Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin this is the Google pixel - and this is the pixel to excel but the question is are they worth it there's a lot new this year but one of the biggest differences is in price so the pixel - is going to cost you six hundred and fifty dollars but bump up to the pixel - Excel and it is eight hundred and fifty 128 gigs of storage then this guy is going to cost you nine hundred and fifty dollars jump inside the box and there's actually a fair bit that comes with the pixel - so the first thing we'll find is the actual smartphone itself but beyond that get a little bit deeper we get a yay welcome to hash tag team pixel bit which I'm sure has all our people work some tool that kind of thing there's also a USBC - USBA adapter we get what looks to be a whole bunch of extra cables oh when Google announced the original pixel last year something they were really big on is the idea that it still has the headphone jack now fast-forward to the pixel - and it's nowhere to be seen now I get the idea that by dropping the headphone jack going to free up more space inside the phone for sensors or batteries or whatever but the problem is unless you're fully on the bluetooth headphone train USBC is a bit of a mess right now say what you will about Apple dropping the headphone jack last year but at the very least there are some decent lightning headphone options available on the pixel you're pretty much limited to either using the adapter that comes in the box or a very limited selection of USBC headphones it's not all bad with a pixel - hardware so well yes it does look fairly similar to the last generation including the pretty large bezels but in return we're now getting ip67 water resistance as well as some pretty solid front firing stereo speakers move over to the pixel 2 XL and it is a surprisingly large change so in front it's rocking a 6 inch AMOLED display and while I wouldn't call it bezel list the bezels are a lot thinner than on the standard pixel - even though the pixel - is made by HTC and the XL is made by LG the hardware is very similar so they're both still rocking a two-tone design and while it looks nice I actually do definitely prefer the way the original pixel looked with the very blue color because you know yeah I want all my smart phones to look like this even though this is a glass and metal phone the metal part actually has this sort of coating on it which kind of feels like plastic if you check out jerry-rigged everything's durability tests of the pixel - you'll see this coding is not particularly durable I actually kind of like the ways the pixel two feels but multiple people who've tried it immediately thought that was made out of plastic so take that for what it's worth take a look at it in Geekbench and while it's fast and it's absolutely no match for the Apple a 10x and the iPhone 8 however thankfully benchmarks aren't everything what stuff like Geekbench doesn't get across is that this is an incredibly snappy phone animations are smooth the responsiveness is quick it always feels like it's one step ahead of what you actually want to do honestly this is one of the fastest Android phones I've tested and it is right up there with the iPhone eight part of that is thanks to an incredibly clean build of Android 8.0 Oreo so there are some custom features including google lens this is actually built inside google photos it would be nice to see it in the camera app what it's allowing you to do is scan a photo and try to figure out what it is for some things it's not that accurate but for others it is surprisingly good although it's just not that useful to me what's a little cooler is now playing and once you enable this essentially the phone will always be listening for music and if it detects it it will actually give you a notification now this is kind of creepy but it works surprisingly well especially if you're in something like a restaurant you might be able to actually pick up the song that's being played over the stereo the pixel 2 also has a squeezable frame so if you actually squeeze it on the bottom half it will trigger a google assistant so what is the Fox say [Laughter] roll a 20-sided die it's an open okay you got however not everything is perfect so all my biggest issues with the pixel 2 is the display so on the standard size pixel - it's fine it's a 5 inch AMOLED panel with a 1080p resolution yes it could be a little bit sharper and the bezels could be a lot smaller but it's totally usable however when it comes to the pixel 2 XL that display is garbage town I mean it garbage town garbage town this reminds me of really early AMOLED panels from years ago when you're looking at it straight on it's okay although honestly a lot of the colors like especially the Reds look awfully Brown but as soon as you move it even a little bit off axis it goes super supercool this is okay in a cheap smartphone when you're charging 850 dollars it's basically a deal-breaker it really is a shame because the pixel xl2 should be able to compete with stuff like the iPhone and the Galaxy Note 8 but right now the screen holds it back which to me actually makes the normal pixel to a much easier cell yes it has the much larger bezels but to my eye is a way better screen it's the phone that I've been using the last few days thankfully the giant bezels of the pixel - don't go to waste it does have some very nice sounding front firing speakers though this pretty much blows away any other flagship that's out today we're throwing the only exception being the iPhone 8 into my ears they sound very similar way better than pretty much anything else you can get right now one of the biggest upgrades on the pixel 2 is that 12 megapixel camera now that might not sound impressive but these are some of the best smartphone images I've ever gotten period some of the stuff is really crazy there is a ton of detail in these images and they've actually done a really good job of getting even more dynamic range than most of the already great flagship says you can buy in 2017 color is also good maybe not quite as saturated as some Samsung phones but the low-light performance is seeing a huge bump up on the pixel now part of that is because they finally added optical image stabilization and that pair with their awesome image processing means that you can get some surprisingly usable shots in very low light the portrait mode is also really good on the pixel so while it doesn't have any kind of dual camera setup using software they're actually able to get a very similar sort of result and the upside is this also works with the selfies now if the pixel dude does shoot 4k video and you guys can actually look to see and hear what that sounds like right now but as far as I'm concerned this is one of the best smartphone cameras that you can buy right now although if you're using a pixel 2xl taking a look at these pictures on screen might not give you too much confidence but believe me the colors and the image quality is absolutely there last year's pixel was a very very good phone with a couple of major compromises this year Google basically nailed it almost you might not mind the screen on the pixel 2 XL but it is just simply not in the same league as other flagships and when you're paying $150 you should expect the best in everything I really like the standard pixel - yes the screen is a little bit small and the bezels are big but the rest of the phone is so good that it's kind of worth it it is absolutely one of the best smartphones that you can buy so what do you guys think about the pixel too in the pixel to excel let me know in the comments below and I will catch you on the next one