Since the Pixel 9 Pro XL, Google’s flagships have consistently impressed me with their astrophotography performance – and the latest Pixel 11 Pro XL is shaping up to be no exception. That’s largely down to its updated Night Sight engine, which directly dictates how effectively it navigates the nuances of night sky imaging.
But the painstaking automation is exactly one of the greatest strengths of shooting on the Pixel: all the heavy processing happens quietly in the background. Google claims this updated Night Sight captures up to 4.5 times faster than previous generations, but I wanted to see how it stacks up against dedicated hardware.
To find out, I pitted it against an OM SYSTEM OM-3 Astro setup—a $2,500 specialized mirrorless body meant for capturing the night sky paired with a fast Olympus 12mm f/2 lens. On paper it looks like an absurd mismatch, but the side-by-side results immediately surprised me.
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Point and shoot ready
The biggest advantage of shooting astrophotography with the Pixel 11 Pro XL is that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to capture scenes filled with brilliant, twinkling stars. With a dedicated setup like the OM SYSTEM OM-3 Astro, you can’t just put it on full auto and hope it takes care of the rest. Instead, you have to manually dial in exposures, balance your ISO, and make sure your focus is spot on.
The Pixel effortlessly transforms any first-time astrophotography shooter into a seasoned pro. All you have to do is follow my usual advice: mount the phone on a tripod, point it at the sky and switch to Night Sight. When the phone detects that it is completely stationary, the switch icon transforms into the special astrophotography mode. A touch of the shutter button is all it takes, and Google’s computing engine handles the rest.
Pixel 11 Pro XL vs OM SYSTEM OM-3 Astro: the results
For this shootout it is worth noting that I am comparing a single exposure in the OM SYSTEM OM-3 Astro rather than taking a full sequence and stacking it. Meanwhile, the Pixel 11 Pro XL relies on an automated calculation load that can take several minutes to complete.
The differences between computational photography and specialized dedicated glass can be hard to see at first glance, but they become obvious when I comb through the details. Everywhere, photos of the Pixel 11 Pro XL show the triumphs of Google’s algorithms. The images are remarkably clean and bright, with lighting that lifts the night sky into a slightly overexposed gray tone.
This approach draws in an incredible amount of ambient light, pulling out faint stars that my own eyes struggled to see even after adjusting to the darkness. Crucially, foreground trees and passing clouds remain surprisingly sharp and well defined. However, the photographer in me easily notices the flattened, high dynamic range aesthetic that often accompanies heavy computational processing.
In comparison, shots from the OM SYSTEM OM-3 Astro offer a dramatically more atmospheric look. The camera’s specialized optical filter produces a rich, deep sky with punchy contrast that immediately catches the eye.
Stars are noticeably sharper, revealing a denser, more defined field of light that software tricksters struggle to replicate. The only downside to the 15-second exposure I stuck to is that the foreground trees show slight softness and wind-induced motion blur – which highlights the computational edge the pixel holds when it comes to stabilizing the surrounding landscape.
Time-lapse surprise
In addition to delivering a finished still image with excellent fidelity, the Pixel 11 Pro XL also creates a short time-lapse clip that I can easily share. Every time I trigger an astrophotography exposure, the Google Camera app silently compiles a short video that captures the movement of the night sky and clouds over the duration of the shot. The beauty of this is that I don’t have to do anything else – the clip simply appears next to the last photo in the Google Photos app.
Pulling this off with the OM SYSTEM OM-3 Astro is a much more involved endeavor. It requires setting up an intervalometer, recording hundreds of frames, and downloading massive batches of images into desktop software like Lightroom or Premiere to manually stitch and render the sequence. With the Pixel, the entire workflow is reduced to a single shutter press.
Bottom line
At the end of the night, the specialized camera still takes the crown in my opinion. That’s because the OM SYSTEM OM-3 Astro’s larger sensor and fast 12mm f/2 glass deliver the kind of depth, contrast and pin-sharp star definition that serious astrophotographers love.
However, comparing a $2,500 dedicated mirrorless body to a phone I slip into my pocket just highlights how incredibly capable modern mobile photography has become. The Pixel 11 Pro XL doesn’t require years of experience to master – you just need a sturdy tripod and a single trigger. And I certainly find no fault with that.
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