The camera experience remains the reason many people buy Pixel phones. The Pixel 11 Pro XL offers a 50 MP main camera with a 1/1.3-inch sensor, a 48 MP ultra-wide with autofocus, and a 48 MP 5x telephoto lens that Google redesigned with a larger sensor and 30% higher light sensitivity. I photographed mostly cityscapes, buildings, and objects in New York and London, with very few people-centered photos and almost no selfies, beyond testing the camera’s capabilities.
The main camera is perhaps the best I’ve used on any Android phone. The details are superb and the images have a cinematic quality that I rather like. The camera processing may be a weak point for some, however. Colors can be toned down in a way that reads like a software decision rather than a sensor limitation. I wish I had the option to go back. For others, it may be a welcome change from Google’s infamously overprocessed photo aspect. Against the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the Pixel takes the best photos. Compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, still images are about on par with the different processing choices, and I prefer the look of the iPhone. However, video is still no contest and the iPhone wins again, as it has for years.
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Even more interesting are the Pixel 11 Pro XL’s zoom capabilities. The 5x telephoto lens is the farthest optical zoom, and the next default option in the camera app is a digitally cropped 10x. The new sensor is noticeable, providing additional detail to zoomed shots compared to the Pixel 10 Pro XL and producing low-light zoomed shots that previous Pixels simply couldn’t. But the new Pixel can zoom much further than 10x – up to 120x, in fact, thanks to Pro Zoom.
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AI-assisted Pro Zoom is probably the most Marmite-like Pixel feature – you’ll either love it or hate it. Sometimes it’s downright impressive; other times it feels more like a faulty experiment. With Pro Zoom, you can impressively read text on menus and signs in a room. He also, in full extension, turned the head of a deer statue upside down.
It’s generative AI that does what generative AI does, and it’s a strange thing to find in a camera you’d otherwise rely on. In my experience, the results are no longer reliable beyond around 80x zoom. Underneath, the phone produces results that look more like real photos. I would prefer if Google experimented with some of the bolt-on lenses offered by some Chinese competitors for even better zooms, but that’s unlikely to happen as Google remains focused on the masses.
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Night Sight is now up to 4.5x faster than before, and the speed increase is very noticeable. It still brightens slightly and some shots still have to stay still for a second or two longer than the interface implies, but the trade-off favors most people – I prefer this excessive brightening to having to stay still for up to 10 seconds. Portrait mode at 5x is new, and the few test photos I took turned out well, helped by Google’s reliable and impressive object detection, which remains among the best in the business. The 42 MP selfie camera is a step forward on paper, but not obvious in daily use. I’d take the iPhone 17’s front camera for the simple reason that it can shoot landscapes without you having to physically turn the phone.
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Although the Pixel 11 Pro XL’s camera is pretty good overall, there were a few things that bothered me. The camera app has an intermittent focus bug on launch that leaves the viewfinder blurry. Closing and reopening the app fixes the issue, but it happened several times a day when I was testing the camera. This is the kind of problem that a software update should have fixed before launch.
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Then there’s Magic Capture, billed as the Pixel 11 series’ primary camera feature. It records the moment around you, then uses AI to select the best still images to keep as photos. I tried it a few times on photos of my mom’s dog and got one decent photo and one blurry one at significantly worse resolution than a normal photo. I prefer to record video and take photos of it while it’s riding. Camera looks, on the other hand, are fun and customizable, but I never use them because I prefer to edit photos after I take them rather than apply the same treatment to every shot.
