13:02
So, it's become abundantly clear at this point that the Pixel simply isn't designed to be the fastest phone on the market. Not only did the Pixel 10 Pro lag behind every other flagship we tested it against, but unfortunately, the new Pixel 11 Pro did n't really do anything to change that. So today we're going to find out how far behind the Pixel really is, at least compared to Samsung phones, starting from the S26 Ultra and all the way down to the S22 Ultra. We test everything from web browsing and portrait photography to photo editing, video editing, and even scanning. So, by the end of this video, you'll know exactly what level of performance the Pixel 11 is at, and whether that level of performance is acceptable to you, given the price.
Let's get straight to the point. This episode is sponsored by Whisper Flow, which has completely changed the way I type on both my phone and computer over the past few months. And the first reason is simple. I can talk faster than I can type. Although I already type about 100 words per minute on the keyboard, with WhisperFlow I can do almost twice as fast. And on the phone it's almost five times faster. But the second reason I continue to use it is its accuracy. For example, let's say I'm sending a message to our researcher about our next test. So I could say, "For our next camera test, I think we should include the following devices: Pixel 11 Pro XL, Xiaomi 17 Ultra, OnePlus 15. No, not actually OnePlus 15, Oppo Find X9 Ultra, and Galaxy S26
Ultra." Thanks to its built-in voice- to- text, it not only caught some of these phone names, but it also included my correction mid- sentence, and completely missed the part where I started whispering. Whereas with WhisperFlow, it correctly typed the device names, skipped any errors, and even formatted everything into a nice, clean list. If you want to try it yourself, you can get 1 month of WhisperFlow Pro for free by using my code fumbuff in your plans and payment settings on your computer. So check out the first link below. Okay, let's start by launching the cameras on each phone and then scanning the QR code, where all six phones seem to complete within a second of each other, with the Pixel
technically coming out on top. But we'll see how it performs here in the portrait test, where we take a total of 10 photos, five with the model further back and five with a close- up. And while the Pixel was very fast for the first five photos, it starts to hang around the sixth and seventh shots as the shutter no longer responds to the robot's presses. Thanks to the Pixel's longer post-processing in the gallery, even the S22 Ultra comes out ahead. Of course, this result says nothing about the actual image quality of these photos. So it's possible that Google is simply applying more processing than Samsung. But, anyway, here in the browser test, this time each phone loads the exact same set of resources. So, everything from videos and 3D models to maps and
calculations. And as you can see, when it comes to browsing web pages like this, all of these phones are already pretty fast, all six completed the task in almost the same amount of time. So, after the first row, the Pixel somewhat unexpectedly finishes last, about a second and a half behind the S22 Ultra, which doesn't look great. Although, I will say that most of this difference came down to the portrait test. But we'll see what the Pixel does here, in the second row, where, due to Facebook, there was virtually no difference between the phones. And at Starbucks, the story was essentially the same, all six phones are practically identical. In Microsoft Word, where we load a 500- page document, we see some difference this time around, as the Pixel almost
matched the S24 in performance, beating the S23 and S22 by about a second. Here in Excel, the situation is a little more complicated when we load a sheet with 5,000 rows, where Pixel lags a bit, this time approaching S23, only ahead of S22. So, in the second row, the Pixel shows much better results this time, coming close to the S24 Ultra overall, which is obviously not the fastest of them all, but it's still a pretty decent result for these lighter tasks. Of course, we didn't stress the phones as much in the second row either, but that will start to change here in the gaming row, where in Subway Surfers the Pixel is slower than the S26, 25, 24 and even 23, coming closest to the S22. In Flip Driving, the story is similar, with
the Pixel again almost on par with the S22. Going Balls is a bit heavier than these last two apps, but even here there's not much difference, and this time the Pixel does come a little closer to the S23 Ultra. But the game that interests me the most is Zombie Fire, as this game is a more powerful first-person shooter. And here the Pixel is clearly slower than the newer Galaxy phones, and it's almost side-by- side with the S23. So in the gaming range, at least when it comes to running games rather than playing them, the Pixel is about on par with the S23 in terms of performance, which, you know, is a bit of a step back from what we've seen in smaller workloads. But, I think it's this bottom line that will ultimately show us how much
power the Pixel really has "under the hood." Starting with Adobe Scan, where each phone has to use its camera to scan a contract, to an OCR task where it has to make the text in that contract editable. And here you can immediately see the difference. The S26 and S25 just passed through it, followed by the S24 and S23, while the Pixel can almost completely match the S22. It's worth noting that we run multiple tests on each device for each test we run here. And these results were consistent. So, not the most encouraging results from the Pixel so far, but we'll see if it can turn things around here in Lightroom, where every phone has to edit the same 68- megapixel photo, which is quite a challenge. First, we remove the object to get rid of the umbrella in the
background, and then each phone has to detect and mask the sky so we can apply color correction. And while the Pixel wasn't the fastest phone here, it was clearly the S26 Ultra, it wasn't the slowest either. In fact, it was almost on par with the rest of the Galaxy lineup. So we'll see if it can continue that here in Instagram editing, where every phone has to export the same 4K video. And no, unfortunately, the Pixel takes last place this time, even losing to the almost 5- year-old Galaxy S22. Okay , in this last app, we simply unzip the same 6 gigabyte file on each device in their native files app. And it's immediately clear that Pixel is lagging behind.
All Galaxys complete tasks in roughly the same order, from newest to oldest, even the S22 Ultra completes a task before the Pixel completes it after 5 seconds. So, looking at the cumulative time in the bottom row, it becomes quite clear that whenever the task gets more difficult, the Pixel falls behind the most. And then when we sum up the time in each app we tested, the Pixel 11 Pro XL delivers about the same performance as the Galaxy S22 Ultra. Of course, this is only part of the story, as so far we have been running each task one at a time, giving the phones enough time to cool down in between. But here, in the test, we're testing something different in how each of these phones performs under sustained load, actually running
everything sequentially. And this is actually an area where I think the Pixel could have done a lot better, at least compared to some of the older Galaxys, as Google really put a lot of thought into the cooling system in this phone, which is about to be put to the test as each phone works towards recording a 1-minute 4K video. Well, this task wasn't actually part of our testing of each app, as we don't measure any speed difference, the goal being to create some load on the phones and cool them down in a way that still reflects real-world usage. So it will be interesting to see if the Pixel can actually use its cooling system to its advantage, especially against the S22 Ultra, which doesn't even have a vapor chamber. But,
at least for now, all five Galaxy phones are still ahead of the Pixel as we begin our browser test. However, it looks like the Pixel is really closing the gap with the S22, and here it is. It seems he got around it as all the phones now work in the second row. Obviously, we want to see the Pixel catch up to the newer Galaxy phones. And the good news is that it now trails right behind S23, only one step behind Excel. And moving on to the game series in Subway Surfers, it looks like the Pixel is ahead of the S23. So, here it is. Another Galaxy phone is behind, and three more are ahead if the Pixel wants to justify itself here in this test. Of course, it's easier said than done, because in our app testing the Pixel was competitive
with the S22 and S23, with the S24 and newer models being where we saw a much bigger gap. So, continuing with this first phase, especially once we get to these last four apps, which are more demanding, we'll get a much better idea of whether prolonged stress on these phones really changes the picture. So, when comparing each phone's performance in this test to its own benchmark across apps, the S26 Ultra actually holds up the best, with virtually no performance degradation. But interestingly, the Pixel actually comes in second, adding only about 4 seconds to its overall benchmark compared to the S24's 6 seconds, while the S22 and S23 are now more than 11 seconds behind their own overall benchmarks across apps. And this is where it starts
to get more interesting, because the Pixel is now just one step behind the S24. And if the S24 and S25 start to slow down like the older Galaxy ones do, then the Pixel has a real chance of making a comeback. Although he definitely won't be up against S26 Ultra, who has already completed the first round and moved on to the second. So now the question is, which of these remaining phones will be able to best maintain its performance? And if that phone turns out to be a Pixel, will that be enough to complete the comeback? And unfortunately, at least compared to the S25 Ultra, the answer is still no. Given that this phone joined the S26 on the second lap. And with the Galaxy S24 Ultra now completing its unboxing, no, it was simply too little, too
late for the Pixel to return. The best chance to catch up here was on the second lap, where memory management becomes a crucial factor. Both the S26 and S25 Ultra managed to keep every app open and ready to run in the background. And so far, it's the same story with the S24 Ultra. However, S24 fails to keep Excel open, giving Pixel one last chance to make up ground here if it can do better. But no, the Pixel fails to keep the flip diving open, which practically solves the problem. We'll move the rest of the phones to the finish line so we can take a look at the data. Where you can see how the Pixel was able to maintain its performance better than any phone here except the S26, especially towards the end of the test. Which, on the
one hand, is quite impressive, but on the other hand, we have to remember that the Pixel originally had lower performance. Although even with some slowdown, the S24 and S25 were still overall faster. So, to answer the question we started with, how far behind is the Pixel? Well, it depends on what you do. In our testing of each application, where the phones had time to cool down between tasks, the Pixel performed about on par with the S22 Ultra. But then, under prolonged loads, it improved noticeably, becoming slightly faster than the S23 Ultra. Assuming you have an S23 Ultra with 12GB of RAM, as the one we had only had 8GB of RAM and obviously struggled more on the second lap. But anyway, that's all for this video. Thanks for watching, and as always
, see you in the next episode.
