We talked about many times about the new Google Pixel 11 Pro with the Tensor G6. But in today’s review, we’re going to talk about all the technicalities about this new phone. How’s the battery life, screen, charging speed, and all of that?
Display
Now, on paper, the display didn’t change from the previous generation. It’s still a 6.3 inches Super Actua display with a resolution of 2856×1280 pixels and goes up to 120Hz refresh rate.
However, the panel itself has gotten a major upgrade. So, when a company advertises their phone can go up to however many thousand nits of brightness, it’s done with like only a small part of the display lit up. However, our tests are done with the entire display lit up. So far, Pixel phones have always been the brightest, and they’ve just bested themselves.
This Pixel 11 Pro can go up to 2414 nits at maximum. I thought this maximum was a random spike, so I actually did this test consecutively for about 5 minutes – and yes, the display held itself at that insanely high brightness. Rather crazy, and it can also go down to 1.83 nits minimum.
Pixel phones also have two different color profiles. The Natural color profile is going to be the most flat one available, covering only 66.53% of DCI-P3. I personally will never use this color profile even though it has an extremely low ΔE number.
Turning it back to the default Adaptive color profile, the Pixel 11 Pro’s display can cover up to 74.75% of DCI-P3 color gamut. While the result doesn’t seem like it’s that vivid, the colors do look really nice. I can only presume that the Pixel phones have its own display engine that is tuned just for this screen.
Software
Moving on – the software. ItI personally really like the Pixel UI – or more specifically, how the Pixel hardware and software work with each other. First off, the UI is clean. No bloatware, snappy, fast, responsive. I never had any problems with the lag even when I’m switching between many frequently used apps.
Since Google controls both hardware and software, there are many unique features found in the Pixel 11 Pro. For example, the new Rambler. I never used speech to text a.k.a. dictation before this because it’s difficult to get the entire sentence out in one go without stopping to think or uhhhsss and uhmmmmms. Google solved this with the new Rambler on Gboard. I can even mix languages.
Everything is done on-device. No internet connection required. We can even connect more apps via the Proactive Assistance and it’ll be personalised for us, working in the phone only.
However, the new HiLight feature… it’s basically useless. I thought it’s going to be the same as the old notification RGB light on phones from like 10 years ago but not really. Yes, this is an RGB light but it will only light up when there’s a call from our favorite contacts or when speaking with Gemini hands-free. There are ZERO customisation options available, so it won’t work with any other notifications.
But there is another super wonderful feature – and that’s the videography features with the teleprompter and the social media grid. Essentially, it is made for those short video creators. I love this so much.
Camera
Now, let’s quickly go through the cameras. There are some changes done to the 5x telephoto camera and it also has the new 120x Pro Zoom feature that uses AI to enhance the details.
Honestly, I really like the cameras. In my day-to-day usage, I’d at most zoom to around 105mm and it took really nice pictures with its telephoto camera. I also took a lot of 120x Pro Zoom pictures of this crow – but that’s mainly for review purposes. In actuality, I doubt I’ll use this feature much anyway. Then again, the 120x Pro Zoom, when enhanced with AI, really is magical.
Whether or not you’ll use this feature, that’s another question.
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the Pixel 11 Pro, watch this video instead.
Performance
Then comes the biggest controversy of the Pixel 11 Pro. Actually all generations of Pixel devices are the same – it’s the chipset. The Tensor G6 continues to be a custom chipset designed by Google themselves.
Long story short, the CPU is fine since they’re using Arm’s latest C1 series of cores but Google opted for a 7-core configuration instead. The GPU is the biggest issue since PowerVR is a very niche GPU and developers just don’t prioritise optimisations for it. Some games like Genshin Impact even dropped support for PowerVR, hence creating this kind of incompatibility issue.
Now, using Tensor isn’t inherently a bad thing. Google wants to use their NPU and ISP to bring forth their own on-device AI features and photography performance – so they have to design their own. But of course, the PowerVR GPU is always the point of criticism. I mean, it can still run games, just not ideal. Shader caching is going to be a huge problem since the included shader packs are not compatible with this PowerVR GPU.
There is actually a solution to this issue that can make everyone happy. I won’t get into detail here, so watch our other video where we go in-depth about the whole Tensor and PowerVR controversy.
Here’s also the full gaming test video as well if you want to see me suffer with slideshow-level FPS.
Battery life
With the new Pixel 11 Pro, the battery capacity actually got slightly decreased, down to 4,850mAh. No idea what’s the Wh value since it’s not published, but the battery life is a bit of a tricky one to talk about.
The new Tensor G6 opted in for a MediaTek modem, which definitely improved the connectivity efficiency – hence achieving amazing battery life. Better than the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the iPhone 17 Pro Max, as shown by Benjamin from Lover Of Tech.
But in our standardised battery life test – which is done using PCMark, runs everything locally without any internet connection. In this case, the efficiency is pretty much the same as the previous generation, clocking in at around 14 hours and 38 minutes only. It’s not exactly the best in terms of battery life, but can still last throughout a day.
Charging speed
As for the charging speed – the Pixel 11 Pro is rated to go up to 30W wired fast charging, but in reality it can only take around 25W maximum. It will also require around 95 minutes to charge from 15% to completion but the temperature graph is rather… interesting. It throttles the charging speed when the battery reaches 37.5°C and you can see that happening from these 3 humps.
I already turned off the charging safety feature, by the way. So this is literally the “charge as fast as possible” scenario, and it still took around 95 minutes.
Design
All of what we’ve said is packed into this design of a phone. Honestly, in terms of the design, it’s no different from the previous generation. I really like the camera design as having a flat bar like this is better than the washing machine design or have the cameras lopsided.
The frame is highly polished, and it is a fingerprint magnet and a bit slippery, but it does look and feel nice. However… I really don’t understand why Pixel devices invert the power and volume button positions. Really screws up my muscle memory.
A few more things to mention
And a few more things to go through. The Pixel 11 Pro comes with a USB 3 port at the bottom and it does have display output capability. We can select either desktop mode or just mirror the screen – but it doesn’t actually support my Thunderbolt 5 dock and it displays an error message. Not sure why this is, because it works with Samsung DeX.
It also only has a single SIM card slot and has eSIM support, and Pixel phones really have amazing speakers. Have a listen here in our video at the top of this review.
Should you buy the Pixel 11 Pro?
So then, should you buy the Pixel 11 Pro? Well, it’s kind of simple. If you play games on your phone, then no. The PowerVR GPU is a huge dealbreaker. If you don’t play games on your phone at all, then I think this is a great phone.
The cameras are surprisingly refreshing, speakers are good, the display is magnificent, and the Pixel UI is just magnificent with its exclusive features. I actually find myself rambling to the Pixel 11 Pro more than I am typing because that feature is just that reliable.
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