Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold Smartphone Review

Since the Made by Google event a bit over a week ago, I have been using the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold smartphone as my primary device. I have been using a foldable consistently for months now, aside from a quick S26 review, and they have quickly become my preferred device for everyday use. 

That has taught me a lot about what works, what doesn’t, what matters, and what is just a gimmick. With the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, I’ve been happy with the device, but I know it won’t be the foldable I stick with long-term. My first complaint: the name is too damn long. Pick Pro. Pick Fold. Don’t pick both. But that isn’t really important. What is most important to me is how my smartphone works with me, and overall the Pixel 11 Pro Fold has been a pretty comfortable partner-in-crime, but it does have some caveats that other foldables don’t.

At Made by Google, they announced four new smartphones in the Pixel 11 lineup, the Pixel Watch 5 and the new Pixel Tag. You can check out the chart below to see how the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold compares to the rest of the Pixel 11 lineup this year:

For starters, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold features the more standard foldable design, much like the motorola razr fold or the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra. It features a 6.5″ Super Actua outer display and an 8″ Super Actua Flex inner display, which reach 3600 nits peak brightness. Folded, the device is 155.2 x 76.0 x 10.1 mm and 155.2 x 150.4 x 5.0 mm unfolded, weighing 239g—down almost 20grams from last year’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Though the screen is good and certainly great for photos and media, my issue came with the crease. 

“With the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, I’ve been happy with the device, but I know it won’t be the foldable I stick with long-term.”

Since the beginning of foldables, there has always been a worry about the crease, and it never really bothered me. The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold is the first time I could not only see the crease, but it also affected my content. Words could look warped when I was reading; people’s heads seemed off in certain places; glare would catch in the fold. Nothing that really ruins the experience, but every once in a while something looked funky, and it pulled me out of the experience.

My next issue with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold came with gaming. Though Pixels have not traditionally been marketed for gaming, a device with this much screen real estate is bound to see some game time. Fortnite is my go-to for mobile game testing. It isn’t insanely demanding, but it will certainly show off if a smartphone is going to struggle with other mobile games. It’s in the middle of the pack between something cute and cozy and something a bit more niche. 

In the case of the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold, setting Fortnite up on its lowest settings, the game was nearly unplayable. Spawn island wasn’t functional, and even in a match in an area with almost no one around, someone tried to sneak up on me, and once we got into a firefight, things were so choppy that I didn’t notice how much I had hit him until he burst into loot. Sitting still, the game would run at 60FPS and drop to 10 in a few quick movements—entirely inconsistent. If you’re looking to play games a bit cozier, like Stardew Valley, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold will do you well, but more demanding games will struggle. 

Cameras on the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold have not seen much of a change this year, with the rear array including a 48MP wide, 85° FOV, a 10.5MP Ultrawide, 127° FOV,  and a 10.8 MP Telephoto lens. Both selfie cameras are 10MP with an 87° FOV. While they’re decent enough for standard photos, nothing stands out. 

I was pretty underwhelmed when I tried to take photos of my kids’ soccer game. Even with only 4x zoom, pictures were blurry and unclear. Even the image processing trying to compensate for it really ruined the photo in some cases, turning my son’s soccer cleats into a pixelated mess. 

Where Google really tries to step up its game each year is with its camera features, which are really fun to play around with. However, many standard users might never need them, or even know they exist. Within the camera itself, they have included a little question mark in the top right that takes you to a page with instructions on all the features you can play with, including videos showing you how to use them. It is the most user-friendly access point to features like this that I have seen on a device, including foldables.

Here you can see plenty of options like Add me, which allows you to take separate photos and add yourself into a picture of your friends. Camera Coach lets you show the area you are in, and Gemini will suggest interesting shots you could take outside of the basic point-and-shoot. Social Media Grid will show you how to frame your images so you won’t lose heads or more to your Instagram or TikTok cutoffs.

My favourite feature this year is Magic Capture, which lets you take a video and automatically snaps the best photos from the action. This is so valuable to creators, but also to people like me, who want great pics of their kids (or pups in action) without having to focus on getting that perfect moment right. Google does the work for you.

Creators also have a selection of options at their fingertips, including a teleprompter. You can add in your script and start recording, so you don’t have to worry about having multiple devices going. Audio Visualizer will let you keep an eye on your audio levels in real time. And of course, you can use your front display and main cameras with Rear Camera Selfie to shoot your content instead of relying on that 10MP inner camera.

Productivity was standard for foldables nowadays on the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold, with apps feeling snappy. I was a bit worried that it might feel like a slog with the way Fortnite ran, but everything else was smooth sailing outside of gaming. I did run into one issue with Android Auto, though. Every time I got into my car, I needed to manually connect my car to the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. It was an inconvenience, but not the biggest issue.

There are two other great features Pixel brought to their devices this year that I think a lot of people will find handy. Live Translate is able to take media watched on the Pixel and translate it in real time so you can watch along. What is crazier is that it sounds like the person who was originally speaking, rather than robotic AI. We couldn’t get it to work on Netflix, though, which could be a game changer for some. 

There is also a new feature called Rambler, which is essentially the best voice-to-text I have seen on a device to date. It naturally corrects filler words, adds punctuation, cleans up broken thoughts and more. Coming from two Samsung devices in a row, I was constantly frustrated with the feature, and Rambler on the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold was a breath of fresh air!

“Rambler on the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold was a breath of fresh air!”

I always feel the need to mention that the “big three” in smartphones in North America (Google, Samsung, iPhone) always fall behind on battery. Google has boasted that the Pixel 11 Pro Fold will last 24-hours on a single charge, and even on my slowest days, I was barely at 12 hours unplugged before I was getting anxiety. I rarely went to bed with more than 30% of battery left over. The 4806 mAh battery hurts.

This year offers the same 30W wired charging, but boosts the wireless charging up to 25W, which is great on the go. And because of the form factor, most wireless chargers fit like a dream, unlike the Z Fold8. Google boasts 50% in 30 minutes, but in my tests I was getting more like 23%. While plugged in and fast charging, the device read 1 hour and 10 minutes to full from 57%.

Sadly, 2026 didn’t bring a very exciting update to the Pixel 11 lineup across the board. The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold isn’t much of an upgrade from last year’s model, but it is still a decent foldable overall. Pixels are consistently some of the most user-friendly devices out there, with some great quality-of-life features for users who like to let their devices do some of the legwork. This phone is for them. 

With that, this year brought out the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8, which has really changed the way I look at foldables. It didn’t have the best specs in the world, but it did some things so well that it has been hard to go back to a standard foldable. The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold matches the Z Fold8 in price, but it doesn’t bring anything to the table that offers that same wow factor. It is good, but not great. At top-tier prices, I think we deserve something great.

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