All hail Google’s latest Pixel 9 Pro, the flagship of its smartphone lineup. It’s powerful, it’s fast, it’s new for 2025. It’s also $999. Not everybody wants to spend that much on a phone, but virtually everyone wouldn’t furiously object to having a fast, powerful phone.
Thanks to an uncommon deal, you can save $400 on the Google Pixel 8 Pro, which may be last year’s model, but it was still Google’s best model of 2024. Even a year later, it’s a powerful, competitive smartphone. And hey, for $500, you won’t find a more powerful phone for the price.
a bona-fide deal
Some detective work is needed to highlight this deal’s legitimacy as a deal. But it is a deal. When I’m talking about a $599 Pixel 8 Pro, I’m referring to the 128GB version. It’s not a lot of storage in this day and age, but you can make it work if you offload your photos to the cloud or an external drive occasionally, as you should be doing anyway.
Once you attempt to spring for the 256GB version, the price skyrockets to either $902 or $1,059, depending on your retailer of choice, and so it ceases to be much of a deal, or even a worthwhile option.
Looking back through the price records (us journalist types can do that sort of thing), I see that the Pixel 8 Pro was listed at this sale price before during the whole of winter 2025, but with the major caveat that it was largely unavailable and out of stock during this time.
Only very intermittently was it available to actually order, and once it was back in stock it jumped back up to $900, where it was decidedly not a great deal. I mean, who’d buy it for $900 when $99 more would get you the brand new Pixel 9 Pro?
Knocking the full $400 off the Pixel 8 Pro’s retail price changes the whole game. This just might be the best deal on a smartphone going on right now.
The post Go Ahead and Get the Google Pixel 8 Pro for $599—Instead of the $1K Pixel 9 Pro appeared first on VICE.
