The TomTom Touch is a fitness tracker that tries to bridge the gap between very simple step-tracking fitness bands like the Fitbit Flex 2, and the sort of advanced GPS trackers marathon runners use.
It's much closer to the basic brigade, but has a body scanner feature that works out how much of you is made of fat and how much is muscle. You two are going to get uncomfortably close.
While a neat idea, the reliability is patchy at best and the TomTom Touch is held back by usability issues that make this tracker less fun to use than some alternatives, but it’s not a complete write-off.
Price and release date
Out now
£129.99/$129.99 (around AU$215)
The TomTom Touch costs £129.99, $129.99 (around AU$215), which puts it in the same sort of price range as the Fitbit Alta and Fitbit Charge 2, and only slightly cheaper than the TomTom Spark 3.
All of those wearables also have screens, but if you can live without a display and just need basic tracking skills you can pick up a Fitbit Flex 2 or Jawbone UP3 for significantly less.
However, none of these alternatives have a body fat scanner built in.
Design
Water-resistant
Chunky but innocuous
Need to press a button to wake the screen up
The TomTom Touch looks like a generic fitness tracker band aside from the unusual silvery circle just below the display. It’s no fashion accessory and is quite thick, but is also fairly innocuous.
The Touch is a plastic pebble that fits into a flexible silicone strap, much like the Fitbit Alta and a number of other trackers. It’s moderately comfortable, though we needed to adjust the fitting a few times during testing to avoid ending up with a wrist full of red indents from the sensors.
You don’t want to leave it flapping about loose though, as those same sensors rely on solid contact with your skin. Some experimenting may be required to find the best fit.
The TomTom Touch looks like a very simple band of black when not in use, a bit like the Fitbit Flex 2, but unlike the Flex 2 it actually has a display, one that covers most of the glossy black lozenge on the front. It’s a low-res monochrome OLED: not fancy, but it provides good clarity in all sorts of environments.
Though it’s here that we stumble into the first big issue with the TomTom Touch. Its display doesn’t turn on with a waggle of your wrist, you have to press the silver button on the front to get it to wake up.
This annoys, particularly as the Touch also functions as a watch, with the default screen showing you the time and how close you are to meeting your daily steps goal.
Basic use of the TomTom Touch is wonky too. You flick up and down on the front of the face to get to the other screens: upwards to see your current step count, calorie count, distance travelled, last sleep duration and exercise duration.
Swipes down get you to the active participation bits, the body fat scanner, heart rate sensor and exercise logger.
All this seems fine aside from using a lot of screens (and therefore swipes) to show just a few basic figures, but the TomTom Touch display often also doesn’t respond to gestures. The little guy doesn’t seem to like being woken up at times.
It is water-resistant, though. Despite having an exposed micro USB port in the main unit and, as far as we can see, only a minimal rubbery lining, it’s IPX7 certified. That means you can wear it in the shower without worry, though it’s not waterproof enough to swim with.
Specs, performance and fitness
No GPS
Patchy body fat scanner
The TomTom Touch, unlike a lot of TomTom gear, does not have GPS. This feels like a tracker for people who spend time in the gym rather than running outdoors. If GPS is something you need, consider the TomTom Spark 3 instead.
Aside from an accelerometer pedometer, the TomTom Touch has an optical heart rate sensor and an all-important body fat scanner. This sets it apart. There’s also a vibration motor, which can be used to signal very basic call and text notifications from your phone.
The heart rate monitor is only really designed to check your resting heart rate, an admission that like most wrist-worn HR sensors, it’s not much use for calculating your rate during vigorous exercise.
While you’re mostly still, the TomTom Touch’s heart rate readings seem fairly reliable, but there’s an annoying caveat.
When you manually check your rate, it tends to take about 4-5 seconds for the reading to settle down to your actual heartbeat. However, the display times out just after this, and you’re back to a black screen. Nice.
As standard, the TomTom Touch takes your resting heart rate automatically throughout the day, and then produces a graph of your average heart rate over the days and weeks. It’s not desperately useful, unless part of your fitness goal is to bring down your resting heart rate a bit.
The fat scanner is a similar case. To get a reading you have to place your index finger on the silver sensor and wait for 10 seconds. This fires a tiny electrical signal around your body, then received by a similar sensor on the underside. The reading is then used to calculate the amount of fat and muscle clinging to your bones.
In our experience, it’s patchy at best. It failed to successfully make a reading about 60% of the time, which gets frustrating when you have to spend 10 seconds per attempt.
Like the strange, varying responsiveness of the touchscreen, this seems to happen in fits and starts. At one point six readings in a row failed. 30 minutes later, we managed to get several successful readings in sequence.
We had already carefully read up on TomTom’s recommended techniques at this point, so we have no explanation other than that the software is possibly a bit buggy at this stage.
Talking to a few people we know using the TomTom Touch, it seems to slightly exaggerate fat levels. Perhaps we’re all just hoping it does, though.
Regardless, we’ve had a better experience in the past with body analyzing scales, and it’s also annoying that you can’t see your results on the watch itself, just the MySports phone app.
There are numerous usability problems like this. For example, you have to plug the TomTom Touch into a PC to update its software, even though every other manufacturer seems to let you do this through your phone. Syncing with a phone can be painfully slow too.
At one point we switched phones and so went without a sync for several days. The sync process then took almost 30 minutes, which seems mad.
The app
Dull app
Offers little context or motivation
The MySports software doesn’t offer any startling insights either. This is the TomTom Touch’s companion app, and it’s a lot less fun and motivating than, for example, Fitbit’s one.
The way it relays data is not very compelling. For example, one feature it has that many other apps don’t is a one-day graph of heart rate readings throughout the day, but it’s delivered in such an uninspiring graph, which doesn’t let you dig further into the data, that it all seems a bit pointless.
You can set goals for your sport activity, body fat ratio and so on, but there’s no further motivation to keep you interested. Fitbit maps your steps onto great treks across the world and lets you compete with your friends. TomTom offers dull pie charts and graphs.
We’ve been watching the development of fitness tech for years, and major improvements have been made in contextualizing your activity or digging deep into the stats, particularly with high-end runners’ watches like the Garmin Forerunner 620, but the TomTom Touch has neither depth nor inspiring context.
You can set the Touch to record specific runs and walks, but all this really does is to separate out the usual distance and step data (all recorded using the pedometer rather than phone GPS) into discrete entries in the app.
If the Touch didn’t have the unusual fat monitor to set it apart, it’d be in real trouble.
Battery life and compatibility
Battery won't last more than 3 days
No battery indicator on the Touch
Easy to charge
The TomTom Touch’s battery disappoints too. It is quoted as lasting up to 5 days between charges, but we only got it to last 2.5-3 days, which is poor given the feature set and lack of always-on screen. The display seems desperate to be off, if anything.
There’s no warning about the battery level either. You have to head to the Devices part of the MySports app to see the battery level. This is a missed opportunity when the Touch has both a screen and a vibrate function, perfect tools to give you a heads-up when, say, the battery hits 20% charge.
In some respects, the TomTom Touch seems almost unfinished, and we hope some of these holes will be plugged in future updates. There’s not even a vibrate wake-up alarm for example, even though there is basic sleep tracking, telling you how much kip you got last night.
Charging is at least simple. You just push the main unit out of the strap, then plug in the USB cable to your phone charger. There’s an on-screen indicator of how near to a full charge the Touch is.
The TomTom Touch is also compatible with a wide variety of devices, as both iOS and Android handsets are supported - though if you're running Android you should check that the MySports app works for you, as TomTom doesn't guarantee compatibility with all Android devices.
Verdict
The TomTom Touch has a neat feature you don’t get elsewhere. Body scanning gives you a rough idea of how much fat and muscle is under your skin, and working on bringing down your body fat is a great metric if you’re looking to get healthier.
Having a screen on the device is handy too, letting you use the Touch as a watch.
Unfortunately, there are more issues than positive points. While the TomTom Touch offers more metrics than some, it doesn’t make particularly compelling use of that data and the body scanner is often a pain to use.
This low-level annoyance is a constant presence too thanks to an occasionally unresponsive touchscreen/interface and a screen you need to press a button to wake.
Poor battery life compounds this. Lasting only three days between charges, it only has the longevity of a much smarter device.
Who's this for?
The TomTom Touch is really for those who like the idea of a wrist-mounted body scanner, since its other features are done better elsewhere.
As it's plain and shower-proof it's also a fitness tracker you can wear all day, though limited battery life means you'll still have to take it off more than you might like.
Should you buy it?
We like the idea of a fitness tracker that can tell your body fat level. It’s a decent way to check your fitness progress, particularly when excess fat around the middle can have a major effect on your health.
The TomTom Touch isn’t a particularly complete-feeling tracker, though. It suffers from too many usability niggles and obvious missing features.
Some of these will probably be fixed in updates, but the poor battery life and software that lags far behind the best seem unlikely to improve dramatically before the Touch is superseded, making the likes of the Fitbit Charge 2 or even TomTom's own Spark 3 a better bet for most buyers.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/2bKWiV9
If the sun is beginning to go down on the era of 1080p gaming, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y900 is the absolutely stunning sunset that marks the end of the day. OK, that's a little dramatic, as full HD is here for a long time, but when it comes to high-end gaming, 4K has gone from expensive and pointless novelty to cutting-edge must-have.
While the $2,499 or £1,999 (about AU$3,340) Y900 doesn't pump out the pixel density of its competitors, its fantastic 17-inch 1080p screen sits atop a computer that trades boundary-pushing resolution for an eye-catching chassis and overall aesthetic.
Design
The Lenovo IdeaPad Y900 might be our favorite computer from a strict design standpoint. It's a BMW to the HP Omen 17's SS Camaro.
A gorgeous, brushed metal case on both the top and bottom of the laptop is accented with a striking red logo on the cover. The logo lights up when in use, but even when it isn't, the red is almost organic in its intensity.
Two bolts of hard rubber run diagonally down the lid, cutting the lines of the lid in an aggressive way. The rubber also breaks up the metal construction. It's was a pleasant surprise to run our fingers over the lid and have them touch, and slow down on, the hard rubber.
In addition to a tactile pseudo ASMR we never knew we needed in our life, the glossy rubber coating is smudge free, so the two accents keep their shine. It's a really nice touch.
Opening up the laptop, the attention to detail carries over to everything inside. The wrist support is a texturized rubber, a nice change from the cold metal or hard plastic of most laptops.
It has an almost tacky feel to it, as though it's coated with some manner of adhesive, but the tackiness simply a product of the friction between our skin and the furnished palm rest.
We were really worried it would pick up dust, but we never found it to be a problem. Like the rubber coating on the lid, the wrist support also has no problem with smudges or fingerprints. That's a welcome change considering so many computers now ship with microfiber cloths to wipe away evidence of their use.
The trackpad is bordered by a customizable light, and there's an additional light-up strip below the screen. A black and red honeycomb surface covers up the Y900's incredibly loud speakers, and on the right is the power button. Even the power button is brushed metal with the same red accents as the rest of the computer.
And for other neat feature, the Lenovo ideapad Y900 has a built in turbo switch for one press overclocking. The feature wraps into Lenovo's Nerve Center software, which controls everything from component clock speeds to the customizable lighting.
A 17-inch screen looks down from high on the entire interior, and even though it lacks the ultra-high resolution of the HP Omen 17 or the Asus Predator 17 X (which has an optional 4K display), the Y900 has a top-rate 1080p G-Sync enabled screen that's crisp, bright, and colorful.
The Y900, being a 17-inch laptop, suffers from the same problem as every other 17-inch laptop: it's enormous. Weighing in at just over 10 pounds, it's a monster on par with the heft of the Predator 17 X.
The 230-watt power brick is nearly identical to the one powering the Omen 17, so there's another extra few pounds to lug around. All that weight stuffed into a laptop bag means you need to have a lot of faith in the strength of the straps.
Our favorite keyboard
We've gushed about every part of the design of the Y900 and we haven't even gotten to our favorite part: the keyboard. We can honestly say this is our favorite keyboard we have ever used on a laptop, ever.
The Y900 sports a customizable, backlit, mechanical keyboard that just feels oh-so-right. Each key is an absolute joy to press, and they feel responsive and sturdy. No one key feels any less incredible than the other. It's like they hired an engineer to balance the responsiveness of every individual key to make them all give back that same satisfying click regardless of size or location. The spacebar is as much of a joy to press as the 'alt' key.
Look, we know it sounds silly, but we’re really going to have a hard time going back to our trusty, 5-year old Razer keyboard on PC. Or the keyboard on the Macbook Air. Or really any other keyboard at all.
To top off just how wonderful the chiclet-style keyboard feels, it looks incredible too. The WASD keys can be swapped out with a set of red keys, making them stand out from the of the rest, and keyboard lighting can be customized to your heart's content. Swapping between programmed lighting schemes is as easy as holding Fn and giving that snappy spacebar a smack.
We don't want to go back. We don't know if we can.
Just to the left of the wonderful keyboard is a momentary slider switch that turns overclocking on or off. It has a similarly satisfying feel to it, making it fit in perfectly with the rest of the keyboard. The only thing it's missing is a sound effect, maybe of a car revving up or some sort of jet-engine noise.
Performance wise, the Y900 holds it own, but against the Predator 17 X and especially head to head with the Omen 17, it comes in on the low-end of things. Relatively, that is, because it's still a powerful machine.
An Intel Core i7-6820HK processor and GeForce 980M graphics card do the heavy graphical lifting, but the Predator's desktop-grade 980 has a slight edge. Neither of them hold a candle to the absolutely beastly GTX 1070 crammed into the Omen 17.
The $2,499 or £1,999 (about AU$3,340) Y900 is a great 1080p machine, but the Omen is probably a better choice if you're looking for a desktop replacement VR machine. Your best bet with Oculus or Vive is to just throw as much computer as possible at it, and while the Y900 can handle both on paper, why risk it when you can have a desktop GPU in either of the other machines?
Especially considering the $1,799 (£1,599, AU$3,699)price on the Omen 17, which is a competent 4K computer, is more than $500 lower than the price on the Y900.
The total package is what brings the Y900 neck-and-neck with the more powerful Omen. Attractive and solid, the Y900 is almost the exact opposite of the Omen in that regard.
The Omen feels like a budget laptop, with creaky lid hinges and a plastic build. The Y900 is phenomenal in design through and through. The Predator is leaps and bounds ahead of the Omen when it comes to design, but it still falls short of the Y900.
Performance
The Y900 is no slouch when it comes to 1080p gaming. Grand Theft Auto 5 looks and runs great, with solid framerates at its suggested settings. Still, for $2,500, suggested settings are kind of a let down. Part of the fun of an audacious gaming rig is cranking everything up to 11 and melting off the faces of your friends.
One pleasant surprise while using the Y900 was how cool it stays. Even with the trillions of math equations it makes every second, it never felt hot on our lap. Our Macbook Air gets too hot to the touch. Lenovo's cooling system is impressive, even if the fan noise is hitting the ceiling of acceptable levels.
Get loud
We mentioned the cooling fans were a little on the loud side, but they're easily drowned out by the room-rattling speakers hiding beneath the futuristic black and red honeycomb.
They are loud – crazy loud. So loud they hurt our ears at full volume. We kept the volume on or around 50% in our time with the Y900, because anything more was too much for us.
The speakers also sound really nice, but at 100% volume there is some real clear distortion. It wasn't really an issue for us since, as we mentioned before, 100% is just way too loud for our sensitive disposition.
We can definitely see it coming in handy at someplace like PAX. The booming sound would help you rise above the cacophony of the bring-your-own-PC area.
One more thing we really liked about the Y900 performance was just how quickly it starts up. It's increasingly uncommon to find the operating system living on a hard drive, and the SSD in the Y900 is crazy fast. Start up seems almost instantaneous.
The 256GB SSD in the model tested filled up fast, but there is a 1TB 5400rpm hard drive for spill over. For games that run best on an SSD, though, you might want to spring for a bigger model. Installing The Division, Grand Theft Auto V, and our benchmarking tools on the SSD almost maxed it out.
We liked
Most gaming laptops are guilty of having an overbearing design that screams #gamerz, but the Lenovo Ideapad Y900 is sophisticated and timeless. What’s more it’s solidly built, with smart material choices throughout and hands down one of the best keyboards we’ve ever used – even compared to the multitude of mechanical desktop keyboards we’ve tested.
We disliked
While we feel the Y900’s design can stand the test of time, we can’t say the same for its components. Equipped with a last generation mobile graphics, its performance pales in comparison to current Pascal-powered machines.
For now it can run modern games with playable frame rates at high to ultra settings, but only just so. We imagine the graphical needs of future titles will quickly outpace the capabilities of the Y900 without an internal refresh.
Final verdict
High-end gaming laptops are about showing off as much as they are about getting the most performance from games. The Y900 is no exception, but it trades a little bit of its power for design decisions that are well worth it. That's not to say it isn't a powerful machine, because it definitely is.
However, much of the Y900's price tag is due to its flat-out attractiveness. It's a beautiful, quality laptop that feels like it will last years and years. This is the sort of computer that will survive long after obsolescence, and in the year 2022 will become the main Minecraft machine of some lucky kid.
The keyboard and fit and finish of the Y900 put it head and shoulders above the Omen 17's cheap feeling plastic, and the quality of the build is so good that it's hard to say which is the better machine. Pure power, the Omen wins hands down. Aesthetically, we think it looks better than the Predator 17 X, but that's a personal decision. It comes down to what you hold most dear.
If you want a relatively powerful computer that looks amazing and feels like it's going to last a hundred years, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y900 is a great choice. Solid construction, cranking speakers, aggressive design and the most satisfying keyboard we've ever tested makes the Y900 a great choice for anyone looking for a gaming laptop that offers more than just big frame rate numbers.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/24GLTkv
Nexus is dead. Pixel is king. Say hello to the Google Pixel, a handset ushering in a new era of the search giant's smartphone range.
It arrives alongside the larger (and even more expensive) Google Pixel XL, as the firm doubles up on devices for another year.
The Pixel takes over from 2015's Nexus 5X as the smaller offering in Google's lineup. The thing is though, it hasn't inherited its predecessor's price point, with the new Pixel sporting a decidedly more premium tag.
Watch our video review of the Google Pixel
Google Pixel price and release date
Available now
32GB - $649 (£599, AU$1,079)
128GB - $749 (£699, AU$1,229)
The Pixel comes in two variants, 32GB and 128GB, with the smaller storage option costing you a lofty $649 (£599, AU$1,079). Meanwhile the Google Pixel price for the 128GB model is a staggering $749 (£699, AU$1,229), pitching it against the likes of the iPhone 7, Huawei P9, HTC 10 and Samsung Galaxy S7.
In the US it's exclusively available with Verizon on contract for $27.08 a month if you don't want to pay full price, and it'll get all the day one updates, too.
Meanwhile, in the UK it's EE who's bagged the exclusive Pixel deal with £9.99 up front and £50.99 per month giving you 10GB of data plus unlimited calls and texts.
Don't worry; the unlocked Google Pixel is also being sold on the Google Store for those of you who don't want to be tied to a contract or carrier.
Previous Nexus devices had a leg-up over the competition with their slightly lower price tag, which helped users overlook a couple of shortcomings; but in 2016, with the new Pixel brand and a brave new price point, there's nowhere to hide.
A sub-par camera, or patchy battery, for example won't be easy to forgive as there's no "oh, but it only costs XXX" - Google needs to ensure the Pixel sings every note.
If you've owned a Google-brand smartphone in the past you'll appreciate the no-nonsense stock Google interface – and you'll be glad to know it's business as usual on the Pixel when it comes to the Android Nougat operating system.
For those who are new to Google's handsets, things may be less clear. While HTC is the firm that has actually built the device, the search giant has made all the calls on what goes into the Pixel, and how it operates.
Short of time? Check out our Google Pixel review video
These handsets are aimed to showcase the best of Google and Android. They pack new features not seen before on the platform (Google Assistant and a ‘best-in-class’ camera in the Pixel's case), and you'll be first in line for an update when a new version of Android is launched – usually weeks, if not months ahead of the likes of Samsung, LG, Sony and co.
The Google Pixel sports a first for Google's smaller smartphone – a full glass and metal body – along with a 5-inch full HD display, Snapdragon 821 processor, 4GB of RAM, 12MP rear camera, fingerprint scanner and 8MP front snapper.
On paper at least, then, the Google Pixel looks to be a flagship contender – but can it live up to the hype – and that price tag – in real life?
Assertive Assistant
A smarter, more personal Google in your pocket
Has potential, but power isn’t fully realized yet
Can play games, tell jokes and read you poems
At the beating heart of the new Pixel smartphone is Google Assistant, which the search giant claims gives you a 'personal Google', accessible whenever, wherever.
Google is driving the Assistant angle hard, and is keen for it to not only be the center of your phone, but the center of your life. It’s currently only available on Google’s new Pixel phones – but you can expect to see it become more widely available on Android devices in the future.
How does Google Assistant compare to your former pocket mates?
Assistant is essentially an upgraded Google Now, with better conversational smarts – ask ‘what’s the time in LA?’ and then follow up with ‘what about San Francisco?’ and it’ll know you want the time in that location – and a fleet of new tricks including jokes, poems, facts, games and even funny videos.
As well as the fun stuff you can ask Assistant to do a host of more useful things such as make a list, send a text or check your agenda – which is helpful, but not that much quicker than jumping into the corresponding app itself.
You can use your voice to trigger Assistant at any point by saying 'OK Google' – and this works even when your phone is locked. Sometimes it can take the Pixel a few attempts to pick up your voice, and we found it struggled in noisy environments, and even at home with some music playing.
If you have to say the 'OK Google' command more than once the Assistant instantly becomes frustrating – you start questioning whether it would just be easier to tap your query/request into the Pixel with your fingers.
Asking ‘what can you do’ is a good way to find out what else Assistant can help you with, from finding out how the Packers got on last night (they lost, bad times) to diving into a Geography quiz which highlighted the gaps in our flags knowledge.
Generally, Assistant was able to comprehend our garbled commands, but there were several occasions when it got things wrong, or didn’t register our dulcet tones. It still feels a bit strange talking to your phone – and when you’re made to repeat yourself the novelty starts to wear thin pretty quickly.
There’s no doubting that Assistant has the potential to be a powerful tool; with the same smarts built into Google Home and support for the likes of Chromecast, and your smart lighting and heating systems, we're getting closer to the day when you can pretty much run your home with your voice.
Assistant also learns as you go, and the more you use it the smarter it will get – but that takes time, and patience, and you may find it’s easier to just use your fingers.
We’re still a little way off fully realizing the potential, and for now Assistant is a nice addition to the Pixel, but it’s not a feature many will be holding up as the stand-out reason to buy the phone.
What's in the box? Find out in our Google Pixel unboxing video
Design
Premium, if slightly odd, looks
Rear fingerprint scanner is useful
Metal and glass build makes for a solid smartphone
The Google Pixel design is premium, if slightly odd. There's a metal body, but Google has added a block of glass around the fingerprint scanner and camera on the rear. While this gives the Pixel a unique look, the glass finish does look and feel a little like plastic.
That detracts slightly from the overall appeal of the phone, although the bottom portion of the handset is cool metal – and that's the bit which is in contact with your palm most of the time.
We’d put it below the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S7, iPhone 7 and HTC 10 in terms of looks, but it’s not too far behind, and the metal and glass construction does provide a solid, smart finish. There’s no water resistance though – something the S7 and new iPhone both boast – which is a little disappointing.
It’s more on a par with the larger, cheaper OnePlus 3, which also boasts a premium metal unibody – but with the Pixel being almost twice the price we can’t help feeling Google could have done something even more impressive here.
With its modest 5-inch display the dimensions of the Pixel are a palm-friendly 143.84 x 69.54 x 8.58mm. It’s a little chunkier than its rival flagships, but the depth tapers to 7.31mm at the base, which makes it easier to hold in one hand.
The wedge shape this creates is pretty subtle, but hold the Pixel upside down and you’ll notice the added girth of the top of the phone. This does mean the phone is a little top-heavy, but with its narrow width you can grasp the Pixel securely.
We were able to use the Pixel one-handed without issue, although the placement of the fingerprint scanner on the rear is a little frustrating if you want to quickly unlock when the phone is sitting on a desk. It’s a minor blemish, however, and the scanner is easy to reach and very responsive, with speedy unlock times.
And its usefulness isn't limited to unlocking the phone, as you can also swipe down on the scanner to pull down the notification bar on-screen – this is great for those with smaller hands, who may struggle to stretch a thumb to the top of the display. A swipe in the opposite direction will close the bar.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this gesture on the digit scanner – Huawei has built it into a number of its phones – but it’s certainly useful once you’re accustomed to it, and we heartily welcome it on the Google Pixel. It wasn’t turned on by default though, so you may need to head to Settings > Moves to enable it.
The power/lock key and volume rocker fall nicely under thumb and finger on the right side of the Pixel, while the nanoSIM tray is the only blemish on the left.
There's bad news for expandable storage fans though, as Google continues to shun microSD on its latest phone – you’ll have to make do with the 32GB or 128GB of internal space.
There is a silver lining to that cloud, however, as Google offers all Pixel owners free unlimited cloud storage for their photos and videos – and at their full resolution – which means you don't need to worry about them taking up vital space on your phone.
On the base of the phone the USB-C port is flanked by two grilles, although only one of those is a speaker – it’s not a dual setup, with the other grille hiding the microphone.
You can pick up the Pixel in three colors – Quite Black, Very Silver and Really Blue – with the cheeky names an obvious pop at Apple’s 'Black' and 'Jet Black' iPhone 7 color options.
Really Blue is a limited-edition option, and Google is still to reveal how you'll be able to get hold of it; currently pre-orders on the Google site are for the black and silver models only.
There's also good news for audiophiles: Google has kept the headphone jack on the Pixel. Its placement at the top of the handset isn't our favorite location – but at least it's there.
Display
Bright and colorful – everything looks great on it
Full HD resolution not the best for VR
The Google Pixel screen is a bright, clear full HD offering stretched across five inches. It's pleasant to view and everything looks great, with a Pixel density of 441ppi – in layman's terms that means it’s pin-sharp.
That's thanks to its 5-inch dimensions, with larger full HD screens tending to lose their clarity a little more - but the Pixel manages to hold it together well here.
We’ve been using the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus recently, and moving from Apple’s latest offerings to the Pixel we noticed the improved depth of color generated by the latter's AMOLED display.
Some may find it a little over-saturated, but it does make the screen pop with color for a vivid viewing experience.
A slight mark against the display is the fact that the Pixel is Daydream VR-ready, which means it supports Google's new virtual reality platform. The fact that it supports Daydream isn't the issue – we're excited about that and the Daydream View headset – but the display resolution isn't optimal for VR.
Those who pick up the larger, higher-resolution Pixel XL will get a better Daydream experience, simply because the display can pack more pixels into your eyes for a more immersive view.
It's not a deal-breaker, and it won't result in a terrible experience if you do opt for a Pixel, but there will be a difference between the two phones.
You also have to consider that the Galaxy S7 and HTC 10 are a touch cheaper than the Pixel, and both pack a QHD display into a similar-sized frame, so it feels like we’ve been short-changed slightly with the Pixel.
The Google Pixel is lovely to use. It’s fast, intuitive and can handle anything you throw at it.
That's down to the powerful Snapdragon 821 processor and 4GB of RAM, providing more power than you'll probably ever need from your smartphone, but also the slick animations Google has implemented in the software to ensure everything flows before your very eyes.
The Pixel runs the very latest software from Google – Android 7.1 Nougat to be exact – and you get it exactly how the search giant wants it to be seen.
That’s the big plus point for Google, and for many fans of Android, as producing its own-brand devices mean there’s no manufacturer trying to put its own stamp on the operating system.
So you get a clean, fuss-free interface – and with the latest Android update Google has completely removed the traditional app drawer. Instead you get five app icons in the tray at the bottom of the screen (rather than four flanking a central app drawer button), with access to all your apps just a swipe-up away.
This takes a little getting used to, and during our first couple of days with the Pixel we were constantly hitting the Gmail app (where the traditional app drawer icon was); but once the muscle memory has been reprogrammed the swipe-up action feels natural – and, more importantly, faster.
Whether it actually is faster or not is hard to tell, but the Pixel certainly feels fast.
Something else Google has tweaked are the app icons, with its own applications sporting round images, while others you download from the Play Store will take the shape of their icon – WhatsApp is a speech bubble for example, while the NFL and Premier League apps keep the square look.
Long-press on an app icon and you may find the Pixel pops up a few quick links for you. It’s a similar feature to 3D Touch on the newer iPhone models, but where those phones use a pressure-sensitive display, the Pixel’s pop-ups are triggered just by holding on the icon a little longer.
Performing this action on Maps, for example, can jump you straight into navigation for your saved locations (work or home, for example), while for the camera app it brings up video and selfie shortcuts.
We didn’t find ourselves using these too much, but they are handy every now and then.
Music, movies and gaming
Great screen for movies and gaming
Built-in speaker not great, but there is a headphone jack
With a heap of power under the hood and a decent display, the Google Pixel is nicely set up for all your music, movies and gaming requirements.
Play Music is the place for music playback (unless you head to the Play Store and download something like Spotify), and as well as accessing any tracks you've put on the Pixel from your personal collection, it also gives you access to Google’s own pay-monthly streaming service.
If you fancy owning your music you can also nip to the Play Store, which has an extensive catalog of albums and singles available for purchase and download.
As we’ve mentioned earlier in this review the Google Pixel has a single speaker on its base, and this kicks out a reasonable volume. Clarity is passable, but it’s not going to wow people at a house party, and you’ll want to plug it into some speakers if you want to get people on the dance floor.
At least that’s easy to do, thanks to the 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the phone – Google hasn’t followed in Motorola’s and Apple’s footsteps and ditched it just yet. Music playback via a pair of headphones is more than good enough.
The speaker does hold its own when you want to listen to music in quieter environments, or show your buddy the latest YouTube craze. There's no distortion and it won't offend your ear, but as with all phones you're not going to get booming bass.
Fire up a movie or TV show and the 5-inch AMOLED display brings the action to life with vivid colors and smooth playback.
Your own videos will be found in the Google Photos app, while any purchases or rentals from the Play Store are stored in Play Movies.
The Pixel is comfortable to hold for extended periods of viewing, and it doesn’t get too warm during movie marathons or intensive gaming sessions.
Speaking of gaming, this is another area where the Pixel excels, munching through any game you chuck at it. The graphically-intensive Real Racing 3, for example, runs fluidly on the Pixel, with swift load times across the board.
Performance and benchmarks
Super-slick performance all round
App multi-tasking handled with ease
You’ll already have a good idea of just how strong the Google Pixel's performance is, and it’s no surprise that it scored well in our benchmark test.
We ran Geekbench 4 on the Pixel, and it averaged a multi-core score of 4,029. That pretty much matches the equally powered Pixel XL, which clocked an average of 4,077 in the same test.
While those are strong figures it still puts the Pixel behind the iPhone 7 (5,311) and Galaxy S7 (6,500) – although in day-to-day use you’re unlikely to notice.
The Pixel also copes well when you have multiple apps open in the background, and it’s quick and easy to skip between them. A double tap of the multi-tasking button (that’s the square icon in the nav bar) will see you instantly return to the previous app you were viewing.
Here's how the Google Pixel did in our high-intensity phone speed test
It all makes for an effortless user experience – and it’s that simplicity and ease of use that Google has improved hugely in the most recent Android updates.
Battery life
A day’s use with moderate to light usage
Regularly required a mid-evening top-up
The Google Pixel battery life is nothing special. If you’re careful with your usage you’ll get a full day out of the phone, but we found that given moderate use a mid-evening charge was required to ensure we made it to bedtime without a flat battery.
The Pixel squeezes in a non-removable 2,770mAh power pack. That's bigger than the battery in the iPhone 7 (1,960mAh), but smaller than those in the Samsung Galaxy S7 (3,000mAh) and HTC 10 (3,000mAh).
That size difference tallies with general performance, as both the Samsung and HTC put in better battery showings than the Pixel, with the new iPhone in a similarly dicey state come the evening.
Watch below to see how the Google Pixel compares to the Pixel XL in terms of battery when browsing websites, watching videos and gaming.
It’s not all bad news though, as the new Pixel boasts fast charging, giving you up to seven hours of usage from a 15-minute blast. That’s certainly handy when you’re about to leave the office and want your phone to survive the Clash Royale onslaught you have planned for your journey home.
You’ll need to make sure you have the charger that comes in the box on you though, as a standard USB-C cable and plug block won’t get you the same rapid recharge action.
We put the fast charging to the test, plugging in when we were down to 13% at around 6pm. Fifteen minutes later the Pixel was up to 27%.
It seems unlikely that an additional 14% of juice would get you anywhere close to seven hours of use – you’d have to turn off Wi-Fi, mobile data, Bluetooth and NFC, while turning the brightness way down and restricting your usage to basic applications.
If you are desperate to get the most juice from your top-up, turn the Pixel off and it’ll charge faster. While it was charging the Pixel quoted us around an hour and 40 minutes to fill the battery to 100%.
The phone achieved a surprising result in our battery video test though. We played a 90-minute full HD video on the Pixel, with screen brightness whacked up to max and the phone connected to Wi-Fi and syncing multiple accounts in the background.
When the 90 minutes were up the Pixel had lost just 15%, which is a very respectable result. It’s a result which also puts its bigger brother, the Pixel XL, to shame – although while that phone has a bigger battery it also has a larger, higher-resolution display.
That puts the Pixel on a level with the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and Moto Z Force – which is certainly esteemed company. It’s just a shame it doesn’t perform as well as those phones throughout a whole day.
The Pixel just about gets away with its battery life, and if you keep your gaming and music streaming to short blasts you can expect to see almost a full day from a single charge. If you’re a heavier user though, you will need to keep a charger with you.
Camera
A very, very good snapper, but it doesn’t wow
Lens Blur is inconsistent, while low-light shots are okay
The 12.3MP rear camera on the Google Pixel is another big talking point for the search giant, which holds the title of the highest-rated camera ever on DxO – an industry standard for camera and lens image quality measurements and ratings. That’s quite the claim to fame.
The Pixel scored 89 overall in the DxO tests, putting it above all its flagship competition. The excellent Galaxy S7 Edge managed 88, as did the HTC 10 and Sony Xperia X Performance, while iPhone 7 came in a little lower at 86.
That’s all well and good, and it gives Google a strong marketing line, although we've found that DxO ratings don't always translate into excellent camera performance day-to-day.
Things start well for the Pixel, with the straightforward camera app making it easy to snap a quick picture. Shutter speeds are fast in good light, and the autofocus generally does a good job of getting your subject in focus – we found that a fast-moving kitten, however, did appear blurred in some shots.
The Pixel doesn’t bombard you with options in the camera app. There are toggles for HDR+, the timer, grid lines, flash and basic white balance settings (cloudy, sunny, fluorescent and tungsten) in the top corner, while a slide-out menu on the left provides a few more tools.
Slow Motion capture, Panorama and Photo Sphere modes are joined by Lens Blur, which is designed to create the blurred bokeh background effect you get with DSLR and compact system cameras, and the top-end camera on the iPhone 7 Plus – although with its small single lens the Pixel has to do this digitally, with mixed results.
Dip into the settings and you’ll find an equally humble offering, with resolution selectors for the front and rear cameras pretty much the only point of note.
You can adjust the brightness of your shots though – just place a finger on the screen and slide it up or down.
The HDR+ (High Dynamic Range Plus) mode is set to 'auto' by default, and we found that most of the time that was the best setting. HDR+ brightens up areas in shadow, reduces blurring and helps out in low-light scenarios.
We found it worked best at dawn and dusk, when the light isn’t at its most plentiful but total darkness isn’t hampering the camera. Snapping a shot with HDR+ working its magic at these times of day resulted in images looking brighter, but still well detailed.
Moving into the night and the Pixel struggled a little, with noticeable blurring and noise in our snaps. It’s certainly not as impressive as the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge in this scenario.
The Lens Blur mode isn’t anything new, and we saw the likes of HTC, Sony and Samsung battle it out a few years ago with this background defocus effect. On the Pixel the digital enhancement works okay, but it’s not a patch on a DSLR or a dual-lens smartphone setup like that on the HTC One M8 or iPhone 7 Plus.
We found the Pixel struggled to separate foreground and background elements well enough, resulting in blur bleed between subjects.
Day-to-day shots are very, very good – don’t get us wrong –- but the Pixel’s camera doesn’t tend to wow you. You’re unlikely to be disappointed with the shots you take on this phone, but they don’t have the same impact or color palette as those from some rival flagships.
Round the front, the 8MP selfie camera is serviceable, and can be accessed by twisting the Pixel twice in your hand – repeating the motion returns to you to rear camera, and it makes one-handed operation easier.
Pictures are bright and clear, although we did find that our selfies lacked clarity at times. There’s no beauty mode to speak of, but if anything we’re thankful for that, as those can often be overbearing.
Camera samples gallery
The Google Pixel is a solid smartphone, but it takes a different direction to previous Nexus handsets. Its loftier price point means it’s under real pressure to perform in all aspects.
It's a phone we wanted to love, and we're certainly smitten.
The design will divide people, the battery could be better, and the price will be a stumbling block for some, but the Pixel is a fast, slick, powerful smartphone which puts the best of Google in your palm.
The clean Android interface is a joy to use, the camera is strong, and the Pixel will happily gobble up any app you throw at it.
The interfaces overlaid by the likes of Samsung, HTC, LG and Huawei have improved significantly over the last few years, but stock Android still feels cleaner, appears to be faster and more efficient and that makes the Pixel great to use.
Add in the fact that you’ll be first in line for future Android software upgrades, and Google has nailed many of the key points with the Pixel.
Who's it for?
The Google Pixel isn’t like its Nexus-named predecessors. This isn’t a phone looking to give you flagship specs for a cut-down price – it's a flagship phone, and it has a flagship price tag.
Google’s own line of smartphones are no longer aimed at those looking for a deal. We saw evidence of the switch with the Nexus 6P, which carried a larger price tag, and the search giant’s shift to battling with the big boys is now complete.
The Google Pixel is for the tech-savvy and cash-rich who want to feel the latest tech in their pocket without the overbearing presence of the 5.5-inch Pixel XL.
It offers something different to the HTC 10, Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 which are more feature-led, with the Pixel instead designed to deliver a top-notch user experience and all the right tools in all the right places – which it does.
Should I buy it?
The Google Pixel is an excellent flagship phone. It combines a heap of power and a slick interface with a solid camera and premium design – a combo which will have almost universal appeal.
It doesn’t quite hit the high marks of the Galaxy S7 though, with the Pixel’s battery performance putting it below a number of flagship rivals, but as long as you’ve got a charging cable to hand you won’t be disappointed.
You are paying top dollar for the Google Pixel, and at this price point the competition is fierce. It’s not the best phone around – that honor stays with the Galaxy S7 Edge (and S7) for now – but the Pixel offers up something a little different for Android thanks to its simplicity.
The Pixel is a breath of fresh Android air in a world of over-complication, and you'll feel rejuvenated using it.
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