 I've been daily driving the Pixel 4 XL for a little over a week now, and I have got some thoughts. You know I never thought I'd miss the display notch. This forehead is more of a five head. Wow, my voice sounds really weird. A front-facing radar might be the biggest phone feature I never knew I needed. I just wish it worked a lot more consistently. This can't be my voice. This doesn't sound right. This video is brought to you by Private Internet Access. Looking for an affordable and reliable VPN, Private Internet Access encrypts your internet traffic and uses a safe, protected IP. It also works on both your computer and smartphones. Check it out today at the link in the video description. Ah! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Apple, I hope you're taking notes, because this is how you refresh a product every year without losing track of your unique design language. Gone are the two-tone back, the large chin bar, and the rear fingerprint sensor, and yet somehow the off-colored lock button, smooth finish, and the feel in the hand, including of course the delightful squeeze to summon the assistant, are all unmistakably Pixel. Which isn't to say that every Pixel fan is going to like Google's latest refresh. Let's begin with the good. It's faster than ever with a Snapdragon 855 chipset and 6 gigs of RAM. The OLED screen is brighter and more beautiful than ever, and is variable refresh rate to boot, allowing it to drop down to 60 to save power and jump up to 90 hertz for that buttery smooth scrolling and gaming. And the software continues to be clean and responsive with some amazing features, both now and in the pipeline. Live caption? Blew my mind. The Pixel 4 has the ability to subtitle most of the media that plays through your phone. It's not fully supported for calls or songs yet, unfortunately, and it does take a toll on your battery, as it uses your CPU. That's why it's coming to the Pixel 3 and 3a devices in December, but apparently never to the Pixel 2. But this is a game changer for anyone who wants to watch a quick video clip without disturbing anyone on the bus, or who just generally has a hard time hearing phone speakers. Which I guess transitions me perfectly into the controversial stuff, don't it? In pursuit of slimmer bezels, Google has ditched the dual front-facing speakers that I praised last time around in favor of a single bottom-firing speaker and an amplified earpiece speaker. The sound quality, stereo effect, and overall loudness is still comfortably flagship though, so as far as I'm concerned, no harm, no foul. But I can't say the same for the available storage options. 128 gigs on your top-of-the-line SKU? What kind of game are you playing here, Google? The i3 gigs of RAM is enough phone moved to 256 gigs three years ago. I mean, this might not be obvious to you, but lots of us store things other than our photography portfolio on our phones, and 128 gigs with no microSD expansion is a straight-up deal breaker for a lot of people. That was a rhetorical question before, by the way. It's fairly obvious that the limited storage game here is getting Pixel users to sign up for Google Cloud Storage, because here comes middle finger number two! The fourth generation Pixel no longer includes unlimited storage for full quality images. Big oof. Now let's get to the big one. The Pixel 4 series' technology-loaded forehead is actually slimmer than last generation, but you'd never notice it because of how out of place and last gen it looks compared to, I mean, if I'm speaking honestly, even the iPhone 11 series. So why would they do this? Well, in addition to the usual ambient light sensor, front-facing camera, and earpiece speaker, Google has jammed in a carbon copy of Apple's Face ID sensor array for accurate, fast hands-free unlocking, and a motherfracking radar chip! So it's these last two that power their new flagship's biggest new features, face unlock and motion sense. The idea is that the radar can sense when you're about to pick up your phone, so it can prep the cameras for its face unlock when the device is still on its way to your face. And it works pretty well. Yes, you still do have to have it pointed at your face before it actually unlocks, something that is not true of a fingerprint reader, rear-mounted or otherwise, but once it's there, it unlocks in what I would describe as a reasonable, if not impressive amount of time, and thank you, Google, there's no unnecessary swipe up like on the iPhone. Your phone is just open. Open for business, like LTTstore.com. Is face unlock faster than a fingerprint reader's best-case scenario, though? No. But considering how often you need to unlock a phone while your hands are wet, covered in gloves, or otherwise occupied, I would wager that the Pixel 4 has the faster average unlock time across every scenario. I mean, it's definitely faster than pulling out my Galaxy Fold, whose review is coming out really soon, so subscribe so you don't miss it. And it was surprisingly reliable for a first attempt, but motion sense is also supposed to be useful when you're not picking up your phone. It can turn off the screen when you're not around, only to light up again when you reach for the device, and allow you to control apps by simply waving at them, letting you skip tracks, silence alarms, and buzz phone calls. Too bad, and I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I saw this one coming, it barely works. It's about as consistently inconsistent as the LG G8's Air Motion, which is a crying shame, because I actually had one really good run where I was walking down the street with my Bluetooth headphones in and my phone in my hand, just like, waving at it to skip tracks, and it felt like the future for that one golden moment, which made it all the more jarring when the illusion was broken by literally 10 failed attempts in a row. Like, should I have my fingers separated? Should I have them together? Should I be closer, further? Like, I could actually see myself getting really used to silencing my alarm clock by just waving in its general direction, instead of picking up my phone and poking at it like a drunk chimp. But that only matters if Google can get Motion Sense to a usable state via software updates. Onto the sensors on the back of the phone. It's a giant square camera bump, but in typical pixel fashion, it has one less lens than you might expect, based on what the competition is doing. Two, not three. But that is one more than last year, enabling the portrait mode to work on larger objects from farther away, and honestly, the Pixel 4's portrait mode clearly just doesn't need the third camera, because it is head and shoulders above the iPhone 11 Pro. Not only does the Pixel keep the shadows and skin detail where the iPhone just smooths it out, but let's take a closer look at our subject's hair. This is one of the most challenging things for portrait mode to handle, and where Apple ends up smudging or eliminating wispies, Google, I mean, honestly, there's just no word for it, but wow, that is a single strand of hair, ladies and gentlemen. Across our test photos, the Pixel 4 was consistently the best at capturing a scene the way the human eye sees it. This room had bar lighting that was much moodier than the iPhone captured, and the Pixel 4's AI-based white balance did a good job of deoranging this musician. Google has also given us two separate sliders to live preview and control the highlights and lowlights in a shot, a feature that is just plain not present on any other phone. Not only does it give you a better starting point to edit from if you're that kind of person, but if you're not and you don't want to do any post-production work, this is a really smart way to give more creativity and control to the user and make shot composition way more fun. With that said, Google did not include an ultra-wide lens, so that's a creative tool that the iPhone 11 Pro offers that is outright absent on the Pixel 4. However, I would make the argument that the Pixel's light and shadow controls are going to be more useful and more often. But the gap between good and great phones when it comes to stills photography is absolutely narrowing, and video is where Apple still has a commanding lead over their Android competition, is what I used to say. Thankfully, Google has obviously put a ton of work into the video recording capabilities of the Pixel 4. As a 4K video camera, it is really impressive. Like if I didn't tell you that this wide shot was taken on a phone, be honest. I doubt that any but the most trained eye would have a chance of noticing. The autofocus lock-on is intuitive to use and exceeded our expectations, and so did the image stabilization while moving. Between these two shots, it's very difficult to make out a difference between Apple and Google's latest and greatests, and honestly both of them almost looked like they're gimbal stabilized. It's outstanding. Even slow motion recording, which can be an Achilles heel for even great phone cameras, was as good as the iPhone. It's different. I would say there's more softness in the edges of this frame at 240fps, and a more pronounced stair stepping effect in the fine details, but the sharpness of our subject and better dynamic range make up for this in my opinion. And of course, it wouldn't be a Pixel launch without some Pixel specific features, and the biggest one of the year is the rollout of Google Assistant 2.0. Google's engineers have miniaturized the Assistant from 100GB to 500MB, small enough to run locally on the device now, including natural language processing. This has enabled a new app called Recorder that you can use to make audio recordings with transcriptions, so your phone can basically take meeting minutes now. Having text with the audio also makes all these audio files searchable, and since it's happening on device, it's more secure and you don't require an internet connection. If you're a fan of texting with your voice, then this works about as well as you'd expect, gets it right most of the time, but you got to be realistic. If you're in a meeting with multiple people that are talking over each other, it does tend to become a bit of a mess. It also wouldn't be a Pixel launch without some inexplicable bugs. So I was browsing condos in a nearby suburb, and the address of one of them just straight up burned onto my phone. I closed Chrome, I opened other apps, and it just stayed there. Guys, what you're looking at is not a simulation of the effect. This is an actual screen recording. I had to reboot my phone to get rid of it. Like, what? I've never seen anything like that on an Android phone, an iPhone, any phone. So then, should you buy the Pixel 4? Well, I spent most of my time with the XL, so I'm going to tailor my thoughts to that one. It feels pretty iterative, but other than the Galaxy Fold, what new phone isn't? The battery isn't as big as some competitors, which is particularly problematic given the 90Hz display, and it costs more than an iPhone 11, but it still delivers on the Pixel promise of having a category-leading camera and innovative bare Android Plus software with timely post-sale support. So it comes with a big recommendation for shutter bugs, especially ones who don't want an iPhone, and a more lukewarm one for everybody else. Speaking of lukewarm recommendations, mine would never be lukewarm for dbrand. dbrand is your source for awesome textured vinyl skins and protective grip cases. Their skins are available for laptops, phones, tablets, consoles, controllers, and more, and they're made from high-quality 3M vinyl that is true texture. 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