According to the latest reports, at least one entry in the upcoming Pixel 9 series will support 8K video recording. This is excellent news, I suppose, although such exuberant resolution is wasted on my pitiful 4K TV — and pretty much any modern set valued at less than $2,000, for that matter. None of the big streaming players have jumped into the 8K race yet, so I won’t be shocked if you’re yet to buy into this latest living room fad. So, should we even be excited about this feature? Well, not unless Google has some solid storage perks to go with it.
For argument’s sake, let’s say you want to future-proof your precious memories in glorious 8K so you can beam them back at retina-searing resolutions in the future. The problem is that 8K video files are humongous. I recorded a few samples on my Xiaomi 14 Ultra; we’re looking at about 560MB per minute for 8K at 30fps, or roughly 33GB per hour of footage. Shooting in H264 or H265 didn’t make any difference to the file size, so it presumably only affects quality, at least on this phone.