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You told us your favorite Pixel 11 Pro alternative, and it’s not another Pixel
Five alternatives entered and only one could top our poll, but there was a bigger surprise at the bottom.
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The Pixel 11 Pro is objectively a very good phone, but at a cool $1,100, it’s hardly a no-brainer in the current market. Indeed, it has plenty of competition. Some of that comes from the usual Android rivals, while Google itself offers a couple of compelling alternatives if you don’t need the latest Pro model.
We recently picked out five phones that we think are worth considering instead of the Pixel 11 Pro, including the Galaxy S26 Plus, Nothing Phone 3, and even last year’s Pixel 10 Pro. We then asked which of the five you’d choose if you were looking elsewhere. More than 2,200 of you voted, and the results made for an interesting comparison.
The Galaxy S26 Plus came out on top as your favorite Pixel 11 Pro alternative, taking 26.2% of the 2,287 votes. The Pixel 10 Pro was next at 21.8%, followed closely by the Nothing Phone 3 at 20.5% and the Motorola Razr at 19.5%. The standard Pixel 11 was the clear outlier at the bottom, attracting just 12% of the vote.
There are a couple of interesting things here. Samsung winning isn’t really a huge shock, given that the Galaxy S26 Plus is the most direct Android rival to the Pixel 11 Pro among our five choices. What stands out more is how little separates the next three phones. An older Pixel, a relatively niche Nothing flagship, and a foldable Motorola all landed within 2.3 percentage points of each other. There doesn’t seem to be one obvious route for readers who want something different.
The Pixel 11 was comfortably the least popular alternative.
The Pixel 11 result is also pretty striking. It costs less and offers the same Tensor G6 chipset as the Pro, so as we’ll come to, you could argue it offers better value for money than its big brother. Yet it was comfortably the least popular alternative. Within this particular matchup, readers were much more tempted by last year’s Pixel 10 Pro than by dropping down to Google’s current standard flagship.
We didn’t offer the option in our poll to say that the Pixel 11 Pro was the best device of the lot, but one inference we could draw from those results is that many non-Pixel fans were voicing their preferred alternative, rather than mostly Pixel users making an enforced choice.
Of course, that poll only tells us which alternative readers preferred when they had to pick one. It doesn’t tell us how many would actually choose any of them over the Pixel 11 Pro. Fortunately, another recent poll gives us a better idea of that.
In a separate article, we argued that the Pixel 11 Pro series might not offer the best value in Google’s new lineup. The standard Pixel 11 is at least $200 cheaper but has the same Tensor G6 chipset and 12GB of base RAM, a slightly larger battery, the same charging speeds, and most of the same software features. The Pro offers perks such as better cameras, a brighter display, and HiLight, but our argument was that many buyers may not get enough use out of those extras to justify the premium.
On the back of making that case, we asked whether you thought the Pixel 11 Pro series was still worth buying, and more than 1,800 readers responded. This time, there was no enforced choice between alternatives.
The results suggest that plenty of readers still see the appeal of going Pro. Of the 1,824 votes, 44.1% said they would absolutely consider buying a Pixel 11 Pro. Another 20.4% agreed with our argument that a standard Pixel would be the smarter buy, while 24.7% would rather go with Samsung or another competitor. The remaining 10.7% chose “Other.”
So while the Pro models were the single most popular choice, a majority of respondents weren’t sold on them. It also adds some useful context to our other poll: almost a quarter explicitly preferred a rival brand, while one in five would stay with Google but save some money by skipping the Pro.
Price changed the equation for some of those who bought the new Pro.
The comments section of this article gave a bit more insight into that “Other” figure, and suggested that camp wasn’t necessarily looking for another 2026 phone. Some readers simply saw no reason to upgrade at all, while others preferred an older Pixel. Rusty Harris, for example, is sticking with his Pixel 9 Pro XL, while Eurotrader1972 said it was the “perfect time to get the 10 Pro XL.”
Price also changed the equation for some of those who did buy the new Pro. Jpframerica said they love their Pixel 11 Pro after paying $449 through Google Fi, while Jason paid $369 after a trade-in and discount code. On the other side, a couple of readers specifically cited the loss of the temperature sensor as a reason to stick with an older Pro.
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