Pixel 4 XL Review - The Good and The Bad By zollotech

Hi everyone Aaron here for ZolloTech and I've, been using the Pixel 4 XL over the past few days, as my main phone and I have some good things to say about it and some bad things to say about it, and maybe a few in between now. Let's start off with the good. The first good thing is the build quality. Google has made some pretty solid phones over the past few years, and this is no exception. It's a little different, and then it's glass front and back, but it's got a coating on the back, so it's kind of rubbery and then the sides are aluminum, but they have sort of a rubbery feel to them as well, and it feels very solid in the hand, but it also gives it a little of grip because it's got those coatings on it. Now, of course, you could use a case with it and that will just add to the grip, depending on the case you get, but it just feels like a solid well bit built phone overall now.

The next good thing is the display, and the display on this has eight an OLED display with a ninety Hertz refresh rate and that 90 Hertz, refresh rate, really makes the whole experience super smooth when you're scrolling, through everything from the app drawer may be going through some news on an app, or maybe you're, just in another application, and you're, and you're, using it to scroll through any feeds you have Twitter or whatever, or you're, just using it in general. It's a great experience. It has good viewing angles and some people have commented about the brightness and I live in the southeast of the United. States and I've had no issues, it's still fairly bright here and really seems fine in sunlight. So maybe, if you're in super bright areas closer to the equator I suppose, maybe it will not be bright enough in sunlight.

But for me overall, it's pretty good I, wouldn't say it's as bright as an iPhone, 11 Pro max or even some note lines or galaxy lines, but in general it's a great display. It looks great. The colors are great, and I'm pretty happy with it. Overall, now as much as I do like this display, keep in mind, it is an OLED, and it's using PWM or pulse width modulation to control brightness. Now, according to display mate, that rate is high enough, that it probably won't bother most people, although I couldn't find a definitive figure.

That said how fast the PWM rate is, however, it hasn't bothered my eyes at all since using it for the past few days, so that in combination with the higher refresh rate actually seems to be less bothersome to my eyes and previous pixels, actually bothering my eyes either. So just keep that in mind, though, if you're sensitive to that, you may want to consider that if you were thinking of purchasing this phone now, one thing Google is known for is their cameras on the pixel line, and this is no exception. These are great cameras. Now they did decide to go with two different cameras this year, and they have a wide angle and a telephoto with super resume. They've improved on night mode or night, shot and/or night sight and overall, the cameras are really, really good.

Now I've taken some photos both in day and night. I've also used the astrophotographer mode where it allows you to expose the camera up to four minutes, just gathering light and that's a pretty interesting experience. It works, indoor or outdoor, and I've got some great photos with it. So let me show you that, and we'll show you some video as well, because that's kind of an area where they're lacking you've got 4k thirty video, but you don't have 4k 60, and they do have some stabilization and things, but I'll. Let you be the judge of that.

So let's go ahead and take a look at the photos and video now I'm recording with the rear facing camera on the Pixel 4 XL and the footage is actually pretty good from what I've seen before it's video stabilized, and we have the ability to zoom as well. So if I turn here, we can zoom in up to 6 X. So it's using that other optical zoom lens to give us that zoom in up to 6 X. If I zoom back out you'll see it's actually pretty good, so we don't have some options from say an iPhone or a s10 plus or some of the other high-end flagships as far as 4k 60. But the footage does look better than I thought.

It would now, let's take a look at the forward-facing video I'm recording with the forward facing camera, and this doesn't go as wide as last year with the pixel 3 XL. You could kind of pinch and zoom out now you just can't do that. So the camera is ok, but it's not as good as say what you had on the previous generation. As far as the angles you get, you've only got one camera and there's some other phones that record in 4k 60 on the forward facing camera as well. Now, the next good thing is the speed using the phone is great, except for when I was restoring a backup it, it lagged a little, but that's normal when you're installing a hundred, apps or so, and then getting everything in place with your passwords and signing in and everything.

After that, the experience has been pretty seamless and flawless. I've had no slowdowns really whatsoever that 90 Hertz refresh rate like I mentioned before, probably has something to do with that. It just seems like a smooth experience overall launching apps as quick closing them. Switching between them, I think, is a great experience and I have no complaints as far as that goes now, given that this is a phone reception is pretty important, and I did place a couple phone calls with it. One time I did have an issue.

The phone call dropped now, I, don't know if that was on my end or the other end. I thought it was the other person they thought it was me it's hard to say, but after that, I called them back and had no issues. The call reception was clear. They sounded good, and I really can't say, there's a problem as far as that goes, and data speeds were fine. When I was using LTE I had no drops.

Switching between cellular and Wi-Fi was pretty seamless better than on an iPhone, for example, so I've continually had issues on iPhones and no choose with this, so I think that's probably due to the Qualcomm modem inside. It's its a much better modem in general. Now, along with reception. Of course, you need good speakers, and I'm happy to report. The speakers actually surprised me.

I was watching a YouTube video and the speaker sounded nice and clear, and they go very loud, so, whether you're watching a movie or watching just a short YouTube, video or listening to music I, think you'll be pretty happy with that. Of course, if you want better sound, get something like a Google home or maybe even a better speaker from another company so but for a smartphone speaker, I was actually pretty impressed, especially when watching video. Now this year we get the pixel neural core. This is the processor right on the device that processes a lot of what Google Assistant does already, so I can squeeze the phone. How is the weather today, and it doesn't necessarily need a data connection to process the voice? Instead, it can just get the information quickly, you can also order food or maybe call for a cab or an Uber, and also you can process a voice right on the device in real time with airplane mode out.

So maybe you go into the new recorder, app hit record, and it will Tran and they transcribe my voice in real time, no matter how fast I speak. So if I speed up my voice, and then I slow it right down, it still keeps up no matter how fast I speak, and it's doing a great job. Now we can go back in and hit save, then we can go back and actually search for what I was looking for. I can say, speed up search for that, and it will find it in any recording that I saved. So here's where I said the word speed up, and we can hear that when we play back, so it works incredibly well, and I think that's a major positive for the pixel 4 and 4 XL.

As far as that goes now we're going to move into an in-between category, both good and bad. Depending on your opinion, these are more subjective and that first thing is design this design. You either love it or you don't like it at all, and I've seen that over and over in my unboxing comments and then prior to its release, a lot of people are very opinionated about this phone. I actually think it looks. Fine.

The camera bump does look a little goofy, but I'm not looking at the back of the phone all day, and I'm, not making excuses either I've just gotten used to it with the new iPhones as well, and it's just something that if you want dual cameras, you may not like the arrangement, but that's what they've chosen to do so. I like the colors, the overall design and then other people are concerned about the forehead and the chin of the phone after about 30 seconds of using it. That just goes away, and I really don't care about that. I actually don't mind the notch. But if things like that bother you, the Infinity Oh on the Samsung, displays it's going to bother you.

If those things don't matter to you, then the display looks fine. It just depends on what your view is on that now. The next in-between thing is the sold radar, and that goes along with the face unlock. The radar allows for quick face, unlocking because it knows, when your hand is approaching the phone, and then you can unlock the phone quickly. You can silence, alarms, or you can play around with Pok?mon and a little app.

All of these things are nice, I think there's some future uses that we haven't seen yet maybe turning up volume I have used it in my car when driving to swipe between songs. So you just wave your hand goes to the next song instead of looking at anything or speaking to the Google Assistant, so those things I think are beneficial, but it's hard to say: if it's going to be something that's great and again, that leads me to the next thing, which is the face: unlock face, unlock works incredibly well, it's the fastest face unlock I've seen, and some people are not going to like it just because you don't have a fingerprint sensor. However, when you're unlocking the phone, unlocking passwords to go into different applications, I think it's a great experience. The bad thing is, you can unlock it with your eyes closed, so let me show you it's locked right now, I'll close my eyes, and it just vibrated to let me know it's unlocked, so it works really quickly, but it works with your eyes. Closed and Google has said they're going to patch this in the coming months.

When that is specifically, we don't really know, so we'll have to wait and see when they actually patch it, but that's going to be a major negative at first for some people, I, don't think it's a big issue for me personally, because no one's using my phone, it's its for me to use, and no one else, my kids don't touch it. They're not allowed to touch it. So I don't really have an issue with that whatsoever. Now, let's move into the actual things that I think are not so great about this phone and the first one is the price. This is price as a flag phone $1,000 with 128 gigs now for $1,000.

If you compare that to what you can get from say, 1 plus with the 1 plus 7 Pro, you get a lot for less money, or you could get a s10 Plus which is oftentimes on discount, and things like that. You get a lot for your money with those phones. This you don't get the latest processor. You only get 6 gigabytes of RAM and only 128 gigabytes of non-expandable storage. So all of those things factored in unless you really are looking for the latest and greatest from Google.

Specifically, this is a hard sell, I think for a lot of people. The Google software is excellent on it, but other than that you're not really getting anything specific for that money other than the camera and the software. It's a hard sell. When you compare it to those other phones and what else is out there and then the final negative thing is the battery. The battery is actually a decent size in the Pixel 4 All, but I was only able to get about four and a half to five hours of screen on time throughout the entire day.

Now that will actually last me a whole day about five hours of screen on time, and it seemed okay. I would take it off the charger early in the morning, put it back on at about midnight or 1:00 in the morning, and that would last me fine, but I'd have about 10 to 20 percent left. But four and a half to five and a half five hours of screen on time is not enough for a lot of people so compared to what you get again from Samsung from Apple now from Huawei or other companies that have huge batteries than them. This is a little lacking in that area and those are what I have to say: that's good and bad about the phone. There isn't much else to say, I think, overall, it's a great experience.

If this was priced closer to something like the Pixel 3a XL, maybe bump that up a couple of hundred dollars. This would be an incredible value, but because it's priced at $1000, it's just going to be a hard sell for some people. I do think it's great to use if you could get it at a discount. I think you'd be very happy with it, but that battery life, especially in the smaller variant of this may be a big issue for some people. But let me know what you think in the comments below which colors your favorite will you be picking up a 4 or 4 XL, or are you going to stick with a 3 or 3 XL or maybe a different brand? Let me know in the comments below, if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe and hit that notification Bell.

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Source : zollotech