Google Pixel 7 Pro gaming benchmarks are in — and they’re ‘embarrassing’

Google’s Pixel 7 Pro has a lot going for it. This includes improved cameras, machine learning and AI tricks and the new Tensor G2 processor. While the new chip has proven to be faster than the Pixel 6 series, one reviewer’s test shows the Pixel 7 Pro struggles versus competing flagships in gaming.

According to Golden Reviewer (opens in new tab), a blogger on Twitter, the Pixel 7 Pro performs extremely poorly in gaming and fails to match this year’s flagship phones. The blogger published test results after playing Genshin Impact — a heavy duty open-world RPG game. They had all the graphics settings on “high” and enabled 60 fps in testing.

The Pixel 7 Pro averaged just 37.2 fps in the blogger’s testing. with the frame rates dropping from 59 fps to around 40 fps just 30 seconds into the test. For comparison, most other flagships report average frame rates well over the Pixel 7 Pro’s results. The iPhone 14 Pro Max came in with a 58.4 fps average and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 notched 42.1 fps.

According to this test, the Tensor G2 does not hold a candle to the likes of Apple’s A16 Bionic or even the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in terms of gaming. In fact, Google’s 2nd gen Tensor performs similarly to the Exynos 2200 and last year’s Exynos 2100.

We ran a suite of performance benchmarks on the Tensor G2 as well for our review and we found that overall the chip performed much better compared to the the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 — which is better than the Tensor G1 could say versus the Snapdragon 888 a year ago. Apple’s A16 did beat the Tensor G2 in our tests.

In the Adobe Premiere Rush 4K-1080p transcoding test, the Pixel 7 Pro kept up with the Galaxy Z Fold 4, though the iPhone 14 Pro exceeded all phones here. These are overall performance benchmarks that don’t single out gaming prowess though. 

When I used Genshin Impact on my Pixel 7 Pro — I found the game to run pretty smoothly. There was no visible lag, and the anime-like graphics looked more realistic. When I cranked up my settings to the max, however, I did notice a less smooth frame rate, The phone did heat up, but that’s not out of the ordinary for most flagships these days.

The Pixel 7 Pro may not be “the” gaming phone around, but it won’t let you down on slightly less graphic intensive games. But if you are an avid gamer — going by the results the blogger has posted — the Pixel 7 series may not be for you.

The Pixel 7 Pro’s gaming results aren’t the only cause for concern. Recently, our Pixel 7 Pro battery test results showed poor performance as well. Google may have improved the Tensor G2 to a certain extent, but it still has work to do.