Google Pixel 8 & 8 Pro - HANDS ON - The NEW Features NO ONE Is Talking About!

Meet the new Google Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. Last week I had the opportunity to get hands on with these at Google’s launch event in New York City, so I went in with tons of technical questions and came home with lots of answers. Stick around for my hands on first impressions and some of the features I’m most looking forward to.

This video isn’t sponsored, and all editorial content in this video was written by me. Google covered the trip to New York City for the launch event via Team Pixel but the brand isn’t reviewing any of my posted content.

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I’m digging the new Bay blue color of the 8 Pro, so this is the one I spent most of my time with. The Pixel 8 Pro has a super bright new display called a Super Actua display, it’s loads brighter than current models and will be fun to use when hiking outdoors this fall. The matte casing is glass but very soft to the touch and stays cool in hand. It’s less slippery, too.

The 8 comes in different colors and has a shiny glass casing, with a very comfortable form factor and size. This one is really easy to use one handed, though some of the camera improvements of the Pro will not be included in the 8.

I spent some time getting demos of the new camera improvements of the 8 Pro. The ultrawide has better macro focus, the telephoto lens can capture 56% more light, and 10x photos can be shot at optical quality. The front facing selfie lens has autofocus now too.

I was very excited to see the Pro Controls in the Pixel 8 Pro. One thing not really mentioned anywhere but is really cool - you can now control which lens you’re taking a photo with. You know how smartphones often will automatically change lenses based on depth from your subject and sometimes it chooses the wrong lens? With Pro Controls you can control that. I was geeking out about this feature with one of the google engineers even though it wasn’t really featured, I wanted to mention it because I love that. Of course, controlling ISO, shutter speed, 50MP enabling, raw photography, etc. Those are included too. The pro controls have a useful settings bar at the top too so you can easily refer to that to see what camera settings you’re currently taking photos at. Controlling the shutter speed through pro controls then taking a photo via the Pixel Watch 2 to avoid shaking the phone during a long exposure is such a useful feature for astrophotography.

Then we had Best Take, which I feel like everyone is gonna use during the holiday season. Take a few group photos, and Google Photos has a new tool that will combine the similar photos into a group, and let you choose the best take per person and combine those into a totally new shot where everyone is smiling and looking in the right direction. I do wonder if this will work on my dogs face - I want to test that. No more photoshopping all the smiling faces into one picture - you can let Google Photos do the hard work.

The 8 Pro will get several other photo and video features, like a new Magic Editor, Audio Magic Eraser and Video Boost. Video Boost will use the new Tensor G3 for optimal adjustments to color, lighting, stabilization and clarity, plus new Night Sight Video. I mentioned to the engineer demoing Audio Magic Eraser that this could potentially help youtubers steer clear of random music licensing copyright issues when uploading vlogs because you can remove music from a video using machine learning on device after you’ve recorded the video. It’s being marketed to remove wind or noisy environments because it can recognize those different subsets of audio, but think about the use case of removing copyrighted music that just so happens to be in the background. That’s gonna be incredibly useful.

The 8 Pro also has a temperature sensor on it so you can take your temp or scan something else. Google submitted the sensors spec to the FDA so you’ll be able to add this data to your Fitbit app too.

Other features and improvements I’m looking forward to are the ability to Summarize an article and have Google read it to you, Call Screen has some enhancements, with 50% fewer spam calls, and I don’t think it was mentioned during the keynote, but Face Unlock on the 8 and 8 Pro have achieved the highest Android biometric class - which means you’ll finally be able to use Face Unlock to unlock banking and payment apps instead of just your fingerprint. That’s thanks to the Tensor G3 with the Titan M2 security chipset. Pack that in with the 7 years of security updates and patches and you’ve got yourself a very nice upgrade.

They’ll both be available on shelves Oct 12. The 8 is $699 with preorder and trade in deals, and the 8 Pro is $999 starting. The 8 Pro preorder comes with a free Pixel watch 2 until Oct 11th, and I’ve linked these below with affiliate links which directly support my channel.

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I did want to end this video by noting the new Pixel phone cases, the Pixel Watch 2, and upgrades to the Pixel Buds Pro.

The phone cases from Google are very compatible with the available colors for the 8 and 8 Pro, I actually really like them but of course, testing in real life will give us a better impression.

Since many of y’all are proficient in programming, I wanted to show you this pro tip with Google Home and Assistant. You’ve seen the home app, but check this out:

The new automations tab in the GHA is cool, but just released to public preview is this dope script editor that uses YAML, and lets you heavily customize your devices. But if you don’t know how to code, you can use Help Me Script, which will release later this year in preview. You type in natural language what you want your devices to do, and it generates the script for you. So here’s an example: [ show video ]

The Pixel Buds Pro will get improved call quality for loud environments and conversation detection if you’re listening to music, it’ll pause the music while you’re having a convo so you don’t have to fiddle with the earbuds or your phone. Both of these new features absolutely do work and I got demos of each in person.

Lastly we have the Pixel Watch 2. It’s the same size as the original - that’s great for me and my dainty wrists. But the battery life is improved, it’s quoted to have faster charging, and has more accurate sensors. The new Body Response feature is really cool - if you want to track your daily stress levels or find possible problems that cause your heart rate to increase, you can use this to track those signs that can cause physical problems. As a woman a lot of our stressors and anxiety isn’t taken seriously so having data that can back up a concern can be really useful for health. Also shoutout for the new Safety Check on your pixel watch 2, which is similar to how it works on our Pixel phones, but Safety Check can now be enabled and let a loved one keep tabs on your movements and alert them to an emergency. I travel a lot by myself for work so being able to secretly send this data back to my husband via a wearable is something I’ll 100% use, and I totally would’ve used last week while I was in NYC.

There are so many new features that I didn’t even have time to mention here, but I also have a vlog channel where you can see the Google Offices tour I did as well as some behind the scenes from my trip - subscribe to Shannon Travels the World for all of my travel vlogs and less techy / more geeky personal life adventures.

Hopefully I’ll have these devices in hand before my trip to Japan (I’m leaving in a few days at time of posting) so I can do tutorials and give you more in depth how-to videos by the end of the month. I would love to take these devices to Japan with me to test translation features as well as do some videography work while in beautiful settings, but that all depends on shipment schedules so we’ll see.

Thanks for watching, and thank you to Team Pixel and Google again for sending me to NYC so I could show you these new products.