The Pixel 4 series come with a dual camera system this year: a main camera and a telephoto one that Google says comes in handy for zoomed in shots.

But unlike other phones, you don't have a button to switch to that second camera: instead, Google says you are supposed to zoom gradually to whatever level you like and you will get a shot with a good amount of detail at all levels, not just when strictly using the telephoto camera.

This technology is called Superzoom and it uses complicated algorithms to enhance your zoomed in photos.

But does it really work in real life and how much of a gamechanger is it?

Super zoom tested

To understand that, we first start by comparing superzoom to an image captured with the main camera and then cropped to match the zoom level on the superzoom photo. We have used 4X zoom level for this example and we have cropped in the same part from the picture shot on the regular camera:

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4X Superzoom, captured in camera

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Crop made after the shot from a regular photo

As you can see, the difference is quite noticeable: you have a lot more noise on the cropped image. Superzoom does indeed make a difference.

We also compare Superzoom at various levels against the popular iPhone 11 Pro Max (which has a 2X telephoto camera, but no "superzoom" alternative).

Let's start with the main image, shot on the regular camera:

1X


At this point, you can just see the difference in general, we start looking at the zoom levels from the next photo.