Google Pixel 11 Pro hands-on review

Design

The design of the Pixel 11 Pro has seen very minor changes. The main difference is the new camera bar on the back, which now has edge-to-edge glass. You may also notice that there is now one less thing back there, and that's because the temperature sensor has been removed.

The camera bar on the new Pixel 11 Pro models is absolutely massive in terms of its height, and gives the phone a proper slope when you put it down on its back. The good thing is that there's still no wobble since it runs the width of the back.

There are also some new colors this year, which is to say, there are some actual colors this year, as last year's palette was quite monochromatic. There's Canyon, which is a light orange with gold trim, and Olive, which is a dark green, but with a lighter gold trim. Fog, which is the one we have here, has a light blue back with silver trim, and finally Obsidian with black trim. Also new for this year is that the black Obsidian color comes with matte sides rather than glossy, making it the only matte option on the Pro models.

That aside, there is not much new to talk about in the design of the Pixel 11 Pro. Even the dimensions are mostly identical, with the newer models being ever so slightly smaller and lighter, but not in a way you'd notice. It's only the Fold that's noticeably lighter, but that's a discussion for another review.

Nevertheless, this is still a handsome design that also happens to be quite distinctive. The Pixel 11 Pro feels quite premium in hand, thanks to the polished aluminum frame. The phone also has a nice heft to it, which, combined with the small size, makes it feel dense and valuable.

Google also sent over its first-party case for the phone in a matching color. The case is nice enough, with metal buttons and a felt-lined interior along with built-in magnets for wireless charging. However, it is quite expensive, and you may be better off with one of the aftermarket alternatives.

Display

The Pixel 11 Pro has the same 6.3-inch LTPO OLED display as the previous generation model. It has a resolution of 2856 x 1280 and supports up to 120Hz refresh rates. There is wide-color support, although the panel is still just 8-bit, despite the HDR functionality.

There are two changes this year. First, the panel is slightly brighter, so you get 2400 nits HBM (up 200 nits) and 3600 nits peak (up 300 nits). It is hard to notice these differences at these values with the naked eye, but the display was already very bright, and this should make it even brighter.

The other difference doesn't really have anything to do with the display itself but rather with the glass covering it. The Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 glass now comes with an anti-scratch coating, which Google claims makes it 2x more scratch-resistant. That might come in handy considering Google would rather you keep the phone facing down.

Getting back to the display, this is still a very good panel with high resolution and great colors. Google sets the default DPI to the optimal value for the OS, but this does make everything look small, and you will need to change the scaling from the settings for a more comfortable size. The display also has a built-in ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which also works well.

However, we have come to expect some niceties on other devices, many of which aren't even thousand-dollar flagships. For starters, Google still uses a conservative 240Hz PWM dimming frequency for the display. We now even have budget phones hitting 3840Hz and also offering a DC dimming option, so 240Hz is simply inadequate in this day and age on any phone with an OLED display. There is an option to increase this to 480Hz in the accessibility settings, but it's not clear why this is a separate option and what the cost of using it is.

Second, a lot of phones now also have the ability to use the touchscreen even if the display or your fingers are wet. This is still not available on Pixel devices, so a wet screen or fingers will just cause the touchscreen to start tripping with false or undetected touches.

Battery and charging

The Pixel 11 Pro has a 4850mAh battery, down slightly from the 4870mAh of the Pixel 10 Pro. While it is an insignificant difference, the fact that a negative difference even exists at all is questionable considering Pixel phones are hardly known for their stellar battery life.

We will get to full battery testing in our full review later. For now, suffice it to say, the Pixel 11 Pro is still very much a one-day phone that you will be plugging in at the end of the day. We are now at a point where we have phones that last two or even three days on a single charge due to advancements in battery technology. However, these advancements are yet to reach American shores as Google and Apple continue to serve reheated dinners from decades-old battery technologies.

More reheated dinners come in the form of wired charging speeds. We are still getting a totally radical 30W USB-PD PPS charging, a speed as modern and in with the times as that description.

Considering neither the charging speeds nor the battery has changed much over the previous generation model, the charging speeds on the Pixel 11 Pro are the same as on the Pixel 10 Pro. That is to say, it's still fairly slow, especially for a battery that is this relatively small.

The phone reaches the advertised 55% at the 30-minute mark, but a full charge still takes about an hour and a half. If you set the phone to only charge up to 80%, it will take about 50 minutes to accomplish that. The charging rate is perfectly linear till about 70%, after which it starts slowing down, and then it really slows down past 90%. There is something called Extreme Charging Mode that can be enabled when you plug in the charger from the lockscreen or the notifications toggle, and pauses background activity and non-essential apps to improve charging speeds.

The actual improvement this year comes from faster wireless charging, which on the Pixel 11 Pro can now achieve the full 25W on the Qi2 standard. There are built-in magnets in place so you don't have to invest in special cases to get MagSafe-like functionality.