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Ok, that’s a wrap folks, we can call Prime Day here because I may have just found the biggest bargain of the entire sale. We’ve seen plenty of tempting smartphone offers over the past couple of days, even a few from Google’s own flagship family, but this Pixel 9 deal trumps them all for sheer value.
The black 128GB model is the phone we’re talking about here and it’s down to a ridiculously low price of just £499. For context, it originally launched last year for £799, and has averaged £788 in price since then. Other colours have been discounted more than that – getting as low as £549 – but none of them have been this cheap.
For an entry-level flagship phone like the Google Pixel 9, £499 is an absolute steal. To that end, I don’t expect this deal will last very long, so if you fancy yourself a shiny new Pixel for record-low prices, I’d jump on this deal as soon as possible.
Our reviewer Jon Mundy gave the Pixel 9 four stars in his review, with the increased price being one of his primary reasons for bumping it down. That, of course, is no longer a concern. We’ll get more into negatives just below but first, let’s go over all the positive things Jon had to say about the Pixel 9:
- The build of the phone is impressively premium, with a study aluminium frame and a layer of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on both the front and the back for scratch protection. It’s also rated IP68 for dust and water resistance, meaning it’s fully dust-tight and can survive submersion in 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes.
- The 6.3in OLED display is also one of the best in the business. It’s plenty sharp, with a resolution of 2,424 x 1,080, has a 120Hz peak refresh rate and gets incredibly bright; in Jon’s testing, it reached over 1,000nits on manual brightness mode, which is fairly incredible at any price. Finally, the colour accuracy here is nothing short of outstanding, with the screen reproducing 99.8% of the sRGB gamut and scoring an average Delta E of just 0.65 – anything under 1 is essentially perfect.
- Gorgeous cameras are a well-known perk of Pixel phones at this point, and it’s no different here. The main lens captures crisp, colourful images with exquisite dynamic range keeping shadows moody and highlights bright. It performs excellently after dark, as well, maintaining excellent detail, and the 2x zoom is decent enough that it makes up for the lack of a telephoto camera.
- Useful AI features take your photography even further, with Magic Eraser, the face-swapping Best Take and the new Add Me feature expanding your options in post-production. Outside of the cameras, a new AI-powered screenshots app is eminently useful for organising your captures and Google Gemini is the best AI-powered smart assistant around right now.
- The software is also just excellent in general. As the Android platform is a Google creation, Pixel phones get first dibs on new features and, better still, Google promises a class-leading seven years of support for the Pixel 9, including OS updates, security patches and new feature drops. That kind of commitment is hard enough to get in the flagship space but at this price? Phenomenal.
We’ve already discussed how the price concerns are firmly assuaged here, so let’s look at the other issues Jon dug up during his rigorous testing. The biggest complaint that we have with Pixel flagships as a whole is that they tend to underperform compared to similarly priced rivals.
To be clear, the Tensor G4 chipset is still plenty powerful, and makes using the phone a breeze (helped along by that buttery smooth 120Hz refresh rate). It’s just that similarly priced phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 and the iPhone 16 are much faster. Of course, neither of those are discounted down as cheap as this, so that comparison feels like less of a direct concern.
Otherwise, the only point to mention is that neither Jon nor I were particularly taken with the new design of the Pixel 9 series. The overall look feels very derivative of Apple’s design language and the tacked-on camera module isn’t as striking as the Pixel 8 series’ full-width camera bar.
Even with those issues in play, the Pixel 9 is still a fantastic deal at this price. I highly doubt that we’ll see another entry-level flagship phone with the kind of quality offered here dropping as low as £499 before Prime Day wraps up for another year.
If you want to compare this deal to the other bargains I’ve found, head over to my Prime Day phone deals live blog to see all the best deals and discounts of this year’s sale.
Amazon Prime Day savings are open to Prime subscribers only. The good news is that you can sign up to a 30-day free trial if you don’t want to commit to the monthly cost.
