Google’s latest flagship, the Pixel 8 Pro, is making waves with its impressive camera system, but it’s facing some tough competition from the likes of Apple and Huawei. In a surprising turn of events compared to last year, the Pixel 8 Pro falls short when compared to its rivals from Apple and Huawei. This year, it also maintains only a small lead over its predecessor.

The Pixel 8 Pro has started shipping, representing the pricier half of Google’s Pixel 8 series. While we haven’t had hands-on experience with these devices yet, DxOMark, a renowned camera testing website, has conducted its comprehensive camera tests on the Pixel 8 Pro. The results indicate that Google’s latest flagship has been outperformed by Apple this time around, which is a shift from the previous comparison between the Pixel 7 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

DxOMark has given Google’s premier smartphone a score of 153, ranking it alongside the Find X6 Pro at the 4th position on its overall leaderboard. To put this into context, DxOMark suggests that the improvement in camera quality between the Pixel 7 Pro and the Pixel 8 Pro is relatively modest compared to the leap between the Pixel 6 Pro and the Pixel 7 Pro. In fact, the Pixel 8 Pro only scores 6 points higher than its predecessor, which is less than half the gap between the Pixel 7 Pro and the Pixel 6 Pro.

The Pixel 8 Pro generally performs well in most shooting scenarios. However, DxOMark noticed occasional issues with fine details and textures, as well as errors in distinguishing between foreground and background objects when using portrait mode. Additionally, the successor to the Pixel 7 Pro exhibits disparities in sharpness between video frames and temporal noise in low-light video recording. In summary, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max outshine the Pixel 8 Pro, and the Huawei P60 Pro remains the undisputed leader among its US competitors.