Google Pixel 11 Pro XL Review

Design

• Excellent build quality
• A little heavy
• HiLight feature is woefully underbaked

The casual observer will find it hard to differentiate the 11 Pro XL from the 10 Pro XL or 9 Pro XL, but that’s no bad thing. I still like Google’s design here, which still feels playful and won’t rock on a table thanks to the camera bar with three lenses that spans the back of the device.

Next to that is the flash, which is also where Google stores HiLight, a new feature that is woefully underused. There is no longer a temperature sensor, seen on the Pro Pixels since the Pixel 8 Pro, with the flash now doubling as a multicoloured indicator. The problem is, it only lights up when the phone is face down and if Gemini is being used or if you get a call from a pre-selected contact.

Use Gemini, and the flash swirls in colours to indicate it’s on. Contacts can be assigned one of five colours in the Contacts app to light up when they’re calling.

It’s indicative of the lack of innovation in modern smartphones that this is a headline new feature for this phone. At launch, you can’t make the light do anything else, and it won’t even light up if a selected contact texts or WhatsApp you – it’s calls only.

I sometimes put my phone face down if it’s in a case, but without a case I’d worry the screen would get scratched. Google says other uses are coming, but for now, this is a not very useful gimmick that recalls the more useful LED notification lights BlackBerry phones had two decades ago. Great!

Elsewhere, build quality is top tier, matching Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro for fit and finish. My Olive review sample is a lovely shade of green but I’m less keen on the shiny metallic side rails that pick up finger grease immediately. There’s a black model available with matte sides, but only on that model. The other canyon (salmon) and fog (silver) models also have shiny rails. There’s the expected IP68 dust and water resistance so it should survive an accidental dunking.

Beware if you don’t like big phones, as the Pixel 11 Pro XL is a whopper. It’s a phone that hurt my pinkie finger that necessarily had to tuck under its 226g weight to be used one-handed. That said, it’s smaller in all dimensions than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and narrower than the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

If I were buying, I’d go for the cheaper and more manageable Pixel 11 Pro, which is smaller and has identical specs save for screen and battery size.

Screen

• Large 6.8-inch screen
• Brightest Pixel yet at 3,600 nits peak
• Gorilla Glass Victus 2 with anti-scratch coating

The large 6.8-inch OLED display on the Pixel 11 Pro XL is excellent, with a pin-sharp 1344 x 2992 resolution. With a peak brightness of 3,600 nits it really pops, and is truly a top-tier panel. 

This is very much a two-handed phone though, and I struggled to use the XL in day-to-day life when trying to even scroll with one hand. Reaching the top with a thumb is impossible, and another reason to consider the smaller Pixel 11 Pro with its 6.3-inch display.

You get a 120Hz refresh rate that can pare right down to 1Hz for energy efficiency and the always-on display setting, while HDR support is the HDR10+ standard. The screen is Gorilla Glass Victus 2, the same as the Pixel 10 Pro XL, but Google says it is “twice as scratch resistant”. 

Opting for the XL model is a good idea if you want to increase text size for easier legibility, or if you watch a lot of video on your phone. 

Cameras

• Very capable triple lens setup with 120x Pro Zoom
• Upgraded main and telephoto sensors
• Camera Looks a solid new addition

Pixel phones are known for their capable cameras, and the 11 Pro XL continues the good work. However in 2026, phone photography relies on a heavy dollop of computational processing and, in Google’s case, AI.

The phone gets an upgraded 50MP main and 48MP 5x telephoto over the 10 Pro series, and retains the same 48MP ultrawide lens. I have been very pleased with images from the main lens, with the default settings kicking out some wonderful images that are crisp and in focus.

The Pixel is particularly good at capturing subjects that are moving, such as babies and pets. Samsung phones are quite bad at this, so if you’re shopping for an Android phone with a reliable point and shoot camera, the 11 Pro XL is my pick over any Galaxy S26 model.

Having said that, I’ve tested the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, Oppo Find X9 Ultra and Vivo X300 Ultra and all three of those Chinese devices have overall superior camera systems to the Pixel. If you want the best camera phone, go for one of them. They all have larger sensors that can take more accomplished shots, and have better quality telephoto zoom lenses with more of a filmic quality to photos.

Instead of leaning on hardware advances, Google is using software, and Gemini AI, to wring the best out of its Pixel cameras. After taking a shot, the camera app says “processing” as it applies Google’s imaging algorithms to enhance image quality. Shots have a processed tinge with boosted contrast, and are less true to life in colour than iPhone images.

If this isn’t your cup of tea, the Pixel 11 series comes with Camera Looks, new alternative shooting modes that change the make up of how your images look, without applying the default ‘Original’ processing. The other options are called Editorial, Velvet, Classic, Digi, Black Tie and Minimal. Each can be tweaked to your liking, and are more manual in that they don’t all adjust things such as overexposed lighting like the default mode does.

I enjoyed playing around with it, but the photos I was best pleased with were in the Original mode, with the Pixel’s signature boosted contrast. The Camera Looks make you work harder to get a great image, just like a DSLR, and that’s not what most people want from their phone cameras. But it’s great to see Google giving Pixel buyers the option.

While the telephoto lens is 5x optical, Google offers zoom at up to a zany 120x digitally. This Pro Zoom tool uses Gemini to fill in (read: make up) details that the hardware can’t capture. I do not like it! It’s a cynical feature that is trying hard to be useful when it simply isn’t needed.

Stick within the 5x or even 10x ranges, and the Pixel is capable of producing wonderful shots. Google has also improved the speed of its Night Sight mode, with great results.

The ultrawide camera is good in a pinch to capture more of a scene, but as on all phones I test, it remains my least used lens due to the odd field of view and minor distortion at the edge of images.

A less impressive new addition is called Magic Capture. It lets you take a video of a scene, and then AI will pick out some frames it thinks will make good images and then select them for you. The idea is you can just point your camera at the stuff, and AI will do the rest.

It’s not very good. It didn’t pick the frames I would have liked, and results were blurrier on moving objects than regular stills from the main camera.

Similarly I was a little disappointed with the video quality from the phone. At its default Full HD setting colours appear washed out and a little grey, and zooming between lenses is a bit jerky. It’s good in a pinch for casual phone videos and uploading to social media, but Google is lagging far behind the iPhone here, and the video results are not befitting of a phone with ‘Pro’ in the product name.

You can also shoot in 4K or 8K, though the Pixel screen is not 4K resolution, so there’s not much point unless you’re exporting to watch on a compatible display.

The selfie shooter is a very good 42MP sensor equipped with autofocus.

Performance

• Tensor G6 can’t cope with AAA mobile games
• 12GB RAM on base model is a downgrade
• Normal use is exemplary

Google is using its own Tensor G6 chipset in the Pixel 11 Pro XL, and for my use it is more than enough power. Found in every Pixel 11 phone, the processor flies in daily use, and I saw no jitter or slow down zipping between apps or scrolling through feeds, files and photos.

I tested the 16GB RAM model with 512GB storage, but the base £1279/$1299 256GB model has only 12GB RAM – that’s less than the cheaper-at-launch Pixel 10 Pro XL that had 256GB and 16GB RAM. This price rise and RAM downgrade is due to to the AI boom raising the price of RAM for phone makers. Ironically, Google is suffering in Pixel pricing while contributing to the RAM crisis by pushing Gemini on its users.

The bottom line is this expensive phone is not for mobile gamers, and falls far short of the performance you might expect for the price. The Galaxy S26 Ultra can run any mobile game very well with its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and 12GB RAM as standard.

I personally do not care about this as I don’t play games on my phone, but it’s irritating to know this £1399/$1419 device can’t run this very popular game that the best mid-range phones half the price with Qualcomm or MediaTek chipsets can usually manage.

Instead, Google is gearing the G6 to perform well for AI functionality, and it ticks that box nicely. Along with a new image signal processor and claimed 50% boost in the Tensor processing unit that churns through photo processing faster than older Pixels.

Asking Gemini questions gets quick responses, and the AI smarts baked into Google’s version of Android feel nicely integrated rather than bolted on, as similar tools can do with competing phones. The Pixel rarely got too hot in my usage, apart from when it was on a wireless charger, though this is not unusual for any phone.

Benchmark tests back up this GPU deficiency. The phone scored 7912 on Geekbench 6’s GPU test  compared to the S26 Ultra’s score of 24,611. That’s not a typo – nearly 17,000 points more than the Pixel. It’s a woefully low score that shows just how little mind Google is paying to graphics performance on the Tensor G6 in favour of on-device AI performance.

Elsewhere, the phone ticks all connectivity boxes with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and though it’s hard to test, Google has said the phone uses a new modem, which may improve cellular signal over older Pixels. As you’d expect there is also NFC for mobile payments 

Software & AI

• Gemini, everywhere
• Seven years of software updates to 2033
• UK misses out on cool features at launch

The Pixel 11 Pro XL is built to run Google’s Gemini AI suite well, and in this it succeeds. But the headline Gemini Intelligence features introduced at launch are mostly only available in the US, so I wasn’t able to test them here in the UK. This includes Proactive Assistance, a tool that takes in all the information on your screen at any given time and pushes you personalised and timely notifications.

This includes information showing up in the home screen At a Glance widget, messaging apps, the phone app and more. Sorry to say I have no idea if it works!

Thankfully a neat Android 17 feature works excellently on the phone. It’s called Rambler, and it’s an advanced form of voice-to-text tech. You press the mic button in a chat app such as Messages or WhatsApp, and the AI will listen to what you want to say but will ignore your pauses, ums and ahs, and can even correct previously stated information if you tell it to.

You can, as the name implies, ramble – and Google can successfully make sense of it all in sentences you can review before hitting send on. It’s rare I’m genuinely impressed by an AI feature on a phone, but Rambler is excellent. The best news is it should be coming to more phones and is not a Pixel exclusive.

I mostly ignore the AI Google has put on this phone, and I am pleased that it’s shoved in my face less than I thought it might be. You often have to go looking for it – which may not always be the case – but it’s good that you can run this Pixel as simply as you wish, if Gemini is not your cup of tea. 

I like Google’s take on Android. It’s playful, with whimsical widgets and icon options that take themselves less seriously than the austere One UI of Samsung or Xiaomi’s HyperOS that tries to look exactly like iOS.

With seven years of promised Android and security updates, this pricey Pixel will at least be in it for the long haul. 

Battery Life

• 5,115mAh cell can nearly eke out two days of use
• 45W wired and 25W wireless charging
• Pixelsnap magnets are great

The story of the Pixel 11 Pro XL’s battery life is much like the quality of its cameras. It is very good, but is roundly beaten by the best Android phones. 

The Pixel’s 5115mAh battery is actually a touch smaller than the 5200mAh cell of the 10 Pro XL, but I found longevity to be excellent. Even at the end of a heavy day of use I’d have at least 30 or 40% left in the tank. That means this isn’t quite a two day phone with my usage, but it will certainly last if you take it off the charger at 7am on 100% and party into the wee hours of the next morning. This is in line with Google’s promise of more than 30 hours of juice on a charge.

The OnePlus 15 is the only phone I’ve ever used that can last for three days with moderate use. That’s partly down to its use of silicon-carbon tech in its battery, which Google has not yet adopted. The lithium-ion cell in the Pixel here is a good one, but this is not the longest lasting phone out there.

Google also promises the XL will charge up to 75% in 30 minutes, but it doesn’t provide a charger in the box. You’ll only achieve these speeds if you use a 45W charging brick, an accessory Google charges £29.99/$29.99 for. There is at least a USB-C cable included.

You can also manually enable Extreme Charging when you plug a compatible charger in, which boosts to the maximum 45W speeds. In my tests, I hit 37% in 30 minutes with a Belkin 45W charger, which is far less than Google’s claim.

The phone also charges at up to 25W speeds wirelessly thanks to the latest Qi 2.2 standard. The Pixel, like the 10 series, also includes Pixelsnap, Google’s magnetic charging ring built into the back of the phone. This means it’ll snap onto wireless chargers just like iPhones do with their MagSafe magnets.

It’s a hugely convenient addition, and the Pixel 11 Pro XL remains one of the only Android phones on the market to offer it – Samsung still hasn’t joined the party.

Should you buy it?