After I finished my Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge review, I put it back in its box and slid my SIM card right back into the Google Pixel 9 Pro. The Pixel isn’t the fastest phone, and it doesn’t have the best battery life, but it is the Android phone I most love to use, especially as my daily work and productivity device.

The Pixel’s performance problem is real

When I say the Pixel 9 Pro isn’t the fastest, I have the data to prove it. On paper, it gets crushed by the titans of the phone world: the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. In Future Labs tests, the Google Pixel 9 Pro’s Tensor G5 chip came in far behind.

For processing, the Google Tensor G5 chipset can’t compare to the Apple A18 Pro or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite platform, upclocked just for Samsung Galaxy S phones.

The Pixel 9 Pro’s Geekbench multi-core score of 4,794 is less than half of the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s 9,829. You have to go back to the iPhone 13 Pro from 2021 to find an iPhone that scores as low as today’s fastest Google Pixel.

In practical tests, the Pixel 9 Pro had problems. The Adobe Premiere Rush video test repeatedly crashed our Pixel 9 Pro devices. The less-powerful Pixel 9, using the same processor, eventually finished the task in one hour and 18 minutes. The iPhone 16 Pro Max did it in 21 minutes.

On gaming benchmarks, the Pixel 9 Pro was unimpressive. On the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test, the Pixel could only produce 15 frames per second, while the Galaxy S25 Ultra managed a fluid 35 fps.

The story is the same for battery life. The Pixel 9 Pro XL lasted only 14 hours in our rundown tests, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max pushed past 17.5 hours, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra lasted more than 18.5 hours. Oh, and both of those phones charge faster, too.

The Pixel’s performance problem really doesn’t matter

And yet, with all of those shortcomings, I’m using a Pixel 9 Pro Fold right now and will happily go back to my standard Pixel 9 Pro until the next model arrives. Why? Because today’s flagship smartphones are too powerful for their own good, and phone makers haven’t even figured out what to do with all that power.

Forget the benchmarks. The latest Pixel 9 Pro design feels fantastic, with or without a case. It takes photos with incredibly accurate color and nails low-light shots every time. Google’s “Circle to Search” and AI vision features make it easy to answer the question “What is that!?” – one of the most common questions in my life. The experience of using the phone is simply more pleasant.

The Pixel 9 Pro is a smarter smartphone

You can’t even say faster phones are better at AI. The Pixel 9 Pro is the most effective and compatible smartphone for mobile AI features, even though it’s the slowest of the bunch. While Apple’s AI is a perpetual question mark and Samsung has largely ceded its best work to Google, the Pixel has some AI features that are actually useful and don’t make me feel like a traitor to my creative profession.

The Pixel does a great job screening calls or even making them on my behalf. I’ve had the phone book haircuts and make restaurant reservations, and if it didn’t do these things for me, I’d probably forget.

More importantly, I use the Pixel constantly to transcribe meetings, interviews, or even a talk with my kid’s orthodontist. It does the best job of making a useful transcript that’s easy to navigate alongside the actual voice recording.

An elegant experience for less money

The Pixel interface is polished, pleasant, and doesn’t get in my way. It doesn’t try to copy Apple’s iOS, but it would feel familiar to iPhone users because it’s such an intuitive interface. While the battery life isn’t a record-setter, it always lasts me a full day, and a few minutes of charging while I’m driving or in the shower gives me more than enough power.

Best of all is the price. The Pixel 9 Pro XL starts at $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,349, which is already cheaper than the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It also goes on sale more often; I saw it drop to $849 last holiday season, a discount you’ll never see on a flagship iPhone.

What race are you trying to win?

The Google Pixel 9 Pro proves that the spec sheet isn’t the whole story. It loses every benchmark battle but wins the war for my daily attention. It’s a device built around practical intelligence, not brute force. In a world of overpowered phones, the Pixel 9 Pro is a phone that feels like it’s actually working for me, not the other way around.

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Phil Berne is a preeminent voice in consumer electronics reviews, starting more than 20 years ago at eTown.com. Phil has written for Engadget, The Verge, PC Mag, Digital Trends, Slashgear, TechRadar, AndroidCentral, and was Editor-in-Chief of the sadly-defunct infoSync. Phil holds an entirely useful M.A. in Cultural Theory from Carnegie Mellon University. He sang in numerous college a cappella groups.

Phil did a stint at Samsung Mobile, leading reviews for the PR team and writing crisis communications until he left in 2017. He worked at an Apple Store near Boston, MA, at the height of iPod popularity. Phil is certified in Google AI Essentials. He has a High School English teaching license (and years of teaching experience) and is a Red Cross certified Lifeguard. His passion is the democratizing power of mobile technology. Before AI came along he was totally sure the next big thing would be something we wear on our faces.