DECEMBER 2019 PCWorld 71Despite its 2X optical zoom lens, the Pixel 4 XL (left) struggled with this zoomed
image, adding artifacts to the mantle and some noise to the back wall, while the
Pixel 3 XL’s digital zoom handled it correctly.as the Pixel 4’s
2X optical
zoom. In fact, if
you inspect the
Pixel 4 image,
you can see
some weird
colors and
graininess on
the back wall
and the mantle
that don’t
appear in the
Pixel 3’s shot.
The Pixel 3
wowed us with
Night Sight last
year, but
Google’s competitors have caught up fast
and exposed its weaknesses. As I
documented in a story for Macworld (go.
pcworld.com/nsit), the iPhone 11’s Night
mode bests the Pixel 4 in just about every
situation. The biggest problem is the Pixel’s
tendency to brighten everything, which often
undermines the nuance and integrity of the
scene. Apple’s method consistently
preserved shadows and lowlights that were
lost or washed out by the Pixel. They both did
an admirable job, but the iPhone was
consistently just a little better, as you can
plainly see in the photo overleaf.
And that’s kind of the story with the Pixel
- While the Pixel 3’s camera put the rest of
the smartphone industry on notice, the Pixel 4
shows that Google might not have been
prepared for Samsung and Apple to catch up
so quickly. (And that’s not to say anything
about its inability to record 4K video at 60fps.)
I might be picking nits here and sharing
photos that specifically highlight the Pixel 4’s
shortcomings, but the fact remains that
Google’s competitors have all but closed the
gap with their own computational
photography systems, and Google’s
improvements on the Pixel 3 XL are slight.
And I have to assume that anyone who buys a
Pixel 4 cares about such subtleties. So while
you’ll surely be able to take excellent, gallery-
worthy photos with very little effort with the