Pixel 9 Pro XL Takes the Biggest Swipe at the iPhone So Far

It’s REALLY good

Mark Ellis
6 min readSep 2, 2024

--

Mark Ellis holds up a white Pixel 9 Pro XL to camera. He looks intrigued.
Image courtesy of author

This isn’t going to be your standard Pixel 9 Pro XL review. Everyone else has done that already, and I guess that by the time you reach this particular ‘review’, you’ll have read about the AI features thousands of times already.

So, I won’t put you through that again. Instead, I’ll give you my off-the-cuff thoughts about Google’s latest flagship smartphone and reveal who I think should buy it.

There’s a corresponding YouTube review where I do the same thing directly after a 14-hour flight home from China. So, if you fancy a laugh, it’s (possibly) worth a watch. I’ve had some sleep since then, thankfully, so today’s ramblings are slightly more coherent.

Pricing and specs

At the time of writing, there are many Pixel devices you can still buy from Google’s store, and the latest lineup consists of four new phones. To keep things simple and sane, I’m only focusing on the one I currently have to hand today: the Pixel 9 Pro XL.

This is, technically, a new addition to the lineup, although it’s only slightly bigger than the Pixel 8 Pro from last year. It comes in four colours (I went for the Porcelain version, which is basically white) and features a 6.8-inch Super Actua display with up…

--

--

Mark Ellis

Tech reviewer. Join my newsletter list for a weekly behind-the-scenes video of a tech content creator! ⬇️ https://markellisreviews.ck.page/newsletter