Summary
Google has done a solid job offering flagship-level features in its mid-tier A-Series Pixel handsets, but the price has quietly increased. TheGoogle Pixel 8acontinues the tradition of being a fantastic smartphone, but considering its $499 price tag, I don’t know why you’d purchase this over the frequently discounted Pixel 8.
Google Pixel 8a
The Google Pixel 8a is a mid-range smartphone powered by the Google Tensor G3 SoC. It starts at $499 and includes excellent camera features. It also has an all-day battery life, making it a great budget-friendly phone if you can find it on sale.
Price and Availability
The Google Pixel 8a starts at $499 for the 128GB model and goes up to $559 for the 256GB option. It’s available in Aloe (green), Bay (blue), Porcelain (white), and Obsidian (black) and can be purchased unlocked or directly through your carrier.
As with previous Pixel devices, I don’t recommend buying the Pixel 8a for full price. Depending on when you read this review, you’ll likely find the handset heavily marked down. At the time of publishing, Amazon is offering a free $100 gift card with the purchase of the device, and most carriers are giving away the phone for free as long as you stay with the cellular company for some amount of time.
The Pixel 8a Looks Like…a Pixel
A Pixel is a Pixel is a Pixel. At this point, unless you buy a foldable, most smartphones all look like metal and glass rectangles. Since the Pixel 6 series, Google has done a good job at helping the Pixel lineup stand out appearance-wise by including a camera bar that spans the back of the phone (which is also meant to highlight the killer camera performance; more on that below). That familiar shape also makes its way to the Pixel 8a but with slightly more round edges.
In the hand, the Pixel 8a feels like a mid-tier phone. The back is plastic but has a matte texture, giving it a more premium presence. The frame and camera bar are made out of aluminum and also feature a matte finish. Alone, the materials don’t feel cheap, but the overall product has an emptiness to it that isn’t quite flagship. It’s not bad, but it’s there.
The good news is that the matte plastic and metal hide all fingerprints and debris. The glass covering the rear cameras and the display are the only areas that need to be wiped clean.
Speaking of the display, you’ll find some serious bezels surrounding the screen. They’re expected at this price point, but they still surprised me when I unboxed the device. What’s annoying, though, is that the bezels aren’t uniform, as the bottom portion is thicker than the top and sides. You mostly get used to and look past this detail, but it continued to bug me.
New this year is a 1080 x 2400 OLED “Actua” display with a 120Hz variable refresh rate (up from 90Hz in the Pixel 7a). Year-over-year, the screens don’t look all that different, but the extra smooth scrolling in apps is always appreciated.
Oddly enough, “Smooth Display” is disabled by default. You have to navigate to Settings > Display and toggle the feature on. The menu warns that you might see increased battery usage, but I had the option enabled during my entire testing period, and as discuss further in this review, battery life has been great. I guess it would have been even better with the feature off.
I also needed to keep the brightness at roughly 75% indoors and cranked it to maximum brightness outdoors. The Pixel 8a has 2000 nits of peak brightness, but it still tended to be hard to read text on the screen in brightly lit rooms and when walking outside.
If you’re familiar with the AI features already on the Pixel 8 series, then you already know about everything offered on the Pixel 8a. Google didn’t release anything new, but that’s not a bad thing.Circle to Search, Call Screen, theRecorder app, Best Take, Magic Editor, Audio Magic Eraser, and more are all on this handset and work just as well as they do on more premium devices.
More on-device AI features, powered by Gemini Nano, are alsoset to come to the Pixel 8a in a future Feature Drop update. The feature will need to be manually enabled in Developer Options, but we should expect on-device Recorder summaries and Smart Replies in Gboard.
I should note thatGoogle I/Ois set to kick off a day after this review is published, and it’s basically guaranteed that there will be endless AI announcements. A number of those will likely include features included in Android 15. The Pixel 8a is set to receive seven years of OS, security, and Feature Drop updates, so fingers crossed that everything will come to the entire Pixel 8 series, not just the flagships.
The Tensor G3 Continues to Be a Champ
Like its flagship siblings, the Pixel 8a is powered by the Tensor G3 SoC. Previous Google chips tended to run hot, and performance was inconsistent (especially in theGoogle Fold), but the G3 turned that around. The processor and its power are, in part, why I loved reviewing the Pixel 8 Pro.
That same performance is found in the Pixel 8a. Paired with 8GB of RAM, I never ran into lag, and the screen never felt sluggish. Unfortunately, the Tensor’s heat output is still very present. I didn’t notice it as much with the 8 Pro—probably due to the different build materials—but the temperature was ever-present after 10 minutes of scrolling through Instagram or playing a game. The phone never got too hot to hold, and the heat didn’t cause any issues.
All-Day Battery, Slow Wireless Charging
The Pixel 8a has a 4492mAh battery, which lasted me all day, even when using wireless Android Auto. I normally ended the day below 15%, but that was with over five hours of screen-on time. If I wasn’t stress-testing the device, there’s a good chance the phone would be juiced up while sitting at my desk throughout the day, so this battery life was more than suitable for me.
Something I continue to be disappointed by with every 2024 Android phone release is the lack ofQi2 wireless charging. I absolutely love using MagSafe and a collection of magnetically attached accessories with my iPhone 15 Pro Max, and not getting to use that same ecosystem with Google’s latest is disappointing. Instead, the search giant kept the slow 7.5W Qi charging found in last year’s model.
Between it being hard to align the wireless coils (I once woke up with an almost dead handset) and the slow charging speed, I decided it was best to plug in the included USB-C cable.
I Will Forever Love the Pixel Camera
Last year, the Pixel lineup took the top three spots inMKBHD’s blind camera test, with the Pixel 7a taking home gold. With Google’s decision to reuse those same sensors in the Pixel 8a, you should expect some fantastic photos out of this mid-tier Android.
On the back of the Pixel 8a, you’ll find two camera sensors: a 64MP wide with optical image stabilization and a 13MP ultrawide. The phone also offers a 2x zoom, but that’s a software crop using the primary sensor.
I have long been a fan of Google’s ability to capture true-to-life colors and contrast. Flipping through the image samples above which show different zooms, the flowers, the grass, and the trees all look fantastic. I did notice some focus issues with the 2x zoom, but if you select your subject before snapping the pic, you should be fine.
It’s also worth noting that the ultrawide camera does add a bit of a fisheye effect. Personally, I’m not a fan of the look, and would prefer the secondary lens to be a true telephoto, but that’s just my opinion. If you want a telephoto camera, you’ll have to opt for the Pixel 8 Pro.
The front-facing camera is a 13MP sensor with a fixed focus. With an ƒ/2.2 aperture, the focus area shouldn’t be huge, but I had no issues taking sharp selfies.
Google’s Portrait mode software is also top-notch. It almost always nailed the bokeh effect around my hair, but as you can see from the samples above, it sometimes struggles with different patterns. I noticed some clipping around my chair’s headrest, which is made out of a mesh-like material. But if you look on the other side of the photo where there is more separation between the subject (me) and the background, the dropoff looks pretty natural.
Compared to the Pixel 8, the Pixel 8a Doesn’t Make Sense
Google’s flagship smartphones, the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, are seven months old, which doesn’t necessarily make them old. But if you look at Amazon or your carrier, you’ll often see them on sale or heavily discounted. These promos normally knock enough off that the phones end up costing no more than Google’s latest budget offering.
To prove my point, I did a quick search throughVerizon’s website. Right next to the $0/month promo for the Pixel 8a is a $0/month deal for the regular Pixel 8. And if you wantPixel 8 Pro, that’ll only cost you $5/month.
Realistically, the Pixel 8a will be heavily discounted over the next year. The Pixel 7a was routinely on sale for $349. It wouldn’t surprise me to see these deals make it to Google’s latest “budget” phone within a month or two.
But if you want to stay on the price-conscience end of things, theSamsung Galaxy A35is a worthy contender. It starts at $400, has a large OLED display, and features decent cameras. You lose all the Google AI features, though, so consider the tradeoffs carefully.
Should You Buy the Google Pixel 8a?
TheGoogle Pixel 8ais a great mid-tier smartphone with the power and features of a flagship. Despite the more budget look and feel and slow wireless charging, if it wasn’t for the $499 price tag, I’d recommend it to everyone. But instead, I firmly believe that most people are better off looking at Google’s more premium handsets. As they typically cost just as much as the A-series, I don’t see why you’d go for the “cheaper” device.
