2024 Winners and losers: Google

Google had a busier year than usual, mainly due to the excess of Pixel phones and the fast-growing AI segment. But as is usually the case, not all products were met with excitement from users and reviewers alike. But let's start with a winner.

Winner: Pixel 9 Pro XL

Despite the new XL designation, the Pixel 9 Pro XL is basically a successor to the Pixel 8 Pro from last year, so it's expected to get most of the attention from the trio. It's also the best Pixel phone from Google so far.

The phone brings a handful of improvements over its predecessor, like a brighter and slightly bigger screen, better selfies, longer battery life, faster charging, and swaps out the optical fingerprint reader with an ultrasonic one. Quite frankly, it is one of the best big-screen Android experiences currently on the market.

Losers: Pixel 9 and 9 Pro Fold

The vanilla Pixel 9 feels neglected this year, just like Samsung has been neglecting the vanilla Galaxy S for years now. The Pixel 9 is the same size as the Pixel 9 Pro but with inferior hardware. Sure, the price is lower, but not enough to make it a bargain and we feel like once the Pixel 9a comes around, the 9 will be obsolete.

If you are looking for a compact phone, we believe the Pixel 9 Pro is a much more sensible choice despite the higher price.

As for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, it's simply behind the curve. It's an expensive piece of tech that just can't match the feature set of other foldables on the market. You could make a case that it's a much better foldable than its predecessor, but that's not hard to achieve. The original Pixel Fold was every bit a first-gen product.

Pixel 9 Pro Fold

And while the Pixel 9 Pro Fold improves upon its predecessor in all key areas, it's still a disappointment in aspects like charging, performance, and camera experience, and has a polarizing design. We know it's subjective, but those thick bezels and asymmetrical corners don't sit well with us.

Winner: Pixel 9 Pro

As you might have already guessed, we liked the Pixel 9 Pro. It's one of the few full-fledged compact flagships on the market. It packs a serious punch and it's practically as capable as its bigger sibling, the Pro XL, but in a smaller, more manageable package.

Losers: Gemini

Google's AI chatbot Gemini feels like an unfinished product. It's as if Google rushed out its AI features to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, but its solution is just nowhere near as useful just yet.

Sure Google has the opportunity to offer advanced integrated services with Gemini on Android and we are seeing a lot of effort in that direction, but for now, we prefer asking ChatGPT for help. We don't see Google losing at its own game very often, though, and this race is far from over.

Winner: Pixel Buds Pro 2

We really liked this year's Pixel Buds Pro 2, especially at the current price. The pair offers a substantial improvement over their predecessors - better audio quality, better ANC, just as good battery life and they feel somewhat more comfortable. If you are invested in the Pixel ecosystem, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are a great deal.

Losers: Pixel Watch 3

Many expected a big upgrade with this year's Pixel Watch 3, but improvements are rather minor. A slightly bigger display, unimpressive battery life and the same old design just won't cut it in 2024. It's nice that the new Pixel Watch is now available in two sizes, though.

Still, for the asking price, we believe you can get a much better wearable that is also running on Wear OS.

We are eagerly waiting for Google's next moves in 2025 and we hope to see the company catching up with some of its hardware, especially with the Fold, Pixel Watch and its chipset. The Tensor G4 deserves an "honorable" mention in the "losers" team as it once again fails to meet our expectations in terms of raw performance and thermal capabilities.