There are only two phones that come to mind if you want to buy a smartphone to be firmly made, with super-clean apps and powerful cameras for about $700 / £600.
The Google Pixel 5 and the OnePlus 9 are two of the best upper-mid-range phones on the market, with each offering impressive specs for a lot less money than the true flagships.
But which of the two is superior? According to our respective ratings, the OnePlus has the benefit, scoring 9 out of 10 to the Pixel 5’s 8 out of 10. But it’s not quite that easy.
In this post, we will contrast the Google Pixel 5 and the OnePlus 9 Pro. These two phones are the latest that Google and OnePlus have to sell. Some of you may argue that this is not a fair comparison because the price difference between these two phones is enormous. To some extent, that might be true, but the Pixel 5 is the best Google has to give right now, and it can hold its own.
The Google Pixel 5 is a mid-range smartphone in terms of specifications. The OnePlus 9 Pro, on the other hand, is a luxury, flagship smartphone in almost every way. The price gap between these two phones is nearly $300. Despite this, can the Google Pixel 5 cope with the OnePlus 9 Pro? That’s exactly what we’re here to find out. We’ll do our best to compare these two phones in a variety of categories so you can make an informed decision about which one to purchase.
OnePlus 9 vs Google Pixel 5 price and availability
Both of these phones are currently available for purchase, with the Pixel 5 launching on October 15, 2020, and the OnePlus 9 reaching stores on March 26, 2021.
The OnePlus 9 starts at $729/£629 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and goes up to $829/£729 for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
The Google Pixel 5 is still available for $699 / £599 / AU$999 from the official Google Store, but with its era, you might be able to find a discount.
Camera and Shoot
Both phones do worse in low-light environments. The Pixel handles skin textures better, but tones tend to take on an unrealistically warmer hue than the OnePlus selfie sensor.
In reality, the OnePlus 9 Pro captures more hair information in the video above. In either case, neither has the same sharpness indoors as it does outdoors. Again, the OnePlus 9 Pro provides slightly more precise hair detection with its bokeh blur.
Google also manages lens distortion at the frame’s edges better than OnePlus, which is understandable considering the narrower field of view. Although neither handset has especially good corner detail, the OnePlus 9 Pro’s wide-angle images have slightly more noticeable stretching and warping than the Pixel 5. Nonetheless, both are much superior to the majority in this respect.
Overall, I prefer the Pixel 5’s softer processing approach. However, due to the smaller sensor, Google’s phone is not always able to optimize the available level of information. As anticipated, the quality degrades further when the lights are turned off. In low light, neither performs especially well, with both displaying high levels of noise and smudging.
