If you found yourself underwhelmed by the flat, desaturated images captured by the Pixel 9, you weren’t imagining it — and you’re not alone. Heck, side by side testing demonstrates the Pixel 10 reverses that with that similar richness in mid-tones, more true whites and — dare I say it? — skin tones closer to looking human again. Long story short: Yes, the color issue is resolved, and the difference in a situation like this — where Pixel 9 always struggled to nail it — is dramatic.
What’s New in Google’s Color Pipeline
And the biggest change isn’t hardware; it’s the imaging stack.
The Pixel 10 acts like it’s employing some different type of white balance and tone mapping — less global “one temperature fits all,” more local intelligence that manipulates one region of the frame differently. That is the very sort of multi-illuminant color constancy work Google Research has posted about, and it is present here in real scenes.
While the Pixel 9 often has a tendency to wash out warmth and clip delicate hues, the Pixel 10 captures more of warm and cool light in that same shot. Highlights keep their color, mid-tones retain their pop and shadows don’t get blue-shifted to achieve a fake “clean” look. It’s still a Pixel —natural rather than neon —but with saturation and contrast that no longer feel timid.
Real-world scenes demonstrate the fix
It was concert lighting as the stress test that caught out the Pixel 9: tungsten floods and cool stage LEDs arrived as a bland compromise, warm spots bleached toward white and faces veneered sickly.
Similarly, the Pixel 10 reads the scene well (see all six images below), and keeps the warm golden spotlights in the desk area radiantly toasty without turning those eagerly awaiting audience members into an icy smudge. Skin tones are in their proper place, and stage hues keep their color.
Everyday color fidelity is also improved. If a neon sign on the Pixel 9 appeared too cyan, on the Pixel 10 it will certainly be green. A classic can of red soda looks red, not brick. Indoor plants get their rich greens back, rather than the washed-out olive that became a Pixel 9 hallmark. At dusk, facades hold their gentle amber glow rather than tipping into cold gray, and decorative bulbs pop out without flattening the rest of the frame.
The Pixel 10 takes it up a “pop” notch, although thankfully without crossing over into cartoonish. It almost feels like moving a more confident colour separation slider and, dare I say it, something less clumsy than just sliding the saturation up. That balance matches up well with what blind camera tests usually favor — photos that are lifelike and vibrant — and does so while staying faithful to Google’s Real Tone objectives.
The pixel 9 looked so washed out. Why?_What happened
The Pixel 9 instead relied on a global white balance that ran down neutrality at all times. That strategy can succeed in outdoor lighting at midday, but fails in mixed light — since there is no one correction that can work for both warm and cool regions. Combine this with a conservative tone curve, denoising that wipes away micro-contrast and highlight recovery that leans towards gray, and you end up with lifeless mid-tones that suck all the color out of images.
Agencies and groups that rate cameras, such as DXOMARK, have been calling attention for years to indoor color casts and the stability of white balance. The Pixel 9 seemed especially prone to those shortcomings: inspect and you’ll recognize a preference for cooler neutrals indoors, along with overcorrection that wipes out the subtle warmth we expect from evening scenes.
Is this hardware, software or both?
There is no proof of a sensor revolution this cycle; the step-change seems to be processing. That one of the fabled camera magic is a retuned color matrix, more granular local tone mapping and an evolved auto white balance model would help explain the Pixel 10’s beahaviour. The new Tensor platform and ISP undoubtedly play a role in scene segmentation and per-region changes, but the net effect reads like software-first progress.
For future updates, that’s good news. Google has sent camera improvements down the wire before, through its software and a quarterly feature drop, like its Real Tone refinements across generations. If this color correction is largely algorithmic, it’s possible that older Pixels could gain the benefit — though performance and consistency may rely on compute headroom and ISP capabilities.
For creators and the casual shooters
Pixel 10’s files look better straight out of camera for social shares. Night scenes are more alive, interiors feel lifelike and skin tones remain accurate under challenging light. For the RAW editor, the shift has implications as well: better white balance in-cam and color separation in JPEG/HDR pipelines tends to mean more accurate metadata and less strenuous corrections down the road.
Industry context helps here. Punchy photos tend to win blind tests with smartphone shooters, but pros love restraint and fidelity. The Pixel 10 threads that needle much better than the Pixel 9, prioritizing accuracy above all and “pop” second, not the other way around.
Bottom line: Yes, there is a real fix
In mixed and low light — exactly the dark gap in which the Pixel 9 stumbled — the Pixel 10 presides over richer, truer colors, better white balance and more confident contrast. Daylight changes are more subtle, but not in the scenes where it really counts: here the upgrade is impossible to ignore. If you canned on recent Pixels because of the dead colors, the Pixel 10 gives the camera life.
One issue still up in the air: will Google backport those improvements to existing models? There is a past precedent for cross-generational tuning update and people with older Pixels still alive deserve these updates. Until then, the Pixel 10 is the obvious option for anyone who loves the classic Pixel look — now complete with the vibrancy it has been lacking.