Google Pixel 11 Pro Review: Is This THE Phone For Content Creators?
The Pixel 11 Pro comes with a few creator tricks up its sleeve.
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The Google Pixel 11 Series consists of four phones, one of them being the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. Yet despite the obvious star power of its foldable sibling, one phone stands out for what it offers: the Pixel 11 Pro.
Available in Canyon, Olive, Fog, and Obsidian, the Pixel 11 Pro comes with a price tag of RM4,999 for the 256GB model, while the 512GB and 1TB models cost RM5,599 and RM6,799, respectively.
I got a chance to review the phone in the Olive variant, and my opinion of it can be summed up in seven words: this is a phone for content creators.
From the get-go, the phone looks and feels classy
While the main highlight of the Pixel 11 Series' colourways is the charming Canyon (check out our video of all the phones and their colours), the Olive holds its own for its premium-but-not-too-loud look, complete with a shiny silver rim that's too nice to hide behind a phone case.
Though if you find yourself in need of one, Pixel offers a phone case in Olive as well.
Of course, the phone has that classic Pixel bump, though it's now been redesigned with an edge-to-edge glass all along the camera bar — a small but very welcome change compared to its predecessors. As someone who verily dislikes huge camera bumps, this bar was surprisingly tolerable. I wager it's because it warrants more of that shiny silver rim, but I digress.
Similar to the Pixel 10 Pro, the screen itself is a 6.3-inch Super Actua OLED with a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz. However, the Pixel 11 Pro brings an increased peak brightness of 3,600 nits, and its display coating is twice as scratch resistant as its predecessor.
For media consumption and gaming, the screen is bright, the colours rich, and its overall performance is adequate for everyday needs.
Encased in Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 with an aluminium frame and an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, the phone feels sturdy enough that I just forgo the phone case altogether.
The biggest upgrade is its processor, the Tensor G6, now paired with a Titan M3 security coprocessor
All the phones in the Pixel 11 Series come equipped with the Tensor G6, and it ensures a smooth performance while handling the array of Gemini-related features the phones pack.
The upgraded chip is 50% more powerful than the Pixel 10 Series in terms of Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). This is mainly to accommodate both on-device Gemini experiences and computational photography capabilities (a 120x Pro zoom, for example).
Aside from the usual features you'd get with Gemini, the Pixel 11 Pro offers Proactive Assistance, which provides notifications and actionable buttons across selected apps with the help of Gemini Intelligence, and Rambler, which detects and filters out filler words in real-time for voice-to-text inputs.
Considering the processor-intensive capabilities of the phone, this 4,850mAh battery could still last slightly under 14 hours of usage before needing a charge. If you're a heavy Gemini user, the battery life will likely be shorter, but at the end of the day, this phone is built to accommodate such a lifestyle.
And now, the HiLight
Only available on the Pro units (so, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold), the HiLight emits a small glow of light to notify you that a favourite contact has called you via the Phone app or WhatsApp while your phone is face down. You can even assign different colours to different people.
While you're interacting with Gemini, the HiLight will also pulse to show that Gemini is thinking or responding to your queries. The point of this feature is to give you quick indicators of activity right on your camera bump without being too distracting.
Now that we're talking about camera bumps, let's talk camera specs
We're looking at a triple rear camera system with a 50MP main, a 48MP ultrawide, and an improved 48MP telephoto lens with a larger sensor and Pixel's longest zoom of 120x. On the front, there's a 42MP front camera.
Here's what I managed to take with the phone:
The 120x zoom focused on the leaves at the top of the brown pole.
Image via Anne Nunis / SAYS
A new feature worth mentioning for the camera here is Magic Capture. Once toggled, it captures both video and photos simultaneously, allowing you to simply film as usual without worrying about capturing "that moment".
Once you've filmed something, Magic Capture analyses about 500 frames of the video and picks out the best moments, which can then be saved in high resolution. It can also apply light edits to these photos – like auto-cropping, unblurring, and straightening – provided you have enabled the permissions for this.
Coming back to the "this phone is meant for content creators" claim, a big factor of this statement is because of the Creator Suite
To access it, click into the settings of your Camera app and toggle each feature under the Creator tab. The best of the lot is the dynamic teleprompter, which automatically scrolls to match the pace of your delivery as you film.
And if you're posting on social media, there's also an on-screen grid to help you frame your shot while being mindful of social media layouts.
Beyond filming, the Creator Suite saves your clips into their own designated folders, then trims and reorders them in Storyboard to help you get a first rough cut of your video. If you're someone who films a lot, the Creator Suite helps immensely, and the teleprompter being an in-built feature saves a lot of hassle of either memorising your scripts or relying on a third-party app.
You can check out how the Creator Suite works here:
After saying all that, the Google Pixel 11 Pro is a great phone to have if you're a fellow creative
Of course, with all of its other features and it being a Pixel phone, you can still be a normal person going about your day with it as your daily phone; I know people who made the swap to Pixel and never looked back.
But given the in-built creator tools like Creator Suite and Magic Capture, if you're not utilising the camera's full potential, you're missing out on a lot of what the phone has to offer.
If you're someone whose day-to-day life involves Gemini? Even better.
At the RM4,999 to RM6,799 price point, it's still a big investment. But if you see yourself using all its features beyond a typical smartphone, the Pixel 11 Pro could just be your new best friend.
