Gimme unbreakable phone so I don't have to add an extra 25% weight case. I couldn't care less what material it's made of.patel21 - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
+100kGive me a phone like S7 Active. And no need for even a screen protector.