Google Pixel 4 XL one year later - Is it still worth buying - Android

Google has an impressive knack of creating polarizing products. The Pixel series is no different. These are phones that have been lavished with critical praise as much as they’ve received scorn for lacking fundamental features you’d expect from a modern smartphone. 2019’s Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL exemplified this love-hate relationship many have with Pixel phones.

Me? I love Google phones, warts and all — have done ever since the Nexus 4. The winning combo of pure Android software and innovative (even when doomed) features has been a cornerstone of the Nexus/Pixel lineage and that continued with the Pixel 4 XL.

With the newly revealed Pixel 5, Google is looking to right some of the wrongs of its predecessor. But is the Pixel 4 XL still worth buying a year later, or should the most divisive Pixel to date be consigned to the history books?

Google Pixel 4 XL review recap

Before we get to our current thoughts, why not refresh your memory on what we had to say about the Pixel 4 series back at launch. You can read our original Google Pixel 4 XL review and check out our video review embedded above.

From bad to worse

The Pixel 4 XL was never a bad phone, but it was a compromised one in myriad ways. Sadly, those sour notes have only become less palatable over time.

Battery and charging

The Pixel 4 XL’s battery life was sub-par in 2019. In 2020, it’s barely tolerable.

The 3,700mAh cell falls far below the average 4,000mAh+ sizes we’ve seen in 2020’s best, with some even pushing beyond 5,000mAh. Google’s Adaptive Battery feature and other software optimizations can’t mask averages of five hours screen on time. You might hit six at a push if you avoid playing any kind of media content like video, music, or games, but that kind of defeats the point of having a smartphone doesn’t it?

It also doesn’t help that fast charging maxes out at 18W and wireless charging is capped at 11W. Both of those aren’t terrible by any means, but they are mediocre at a time where 25W+ is the norm for a flagship phone.

TL;DR, do not buy the Pixel 4 XL if battery anxiety puts your teeth on edge.

Motion Sense

Intended as a novel new way of controlling your phone with hands-free gestures, Motion Sense turned out to be mediocre at launch and is just as underwhelming today.

The Pixel 4 XL’s radar tech is still hit-and-miss, with hand waves and swipes ignored as often as they are actually registered. Despite promising early on that the feature would grow over time, Google added a pause and resume music gesture in March and… that’s it.

I turned Motion Sense off long ago to save battery life and I’m sure I’m not alone in taking that trade-off. Soli still has a lot of potential — remember those early teasers? — but perhaps not in the smartphone space.

Storage

Much like the small battery, the choice to include just 64GB of storage for the base Pixel 4 XL was roundly criticized at launch and looks even worse today.

It’s also another case where Google’s software band-aid strategy proves to be lacking. The Smart Storage optimizations are nice, but it can’t magically extend the ROM beyond its paltry maximum capacity.

Thanks to the 64GB model and a significant price hike for the 128GB model, Google’s storage price gouging with the Pixel 4 series topped even Apple in 2019. It’s telling that even Google’s cheapest phone in 2020 — the Pixel 4a — has 128GB base storage.

4K video

8K video is the new hot feature for top-tier smartphones right now, while 4K has steadily established itself as the new standard.

The Pixel 4 XL is capable of capturing ultra high-resolution footage too, with impressive AI stabilization no less. However, it’s capped at 30fps, leaving your clips feeling a lot less fluid than they should be, especially when viewed on a larger screen.

Those are my main gripes with the Pixel 4 XL and if any of them are deal-breakers for you, I don’t blame you at all. But before you write off the Pixel 4 XL completely, I should reiterate that I’ve been using this phone as my daily driver for a year out of choice.

Why? Because in spite of all the inherent flaws and quirks, it also contains some of Google’s best work in the smartphone industry to date.

Related: The best Google Pixel deals

The camera is still astounding

The Pixel 4 XL’s camera should require no introduction. It’s represented the pinnacle of point-and-shoot smartphone photography for the past year. Apple, Huawei, and Samsung have all excelled in phone camera imaging in 2020, but few have come close to matching Google’s excellence in the field of computational photography.

For its main shooter, the Pixel 4 XL relies on the same 12.2MP Sony Exmor IMX363 sensor found in every Pixel phone released since the Pixel 3 in 2018. That includes the Pixel 5. The sensor itself is one of the smallest you can find on any recent smartphone, but Google’s software is working overtime to compensate.

Exposure is uniformly on point, dynamic range is stunning, colors pop without being too saturated, and the white balance is almost always accurate to life.

The only areas it struggles are in the finer detail where the smaller sensor is found lacking and in low light where noise begins to further creep in, though even these are well above the standard for many phone cameras. Plus, Google’s Night Sight papers over the low light issues remarkably well and adds a touch of flair with its fantastic astrophotography mode.