Hey all...I've been pretty exhaustively trying all the current streaming services. I know this is a Stadia group but I thought if anyone out there is curious about what the experience is like on other services, perhaps you could benefit from a layman's experience using each service and trying to make it my "main" service. Like I said, I'm a layman, not a professional reviewer, so there's a lot of things I'm still learning, but having tried all three of the major services, here's my thoughts.
Edit: Please bear in mind this is not an exhaustive list, just some thoughts based on a couple of months of on and off testing. I'm certainly not trying to sway or influence anyone's purchasing decisions, just giving some general thoughts that might help when trying to decide which service to look into. I know not everyone can get ahold of / rush out and buy all of the devices I have listed here - I happen to work for a tech company so I have a lot more devices floating around than most other people. Your mileage, of course, may vary!
I know there's also Steam Link, but since that requires you to have a PC capable of playing the game in the house somewhere, I'm not considering that a streaming service.
Testing Devices:

• ChromeCast Ultra (Stadia Only)
• iPad Pro 2020
• Asus G14
• Pixel 2 XL (xCloud only)
• iPhone 12 Pro Max (Stadia only)
• nVidia Shield (GeForce Now only)
• Samsung Galaxy Chromebook (Stadia only)

Amazon Luna

Notable Games: Control, lots of highly rated indie titles (Blasphemous, Bloodstained, Iconoclasts)
To be fair, I only have about 6 hours on Amazon Luna, but they've been pretty excruciating. My wifi averages about 75-90 MBps, and about half of the games I tried suffered from lag and graphical smear, mostly the Ubisoft+ games. The indie games played fabulously well. Luna is probably the service I have the least to say about. It's $6 a month for Luna on it's own, so it's kindof like the "also-ran" effort - it's cheap, but might be the most forgettable of the bunch. The user interface is better than GeForce Now, worse than Stadia, and unlike Stadia it doesn't seem like Luna can be enhanced with browser extensions.
I have Ubisoft+, so I tried to play Immortal: Fenyx Rising on Luna and it was absolutely horrible. Smeared graphics, dropped frames, input lag, the works. It was the only experience across all of the big three services that was literally unplayable. This seemed to be a problem only with the Ubisoft games, however, I have to stress.
Pros

• Netflix-style game selection, with lots of indie titles you don't see many other places. Control is the only standout AAA title, and it looks and plays fantastically. Indie games were great too.
• Integration with Ubisoft+ is seamless and the games just become part of your library.
• Twitch integration is pretty cool - nice to see streamers who are playing the game live when you jump into the game page.
• Runs in the browser but also has dedicated apps - a plus for me.
• Luna is probably the best service for Twitch streamers - it's integrated right into the UI. I don't stream so I wasn't able to test it, but it seems pretty easy.

Cons

• Seems to be in Early Access, so I literally don't know anyone else who has gotten an invite.
• The pro of having niche indie games is offset by the con of not having a wide game selection. Of all the services, seems like Luna has the least, but broadest, selection.
• Seeing an ad for Luna, WHILE PLAYING LUNA, was irrationally annoying. Amazon just can't freaking help themselves I guess.
• I signed up for Luna fully expecting to play all of my games claimed through Prime Gaming...literally none of those games are available.
• If there's a way to find Luna from the main Amazon home page, they've hid it pretty well. I'm sure it's buried in one of their dozens of menus but I could not for the life of me find a quick and easy way to get to Luna from Amazon dotcom.
• This is a very minor point, but Amazon Luna ONLY works on Chrome, while Google Stadia works in either Chrome or Edge Browser (since it's built on Chromium). Probably doesn't make a difference for most people, but to me Edge seems to run better, so I'm docking a point.

GeForce Now

Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077, Control, Immortals: Fenix Rising, Metro series, Destiny 2 (all paid)
I picked up an nVidia Shield specifically for GeForce now, but my wife and I have ended up using it primarily for Kodi and to watch Netflix more than playing any games on it. I'll just say it straight out - GeForce Now sucks ass. It's a broken, shoddy, inconsistent mess. It's actually WORSE on the Shield than it is on PC, because there are so many times when I needed a keyboard to do anything. I tried playing Immortals: Fenyx Rising on GFN on my Shield which required me to log into Ubisoft+. I'm fine with that, since you only have to do it once...but using the Shield remote that came with my Shield, the on-screen keyboard never popped up, forcing me to track down a second keyboard from in my garage and plug in. After I plugged in the physical keyboard....THEN the onscreen keyboard popped up and just mirrored what I pressed on the physical keyboard. What? Why?
Games are all over the place as well. Witcher 3 was a nightmare - every time you try to play the game, it wants to install the DLC packs onto whatever virtual machine you've been assigned. Then when you can play, it dips so far under 30 fps it's literally better to just play it on a budget PC with Hairworks off.
Plus the Shield ain't cheap - it was like $200 at Best Buy, and didn't include a controller. $100 more gets you a Series S, and $100 LESS gets you a Stadia-enabled Chromecast WITH a solid as hell controller, just for comparison's sake.
Pros

• Raytracing, I guess. Control looks great?
• Links with Steam, GOG, and Epic, so you keep your games if the service goes down at some point in the future. Also technically "cheaper" overall than Stadia cos you can find cheap keys online or Steam sales (which seem to be more frequent than Stadia sales) and still get the game in your GeForce Now.
• GFN seems to have the widest selection of enabled games. Not all that impressive since you have to own the game already, but this does give it somewhat of an advantage.
• Links to Epic library, which is cool. 80% of my games on Epic were not GFN enabled, which is not as cool.

Cons

• Literally the hardest of the big three services to use. Not a "pick up and play" experience. Requires a lot of effort to get working, and even then, inconsistent across platforms.
• Even on nVidias own hardware, it can be tricky to figure out what games actually are on GeForce Now and which aren't and get them running right.
• Some games just don't play well. Witcher 3 is a buggy, low framerate mess...while Control is smooth as butter. No rhyme or reason as to why. I couldn't get Mankind Divided to play full-screen - it always wanted to play in a window.
• Since you're just running a virtual machine, you still have to fiddle with graphical settings. Some games don't look right when first started, and you have to remember to go into the settings and change things to match whatever screen you're on.
• Twice I still had to wait in a queue to play even though I paid for the Founder's subscription. Insanely frustrating.
• One hour limit to gameplay if you don't pay for the Founder's subscription, and you're stuck waiting in a queue. There were times where I was in a queue of over 300, which translated to upwards of 18 minutes one session, waiting to play. I would go as far as to say, if you don't pay for Founder's, don't bother with GFN at all.
• Also, just because I don't have anywhere else to put this, Ubisoft's Cloud Save system is atrocious. This isn't nVidia's fault, I just want to complain about it.

Google Stadia

Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077 (paid), Hitman: World of Assassination (Pro), Destiny 2 (Pro), Red Dead Redemption II (Paid)
Stadia is easily the best overall, but it still has its cons. I came to Stadia thanks to Cyberpunk 2077 so I have the most hours played on Stadia of the big three services. Stadia on the Chromecast Ultra seems to me to be the hands down best way to play streamed games currently.
Of all the services, Stadia was the one that felt the least like a "me-too" service and more like a dedicated platform. Almost all of the other services felt like a way for corporations to dip their toe in the water and figure out if there's money to be made, while Stadia feels like someone who really grasps and cares about gaming is at the helm.
Pros

• Least barrier to entry. Download Chrome or Edge Browser, grab any bluetooth controller, and you're off the races.
• No subscription required. You can play any game purchased on Stadia without a subscription with no queue system, no picking a virtual machine, no Steam big picture mode...it's just, hit the Play button and go.
• This is a big one for me - seems to have the best "capture" integration. Though, the iOS / Android app could use work (just let me download the image and share it? Why do I need to share a link?) overall, sharing your snaps and vids is pretty easy on Stadia.
• Playing with the Stadia controller on my TV after picking up a Chromecast Ultra felt like magic.
• Similarly, being able to "pick up and play" games like Cyberpunk 2077 on a Chromebook felt similarly magical. The game looked its best, believe it or not, on a Samsung Chromebook that I tested at Best Buy. Random side note but the Google guy at Best Buy was SO EXCITED that I wanted to check out Stadia on a Chromebook. He was over the moon.
• The game selection for Pro does have some interesting titles that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. But see Con 1 below.

Cons

• The game selection for Stadia Pro is a tad lackluster at the moment. Definitely enough to keep me playing, but there wasn't really a "must have" title that jumped out at me. Bunch of average, quite playable titles
• The game selection for purchases is a little thin as well, seeing as how the service is over a year old at this point. I know it’s on literally every other platform but I would have loved to do a second play through of Control on Stadia, and stuff like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Hades, even some older indie titles like Transistor or Pyre, some of the Lego games...
• UI seems like an complete afterthought, which is a little weird since this is a Google product. This is solved a little bit by extensions like Stadia Enhanced, but that's a third party fix so I'm still listing it as a con. No search? Captures seem deprecated?
• Probably the highest "cost" to play, since you have to buy the games outright, and sales seem few and far between. If Stadia just vanishes at some point (which, let's be fair, Google has a track record of doing with their services) they haven't really outlined what happens to your library.
• No raytracing yet. Not really a con for me personally, but other services offer it.
• This may just be a bug but I'm listing it as a con - a number of times the Stadia homepage just wouldn't load. I was left staring at the Stadia logo wondering what was going on for minutes at a time. I'd have to close out of the browser and restart. Not sure if that's an issue with Chrome, but it seemed to happen on Edge browser as well.
• Stadia-specific versions of games. Now, hear me out - usually this is a PRO not a con, but in Stadia’s case it seems to be a con as making a wholly new build of a game for a specific platform probably just isn’t in the cards for a lot of developers. That could be what’s slowing down a lot of games coming to Stadia - the time and money required to build a new version of the game. Hopefully we see some “Stadia first” games that will convince other developers to jump on board.

Xbox Game Pass / Game Pass Unlimited / Gold / Live / Play Anywhere / xCloud / Whatever it's being called these days

Notable Games: Nier: Automata BAG Edition, Dragon Quest XI S, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda
Xbox Game Pass gets added to this list on a pure technicality.
So, technically Xbox Game Pass isn't a streaming service, but I include it because on Android, there actually is a "cloud" option for playing your console Game Pass library. The Cloud streaming works surprisingly well, but you're limited to either an Android tablet or phone because it doesn't seem to work properly on Android TV. I've heard you can sideload onto the nVidia Shield, but that was beyond the scope of what I was trying to accomplish with these reviews...I just want something I can pick up and play. So, yeah if you don't mind playing on your phone, Game Pass Cloud is actually probably the best of the bunch in terms of ease of use and game selection. There are so many things I want to play on Game Pass it's actually a little overwhelming. However, I don't want to stare at a 5" screen for hours to do so.
Pros

• Wide game selection with lots of games being added every month (almost every week, seems like)
• Broad game selection - seems to be some standouts from just about every game genre. I know this seems like a repeat of point one, but they're very different things - it's one thing to just throw a ton of games on your service, its another to make sure you're representing every genre out there, which Game Pass seems to do more admirably than any other service.
• Streaming seems to work just fine. I was able to play Dragon Quest: Inquisition on my Android phone with very little issue. Couple of times the connection dropped, but it was no better or worse than Stadia.
• It seems like services are stumbling all over themselves to get included in Game Pass.

Cons

• Again, inconsistent experience. Offerings are different on console than on PC...why is Torchlight III a console exclusive? Why are all the good games pushed to console and cloud, with PC being an afterthought?
• Games seem to come and go randomly - some popular games pop up for a few months and are gone, other seemingly niche titles have been on the service since launch
• Probably the biggest con - no streaming on PC, iOS, or Android TV. Baffling choice. Maybe there's business reasons I'm not aware of, but as a user, it's maddening.
• Minor point, but good lord Microsoft needs to simplify EVERYTHING related to Xbox. No one can figure out what the hell service we have when I try to talk to people about it - there's Game Pass, but there's also Games with Gold, then there's Live, then there's Game Pass Ultimate, but there's also Play Anywhere, which isn't really a service, just some sort of cross-play, And the number of times people thought I have a Series X when I actually have a One X was insanely frustrating as well. I know this doesn't have anything to do with the service, but jeez man why is everything Microsoft does so haphazard?

Whew! I actually had way more to say on this topic than I thought, I guess. I've probably spent more time and energy on this than I should have, but working from home has given me a lot of time on my hands, so hopefully my experiences can help save someone else some time and effort. Would love some counterpoints as well!

Section One: Assets and Debt Use this section to explain your current financial picture at large.
Retirement Balance: $0 (I can’t contribute until March)
Equity if you're a homeowner: My boyfriend, H, and I just bought a house! We close on Feb 5th, but don’t take possession until March 15th. But our home was appraised at $270,000, we paid $267,000. Our downpayment is 20% and H’s parents gave us $46,000 for that and closing costs. I have put forth $10,000 from my investment account (see below) and H has contributed $7,000 and will pay for a chunk of the repairs needed before we move in.
Savings account balance: $5,000
Checking account balance: $1,200 (I try not to ever let this go under $1,000)
Credit card debt: $300 (This is gas/some grocery expenses that will be paid at the end of the month)
Student loan debt: $10,500 for a BBA in general business. I am reeeeeally hoping Biden is going to forgive this, as I have almost exactly $10,000 left to pay. My grandparents paid for most of my degree until my last 5 semesters because I changed schools. I had been going to my grandfather’s alma mater and changed schools with 5 semesters left, going full time all semesters.
Mutual fund: ~$6,500. This had $10,000 more but I used it for our down payment. This was opened for me by my grandparents, and my parents also contributed. I got ownership of this account the year I turned 21.
Section Two: Income
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $2,472
My boyfriend H makes $52,000/year, but we do not combine finances. We either split everything or Venmo each other. It typically evens out.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent / Mortgage / HOA fees: Currently our rent is $950 for just rent and we pay relative to paycheck (I pay $400). Our mortgage will be $1,200 and I will be paying $550
Renters / home owners insurance: We paid for a year of renters ($110) and will have to start paying home owners in March
Retirement contribution: I can’t contribute until March, but will start contributing 3%
Savings contribution: usually around $200-300
Investment contribution: Nothing now, will be after we get the expensive home things finished
Debt payments: Pay off CC monthly. Not paying off student loans until September, if I have to. Then will be paying $100
Donations: I volunteer with an animal rescue (am also a board member!)
Electric: H pays
Wifi/Cable/Landline: H pays
Cellphone: On my parents’ plan
Subscriptions: $15 for book of the month, and $60 every 6 weeks for our cats’ food through Chewy, $10 for Grubhub+, $10 for Disney+ and $5 for Spotify for students (they don’t know I graduated). H’s parents pay for Netflix and Amazon and we let them use our Disney and Hulu!
Pet expenses: See above, and $20 month for their insurance (for my half)
Car payment / insurance: My parents bought my car and pay my insurance
Friday:
7:15 am: Wake up for work. Make an iced coffee and get ready. Throw on Madewell jeans and a sweater and out the door by 7:35.
8:00: Arrive at work. Realize I have nothing to do today and internally freak out. This is my first job out of college and I’m really struggling with figuring it out. We are in the office, but my manager is working from home this week and my coworker, L, is in the office. They have different expectations of me and I’m completely overwhelmed. My coworker is a bit controlling, so she “assigns” me my work and I have a project that I can do in my free time. I feel like I’m wasting time by not actually doing any real work, but L is swamped and won’t delegate. During my first week I attempted to just start doing things that are my responsibility, but L freaked out, called my manager, who then told me that I can’t do anything until L assigns it to me, even though I was just doing things that are my responsibility.
12:30: Heat up lunch and chill on my phone. L is being quite verbal with how busy she is and makes an off hand comment about how she’s “so glad I’m here, but it’s like double the work having to check over someone else’s work and do your own.” I apologize for being new and she says that she can’t wait until I have free reign on things and I agree. I remind myself that I am still new and it is okay to make mistakes.
4:30: Finally done, call H on my way home. I tell him I am so glad it is Friday and I can’t wait to just relax tonight. When I get home I have a Diet Coke while H makes tempura cauliflower and potsticker soup.
7 pm: Amazon delivers a box of vitamins my mom ordered for me and I call her to thank her. H is on the phone with his mom, so we both chat with our respective moms for a few before we continue watching Netflix and chatting.
9 pm: I start getting tired but we decide to watch Lady Bird and hang on the couch with the cats. I doze off at 11 while H plays video games.
Money spent: $0
Saturday:
9:30: Wake up to coffee in bed supplied by H, who has been up since 7 am to watch a soccer game. I put the coffee on my nightstand and one of the cats instantly knocks it over, spilling it everywhere. I guess it’s time to get up?
10:30: Hop in the shower after milling around straightening the apartment. I am finding it so difficult to even want to organize here when I know we’re moving in a few weeks. We don’t have a possession date yet, because the current owners have not found a new house. We have a huge list of things we want/need to do to the house before moving in, so we will not move in on our possession date anyways. I throw in some laundry after my shower and H decides to make lunch.
12: We need to get out of our apartment, so we go drive by our house and check out our new local brewery. It is half a mile from the house and they have an outdoor beer deck, as restaurants in Michigan are closed to indoor dining. I get a sangria and H gets 2 beers and some fries for us to share. H pays.
1:00: We see that town a few minutes away has a whole street closed down where you can open carry alcohol and there are fires and food. We figure we will stop by and see how things look. Everyone is wearing masks (unless eating or drinking) and are social distancing, so H parks and we walk around. We stop for coffees first, I get a tea latte and H gets a coffee. ($8 with a tip).
1:30: After sitting down and hanging out drinking coffee we walk around downtown. Everyone has masks on and are social distancing and it is so nice to see. It is pretty cold out but most bars and restaurants have outdoor seating with heaters or fires. We pop into another brewery where H gets a ghost pepper beer and a spicy Crunchwrap for when we get home. H pays. On our way out we stop at our favorite cheese store and get a caramelized onion quiche, a goat cheese with red pepper and onion, some Tipperary Irish cheese and a triple cream Brie/blue cheese, I pay. ($26 with tip)
2:30: After sitting out by the fire my hair smells like smoke so I take another shower while H puts away the cheese and tidies around the living room. We share the crunch wrap and it is amazing. Today is cheat day, so we won’t work out tonight, but will tomorrow. Loaf around between loads of laundry and watching Pirates of the Caribbean.
8:00: Hungry again so we order Thai food from Grubhub. I get peanut curry noodles and H gets yellow curry and we split crab Rangoon. ($32, H pays half). H plays games online with some friends on Saturday nights so I make the bed, tidy up, and start some online shopping for the house. We currently have 1 b1 bath and our house is 4 b2.5 bath and I’m so overwhelmed! The current owners are taking all of the fixtures in all bathrooms (toilet paper holders, towel bars and hooks, etc) so those are things we need pretty quick after we move. I put some items in my cart at Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, but don’t check out because I know there will be a sale soon.
10:30: The cats and I head to bed, H is staying up to watch the Connor McGregor fight. I do my night time skin routine of Lush’s 9-5, the Body Shop’s Oils of Life and Olay night cream and eye cream, brush my teeth and watch Bob’s Burgers until I pass out.
Total: $50
Sunday:
9:30 am: H wakes me up with coffee and asks if I want him to heat up the quiche from yesterday. He does that while I talk to my parents and cuddle the cats. We eat in bed and lounge until noon, when we decide to run to the grocery store and take our recycling and garbage. (Meijer trip: $26 for my half) We get onions, brussels, asparagus, potatoes, soup, crackers, rice, enchilada sauce, black beans, and other stuff I can’t remember.
1:00: On to target because our Meijer is never well stocked. We are able to get in and out in 15 minutes, which seems like it should be illegal. (My half: $13). We get some meatless crumbles and falafel, parchment paper and Valentine’s Day toys for the cats.
2:00: Home and the groceries are put away. I make a cheese board for H and I to snack on while we watch the Red Wings game.
3:00: I start cleaning the apartment while H watches football. I clean the sinks, the bathroom, vacuum and steam clean the floors while he scoops the litter box. While the floors dry, I take a nap on the couch with one of the cats. We do a popsugar workout when I wake up and then veg until dinner, talking and watching TV.
7:30: H makes brussel sprouts, asparagus, and rice for dinner while I finish up laundry. After dinner I shower and do my night time routine and out by 10.
Daily total: $39
Monday:
7:30: On way to work and the line at Starbucks is insane. I usually stop at Starbucks on Monday mornings but there is no way I can wait in line and still make it to work on time. I stop at the gas station next to work for my coffee ($1.50) and hope it doesn’t suck (spoiler: it did).
12:30: Lunch time! H texted me this morning that we will be able to take possession on our house sooner than we thought, so I make a list (one of many) of things we need to get done between closing and possession. Getting a little stressed about things we “need” vs “want” but I know it’ll work out. I eat an Annie’s Mac and cheese and look online for bathroom hardware.
4:30: H calls and tells me we need to figure out how to get a wire transfer receipt for the money I sent him for our down payment. On my way home I call my credit union, but they don’t offer receipts for wire transfers. I call H back and give him the confirmation number my CU gave me, and we hope that is good enough. When I get home we do another Pop Sugar workout video and order mexican food. We have some rewards from Grubhub, so our fajitas only cost us $4 (I pay).
6:00: Home, eat and relax. It is going to snow tonight so H reminds me to leave early in the morning for traffic. We do our nightly routines and I’m out by 10.
Total: $5.50
Tuesday:
7:30: Wake up to a ton of snow and icy roads. Thankfully H brushed my car off before I left, but it is still snowing and gross outside. We’re supposed to get another 6 inches today!
12:30: Lunch time! I heat up some mashed potatoes and call my credit union. We are still trying to get our lender proof that I gave H money for our mortgage and I’m getting frustrated. I give them permission to speak to H, and he gets it straightened out.
4:30: My boss calls me as I’m about to leave to tell me I can work from home Friday! When I got this job I was told I would be remote within a year, but from conversations with my boss it sounds like it could be a lot sooner. This was a huge reason we wanted to get a house, because I do really need an “office”, not just a desk in our bedroom. I call H on the way home and make him tell our cats I will be home with the all day Friday.
5:00: Home and my mom texts asking if I want anything from The Body Shop. She places an order and I get Aloe moisturizer, some make up remover, and a facial massager ($28, sent to my mom). I have been trying to get more into skin care lately and I’m so excited for the facial roller! My mom and I are super close and I miss her so much. We usually chat on the phone once a day, but it isn’t the same.
7:00: After dinner (soup and salad, made by H) I get the box my mom sent me. Mostly things I left at home for Christmas. H and I were not planning on going home for Christmas, but the week before there was a death in his family. We went home (2 hours away) with the cats, not knowing how long we would stay. We packed for 4 days, but ended up staying 3 weeks. Also included in the box was my tab renewal form. I decide to do it online, instead of going to the Secretary of State in person ($91.31, with fees for paying with a card). My car is in my mom’s name, so I have to update my tabs during her birth month, not my own.
9:30: Shower and get in bed. We watch the Simpsons until we fall asleep.
Total: $119.30
Wednesday:
7:15: Wake up and get dressed. I have extra time this morning, so I stop at Starbucks and get a Carmel macchiato ($5). I get into work and my boss calls to let me know my laptop bag was delivered, so I grab that from the receptionist. Since I’ll be working from home Friday I make sure my laptop, mouse, and charger all fit in the bag.
12:30: H Venmo requests me $65 for utilities this month. I didn’t pay for rent from August-December, so I tell him I will pay half of our utilities for a few months. I was furloughed from my retail job March-June, and then I was collecting underemployment June-August. I got COVID in July, and quit my job in August, due to being asked to work while being sick with CIVID. Because I stopped receiving unemployment at that point, H agreed to let me stop paying rent. I really appreciate this, it allowed me to not have to get a job for my last semester, and truly focus on school and getting an after graduation job. I place a pick up order for Target to grab on my way home from work. I get pita bread and snacks for work ($11).
4:30: Leave work, stop at Target for Drive Up. I also stop at Sam’s Club for gas ($18.40) When I get home, H and I do a popsugar work out. He makes dinner (falafel, rice, pita and salad) while I fold towels, pick up a bit and chat with my mom. I also text a few friends I haven’t talked to lately. In bed by 9, after a shower and skin care routine.
Total: $94.40
Thursday:
7:30: Up and out the door. At work, my boss asks what I want for lunch so I order a wrap from Applebees (she pays) and my coworker, boss and I eat in a conference room. We discuss how I’m doing and they let me know I will be able to work from home by my 90 day point (!!!!). They also explain that another coworker, who isn’t in my department but was hired in the same day as me, was let go last week due to misaligned expectations. They ask how I’m feeling, and I am honest and explain that I feel a little overwhelmed and like I’m not doing a good job. They both reassure me and it ends up being a great talk.
2:30: My mom texts and asks if I think my niece would like an Amazon tablet and I say yes. I do a pickup for one at the target near my mom, so she can use my red card discount and drive up. ($105, but my mom will Venmo me when she decides if she will keep it)
4:30: Grab my laptop and leave work! I stop at Marshall’s to get a new cat dish, and also some soap dispensers for the house. Wouldn’t be a marshalls trip without buying something that I don’t really need but I walk out with an entry way bench anyways. ($108) I chat on the phone with my mom and friend while shopping and then go get my dip powder taken off my nails ($10). Super bummed I’m not going to be doing dip for the time being but it is an unnecessary expense right now, and I’ll be working remote more with no one looking at my nails.
7:00: H gets home from guitar lessons and we talk about moving. This leads to a fight about realistic expectations of moving, cleaning old apartment, and what happened last time we moved. We both agree that there’s no use fighting until we know all the facts and H makes dinner.
9:30: H does the dishes while I get ready for bed and we get into bed. Asleep by 10, excited to WFH tomorrow!
Total: $223
Week total: $531.20
Food + Drink: $110.50
Fun / Entertainment: $0
Home + Health: $108
Clothes + Beauty: $28
Transport: $109.71
Other: $65
Reflection: This is an atypical week for spending. H and I definitely order a ton of take out, and that’s typical, but I haven’t been shopping as much lately. Saving up for housing expenses has been pretty stressful for me, I really want to get the big stuff out of the way before buying furniture. In case anyone is wondering about our house buying process, I will outline briefly below:
In November 2020, H’s parents offered to help us with a down payment, as we were having a tough time finding any homes in our budget. We met with a lender, who approved us for way more than we planned on spending. The market in Grand Rapids is hot. We put an offer in on another house, $30k over asking, we had done an inspection before our offer, and offered an appraisal gap of $5k. The winning offer was $70k over asking, in cash, no appraisal or inspection. We were devastated, it was truly our dream home. This was right before Christmas, and H had lost a family member that week. We agreed to take a break from looking at houses. January 3rd, I found our house on a Zillow email. We called our agent and he told us that there was already an offer in, who asked the owners to stop showing the house. It had been on market for 6 hours. Our agent was able to get us in that night, but told us if we wanted it we needed to make an offer that night. We agreed to offer $15k over, with an escalation clause of $20k over, $3k appraisal gap, and 40 days between acceptance and possession, as the current owners needed to find a house. There was another offer that was $1k over our initial, but under our escalation clause maximum, so our offer won! We found out we got the house on a Thursday, and our inspection was that Saturday. This was January 9, and the inspection didn’t find any major issues with the house, save for the 24 year old water heater and furnace. We asked the sellers for a 1 year home warranty, which they agreed to. They also offered us their washer and dryer (5years old, LG) for $500. We agreed and our all in was $268,500. It was really important to H’s parents that we put 20% down so we didn’t have to deal with PMI, so our down payment was $56,000. Closing costs will be $7,000. We will need to paint, add gutters, have a handy man and electrician do small jobs, and update the master bedroom carpet.

Just wanted to share my experience today setting up Shadow on the Fire TV Stick. Played Star Wars: Fallen Order on ultra settings without a hiccup.
Here's the hardware list for setup:

• Shadow Boost using Quadro P5000 GPU.
• 4K Fire TV Stick
• 8bitdo SN30Pro controller
• iOS or Android device
• Television (obviously)

The Firestick is located close to our 5G router. It's a basic router that came with the cable service. You can setup anywhere in the house, given you have a mesh network in your home (pods supplied by cable service that extend WiFi around your home).
Instructions:

1. The Firestick comes with an extender cable in the box. This I believe boosts the WiFi signal, so suggested to plug it in.
2. Connect your controller to the Firestick. XBOX controllers are best, but the cheaper SN30Pro works, since it has the same buttons essentially, and is well-built.
3. Install "Mouse Toggle" app on Firestick. This gives you mouse functionality needed later. Follow this guide to install it, and despite comments, you can use the 4K Firestick link provided in the article. It works: https://www.firesticktricks.com/mouse-toggle-firestick.html
4. Install "Downloader" app on Firestick (covered in guide above).
5. Within Downloader app, navigate to APKMirror and download/install the latest Shadow build for Android. I used the 3.4.4 BETA: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/blade-group/
6. On your mobile phone or tablet, install the "Fire TV" app from official app store. This gives you a bluetooth keyboard needed later. Once downloaded, connect it to your Firestick using the code provided on screen.
7. Go to your computer and fire up Shadow PC. If like me you have games on several platforms like Steam, Epic, Amazon, Origin, etc., you'll want to access your installed games that utilize a controller in one interface on the Firestick.
8. Open Steam, and add the games you want to show up on the Firestick from each platform. Installed Steam games will show up in your library automatically, as you'll be using Steam's Big Picture Mode to navigate on the stick. Games from other platforms must be manually added. Here's a guide: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-to-add-games-to-steam-library/ "scroll to section: Add non-Steam games from other services (such as GOG.com)".
9. A few tips - favorite the games in Steam you've manually added from other platforms. In this way, they stay separated from your main Steam library for easy removal later. Also, you likely will want to rename the games in Steam as they take on the game's executable file name (which is not pretty).
10. In Steam settings > Interface > enable “Run Steam when my computer starts” and “Start Steam in Big Picture Mode”.
11. In Shadow settings, set your bandwidth to a few Mbps lower than recommended, to ensure smooth playback. In my case, they recommended 20 Mbps. I set it to 10 Mbps.
12. Shut down your Shadow session, note your Shadow username/password, and return to the Fire TV Stick.
13. Open Shadow app on the Firestick. Login with your credentials. You can use the standard Firestick remote for this part with its built-in keyboard.
14. Once credentials are entered, you'll be presented with a 6-digit confirmation code sent to your email to approve the connection. Open the "Fire TV" app on your phone and with its keyboard, enter the 6 digits in the email. Then click the "Continue" button in Shadow.
15. Shadow will ask to convert your Shadow PC to Beta version. This is OK, as it only does it for the session, and nothing gets messed up. When you open Shadow on your computer later, it'll revert back to regular Windows 10 with all your stuff intact.
16. You should be greeted by Steam in Big Picture Mode when it boots up. From there you can navigate to your installed games library using your XBOX or generic game controller. Launch a game and Bob's your uncle.
17. If like me you have some Star Wars games from EA, you'll likely need to login to Origin again on the Firestick. Using a combination of "Mouse Toggle" and "Fire TV" apps, you can navigate the Origin login process since it requires keyboard and mouse input. For Mouse Toggle, you press play/pause button twice to enable it, then up/down to move the mouse.
18. A quick note about bandwidth. The Shadow android app has its own bandwidth setting independent from the standard desktop Shadow settings. By default, it was set to 5 Mbps, so I set it to 10 Mbps (as I know my network can handle that), but YMMV.
19. It's worth noting that you should keep at least 1GB of storage free on your Firestick at all times for best performance, and the Shadow app uses roughly 55MB of storage space. It keeps next to no additional data or cache. I was pretty shocked at how light it is!

I wanted to document this process in case it helps anyone else. I've heard the 4K Fire TV Stick flakes out on others, but as of January 2021 I had zero issues playing Fallen Order for an hour with the best graphic settings. Also I didn't notice any compression artifacts on a 52" 1080p LCD TV.
I don't believe the 30 minute inactivity shutdown is a problem with the android app, so IMO it's worth moving longer gaming sessions to the TV. Less chance of losing in-game progress when you step away for an exercise break.
Stay healthy gamers!

Brevity is not my strong suit. No one is going to read this whole thing, but as long as one person reads at least one section of this, I'll be happy. Feel free to skip ahead to a section you specifically want to read a comparison about, if you don't want to read the whole thing. I recommend the Performance and Gaming sections.
Firstly, here is a Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, gameplay footage, (no camera videos yet) for the things I will be referring to.
Secondly, I am no phone reviewer. I buy phones once every 3-4 years, until this time where I jumped the gun to switch to a Pixel, so I have only used 5 phones in my life (mostly midrange) and don't have too much to compare to.
Thirdly, this is long enough to have an outline, so feel free to jump to read something that interests you if you don't want to read the whole thing:

1. Introduction
2. Dimensions
3. Haptics
4. Display
5. Fingerprint sensor
6. Speakers
7. Microphone
8. Battery
9. General software and features
10. Default Launcher
11. Always On Display
12. Performance
13. Gaming
14. Camera
15. Dual Screen
16. Conclusion
17. tl;dr

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Introduction

Hi /GooglePixel I picked up a LG G8X as about 4 months ago when my Moto Z Play died on me, and the LG G8X seemed to have everything I wanted in a phone at the great price of $500 CAD (at the time – the phone’s even cheaper now!). Snapdragon 855, 4000 mAh battery with positive battery reviews, AMOLED display, wide angle camera, 128gb storage + expandable, headphone jack, front-facing fingerprint scanner (in this case, in-screen). I also could have bought a separate dual screen if I wanted.
Unfortunately, after having used it for 4 months, I started feeling wary of the phone. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, but I felt the performance felt faster than the MZP definitely, but not… remarkably faster than this 4 year old midrange phone with a Snapdragon 625? The phone was heavier than I’d like and was actually straining my wrist with prolonged usage (weak wrists I guess), the standby time at my home was draining about 2%/hour, recently opened apps and websites seemed to require refreshes frequently, and most frustratingly of all, the “previous app” gesture was completely busted to the point I just use the Recent Apps page to go to my previously used apps.
For Boxing Week in Canada, lots of carriers had the Pixel 4a 5G for $260. This is the phone I would have bought if it had been out when my MZP died, so I decided to pick it up. If I didn’t like it, I’d have 15 days to return it. If I did like it more than the LG G8X, I’d try to sell my LG G8X. My fears were that the Pixel would have worse performance with its midrange SD765 (especially compared to the LG G8X's SD 855, 2019's fastest Android processor), possibly worse battery, I’d miss the expandable storage, and most importantly… that I wouldn’t be able to sell the LG G8X at a reasonable price to recoup the costs.
So here is an ludicrously in-depth, very long-winded comparison between the two phones, based on my personal experiences with them. Keep in mind the LG G8X is a 4 month old phone so in some ways may have deteriorated in terms of performance and battery. I guess you could say it’s a bit unfair to compare a brand new days-old phone with a 4 month old phone, but I guess it could also be said that it’s a bit unfair to compare a SD 855 phone with a SD 765 phone. That being said, I haven’t noticed an appreciable decline in performance or battery on the LG.
So, which came out on top? (Spoiler: surprisingly, despite its “worse specs” on paper, the Pixel won out in nearly every regard, completely creamed the LG in memory management, is basically the same in terms of app and website opening speeds, even games better.)
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Dimensions

Perhaps a dumb reason, but one of the main reasons I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X is the weight. I didn’t realize how much of a difference 27g would make, but my wrist gets tired using the LG G8X after a while, whereas my wrist does not with the Pixel nearly as much. In terms of the length and width, though the LG is bigger, it doesn’t feel much bigger to use (outside of the weight).
Some people like huge phones, and good for them! For me, the Pixel’s lighter profile wins out by far.
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Hardware

Power buttons for both phones are on the right side. Pixel has volume also on the right, which makes taking screenshots a pain. LG has the volume buttons on the left, much more convenient for screenshots. LG also has a useful Google Assistant physical button on the right below the volume buttons, which is not remappable. Pixel has a matte plastic back with a camera bump, the LG G8X has a glass back that is completely flush with the camera. In theory this sounds nice for the LG G8X, but I suspect the glass contributes to the weight of the phone. This is an incredibly slippery phone! The weight of the charging cord is often enough to pull this slippery guy off a tabletop. Can be solved with a case.
LG wins here. The glass feels more premium, and the buttons are a lot nicer. The flush nature of the device is really nice.
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Haptics

Not something I care too much about honestly. I had read some review somewhere saying the LG haptics were bad, but I didn’t mind it at all at the time. Similar to the MZP. Now that I have the Pixel though, I think I see what they mean. The LG feels …tinnier? than the Pixel. The first time I received a notification on the Pixel I almost jumped out of my seat at how full and robust the vibration was.
Pixel wins here, I think. Maybe. But I don’t really care much for haptics so it’s a non-issue for me.
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Display

LG G8X has a slightly bigger screen at 6.4” vs 6.2”. In practice I can’t really tell the difference. In terms of image quality, I am no expert at distinguishing this. Pixel appears a bit brighter than the LG G8X at max brightness. Pixel appears a bit darker than the LG G8X at minimum brightness. Honestly not a huge difference either way. At low brightness, the LG has a bit of a “black smear” effect that I notice while scrolling that isn’t as evident on the Pixel. Colours, I don’t know. Reds and whites look more natural on the Pixel otherwise hard for me to tell much of a difference. However, LG gives you a lot of flexibility in playing around with the colours of the display and stuff and I’m sure you could get it to look the way you want. The Pixel only offers 3 colour options. Finally, the status bar on the Pixel is HUGE and feels like they could’ve saved a lot of space if they cut it down. Thus for many apps the LG G8X feels significantly more spacious because of the status bar – the Pixel’s status bar is, from what I can visually estimate, literally twice as tall as the LG’s. Auto brightness: LG G8X is way better. Smooth gradation, whereas Pixel is abrupt.
Overall I think the Pixel is maybe a tad nicer on default settings, but I’ll give it to LG G8X for the flexibility with adjusting the screen colours however you want, as well as the extra real estate afforded by the much smaller status bar (and of course bigger screen).
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Fingerprint sensor

LG G8X fingerprint is frustratingly inaccurate. I am only successfully like 60-70% of the time with my thumbs. Sometimes it’s fantastic, other times I cannot get it to work 5 times in a row and I need to enter the passcode manually. I can’t seem to recreate the conditions where it doesn’t work. That being said, I really like having front-facing fingerprint scanners: my phone is often sitting on my desk, and it’s really nice to be able to check things on my phone without having to lift up the phone or entering a passcode. Also, when my phone is on my desk, I unlock my phone with my index finger which is a lot more accurate than when I use my thumb, I guess because the index finger has such a smaller surface area. Thus that frustration with inaccuracy isn’t as big of an issue when my phone is on my desk, but it’s still generally much slower than a regular fingerprint reader.
The Pixel fingerprint reader on the other hand works ridiculously well (maybe because of the index finger thing? Though my old thumb Moto Z Play was also a lot quicker and more reliable than the LG G8X), and is much quicker in recognizing the fingerprint. There is also a “Swipe down on fingerprint reader” gesture to bring down notification panel. I constantly get false positives when I accidentally rest my finger on the sensor, so I’ve turned it off. The fingerprint reader is incredibly shallow to the point where I sometimes don’t know where it is because it’s hard to feel. As a result, sometimes I need to search for it a bit, and other times I accidentally turn it on without even noticing that I activated the fingerprint sensor. Both problems could be solved with a case (which I don’t have yet)
Overall it’s a tossup for me. I like the reliability and speed of the Pixel’s, but I like the front-facing sensor on the LG for when I have the phone laying on my desk (which is a lot of the time).
---

Speakers

I can’t tell. They both sound different. The max volumes are very similar in volume. The Pixel has a much quieter, almost imperceptible min volume. The Pixel 4a 5G sounds more… spacious? Maybe echoey. The LG G8X’s speakers sound more… precise? There is an obvious difference in the two sounds, which sounds “better” might be an obvious difference to others but I can’t tell. I have to assume that the LG G8X’s headphone jack audio is much better than the Pixels with the HI-Fi Quad DAC thing, but I don’t have any high end headphones so I can’t test it really. The LG G8X has some fancy “DTS:X 3D Surround” effects, which all sound terrible always, so I never leave them on. LG G8X has an equalizer, Pixel does not. Audio for both come out of the bottom right “speaker grille” and the earpiece speaker grille. For both phone the bottom speaker is louder than the earpiece, but the Pixel’s speakers are closer in volume than the LG G8X’s: block the bottom speaker, and the audio is greatly diminished.
I think the LG wins this one with the audio options and flexibility? There’s probably something fundamentally different between the speakers on the two phones but I really I can’t tell which I prefer. People had a lot of complaints about the Pixel 5 speakers, I have no clue if the 4a 5G have the same problems.
---

Microphone

Take a listen for yourself. I read a very relevant CBC report with both phones about 15 cm away from my face. I also recorded my laptop playing some music, about 30cm away from the phones. I think the Pixel maybe takes in more sound, but as a result also has more background noise than the LG. On the contrary the LG sounds tinnier to me.
Overall I still think I like the Pixel better, but again take a listen yourself!
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Battery

The Pixel has a 3800 mAh battery, the LG has a 4000 mAh battery. That being said, there are obviously many other factors contributing to battery life (processor, cell signal, etc). If I just use both phones nonstop, they both have great SOT. Both get about 8-9 hours for me of SOT uninterrupted. It’s the standby time that the Pixel excels at though. Overnight drain is <1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 1.5% on my LG. Standby drain while out and about is about 1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 2%/h on the LG. It’s unfortunately the standby drain that turns the LG G8X from a true 2 day phone to a not-quite-fully-2 day phone. (Also keep in mind cell signal plays a big role in battery drain – the signal in my area isn’t super great. I’m sure the drain for others isn’t as bad as the 2%/h I’m experiencing, but you might live in an area with better reception!)
Both phones have great battery life. I will give this one to the 4a 5G for the great standby time. I’ve included screenshots of my (very phone heavy) holiday break battery life, as per Accubattery. I may continue to add Pixel battery life screenshots as the days go by.
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General software and special features

Mostly just going to list features here, bear with me. Pixel has the huge advantage of having day 1 Android updates for 3 years. LG G8X has maybe 1 update left in it, if at all? Both phones have double tap to wake. LG has double tap the status bar to sleep, which is very nice. Pixel has call screening with the phone, Now Playing song recognition. Notifications are basically identical. LG G8X technically has a 1 handed/Reachability mode, but it has worked a grand total of 2 times for me despite trying it countless times. Would have been nice. The Pixel’s “Recent apps” screen has a Screenshot button and a Select (text) option. I don’t find the screenshot button very useful at all as I can just take a screenshot with the (admittedly uncomfortable) Power button + Volume Down combo. Select text I have not used yet but I could see being useful. The LG has an, in my opinion, much more useful set of frequently used icons on the bottom. Not customizable, but pretty true to what I use frequently. I use the feature very often. In addition to split screen apps, LG also gives you the option for a “pop up window”, Windows style, that you can drag around the screen, which could be useful for multitasking I guess but I’m still not sure in what use cases you’d have multiple windows-style windows open (they don’t work on the dual screen).
LG apps
LG has a bunch of bloatware that I never use and I disabled right away. I haven’t tested out the Whale browser at all. LG has its own LG Health app which I did not check out. It has an FM Radio which could be useful. There is a screenshot tool/app which could be useful, but I just use the regular screenshot shortcut. (Speaking about screenshots: Android 11 brought with it screenshots that are instantly taken as soon as you press Power + volume down, which is fantastic on the Pixel. On the LG, you still have to hold the buttons for a second or two. That being said, it is very annoying taking screenshots on the Pixel due to the volume and power buttons being on the same side. Android 11 also removed the ability to take a screenshot by holding the power button, which could have been great.) LG also has a pretty robust “HD Audio Recorder” app with lots of flexibility, but doesn’t do the transcribing that the Google audio recorder does (Which you can download though to the LG via apk). LG G8X has 2 apps you can assign to each bottom corner of the lock screen, which is where I put my GCam. Both phones have double tap power button to turn on camera shortcuts. LG also has a “Context Awareness” feature, which lets you adjust your sound profile, Bluetooth, wifi settings automatically based on your location. Also lets you find your parking spot. Neat in theory, but I didn’t use it much for concerns about battery drain (did not test to see if it really drained much). LG has a “Floating bar” you can turn on, which is a little tab which gives you shortcuts to apps that you can set, audio controls, screen capture, quick contacts. I could see this being really useful! I didn’t realize til just now writing this that we could set our own apps though, so I haven’t tested it to see if I’d actually use it. Finally, the G8X has a desktop mode, which I unfortunately don’t have access to. I can imagine this being useful in certain situations.
LG's previous app gesture
One big complaint that I have a big reason I was tempted to ditch the LG. The “previous app” gesture is completely busted on the LG. I won’t talk about it much here as I’ve already documented it elsewhere. In short, it’s completely unreliable and only works the way you’d expect it to work like 30% of the time. It is infuriating and makes me want to chuck out the windows at times. I’ve stopped using the gesture entirely and just open the Recent Tabs instead, which over time adds up a decent amount of time. The Pixel has no such problem. Generally the LG is also buggier than the Pixel, with jankier animations, turning off out of nowhere, sometimes getting stuck on the Recent Apps screen, completely going unresponsive at times – the latter three problems being quite rare, but they’ve happened.
Pixel power menus
Emergency info, power off, restart, Google Pay, Google Home devices. No longer has screenshot. LG power menu: Power off, power off and restart. Pixel definitely wins here.
Volume menus
Pixel has media volume slider, notifications toggle, Live Transcribe, and a shortcut to an audio settings overlay. LG has a context-sensitive volume slider (media volume slider when there’s audio playing, call volume during a call, notification volume otherwise), and a drop-down menu for individually controlling the different types of volumes. If you don’t want a context-sensitive slider, you can also set it to by default open just the one type. Pixel wins here for me: though the context sensitive slider can be useful, Live Transcribe is a pretty neat feature. Pixel also lets me control both notifications (Toggle) and media volume slider within one tap, whereas the LG only lets me change (in one tap) whichever context sensitive option is available at the time, otherwise I’d have to open the menu.
Overall, LG has a lot of features crammed in, but I rarely if ever use any of them. They are functionally bloatware for me. LG does have some genuinely useful software quirks like double tap status bar to sleep, the Floating Bar (I guess), and the lock screen shortcuts, but I have never been so aggravated with a phone before in my life with the previous app gesture and other bugs that I have to give Google the win here. (Also, reliable frequent software updates, less bloatware, and other useful features like Call Screening, Live Transcribe, Now Playing). The caveat is I haven’t used the Pixel long enough to see the bugs present in the Pixel.
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Default launchers

Google uses the Pixel Launcher. Very minimal flexibility, but it is pretty slick to use with great animations. Google search bar on the bottom, At A Glance (temperature, date, calendar events) at the top, Google feed to the left. You can’t adjust icon packs or grid size. App drawer showing frequently used apps at the top, and the rest of the apps in alphabetical order in a scrolling pile/list. LG has their own launcher with more flexibility (screen swipe effect, icon shape, grid size, option for left swipe to be Google feed or LG’s whatever feed). Unfortunately LG’s app drawer is truly horrendous, a horizontally moving multipaged mess that doesn’t automatically sort (if you add an app, you need to manually sort alphabetically to get them all alphabetical again). I never know which page I am on (there is an indicator at the bottom, but still) and thus it takes me far longer than it should to find an app I’m looking for. Just give me a scrolly bar!
Either way, both launchers aren’t great (except for animations -they’re both slick) and you should really use some 3rd party launcher instead. I use Microsoft Launcher personally, which has some janky animations but lots of great functionality. Nova of course is another popular option with even more customization.
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Always On Display

Pixel Always On Display displays 5 notification icons, time, date, weather, battery. No customization. LG G8X lets you customize the home screen quite a bit (you can add your own images, change aspects of the format, displays time, date, battery but only displays 3 notification icons. Has quick icons you can swipe to access to eg. turn on flashlight, change songs, etc. The Pixel’s is dimmer than the LG’s, which I think I prefer. The LG’s is very bright at night when I’m trying to sleep. Finally, picking up the Pixel will wake it up and bring it to the lock screen. Picking up the LG does nothing.
Kind of a toss up. At first I was leaning toward the LG for its flexibility, but the Pixel’s 5 notification icons are frankly more useful to me. I also like the dimmer AOD of the Pixel. If you’ve got the Dual Screen, you’re almost never even going to see the AOD on the LG.
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Performance

Okay, so I realize that “opening apps and web pages in quick succession” is not something anyone ever does in real life. That being said, I think there is a little bit of merit to it.
Another reason I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X was that this supposedly high end Snapdragon 855 didn’t feel nearly as quick or snappy as I thought it would. A definite improvement from my Moto Z Play, but also not quite the blazing fast speed I was expecting? So I did a ridiculously unscientific speed test between the two. Keep in mind the following caveats:
- MY LG G8X is 4 months old
- LG G8X has 111gb used of 128gb, Pixel has 75.14gb used of 128gb.
- Apps are close to parity but not quite
- I love reading about tech, but have not myself owned too many products. I am not a professional reviewer by any means, and have never really owned any high end phones (I had an iPhone 4 when it came out, the next “highest end” phone I’ve owned would be this LG G8X). So eg. with displays, I’m not the best at judging.
- I only got the dual screen a day before I got the Pixel, so most of my LG G8X impressions are from Dual Screen use. I’ve also used the Dual Screen for a bit since getting it, so I do have thoughts in its own section.
- I did comparisons in two different scenarios: 1st scenario, both phones were restarted, full battery. 2nd run, both phones had been on and used over a period of about 48 hours without turning them off. LG G8X was at 70% and Pixel was at 100%. Pixel was used generally much more than the LG phone was all day. The reason for doing it both after a fresh restart and after a few days on is that I had noticed that my LG seemed to perform worse after several days, and seemed to be better after a fresh restart.
1st run
With both phones freshly restarted and at the same battery percentage, geeeeeeeeeeeeeenerally the LG G8X was faster at opening apps than the Pixel. But honestly not as frequently as I was expecting. The LG G8X was generally able to open more intensive apps a bit faster than the Pixel. I’ve attached the “stats” here. In short, the LG was able to open 12 apps less than half a second faster than the Pixel, whereas the Pixel was able to open 9 apps less than half a second faster than the LG. The LG was able to open 8 apps more than half a second faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 6 apps more than half a second faster than the LG. The phones opened 7 websites equally quickly. In terms of websites, the LG was able to open 23 websites faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 9 websites slightly faster than the LG. They opened 3 websites at the same speed.
The most egregious thing here was the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of keeping app and websites in memory. It wasn’t even remotely close. Even before I got the Pixel I had noticed my LG seemed to be dropping apps quickly, but it wasn’t clear how quick it was until I directly compared these two phones. On my first run, after loading tons of Chrome tabs, both phones had to reload 80 days (the most recent app). After that, the LG continued to consistently reload apps, whereas the Pixel was able to load at least 7 apps without having to reload before I stopped testing.
2nd run
At this point I had both phones on for about 48 hours and had used my Pixel for about 3 hours that day (then charged to 100%) and then used my LG for about 2 hours right before testing it (battery about 70% when I started testing). I cleared all the apps from memory. I have no clue if the battery difference contributed or what, but the results completely flipped around, and quite dramatically. The Pixel was able to open apps slightly faster by <0.5s than the LG with 38 apps. The LG was slightly faster by >0.5s than the Pixel with 10 apps. The Pixel was noticeably >0.5s faster than the LG with 8 apps, and the LG was noticeably faster >0.5s than the Pixel with 6 apps. They were equally fast at opening 17 apps.
Really striking results. I rarely turn off my phone, which is maybe why I’ve been feeling my LG gets sluggish pretty easily? Clear something about keeping the LG on for periods of time causes… stuff… to build up, and the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of app opening on the second run. That being said, the <0.5s speed advantages really are quite miniscule, could very much be due to margin of error from my tapping, and of course there are always a million variables impacting how quickly an app opens up. But still, the Pixel is no slouch with its SD 765.
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Gaming

I also ran the Dolphin emulator on The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Both phones performed equally well, hitting 29-30 fps for Wind Waker and 59-60fps for Fire Emblem consistently. Genshin Impact ran a bit smoother on the LG than the LG (and the default setting for LG was “Medium” graphics, while for the Pixel was “Low”.) Both phones had lots of frame drops. I’ve included some screen recordings of Genshin Impact, both ran at medium settings, as well as the Dolphin games at default settings, using each respective phone’s default screen recorders. I’m not sure why the LG recording is such miserable quality (and muted), they both visually looked the same while actually playing the game. Similarly, I have no clue why the Pixel recording made the voices all echoey, they sound fine normally. Similarly, with the Dolphin emulator, normally Wind Waker is able to hold 29-30 pretty well, I suspect also running the screen recorder simultaneously caused it to drop frames. I repeated the Dolphin emulation after resetting the phone, and I still got frame rate drops. But uh, yeah, the Pixel also held its framerate better with the screen recorder than the LG did (normally they’re both good at holding the framerate).
Using Dolphin to emulate Xenoblade was a completely different story. Through the opening sequence, both phones (and my laptop) hiccupped at the same places. That being said, outside of those hiccup spots in cutscenes (and one area with a larger concentration of enemies), the Pixel 4a 5G was mostly able to maintain 30fps. Exploring Colony 9 was a smooth 30fps throughout the city. The LG G8X hiccupped in those cutscenes, but in other places where the Pixel was 30fps, the LG G8X was chugging along at 15-25fps. Most notably this occurred while exploring Colony 9. I have no clue what’s going on here, I didn’t actually expect the Pixel to perform so well here, or the LG G8X to perform so poorly. I tried walking around Colony 9 again when my phone cooled down a bit and it performed better, but quickly tanked back down to ~20fps within 15 seconds. I suspect LG throttles its phone pretty hard?
Overall, shockingly, I have to give the Pixel the win here. It’s no comparison. You can check out the gameplay vids yourself. I don’t know if I have a lemon of an LG G8X or what. If anyone else is able to emulate Xenoblade on their LG G8X, let me know how it performs for you. Is my phone a lemon? Or did LG just optimize their phone extremely poorly? (ALSO Apologies for the terrible resolution for the LG recorder, I didn’t realize you could change the resolution to full HD til my rerecording after the phone had cooled down).
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Camera

I thought the LG’s camera was fantastic coming from the Moto Z Play. Then I got the Pixel! GCam does help, but unfortunately you can’t set it to the double-tap-power button shortcut. The LG camera app does have some merits (lots of flexibility in image settings if you have the time to tweak settings to take a photo), but for a quick point and shoot it just doesn’t compare to the Pixel a lot of the time. That being said, I feel the LG actually sometimes takes more accurate photos? If I take a photo of something drab and dull, the LG captures it pretty accurately, whereas the Pixel takes a far nicer looking photo but doesn’t look like the drab reality. The Pixel though also takes much nicer, realistic photos of nice vibrant things, whereas the LG’s photos look more washed out. For day shots, or shots facing light, the… dynamic range? Is that what it’s called? For the Pixel is far better than the Pixel. The LG will blow out eg. the details in clouds (ie. Clouds will just appear white and uniform), while the Pixel will preserve the detail and colour of the clouds. For night shots, the LG actually takes better non-Night mode night shots than the Pixel. But the Pixel’s Night Mode absolutely smokes LG’s Night Mode, no questions asked. LG with GCam’s Night Sight helps a lot though. The LG’s selfie camera focuses off into the distance instead of your face so is functionally useless. Finally, I don’t take videos so won’t really comment on it. LG’s wide camera is a lot wider than the Pixel’s, which is a plus for LG.
Overall, the Pixel has a better camera but the LG isn’t too shabby, and sometimes takes nicer shots than the Pixel. Non-Night mode shots are actually better on the LG, but usually Pixel’s night mode turns out better looking. I’ll let the photos do the talking, where I have comparison shots between the LG (with the LG cam as well as the GCam), vs. the Pixel. I’m a lot more interested in shots with challenging lighting, thus the weird dark shots. Unfortunately the weather isn’t great here so no nice outdoor shots. Also unfortunately I have now noticed that a lot of them are blurrier than I’d like – I am too lazy to change them now! I may add more photos to the albums later.
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Dual screen

I just picked this up a day before the Pixel came in. I was pretty excited for it because there are definitely times where I want to multitask, or where I’ve got split screen open trying to copy some text from what window to the other but the keyboard pops up and blocks my view.
Unfortunately, the dual screen implementation feels far more half-hearted than that of what I’m hearing about the Surface Duo. The two screens feel more like two separate machines with a tenuous link, than like two parts of the same unit. At the same time, the 2nd screen doesn’t have the same functionality as the main screen: you can’t split screen it, you can’t change the launcher, the home screen is not continuous at all with the main screen’s home screen, and when you throw one screen’s contents over to the other screen, it often feels like a mystery what will occupy the screen whose contents you just threw over to the other screen.
Using one screen as a keyboard for the other screen in theory sounds really neat, but it only works with the LG keyboard, which has an embarrassingly tiny dictionary with terrible autocorrect suggestions. Even when it works with the LG keyboard, when you tap in a text field on the top screen, the phone does this janky animation where the keyboard first shows up on the top screen before jumping down to the bottom screen. If you tap on a text field on the bottom screen, it won’t by default push the bottom screen contents up and open the keyboard on the bottom screen (which could be what some people want, I guess).
Very, very, very few apps make good use of the dual screens, even with the 3rd party Wide Mode app which forces any app into Wide Mode (which just turns apps into Tablet Mode rather than giving unique content to each screen). The LG Whale browser seems to be the best app to make use of the dual screen (you can open links in one screen on the other screen) – that being said, I’d much rather use other browsers. Chrome does a reasonable job, and you can open taps from one screen in the other screen. I can’t find a way to get Youtube to open a video on one screen and me scrolling through comments/searching through other videos on the other screen.
Overall something I really wish they would have incorporated was, say, opening a link in one app and the internet browser automatically opening in the other screen, or at least giving me the option to open in the other screen! Say, a friend sends me a link to a website and then I open the website in the opposite screen automatically and then continue talking to my friend on the first screen. Not a feature that is currently implemented.
The LG Gamepad mode seems like a great idea: the top screen acts as the screen, the bottom screen acts as the gamepad. Supposedly the games will detect it as a native gamepad. Unfortunately, it was not compatible with Stadia, Xbox GamePass Streaming, or Dolphin Emulator. It was compatible with Final Fantasy V and PPSSPP. Games like Genshin Impact, a game without controller support absolutely begging for it, work really well with it as you can also create a custom gamepad with buttons that correspond to tapping areas on the game screen. I was most looking forward to it working with Stadia, Gamepass and the emulators though (I don’t play too many native Android games) so I definitely am pretty bummed.
My biggest complaint though is there just simply is no easy way to type with the dual screen vertical. Though I’d like to make use of the dual screen features sometimes for the occasional time I want to multitask, I sadly discovered the few times I would use the dual screen to its potential does not warrant having the carry this colossal phone around with its incredibly uncomfortable typing position. The obvious solution would be to have a “wide mode” split keyboard, which actually does appear if you Wide Mode an app and then use the keyboard. But from what I can tell, there is no way to “wide mode” a keyboard when you’re using the dual screens as, well, dual screens. On single screen phones I usually type with two hands, whereas I can’t type with one hand on this phone because the keyboard only shows up on one screen, and the other screen is in the way. On this phone, the only way to type is to hold the phone with one hand, and use a finger on the other hand to peck at or swipe the keys.
Overall, I think I like a dual screen in theory, but LG didn’t execute it very well at all. Instead of feeling like an extension of the main screen, it feels like its entirely own entity and doesn’t always flow well with the main screen. The absolute paucity of apps making use of the dual screen to its full potential is unfortunate. The biggest culprit is that typing in dual screen vertical mode (The way I use it most frequently) is extremely uncomfortable. All these drawbacks don’t make keeping the dual screen on worthwhile, as someone who only occasionally requires the dual screen.
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Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! This wound up being nearly 7000 words… wasn’t expecting it to be, like, even a quarter that long. I'll be happy if even one person reads through 50% of this.
I think the Pixel demonstrates that spec sheets really are not everything. Either that, or I got a lemon of an LG G8X (not outside the realm of possibility). With the caveat of the LG having much more fuller storage and being used for 4 more months, despite the LG’s supposedly better chip, performance is objectively pretty similar between the two phones in terms of app opening and opening websites. The Pixel was actually beating out the LG pretty consistently after both phones were used for 48 hours. Both phones run Genshin Impact kind of miserably, and run Gamecube games on Dolphin without a hitch. The Pixel was significantly better than the LG in emulating the Wii. The Pixel consistently destroyed the LG in terms of memory management. The Pixel’s smaller battery capacity of 3800 mAh outlasted the LG’s 4000 mAh battery, even when the LG was brand new. The camera in the Pixel is far better than the LG. The software experience of the Pixel is smoother and less buggy (and certainly less frustrating). The fingerprint sensor is a tossup for me. The audio is maybe better in the LG, but I can’t really tell. Screens are similar. The LG does “feel” more premium, but I do prefer the lightness of the Pixel. The one definitely advantage the LG has over the Pixel is the expandable storage.
Needless to say, I think I am going to keep the Pixel. I didn’t want to leave the LG G8X community behind though without giving a good reason to do so, and I hope this 6000+ word document with accompanying Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, and screen recordings explain why I did so, and also demonstrate that spec sheets aren’t everything. I’ll probably try to sell the LG G8X + Dual Screen, but taking a look at how long these phones stay on Facebook Marketplace/eBay, I’m not very hopeful I’ll be able to sell it at even a fraction of what I bought it for. Anyway, thanks for reading.
I spent way too much time on this.
Also I haven’t proofread this, so I’m sure there are mistakes abound.
Also I really need to get working on actually important stuff. Thanks for reading!
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Much needed tl;dr (Which is still long):

- Spec sheets are not everything.
- Was getting tired of LG G8X's weight, previous app gesture being busted, standby drain, general glitchiness, slower performance than expected, so I picked up a Pixel 4a 5G.
- Did lots of tests which you can check out in the Dropbox
- I subjectively like Pixel's camera, speakers, microphone, default screen colour balance, software cleanliness better.
- Really surprisingly, my specific days-old Pixel 4a 5G outperforms my 4 month old LG G8X in app opening and website opening (unless I freshly restart both phones). REALLY surprisingly, my Pixel ran circles around the LG in Wii emulation, and was equally competent at Gamecube emulation and Genshin Impact
- I will be keeping the Pixel. I will try to sell the LG G8X but am not hopeful. I will miss LG G8X's expandable storage but not much else.

So I have a Surface Pro 3 tablet, a Samsung Chromebook Pro (no linux support through Crostini, but Crouton works however), and an Android phone.
If possible, I want to be able to play my Steam games without having to sit at my PC each time. I have looked at Geforce Now, but not all games are supported and when I sync my library it shows 0 games. Makes me think all the Steam games I own cannot work with Geforce Now.
I looked into Steam Link and Remote Play as well which requires you to be connected to the same WiFi network as your PC. I guess this isn't a big deal, but do you have to have your PC or screen on all the time while playing? Is there a way to put the PC to sleep through Steam Link or remotely when done? It would also be a bonus to be able to play outside of my network, but I haven't found anything on that.
Basically what I want to do is to use as few devices as possible to play, and to not have to have my computer on all the time, or a more convenient way to shut it off. The 2 ways I can think of is to install crouton on the Chromebook, but that seems like a hassle whenever I want to access Steam. Or use the Surface pro 3 for Steam.
If anybody has a better solution in mind, please let me know. Thank you!

There are lots of problems posted to this subreddit, I thought I would share some of my success with the Kindle Fire 7 and my 4 year old twin girls. Hopefully some here can share their experiences.
My girls love the tablets, but I've had to curate the content with an iron fist.
Here's how they're set up:

• Freetime Unlimited is removed from their profiles.
• Web browsing is disabled from their profiles
• Movies are disabled from their profiles
• My wife's Amazon Prime account can share books through Prime Reading, this has some good children's books such as Pete the cat or the Mr Men books... but the girls rarely open them. They can't read yet.
• The app time limit is set to 45m. This lets me force them to get exercise breaks, clean up, take bathroom breaks or just stop without too much trouble. They're used to the tablet locking them out. I extend it from the UI on the tablet itself, else it's not reliable to extend.

What do my girls do with the tablets?

• 90% of the time they're playing Khan Academy Kids... switching from number games, word games, books, drawing, colouring etc, etc. ... that app is awesome for this age. Without it, I'm not sure they'd like the tablets at all.
• PBS Kids "Play and Learn Engineering", they figured it out end to end. It's not very challenging, but it was very good for them to learn to navigate apps on a tablet
• They're figuring out how to doodle on camera photos
• RV AppStudios ABC Kids - Tracing and Phonics, - I evaluated this game and figured the interest would be short-lived, but the game has "stickers" and "toys" to collect, so the past week they've been obsessed with practicing their alphabet and matching lowercase letters to uppercase, etc to get toys and compare what they have with their sister. Very relevant for the age... although it sounds like they're playing slots in a Vegas casino... which worries me.
• I created a children's profile of my own which has the Freetime Unlimited enabled. The Kids+ app on my iPad lets me access the books there to read to them, this has many excellent kids books, this means Freetime Unlimited is not useless to me, particularly since our public library's ebook loans are backed up for 6+Mo due to Covid.

Problems

• The wifi doesn't work after the tablet is asleep for an extended period. I have to disable and enable the wifi before handing them their tablets, else it just doesn't work.
• Sometimes Khan Academy freezes. Restarting the tablet fixes this. The girls have learned to be patient.
• Books are not reliable... it seems like the DRM gets confused. This is true for books which were outright purchased as Kindle Edition or books from Prime. This is a serious disappointment and impossible to explain to a 4 year old. Hopefully it's just temporary.
• The fonts are too small when reading books. the 7" displays don't seem to be the issue, even on a full sized iPad with Kids+, the text is small. Zoom is bad on the Kids+ iPad app and *unusable* on the Kindle. This is going to be a serious issue when they start reading on their own.
• Parental controls from the dashboard e.g., "disable device" can take 10 minutes to kick in. Useless as a way to "take their tablet away". You'll still have to pull it from their hands while they need to do "one more thing."

What I would like to do

• Find an photo app for young children which would engage them to try photography
• Find a music app which would let me load songs and let them play them to dance to etc.
• Find any game which would let them play head-to-head play. Using the tablet to teach the concept of "rules" and "turns"... I mean Tic-Tac-Toe, or card matching memory games level stuff... these girls are 4.
• Find a coding-like app which would get them thinking about coding (I tried Lightbot Jr, they don't get it yet. Not being able to just move the robot with controls seems dumb to them)
• Drum machine music making stuff... ( I tried pianos, they kind of like them for a few minutes then get bored)

I strongly suspect I'll be replacing these with iPads when they get older, that will have its own challenges, although at least books will work... but until then, the girls love the tablets and the content is mostly positive and helpful.

Brevity is not my strong suit.
Firstly, here is a Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, gameplay footage, (no camera videos yet) for the things I will be referring to.
Secondly, this is long enough to have an outline, so feel free to jump to read something that interests you if you don't want to read the whole thing:

1. Introduction
2. Dimensions
3. Haptics
4. Display
5. Fingerprint sensor
6. Speakers
7. Microphone
8. Battery
9. General software and features
10. Default Launcher
11. Always On Display
12. Performance
13. Gaming
14. Camera
15. Dual Screen
16. Conclusion
17. tl;dr

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Introduction

Hi /LGG8X. I picked up a LG G8X as about 4 months ago when my Moto Z Play died on me, and the LG G8X seemed to have everything I wanted in a phone at the great price of $500 CAD (at the time – the phone’s even cheaper now!). Snapdragon 855, 4000 mAh battery with positive battery reviews, AMOLED display, wide angle camera, 128gb storage + expandable, headphone jack, front-facing fingerprint scanner (in this case, in-screen). I also could have bought a separate dual screen if I wanted.
Unfortunately, after having used it for 4 months, I started feeling wary of the phone. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, but I felt the performance felt faster than the MZP definitely, but not… remarkably faster than this 4 year old midrange phone with a Snapdragon 625? The phone was heavier than I’d like and was actually straining my wrist with prolonged usage (weak wrists I guess), the standby time at my home was draining about 2%/hour, recently opened apps and websites seemed to require refreshes frequently, and most frustratingly of all, the “previous app” gesture was completely busted to the point I just use the Recent Apps page to go to my previously used apps.
For Boxing Week in Canada, lots of carriers had the Pixel 4a 5G for $260. This is the phone I would have bought if it had been out when my MZP died, so I decided to pick it up. If I didn’t like it, I’d have 15 days to return it. If I did like it more than the LG G8X, I’d try to sell my LG G8X. My fears were that the Pixel would have worse performance with its SD765, possibly worse battery, I’d miss the expandable storage, and most importantly… that I wouldn’t be able to sell the LG G8X at a reasonable price to recoup the costs.
So here is an ludicrously in-depth, very long-winded comparison between the two phones, based on my personal experiences with them. Keep in mind the LG G8X is a 4 month old phone so in some ways may have deteriorated in terms of performance and battery. I guess you could say it’s a bit unfair to compare a brand new days-old phone with a 4 month old phone, but I guess it could also be said that it’s a bit unfair to compare a SD 855 phone with a SD 765 phone. That being said, I haven’t noticed an appreciable decline in performance or battery on the LG.
So, which came out on top? (Spoiler: surprisingly, despite its “worse specs” on paper, the Pixel won out in nearly every regard, completely creamed the LG in memory management, is basically the same in terms of app and website opening speeds, even games better.)
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Dimensions

Perhaps a dumb reason, but one of the main reasons I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X is the weight. I didn’t realize how much of a difference 27g would make, but my wrist gets tired using the LG G8X after a while, whereas my wrist does not with the Pixel nearly as much. In terms of the length and width, though the LG is bigger, it doesn’t feel much bigger to use (outside of the weight).
Some people like huge phones, and good for them! For me, the Pixel’s lighter profile wins out by far.
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Hardware

Power buttons for both phones are on the right side. Pixel has volume also on the right, which makes taking screenshots a pain. LG has the volume buttons on the left, much more convenient for screenshots. LG also has a useful Google Assistant physical button on the right below the volume buttons, which is not remappable. Pixel has a matte plastic back with a camera bump, the LG G8X has a glass back that is completely flush with the camera. In theory this sounds nice for the LG G8X, but I suspect the glass contributes to the weight of the phone. This is an incredibly slippery phone! The weight of the charging cord is often enough to pull this slippery guy off a tabletop. Can be solved with a case.
LG wins here. The glass feels more premium, and the buttons are a lot nicer. The flush nature of the device is really nice.
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Haptics

Not something I care too much about honestly. I had read some review somewhere saying the LG haptics were bad, but I didn’t mind it at all at the time. Similar to the MZP. Now that I have the Pixel though, I think I see what they mean. The LG feels …tinnier? than the Pixel. The first time I received a notification on the Pixel I almost jumped out of my seat at how full and robust the vibration was.
Pixel wins here, I think. Maybe. But I don’t really care much for haptics so it’s a non-issue for me.
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Display

LG G8X has a slightly bigger screen at 6.4” vs 6.2”. In practice I can’t really tell the difference. In terms of image quality, I am no expert at distinguishing this. Pixel appears a bit brighter than the LG G8X at max brightness. Pixel appears a bit darker than the LG G8X at minimum brightness. Honestly not a huge difference either way. At low brightness, the LG has a bit of a “black smear” effect that I notice while scrolling that isn’t as evident on the Pixel. Colours, I don’t know. Reds and whites look more natural on the Pixel otherwise hard for me to tell much of a difference. However, LG gives you a lot of flexibility in playing around with the colours of the display and stuff and I’m sure you could get it to look the way you want. The Pixel only offers 3 colour options. Finally, the status bar on the Pixel is HUGE and feels like they could’ve saved a lot of space if they cut it down. Thus for many apps the LG G8X feels significantly more spacious because of the status bar – the Pixel’s status bar is, from what I can visually estimate, literally twice as tall as the LG’s. Auto brightness: LG G8X is way better. Smooth gradation, whereas Pixel is abrupt.
Overall I think the Pixel is maybe a tad nicer on default settings, but I’ll give it to LG G8X for the flexibility with adjusting the screen colours however you want, as well as the extra real estate afforded by the much smaller status bar (and of course bigger screen).
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Fingerprint sensor

LG G8X fingerprint is frustratingly inaccurate. I am only successfully like 60-70% of the time with my thumbs. Sometimes it’s fantastic, other times I cannot get it to work 5 times in a row and I need to enter the passcode manually. I can’t seem to recreate the conditions where it doesn’t work. That being said, I really like having front-facing fingerprint scanners: my phone is often sitting on my desk, and it’s really nice to be able to check things on my phone without having to lift up the phone or entering a passcode. Also, when my phone is on my desk, I unlock my phone with my index finger which is a lot more accurate than when I use my thumb, I guess because the index finger has such a smaller surface area. Thus that frustration with inaccuracy isn’t as big of an issue when my phone is on my desk, but it’s still generally much slower than a regular fingerprint reader.
The Pixel fingerprint reader on the other hand works ridiculously well (maybe because of the index finger thing? Though my old thumb Moto Z Play was also a lot quicker and more reliable than the LG G8X), and is much quicker in recognizing the fingerprint. There is also a “Swipe down on fingerprint reader” gesture to bring down notification panel. I constantly get false positives when I accidentally rest my finger on the sensor, so I’ve turned it off. The fingerprint reader is incredibly shallow to the point where I sometimes don’t know where it is because it’s hard to feel. As a result, sometimes I need to search for it a bit, and other times I accidentally turn it on without even noticing that I activated the fingerprint sensor. Both problems could be solved with a case (which I don’t have yet)
Overall it’s a tossup for me. I like the reliability and speed of the Pixel’s, but I like the front-facing sensor on the LG for when I have the phone laying on my desk (which is a lot of the time).
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Speakers

I can’t tell. They both sound different. The max volumes are very similar in volume. The Pixel has a much quieter, almost imperceptible min volume. The Pixel 4a 5G sounds more… spacious? Maybe echoey. The LG G8X’s speakers sound more… precise? There is an obvious difference in the two sounds, which sounds “better” might be an obvious difference to others but I can’t tell. I have to assume that the LG G8X’s headphone jack audio is much better than the Pixels with the HI-Fi Quad DAC thing, but I don’t have any high end headphones so I can’t test it really. The LG G8X has some fancy “DTS:X 3D Surround” effects, which all sound terrible always, so I never leave them on. LG G8X has an equalizer, Pixel does not. Audio for both come out of the bottom right “speaker grille” and the earpiece speaker grille. For both phone the bottom speaker is louder than the earpiece, but the Pixel’s speakers are closer in volume than the LG G8X’s: block the bottom speaker, and the audio is greatly diminished.
I think the LG wins this one with the audio options and flexibility? There’s probably something fundamentally different between the speakers on the two phones but I really I can’t tell which I prefer. People had a lot of complaints about the Pixel 5 speakers, I have no clue if the 4a 5G have the same problems.
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Microphone

Take a listen for yourself. I read a very relevant CBC report with both phones about 15 cm away from my face. I also recorded my laptop playing some music, about 30cm away from the phones. I think the Pixel maybe takes in more sound, but as a result also has more background noise than the LG. On the contrary the LG sounds tinnier to me.
Overall I still think I like the Pixel better, but again take a listen yourself!
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Battery

The Pixel has a 3800 mAh battery, the LG has a 4000 mAh battery. That being said, there are obviously many other factors contributing to battery life (processor, cell signal, etc). If I just use both phones nonstop, they both have great SOT. Both get about 8-9 hours for me of SOT uninterrupted. It’s the standby time that the Pixel excels at though. Overnight drain is <1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 1.5% on my LG. Standby drain while out and about is about 1%/h on the Pixel whereas it’s about 2%/h on the LG. It’s unfortunately the standby drain that turns the LG G8X from a true 2 day phone to a not-quite-fully-2 day phone. (Also keep in mind cell signal plays a big role in battery drain – the signal in my area isn’t super great. I’m sure the drain for others isn’t as bad as the 2%/h I’m experiencing, but you might live in an area with better reception!)
Both phones have great battery life. I will give this one to the 4a 5G for the great standby time. I’ve included screenshots of my (very phone heavy) holiday break battery life, as per Accubattery. I may continue to add Pixel battery life screenshots as the days go by.
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General software and special features

Mostly just going to list features here, bear with me. Pixel has the huge advantage of having day 1 Android updates for 3 years. LG G8X has maybe 1 update left in it, if at all? Both phones have double tap to wake. LG has double tap the status bar to sleep, which is very nice. Pixel has call screening with the phone, Now Playing song recognition. Notifications are basically identical. LG G8X technically has a 1 handed/Reachability mode, but it has worked a grand total of 2 times for me despite trying it countless times. Would have been nice. The Pixel’s “Recent apps” screen has a Screenshot button and a Select (text) option. I don’t find the screenshot button very useful at all as I can just take a screenshot with the (admittedly uncomfortable) Power button + Volume Down combo. Select text I have not used yet but I could see being useful. The LG has an, in my opinion, much more useful set of frequently used icons on the bottom. Not customizable, but pretty true to what I use frequently. I use the feature very often. In addition to split screen apps, LG also gives you the option for a “pop up window”, Windows style, that you can drag around the screen, which could be useful for multitasking I guess but I’m still not sure in what use cases you’d have multiple windows-style windows open (they don’t work on the dual screen).
LG apps
LG has a bunch of bloatware that I never use and I disabled right away. I haven’t tested out the Whale browser at all. LG has its own LG Health app which I did not check out. It has an FM Radio which could be useful. There is a screenshot tool/app which could be useful, but I just use the regular screenshot shortcut. (Speaking about screenshots: Android 11 brought with it screenshots that are instantly taken as soon as you press Power + volume down, which is fantastic on the Pixel. On the LG, you still have to hold the buttons for a second or two. That being said, it is very annoying taking screenshots on the Pixel due to the volume and power buttons being on the same side. Android 11 also removed the ability to take a screenshot by holding the power button, which could have been great.) LG also has a pretty robust “HD Audio Recorder” app with lots of flexibility, but doesn’t do the transcribing that the Google audio recorder does (Which you can download though to the LG via apk). LG G8X has 2 apps you can assign to each bottom corner of the lock screen, which is where I put my GCam. Both phones have double tap power button to turn on camera shortcuts. LG also has a “Context Awareness” feature, which lets you adjust your sound profile, Bluetooth, wifi settings automatically based on your location. Also lets you find your parking spot. Neat in theory, but I didn’t use it much for concerns about battery drain (did not test to see if it really drained much). LG has a “Floating bar” you can turn on, which is a little tab which gives you shortcuts to apps that you can set, audio controls, screen capture, quick contacts. I could see this being really useful! I didn’t realize til just now writing this that we could set our own apps though, so I haven’t tested it to see if I’d actually use it. Finally, the G8X has a desktop mode, which I unfortunately don’t have access to. I can imagine this being useful in certain situations.
LG's previous app gesture
One big complaint that I have a big reason I was tempted to ditch the LG. The “previous app” gesture is completely busted on the LG. I won’t talk about it much here as I’ve already documented it elsewhere. In short, it’s completely unreliable and only works the way you’d expect it to work like 30% of the time. It is infuriating and makes me want to chuck out the windows at times. I’ve stopped using the gesture entirely and just open the Recent Tabs instead, which over time adds up a decent amount of time. The Pixel has no such problem. Generally the LG is also buggier than the Pixel, with jankier animations, turning off out of nowhere, sometimes getting stuck on the Recent Apps screen, completely going unresponsive at times – the latter three problems being quite rare, but they’ve happened.
Pixel power menus
Emergency info, power off, restart, Google Pay, Google Home devices. No longer has screenshot. LG power menu: Power off, power off and restart. Pixel definitely wins here.
Volume menus
Pixel has media volume slider, notifications toggle, Live Transcribe, and a shortcut to an audio settings overlay. LG has a context-sensitive volume slider (media volume slider when there’s audio playing, call volume during a call, notification volume otherwise), and a drop-down menu for individually controlling the different types of volumes. If you don’t want a context-sensitive slider, you can also set it to by default open just the one type. Pixel wins here for me: though the context sensitive slider can be useful, Live Transcribe is a pretty neat feature. Pixel also lets me control both notifications (Toggle) and media volume slider within one tap, whereas the LG only lets me change (in one tap) whichever context sensitive option is available at the time, otherwise I’d have to open the menu.
Overall, LG has a lot of features crammed in, but I rarely if ever use any of them. They are functionally bloatware for me. LG does have some genuinely useful software quirks like double tap status bar to sleep, the Floating Bar (I guess), and the lock screen shortcuts, but I have never been so aggravated with a phone before in my life with the previous app gesture and other bugs that I have to give Google the win here. (Also, reliable frequent software updates, less bloatware, and other useful features like Call Screening, Live Transcribe, Now Playing). The caveat is I haven’t used the Pixel long enough to see the bugs present in the Pixel.
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Default launchers

Google uses the Pixel Launcher. Very minimal flexibility, but it is pretty slick to use with great animations. Google search bar on the bottom, At A Glance (temperature, date, calendar events) at the top, Google feed to the left. You can’t adjust icon packs or grid size. App drawer showing frequently used apps at the top, and the rest of the apps in alphabetical order in a scrolling pile/list. LG has their own launcher with more flexibility (screen swipe effect, icon shape, grid size, option for left swipe to be Google feed or LG’s whatever feed). Unfortunately LG’s app drawer is truly horrendous, a horizontally moving multipaged mess that doesn’t automatically sort (if you add an app, you need to manually sort alphabetically to get them all alphabetical again). I never know which page I am on (there is an indicator at the bottom, but still) and thus it takes me far longer than it should to find an app I’m looking for. Just give me a scrolly bar!
Either way, both launchers aren’t great (except for animations -they’re both slick) and you should really use some 3rd party launcher instead. I use Microsoft Launcher personally, which has some janky animations but lots of great functionality. Nova of course is another popular option with even more customization.
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Always On Display

Pixel Always On Display displays 5 notification icons, time, date, weather, battery. No customization. LG G8X lets you customize the home screen quite a bit (you can add your own images, change aspects of the format, displays time, date, battery but only displays 3 notification icons. Has quick icons you can swipe to access to eg. turn on flashlight, change songs, etc. The Pixel’s is dimmer than the LG’s, which I think I prefer. The LG’s is very bright at night when I’m trying to sleep. Finally, picking up the Pixel will wake it up and bring it to the lock screen. Picking up the LG does nothing.
Kind of a toss up. At first I was leaning toward the LG for its flexibility, but the Pixel’s 5 notification icons are frankly more useful to me. I also like the dimmer AOD of the Pixel. If you’ve got the Dual Screen, you’re almost never even going to see the AOD on the LG.
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Performance

Okay, so I realize that “opening apps and web pages in quick succession” is not something anyone ever does in real life. That being said, I think there is a little bit of merit to it.
Another reason I was thinking of switching away from the LG G8X was that this supposedly high end Snapdragon 855 didn’t feel nearly as quick or snappy as I thought it would. A definite improvement from my Moto Z Play, but also not quite the blazing fast speed I was expecting? So I did a ridiculously unscientific speed test between the two. Keep in mind the following caveats:
- MY LG G8X is 4 months old
- LG G8X has 111gb used of 128gb, Pixel has 75.14gb used of 128gb.
- Apps are close to parity but not quite
- I love reading about tech, but have not myself owned too many products. I am not a professional reviewer by any means, and have never really owned any high end phones (I had an iPhone 4 when it came out, the next “highest end” phone I’ve owned would be this LG G8X). So eg. with displays, I’m not the best at judging.
- I only got the dual screen a day before I got the Pixel, so most of my LG G8X impressions are from Dual Screen use. I’ve also used the Dual Screen for a bit since getting it, so I do have thoughts in its own section.
- I did comparisons in two different scenarios: 1st scenario, both phones were restarted, full battery. 2nd run, both phones had been on and used over a period of about 48 hours without turning them off. LG G8X was at 70% and Pixel was at 100%. Pixel was used generally much more than the LG phone was all day. The reason for doing it both after a fresh restart and after a few days on is that I had noticed that my LG seemed to perform worse after several days, and seemed to be better after a fresh restart.
1st run
With both phones freshly restarted and at the same battery percentage, geeeeeeeeeeeeeenerally the LG G8X was faster at opening apps than the Pixel. But honestly not as frequently as I was expecting. The LG G8X was generally able to open more intensive apps a bit faster than the Pixel. I’ve attached the “stats” here. In short, the LG was able to open 12 apps less than half a second faster than the Pixel, whereas the Pixel was able to open 9 apps less than half a second faster than the LG. The LG was able to open 8 apps more than half a second faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 6 apps more than half a second faster than the LG. The phones opened 7 websites equally quickly. In terms of websites, the LG was able to open 23 websites faster than the Pixel, and the Pixel was able to open 9 websites slightly faster than the LG. They opened 3 websites at the same speed.
The most egregious thing here was the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of keeping app and websites in memory. It wasn’t even remotely close. Even before I got the Pixel I had noticed my LG seemed to be dropping apps quickly, but it wasn’t clear how quick it was until I directly compared these two phones. On my first run, after loading tons of Chrome tabs, both phones had to reload 80 days (the most recent app). After that, the LG continued to consistently reload apps, whereas the Pixel was able to load at least 7 apps without having to reload before I stopped testing.
2nd run
At this point I had both phones on for about 48 hours and had used my Pixel for about 3 hours that day (then charged to 100%) and then used my LG for about 2 hours right before testing it (battery about 70% when I started testing). I cleared all the apps from memory. I have no clue if the battery difference contributed or what, but the results completely flipped around, and quite dramatically. The Pixel was able to open apps slightly faster by <0.5s than the LG with 38 apps. The LG was slightly faster by >0.5s than the Pixel with 10 apps. The Pixel was noticeably >0.5s faster than the LG with 8 apps, and the LG was noticeably faster >0.5s than the Pixel with 6 apps. They were equally fast at opening 17 apps.
Really striking results. I rarely turn off my phone, which is maybe why I’ve been feeling my LG gets sluggish pretty easily? Clear something about keeping the LG on for periods of time causes… stuff… to build up, and the Pixel completely smoked the LG in terms of app opening on the second run. That being said, the <0.5s speed advantages really are quite miniscule, could very much be due to margin of error from my tapping, and of course there are always a million variables impacting how quickly an app opens up. But still, the Pixel is no slouch with its SD 765.
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Gaming

I also ran the Dolphin emulator on The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Both phones performed equally well, hitting 29-30 fps for Wind Waker and 59-60fps for Fire Emblem consistently. Genshin Impact ran a bit smoother on the LG than the LG (and the default setting for LG was “Medium” graphics, while for the Pixel was “Low”.) Both phones had lots of frame drops. I’ve included some screen recordings of Genshin Impact, both ran at medium settings, as well as the Dolphin games at default settings, using each respective phone’s default screen recorders. I’m not sure why the LG recording is such miserable quality (and muted), they both visually looked the same while actually playing the game. Similarly, I have no clue why the Pixel recording made the voices all echoey, they sound fine normally. Similarly, with the Dolphin emulator, normally Wind Waker is able to hold 29-30 pretty well, I suspect also running the screen recorder simultaneously caused it to drop frames. I repeated the Dolphin emulation after resetting the phone, and I still got frame rate drops. But uh, yeah, the Pixel also held its framerate better with the screen recorder than the LG did (normally they’re both good at holding the framerate).
Using Dolphin to emulate Xenoblade was a completely different story. Through the opening sequence, both phones (and my laptop) hiccupped at the same places. That being said, outside of those hiccup spots in cutscenes (and one area with a larger concentration of enemies), the Pixel 4a 5G was mostly able to maintain 30fps. Exploring Colony 9 was a smooth 30fps throughout the city. The LG G8X hiccupped in those cutscenes, but in other places where the Pixel was 30fps, the LG G8X was chugging along at 15-25fps. Most notably this occurred while exploring Colony 9. I have no clue what’s going on here, I didn’t actually expect the Pixel to perform so well here, or the LG G8X to perform so poorly. I tried walking around Colony 9 again when my phone cooled down a bit and it performed better, but quickly tanked back down to ~20fps within 15 seconds. I suspect LG throttles its phone pretty hard?
Overall, shockingly, I have to give the Pixel the win here. It’s no comparison. You can check out the gameplay vids yourself. I don’t know if I have a lemon of an LG G8X or what. If anyone else is able to emulate Xenoblade on their LG G8X, let me know how it performs for you. Is my phone a lemon? Or did LG just optimize their phone extremely poorly? (ALSO Apologies for the terrible resolution for the LG recorder, I didn’t realize you could change the resolution to full HD til my rerecording after the phone had cooled down).
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Camera

I thought the LG’s camera was fantastic coming from the Moto Z Play. Then I got the Pixel! GCam does help, but unfortunately you can’t set it to the double-tap-power button shortcut. The LG camera app does have some merits (lots of flexibility in image settings if you have the time to tweak settings to take a photo), but for a quick point and shoot it just doesn’t compare to the Pixel a lot of the time. That being said, I feel the LG actually sometimes takes more accurate photos? If I take a photo of something drab and dull, the LG captures it pretty accurately, whereas the Pixel takes a far nicer looking photo but doesn’t look like the drab reality. The Pixel though also takes much nicer, realistic photos of nice vibrant things, whereas the LG’s photos look more washed out. For day shots, or shots facing light, the… dynamic range? Is that what it’s called? For the Pixel is far better than the Pixel. The LG will blow out eg. the details in clouds (ie. Clouds will just appear white and uniform), while the Pixel will preserve the detail and colour of the clouds. For night shots, the LG actually takes better non-Night mode night shots than the Pixel. But the Pixel’s Night Mode absolutely smokes LG’s Night Mode, no questions asked. LG with GCam’s Night Sight helps a lot though. The LG’s selfie camera focuses off into the distance instead of your face so is functionally useless. Finally, I don’t take videos so won’t really comment on it. LG’s wide camera is a lot wider than the Pixel’s, which is a plus for LG.
Overall, the Pixel has a better camera but the LG isn’t too shabby, and sometimes takes nicer shots than the Pixel. Non-Night mode shots are actually better on the LG, but usually Pixel’s night mode turns out better looking. I’ll let the photos do the talking, where I have comparison shots between the LG (with the LG cam as well as the GCam), vs. the Pixel. I’m a lot more interested in shots with challenging lighting, thus the weird dark shots. Unfortunately the weather isn’t great here so no nice outdoor shots. Also unfortunately I have now noticed that a lot of them are blurrier than I’d like – I am too lazy to change them now! I may add more photos to the albums later.
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Dual screen

I just picked this up a day before the Pixel came in. I was pretty excited for it because there are definitely times where I want to multitask, or where I’ve got split screen open trying to copy some text from what window to the other but the keyboard pops up and blocks my view.
Unfortunately, the dual screen implementation feels far more half-hearted than that of what I’m hearing about the Surface Duo. The two screens feel more like two separate machines with a tenuous link, than like two parts of the same unit. At the same time, the 2nd screen doesn’t have the same functionality as the main screen: you can’t split screen it, you can’t change the launcher, the home screen is not continuous at all with the main screen’s home screen, and when you throw one screen’s contents over to the other screen, it often feels like a mystery what will occupy the screen whose contents you just threw over to the other screen.
Using one screen as a keyboard for the other screen in theory sounds really neat, but it only works with the LG keyboard, which has an embarrassingly tiny dictionary with terrible autocorrect suggestions. Even when it works with the LG keyboard, when you tap in a text field on the top screen, the phone does this janky animation where the keyboard first shows up on the top screen before jumping down to the bottom screen. If you tap on a text field on the bottom screen, it won’t by default push the bottom screen contents up and open the keyboard on the bottom screen (which could be what some people want, I guess).
Very, very, very few apps make good use of the dual screens, even with the 3rd party Wide Mode app which forces any app into Wide Mode (which just turns apps into Tablet Mode rather than giving unique content to each screen). The LG Whale browser seems to be the best app to make use of the dual screen (you can open links in one screen on the other screen) – that being said, I’d much rather use other browsers. Chrome does a reasonable job, and you can open taps from one screen in the other screen. I can’t find a way to get Youtube to open a video on one screen and me scrolling through comments/searching through other videos on the other screen.
Overall something I really wish they would have incorporated was, say, opening a link in one app and the internet browser automatically opening in the other screen, or at least giving me the option to open in the other screen! Say, a friend sends me a link to a website and then I open the website in the opposite screen automatically and then continue talking to my friend on the first screen. Not a feature that is currently implemented.
The LG Gamepad mode seems like a great idea: the top screen acts as the screen, the bottom screen acts as the gamepad. Supposedly the games will detect it as a native gamepad. Unfortunately, it was not compatible with Stadia, Xbox GamePass Streaming, or Dolphin Emulator. It was compatible with Final Fantasy V and PPSSPP. Games like Genshin Impact, a game without controller support absolutely begging for it, work really well with it as you can also create a custom gamepad with buttons that correspond to tapping areas on the game screen. I was most looking forward to it working with Stadia, Gamepass and the emulators though (I don’t play too many native Android games) so I definitely am pretty bummed.
My biggest complaint though is there just simply is no easy way to type with the dual screen vertical. Though I’d like to make use of the dual screen features sometimes for the occasional time I want to multitask, I sadly discovered the few times I would use the dual screen to its potential does not warrant having the carry this colossal phone around with its incredibly uncomfortable typing position. The obvious solution would be to have a “wide mode” split keyboard, which actually does appear if you Wide Mode an app and then use the keyboard. But from what I can tell, there is no way to “wide mode” a keyboard when you’re using the dual screens as, well, dual screens. On single screen phones I usually type with two hands, whereas I can’t type with one hand on this phone because the keyboard only shows up on one screen, and the other screen is in the way. On this phone, the only way to type is to hold the phone with one hand, and use a finger on the other hand to peck at or swipe the keys.
Overall, I think I like a dual screen in theory, but LG didn’t execute it very well at all. Instead of feeling like an extension of the main screen, it feels like its entirely own entity and doesn’t always flow well with the main screen. The absolute paucity of apps making use of the dual screen to its full potential is unfortunate. The biggest culprit is that typing in dual screen vertical mode (The way I use it most frequently) is extremely uncomfortable. All these drawbacks don’t make keeping the dual screen on worthwhile, as someone who only occasionally requires the dual screen.
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Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! This wound up being nearly 7000 words… wasn’t expecting it to be, like, even a quarter that long. I'll be happy if even one person reads through 50% of this.
I think the Pixel demonstrates that spec sheets really are not everything. Either that, or I got a lemon of an LG G8X (not outside the realm of possibility). With the caveat of the LG having much more fuller storage and being used for 4 more months, despite the LG’s supposedly better chip, performance is objectively pretty similar between the two phones in terms of app opening and opening websites. The Pixel was actually beating out the LG pretty consistently after both phones were used for 48 hours. Both phones run Genshin Impact kind of miserably, and run Gamecube games on Dolphin without a hitch. The Pixel was significantly better than the LG in emulating the Wii. The Pixel consistently destroyed the LG in terms of memory management. The Pixel’s smaller battery capacity of 3800 mAh outlasted the LG’s 4000 mAh battery, even when the LG was brand new. The camera in the Pixel is far better than the LG. The software experience of the Pixel is smoother and less buggy (and certainly less frustrating). The fingerprint sensor is a tossup for me. The audio is maybe better in the LG, but I can’t really tell. Screens are similar. The LG does “feel” more premium, but I do prefer the lightness of the Pixel. The one definitely advantage the LG has over the Pixel is the expandable storage.
Needless to say, I think I am going to keep the Pixel. I didn’t want to leave the LG G8X community behind though without giving a good reason to do so, and I hope this 6000+ word document with accompanying Dropbox folder of photos, screenshots, and screen recordings explain why I did so, and also demonstrate that spec sheets aren’t everything. I’ll probably try to sell the LG G8X + Dual Screen, but taking a look at how long these phones stay on Facebook Marketplace/eBay, I’m not very hopeful I’ll be able to sell it at even a fraction of what I bought it for. Anyway, thanks for reading.
I spent way too much time on this.
Also I haven’t proofread this, so I’m sure there are mistakes abound.
Also I really need to get working on actually important stuff. Thanks for reading!
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Much needed tl;dr (Which is still long):

- Was getting tired of LG G8X's weight, previous app gesture being busted, standby drain, general glitchiness, slower performance than expected, so I picked up a Pixel 4a 5G.
- Did lots of tests which you can check out in the Dropbox
- I subjectively like Pixel's camera, speakers, microphone, default screen colour balance, software cleanliness better.
- Really surprisingly, my specific days-old Pixel 4a 5G outperforms my 4 month old LG G8X in app opening and website opening (unless I freshly restart both phones). REALLY surprisingly, my Pixel ran circles around the LG in Wii emulation, and was equally competent at Gamecube emulation and Genshin Impact
- I will be keeping the Pixel. I will try to sell the LG G8X but am not hopeful. I will miss LG G8X's expandable storage but not much else.

So I have a Surface Pro 3 tablet, a Samsung Chromebook Pro (no linux support through Crostini, but Crouton works however), and an Android phone.
If possible, I want to be able to play my Steam games without having to sit at my PC each time. I have looked at Geforce Now, but not all games are supported and when I sync my library it shows 0 games. Makes me think all the Steam games I own cannot work with Geforce Now.
I looked into Steam Link as well which requires you to be connected to the same WiFi network as your PC. I guess this isn't a big deal, but do you have to have your PC or screen on all the time while playing? Is there a way to put the PC to sleep through Steam Link or remotely when done? It would also be a bonus to be able to play outside of my network, but I haven't found anything on that.
Basically what I want to do is to use as few devices as possible to play, and to not have to have my computer on all the time, or a more convenient way to shut it off. The 2 wsys I can think of is to install crouton on the Chromebook, but that seems like a hassle whenever I want to access Steam. Or use the Surface pro 3 for Steam.
If anybody has a better solution in mind, please let me know. Thank you!

Might be useful for others in the same situation. Please let me know if I missed anything! PS. I'm in Canada... So prices in CAD. Also, for context, my friend has a Switch and a PS4.
Oh man... So much to explain... Here's what's great about stadia...

1. No downloads. Ever. No game updates. No system updates. No worrying about how much you can store on the system.
   
2. Play on any screen. Your tv (with Chromecast). Your phone. Your iMac. Kids tablet. Or any old crappy computer. You can play wirelessly using that stadia controller on any screen or you can connect any old controller to a computer, like your PS4 controller.
   
3. It's low cost! If you want to play online with your friends, they don't need to spend $400+ on a new system. They can play now with a computer and an old controller, or they can buy a stadia kit like yours for a very reasonable price. Games are often on sale for a very low price, and when you buy a game you can play online without paying a monthly fee for online access. Ex. If you buy The Division 2 Warlords of New York Edition, on sale now for $23.99 (regular $80) you keep that game forever and can play free online forever. I play that game online all the time with friends. (Also, you can plug in any headphones that have a microphone, like the ones that came with your cell phone, to the stadia controller to chat online).
   
4. If you pay $11.99 per month for a Pro subscription, you get a ton of free games. Usually 3-6 games every month. If you stop your subscription, you lose access to those games. If you start the subscription back up, you get the games back. A Pro subscription also gives you 4k, HDR, 5.1 audio. Otherwise your games will be HD stereo. I've had a Pro sub for a year and I have something like 60 games in my stadia library, all "installed" and ready to play instantly.
   
5. Stadia has Family Sharing, so you can share any game you buy or claim through a Pro subscription with 5 family members. So for example, you might play Division on your TV at the same time as a kid plays Avengers on their iPad. No extra cost. If you want to play the same game together though, you need to have multiple copies of the game. Ex: I play Destiny 2 with two kids on 3 screens... The game is Free To Play, so the early levels are playable for free by all of us, but we each had to buy the campaigns to keep going. But they're often on big sales. Like $11.54 for a big campaign expansion right now.
   
6. Stadia has high-end AAA games that you can't play on Switch. Like: Jedi Fallen Order, Avengers, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, Assassin's Creed Valhalla. And they play better than on PS4... With WAY faster loading times and higher visual quality.
   
7. There (likely) won't be a Stadia 2. At some point, Stadia will upgrade their hardware in their server farms and you'll have access to games with better graphics. No need to purchase new hardware.
   

One big caveat... You need good internet! Make sure your wifi is solid, or play wired-in via ethernet. You need something like 10-20 Mbps to play HD on one screen, 40 Mbps to play 4K. Also, watch out if your internet plan has a data cap... You'll chew through tons of data playing stadia.