Across a wide variety of the tests that I performed, the Pixel 2 XL offers around an extra hour of battery life compared to the Pixel XL, which is an impressive improvement considering the hardware constraints. The lowest gains were seen in more intensive workloads like PCMark, while web browsing saw a decent gain year-on-year. The Pixel 2 XL also fares favourably compared to a range of other flagships on the market today, particularly smaller devices. The handset is roughly on par with the Exynos Galaxy S8+, and it’s only slightly behind the smaller Xiaomi Mi 6 which packs a similar battery capacity. Phones like the OnePlus 5 fall well behind in web browsing tests but perform okay in other situations, while handsets like the HTC U11 are no match for the Pixel 2 XL. The end result is excellent battery life in most situations. You won’t be blown away with ridiculously long battery life, but there’s enough juice in this handset for a comfortable day’s work despite its 6-inch display, and hovering around the top of our battery benchmarks is always a good sign.
