Google Pixel 10 Pro XL Review – A Flagship Of Many Quirks

Unboxing

Google’s latest and greatest has landed on our desk – the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL unboxing starts with a simple box, with the Jade color we have here shifting colors slightly away from what the paper depicts due to our studio lighting.

Like the modern flagship phones these days that isn’t from a Chinese brand, the box only includes these items:
– USB-C charging cable (USB 2.0)
– SIM ejector pin
– Documentation
– Google Pixel 10 Pro XL main unit

Walkaround

For this generation, Google brought two new colors from the predecessor with Porcelain and Obsidian, while Moonstone and Jade (which is featured in our unit) are the new additions. Visually, there are very minor tweaks on the design of camera bump, which you won’t be able to spot them unless you put two phones side-by-side.

This rather thick camera bump houses a lot of cameras and sensors: the primary Samsung ISOCELL GNV 50MP camera paired with a pair of Sony IMX858 sensors for ultrawide and telephoto duties. There’s also time-of-flight sensor on the right, along with the flash and the temperature sensor outside the lens window.

The changes on the aluminum frame include the relocated SIM slot, now on the top side instead of bottom; the button microphone is seemingly not present here as well. It’s likely hidden within one of two speaker grilles though, considering its original position in the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Notably, the power button is located above the volume rocker, unlike most smartphones; this may take a while to get used to if you’re not familiar with Pixels before this.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL runs on Google’s own version of Android 16, which is not quite stock given that Pixel gets some exclusive features that you won’t necessarily find in other stock-like UIs (i.e. Sony). The home screen features the Gemini widget with several ways to activate Google’s AI, accompanied by the usual set of Google-made apps.

Specifications

Google Pixel 10 Pro XL (G45RY, 16GB+256GB)

Full specifications available on product specifications page.

Form Factor & Build	Smartphone (candybar) Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 front Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 back (polished matte) Aluminum frame Fingerprint-resistant coating
Chipset	Google Tensor G5 (3nm, TSMC N3) Google Titan M2 security co-processor
CPU	8-core (1X+5P+2E) Prime: 1x Arm Cortex-X4 @ 3.78GHz Performance: 5x Arm Cortex-A725 @ 3.05GHz Efficiency: 2x Arm Cortex-A520 @ 2.25GHz
GPU	Imagination Technologies PowerVR DXT-48-1536 @ 1.0GHz
RAM	16GB LPDDR5X *~8GB swap memory
Storage	256GB UFS 4.0 [as tested] 512GB UFS 4.0 1TB Zoned UFS 4.0 *No microSD expansion support
Display	6.8″ LTPO OLED 2992×1344 (~20:9) 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate 2200 nits HDR brightness, 3300 nits peak (5% APL) 8-bit (16.7M) color 486 ppi pixel density
Audio	Stereo speakers No headphone jack (USB-C only)
Cameras	Rear: Triple cameras – 50MP Samsung ISOCELL GNV (wide, 82° FOV, 1/1.3″, f/1.68, PDAF, OIS) – 48MP Sony IMX858 (ultrawide, 123° FOV, 1/2.55″, f/1.7, PDAF) – 48MP Sony IMX858 (telephoto 5x optical, 22° FOV, 1/2.55″, f/2.8, PDAF, OIS) LDAF (laser detect autofocus) sensor Front: Single cut-out camera – 42MP (103° FOV, 1/2.4″, f/2.2, PDAF)
Biometric sensors	Fingerprint scanner (in-display ultrasonic)
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 7 (tri-band 2×2 MIMO) Bluetooth 6.0 NFC Ultra-wideband Thread USB Type-C 3.2 with display output support
Cellular Networks	Dual-standby Nano-SIM + eSIM 2G: 850/900/1800/1900MHz 3G*: B1/B2/B4/B5/B8 4G: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B13/B14/B17/B18/B19/B20/B21/ B25/B26/B28/B29/B30/B32/B38/B39/B40/B41/B42/B48/B66/B71/B75 5G Sub-6: N1/N2/N3/N5/N7/N8/N12/N14/N20/N25/N26/ N28/N30/N38/N40/N41/N66/N71/N75/N76/N77/N78/N79 5G mmWave: Not supported NB-IoT: Band 23/255/256 *3G network has been phased out in Malaysia.
Operating System	Android 16 7 years OS updates, 7 years security updates
Battery	5,200mAh Li-ion 45W USB-C wired charging 25W Qi2 wireless charging via Pixelsnap accessories
Ingress Protection	IP68
Colors	Moonstone Jade [As tested] Porcelain Obsidian
Dimensions	162.8 x 76.6 x 8.5 mm
Weight	232g

Performance

System

Suffice to say, Google is not designing the Tensor G5 chipset around absolute performance, with a total score that looks middling compared to the flagships from other brands. Still, in practice the smartphone performed smoothly throughout during the usage, and the generous 16GB RAM certainly helps in that regard. Also noteworthy is the heat generation in demanding tests like AnTuTu – the device gets extremely hot after the test in complete, which isn’t great.

CPU

In terms of raw CPU performance, the new 3mn-based Tensor G5 is not offering the level of performance to that of the contemporary flagships if Geekbench 6 numbers are anything to go by – the core clusters within the Tensor chip are clocked significantly lower than Snapdragon 8 Elite, for example. That said, modern smartphone chipsets have surpluses of performance so UI performance isn’t an issue.

GPU

Same deal for GPU performance – the Tensor G5 actually switched to a brand-new GPU from Imagination’s PowerVR series (which used to power Apple chips of old) instead of the Arm Mali GPU found in Tensor G4. That slightly improves the performance when compared to Pixel 9’s results here, and the aforementioned heat issue meant the overall stability decreased a fair bit, although still on the high side.

While Imagination’s product page suggests the new PowerVR GPU supports ray tracing, we found out during testing that 3DMark Solar Bay is not supported on this device. As it turns out, Google confirmed that the Tensor G5’s GPU indeed does not support ray tracing. If you like the graphical effects ray tracing provides to some of the mobile titles out there, skip this phone.

Battery

In terms of power efficiency, the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL’s 5200mAh battery does very well in the PCMark Mobile battery test, although it didn’t improve against its predecessor if you take the battery capacity into account. You can get nearly 15 hours from a single charge, fairly sufficient for a full-day use; it also outlasts some of the flagship models we included in the list here, except the vivo X200 Pro.

User Experience

Software

Google Pixel’s software has always been pretty straightforward, as what you get is whatever Google provides to most other Android-based systems, without the worry that apps with duplicated function or bloatware getting in the way. The setup process involves the usual data restore and system update step, though no additional apps will be knocking at your doorstep like most phones do. As a 2025 flagship, you also get access to Gemini AI via the widget in the home screen.

Camera

The camera UI a fair bit unique in the sense that it is quite pro-friendly. A lot of advanced controls are readily accessible via the button in the corner, whereas in most phones you have to switch to a dedicated Pro mode to do so. Still, you can just point-and-shoot like all phones do, and it works pretty well in most situations – it even comes with suggestions to help with framing or focus. There’s even a generative AI-based feature called Camera Coach that analyzes your viewfinder and suggests how to take photos with a specific look.

That said, there are a two things worth discussing here: Ultra HDR, and the so-called “Pro Res Zoom”.

Google dubs its HDR feature “Ultra HDR”, and the result isn’t quite realistically reproduced, I’ll say. The images above are clamped to SDR for compatibility reasons, and they happen to actually look more in line to what your eyes will see. If you’re viewing these pictures directly on the Pixel 10 Pro XL itself, the images often look over-exaggerated, which is especially apparent in the diffused lighting on top of this Lotus Emeya EV (the second image), where the brightness seen in the phone resembles a giant light bulb more than a dimmer diffused light source.

And then there’s the Pro Res Zoom, which I will say is a bit misleading. Essentially, it is just generative AI upscaling added on top of zoom levels at 30x and beyond (and you must enable this feature in order to unlock zoom levels beyond 30x). As such, usual generative AI disclaimers apply – and while it does a good job at sharpening texts and simple shapes specifically, anything more complex it’ll struggle, or outright comes up with something completely random. We have a few examples below:

With sufficient zoom on simple shapes like texts in signages, Pro Res Zoom does a good job at making images sharp, even with a slightly more chaotic composition in the second set of images.

However, there’s a fundamental limitation for a feature like this: whatever readable details the AI have figured out, your eye most likely see them in the raw image; on the contrary, if a user couldn’t discern the details from the viewfinder alone, the AI certainly couldn’t do much either. Pay attention to the icons on the final row of this signage. (Side note, this is one of the examples of the camera struggling with white balance from specific light sources.)

We take to nature for the next set of examples, and I’ll say this is fairly convincing to an untrained eye – the first set of images even has the details within the leaf, although some of that may be guesswork from the AI model. Similar thing to the second set of images, although there’s a bit of weirdness on the orange-colored leaves if you take a close look.

This light strip is another case where Pro Res Zoom doesn’t work: much of the details have already been lost from raw 100x zoom, so whatever the AI model tries to recreate is nowhere close to the actual thing as seen in the reference photo.

And finally, here’s the weirdest example we got: the subject in this photo is a solar heater from a distance away, using 100x zoom – we’ll leave it up to you to interpret whatever Pro Res Zoom has figured out here.

Note that all images taken using Pro Res Zoom feature will have a Content Credentials tag that labels the image as “Edited with AI tools”, and for each image taken using feature, the app will keep a copy of the original which you can choose to keep or discard as needed. That said, we did observe some signs of AI upscaling/denoising involved in zoom levels less than that (such as 10x), similar to Samsung’s Intelligent Optimization – but it wasn’t declared as AI edited in such cases.

Finally, here are some of the remaining photos we’ve taken as samples.

Gaming

The Google Pixel 10 Pro XL has some gaming-related features available via a small panel of buttons that include a dashboard menu, a screenshot button, a record button, and an FPS counter. These buttons can be hidden or revealed via the main dashboard button tucked on the side with navigation controls, which happens to overlap the button somewhat (this won’t happen if you use gesture controls). A bit of design oversight from Google here, that’s for sure.

The gaming experience is admittedly a mixed bag. From the get-go, you won’t be expecting top-tier performance given the chipset’s capabilities as seen in benchmarks above, though it is somewhat serviceable if graphical quality isn’t your biggest concern. In Call of Duty Mobile, the phone can consistently hit 60FPS in the more resource-heavy Battle Royale game mode on its default settings (which is Medium), although there was some stuttering in various parts of the game.

The switch to PowerVR-based GPU seemed to introduce some major bugs as well: when we switched to higher quality settings, the game suffered from what I’d describe as game-breaking bug with frame flickering (which can’t be captured through screenshots but imagine as two frames alternating between each other), along with some random splotches of colors in the game. We suspect it’s driver-related issues, and unfortunately there’s no easy way to fix – our device was already up to date by the time this bug was spotted.

The Good

It’s not often that you get a smartphone out of the box and gets to set the phone up without steps getting in the way from phone brands trying to bundle some apps and tie-ins – the setup experience is very straightforward, and if you’re already familiar with stock Android, this should be easy to get up to speed. I personally likes the pro-friendly user interface in the camera app too, putting pro controls in a more convenient spot rather than tucking it away into a separate mode like most phones do.

In terms of hardware, there are highlights: the speakers are great, although having a native EQ would’ve been nicer (third-party apps exist, though). For those who charges phone wirelessly, the new Qi2 support – along with Pixelsnap accessories – should give users a similar experience as MagSafe to iPhone users, with 25W fast charging to boot. Another highlight is the battery life it offers, which is quite good considering its modest capacity, as smartphone makers are adopting higher-capacity silicon-carbon batteries as their approach to extend usage time.

The Bad

The major pain point of the Pixel 10 Pro XL revolves around the Tensor G5 chip. While it’s serviceable in terms of performance, it’s certainly not flagship-level; in the case of gaming, we also encountered several graphical bugs, although it’s unclear if the switch to PowerVR GPU has played a factor here. We also found that by subjecting the phone to benchmarks like AnTuTu can cause the frame to get extremely hot, although we didn’t find such is the case during our gaming runs, though your mileage may vary depending on the game.

Also, as much as Google intends to showcase its generative AI prowess in the form of Pro Res Zoom, this feature is gimmicky at best and outright inaccurate at worst. Sure, you can always throw a line of disclaimer text before users enable that feature, but to advertise it as a zoom feature rather than a generative AI-based upscaling feature (since the feature could in theory apply to any photo long after the shot is taken) is misleading.

Verdict

For the cheapest variant of the biggest member of the Pixel 10 line, the Pixel 10 Pro XL with 256GB will set you back for RM5,999 – which is honestly not a good deal when phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, with the same storage configuration, can be had for nearly a thousand ringgit less (and you get an S Pen on top of that). If you already own the Pixel 9 from last year, this isn’t that big of an improvement to warrant the device upgrade, so keep what you have for another generation at least.

Special thanks to Google Malaysia for providing the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL smartphone for this review.