Google Pixel 8

The Pixel 8’s display gets even brighter than Google said it would

Ben Schoon | Nov 20 2023 - 12:15 pm PT

Google’s work on “Actua” displays for Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro is one of the biggest upgrades we’ve seen on the company’s smartphone hardware in quite a while, but on the smaller Pixel 8, that upgrade is even bigger than it was thought to be.

On the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, Google is using AMOLED displays that are branded as “Actua” and “Super Actua” respectively. The branding helps to show the big jump in capabilities that Google has delivered with this new hardware, as the Pixel 8 Pro is advertised with a peak brightness of 2,400 nits, whereas the Pixel 8 hits 2,000 nits. The Pro in particular is, at least for now, industry-leading in the US smartphone market.

As it turns out, though, the regular Pixel 8 is actually a bit more impressive than we first thought.

To calculate its 2,000+ nit peak brightness on both phones, Google uses a measurement of “5% on-pixel ratio,” which is just a small percentage of the display. That’s not uncommon, though. In real-life use, you just won’t see a Pixel 8 Pro hit 2,400 nits of brightness on the entire panel, with the only real exception being HDR content. There, Google says the Pixel 8 Pro can crank the brightness up to 1,600 nits, while the company claims the regular Pixel 8 can hit 1,400 nits.

But, as the folks over at XDA-Developers have discovered, Google is underpromising here.

In a display deep dive from Dylan Raga, it’s noted that the Pixel 8’s display can hit a fullscreen brightness of 1,600 nits, 200 nits higher than Google’s claim and actually even higher than Raga saw when testing out the Pixel 8 Pro.

Apparently, the Pixel 8 gets that extra 200 nits from turning on “Smooth Display” (120 Hz), as with the option turned off, the panel only hits 1,400 nits, as Google claimed. It’s not totally clear why there’s such a disparity here, but in any case, it comes only as a benefit to users.