Last year, the Pixel 10 delivered less-than-stellar battery life results from its 4,970mAh battery – this was the first generation with Tensor chipsets fabbed by TSMC, so, clearly, there were some teething issues.
It’s a year later and we’re putting the Google Pixel 11 through the same battery and charging tests. Google kept battery capacity essentially the same at 4,985mAh, but it optimized the rest of the hardware to reduce power draw. Let’s find out whether it was successful.
Indeed it was! With an Active Use Score of 15:40h, the Pixel 11 left its predecessor in the dust – the 2025 vanilla phone only scored 12:08h. Crucially, the Pixel matched its key rivals – this includes the Pixel 11 Pro, the Galaxy S26 and the iPhone 17.
Gaming remains a weak test for the Pixels even with the latest Tensor G6. The culprit is the IMG CXTP-48-1536 GPU from Imagination, which struggles to match the Apple-designed GPU inside the iPhones, the AMD-based GPU inside the Galaxy S26 (we tested the Exynos 2600 version) and the Arm GPUs used by MediaTek.
That is only in terms of performance, though. As you can see, Google and Imagination significantly improved the power efficiency, and the gaming battery life test now matches the Galaxys and the iPhones. You might get worse frame rates at max graphics settings, so we still wouldn’t recommend a Pixel 11 to gamers. That said, the phone is fine for casual play as most mobile games aren’t that demanding and you’ll be getting battery life comparable to Apple and Samsung phones.
The good news is that there is no individual test that stands out as bad. This is in contrast with the Pixel 10 – look at its gaming score of only 5:47h, while the Pixel 11 scored nearly 4 hours higher. The video test also shows a significant improvement for the new Pixel 11 model.
Charging speed test
Wireless charging on the Pixel 11 has received a boost to 25W this year, but wired charging hasn’t budged from the max 30W rating.
Google introduced a new Extreme mode for wired charging with the Pixel 11 series. We tested it, and we’ll tell you right now that it doesn’t really deserve that boastful term.
Still, with Extreme Charging ON, we do see a speed-up from the Pixel 10 generation, and it is overall not far behind phones like the Galaxy S26 and iPhone 17, both of which are pretty conservative when it comes to charging power. We can hear you shouting about your favorite Chinese brands, but Google sells Pixels only in a limited number of countries and those markets lean towards Samsung and Apple. Brands like Oppo and Xiaomi aren’t even available in the US and Canada, so that’s why we’re focusing on Galaxy and iPhone comparisons.
Before we continue, we need to explain what you need to enable Extreme Charging mode. It basically has the same requirements as the regular mode, it just uses a slightly more aggressive charging curve. Specifically, you need an adapter that can deliver 11V and 3A to get the fastest charge times.
Most 30W chargers won’t deliver the maximum power that the phone is rated to take but anything about 33W should be good enough. Most 45W adapters we checked had the correct power ratings, so you can pick one just to be on the safe side. Google’s 45W USB-C Power Charger ($30) supports up to 16V at 3A. Note that we used Google’s 67W dual-port adapter ($60) for this test, but that’s overkill – even the 45W model can deliver maximum power to the Pixel 11 Pro XL, which has higher requirements.
Whether you go for a Google charger or a third-party one, you will have to supply your own, as Google only includes a USB-C to USB-C cable with the retail package. The good news is that you only need a 3A cable, so you can use mostly any cable; you don’t need a pricier 5A cable (those require E-Marker chips).
Alright, we can finally talk about the results. As mentioned above, neither Samsung nor Apple are fans of high charge rates and it shows – at the 15 minute mark, the iPhone 17 and Galaxy S26 pull ahead, but they have smaller batteries. And at the 30 minute mark, the Pixel 11 starts to close the gap, anyway.
A full charge for the Pixel 11 takes 1 hour and 20 minutes (give or take). That’s a little better, but we wouldn’t call it “Extreme”. Still, it’s competitive with the others, being beaten only by the Galaxy S26, whose battery is 685mAh smaller.
In summary, Google did excellent work on improving battery efficiency – what we would like to see next year is a better GPU and a Si/C battery. But as it stands today, the Pixel 11 matches the Galaxy S26 and iPhone 17 in terms of battery life.