Forget benchmarks: video pits Pixel 6 Pro vs. iPhone 13 Pro Max in real-world speed test

First off, if you’ve never watched a Phone Buff speed test, you are in for a real treat. These guys use robots to accurately and fairly perform a battery of real-world actions on phones at the same time to really get a feel for the actual speed of a device. While benchmarks can be helpful, they aren’t always indicative of what it will really feel like to use a phone in real life with real tasks. Phone Buff’s videos help quantify this in a way that most people can see, understand, and react to.

In the video below, you’ll see quite a few tasks happen that you likely take part in on a daily basis. From web browsing to gaming to office document editing, this test is a great compilation of all the normal types of things you may find yourself doing at any time on a modern smartphone. Check it out.

You’ll see that in the early stages, the Pixel 6 Pro actually takes the lead in a very substantial way. The early tasks include things like opening large office documents, launching the Facebook and Starbucks apps, shooting a selfie, and then editing that same selfie. With these tasks, the Pixel 6 Pro was in a commanding lead.

Then came the video edit and export. With this task, the iPhone simply killed the Pixel 6 Pro, narrowly taking the lead that it wouldn’t relinquish again. After the video export, the tasks moved into launching a few games and then into lighter apps like Spotify, ESPN, and Disney+. While the Pixel 6 Pro regained some ground, there simply wasn’t enough time for it to catch back up. Of note, the Galaxy S21 Ultra and its Snapdragon 888 processor lost to the iPhone 13 Pro Max by a full 10 seconds in the same test.

So what?

For me, this is further proof that Google’s Tensor chip is the real deal. With it beating out the Android competition in the GPU department and now going toe-to-toe with the iPhone in real world testing, I don’t think there’s any reason to worry about the future of Google’s custom silicon.

Remember: Android 12 is still very new and there will be many tweaks over the coming months (Android 12L, most notably) that will likely be leveraged to take more advantage of Tensor’s internal power. Also remember that Google’s never had this amount of control over the SoC in a Pixel, so that means updates and Pixel Drops down the road could end up bringing truly significant performance upgrades as these new phones age.

For now, however, you can purchase the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro knowing that Google’s new SoC is no slouch. We’re working on our review and we’ll have some early thoughts published in a video very soon, but I can already tell you both of these phones live up to the hype. While not perfect (no device is), they are stellar handsets with very robust internals that should only get better as time goes on.

VIA: 9to5 Google