Roughly a month after the HONOR 200 series gave Google’s Pixel phones a run for their money, Google reclaims their lead over HONOR with the cameras of the Pixel 9 series. The vanilla Pixel 9 took the 7th spot for the global rankings and was placed 1st in the premium category. On the other hand, the 9 Pro XL is in the 2nd spot in the global rankings and 2nd in the ultra-premium category.

The Pixel 9 earned 154 points, good for seventh place overall and first place in the Premium price range. For perspective, the Pixel 9’s score is at par with the iPhone 15 Pro series, which shows that Google takes the lead from Apple when it comes to its cameras. The Pixel 9 excels in landscape and portrait photography, with vibrant colors, accurate exposure, and a wide dynamic range. It shares hardware with the Pixel 9 Pro XL but lacks a telephoto camera and advanced features like Video Boost and Night HDR+.

Moving over to the Pixel 9 Pro XL, it has achieved an incredible score of 158 points, good for second place in the DxOMark Camera ranking both in the global and ultra-premium categories. As a top-performing flagship in DxOMark’s Camera tests, the Pixel 9 Pro XL boasts features like an HDR+ imaging pipeline, optimized exposure, accurate tone-mapping, and sharper images. It also has pleasant colors, accurate skin tones, and wide dynamic range that makes it ideal for portrait, landscape, still, and video shots. Its autofocus system maintains detail, and video stabilization ensures smooth footage with minimal artifacts.

In addition, both phones also ranked high on DXOMARK’s display rankings: The Pixel 9 Pro XL earned the top spot on both global and ultra-premium rankings while the Pixel 9 grabbed the 3rd spot in the global ranking and 1st place in the premium category.