The Pixel 3 has dual 8 MP front-facing cameras and a single 12 MP rear-facing sensor that has an f/1.8 aperture. The secondary front-facing sensor has an ultra-wide lens that Google advertises is useful for taking group selfies. Both front-facing sensors take detailed photos that capture fine structures like hair strands and do not artificially blur background imagery. The default camera uses a ‘Retouch’ feature by default, which makes faces look too soft and warm for our liking. Thankfully, its effect can be reduced or switched off. The camera lacks a professional or manual mode, but there are options for adjusting ambient light, white balance and HDR.

The rear-facing camera takes decent photos with vivid colors, albeit colors tend to look slightly darker than they should do. Objects and people are always captured sharply though and are neither obscured in dark areas nor are they overblown in bright areas. Macro shots look better in our opinion, primarily because colors appear more balanced and objects look noticeably sharper. The camera captures fine structures well too. Moreover, Bokeh effects look great and do not contain many artifacts. The default camera app also supports a feature called ‘Top Shot’ too. ‘Top Shot’ uses machine learning to take several photos before and after the shutter is pressed, which allows people to pick the best shot rather than needing to retake a photo.

The main camera’s real strength is in low light, particularly ‘Night Sight’ or ‘Night’ mode. The feature works with all three cameras and dramatically improves the exposure of low-light pictures by taking several photos at different exposures and then stitching them together. The difference in detail captured is striking, as shown in our third comparison picture below. The Pixel 3 cannot compete with a Canon EOS 70 D for image clarity, but our test device takes a noticeably better low light photo than either the iPhone XR or the P20 Pro.