Google Pixel 8a smartphone review

Google continues to release its reference Pixel smartphones on pure Android. The Pixel has quite a few fans, despite the increase in complaints about the quality of workmanship in recent generations. The current lineup includes the flagships Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, as well as the more affordable Google Pixel 8a. Of course, it has some simplifications compared to the flagships, and today we will tell you how critical these simplifications are and how interesting the smartphone turned out to be.

Google Pixel 8a specifications

Package contents

Google Pixel 8a is packaged in a thin white box with the name and image of the smartphone. The package is standard for all current Pixels: in addition to the smartphone, there is a cable with a USB Type-C connector on both sides, a Type-C to Type-A adapter, a SIM card clip, and documentation.

Starting with the 6 series, Google Pixel smartphones can be recognized by the distinctive design of the back cover. Namely, the rear camera, which is made in the form of a horizontal block across the entire width of the body. The older Google Pixel 8 received a glass back cover and a metal camera module that smoothly transitions into a metal side frame. The back cover of the Pixel 8a is made of matte plastic, which is pleasant to the touch. The camera unit is also plastic, so there is no seamless transition to the metal frame.

Another not so pleasant thing is that despite the rounded shape of the back cover and the frame, a smooth transition was not made: the edges of the back cover protrude slightly above the edges of the frame and you can feel it in your hand. The blue version, which is on review, looks interesting and original. Black, green, and beige versions are also available.

On the front, we have a fairly typical modern smartphone with a flat screen protected by Gorilla Glass 3. The front camera of Google Pixel 8a is located in a round hole in the middle of the top of the screen. The rather wide bezels around the display were a bit confusing. They look wide even compared to mid-range smartphones of previous years. The smartphone is compact, but it could be even more compact: The Google Pixel 8 has a 6.2-inch screen compared to the Pixel 8a’s 6.1, but it’s smaller.

The metal frame has many plastic inserts around the perimeter for more stable operation of wireless interfaces. The volume and power buttons are located on the right side. But, unlike the vast majority of modern smartphones, the power button is located above the volume buttons. We can assume that this decision is due to compactness and the idea was to place the power button optimally for the thumb of the right hand. But it’s a bit unusual, and at first you constantly press the volume down button instead of the power button.

On the opposite side of Google Pixel 8a is a tray. It is designed for one nano SIM card. There is also support for eSIM.

An additional microphone is located on the top edge. At the bottom is a USB Type-C connector and two symmetrical slots on the sides of it. They house the main speaker and the earpiece microphone.

Despite some complaints about the design, the smartphone looks interesting and is generally comfortable to use. Not least because of its compact size. There are very few smartphones that are so compact nowadays. Like the older members of the line, the Google Pixel 8a has protection against dirt and water, but of a slightly lower standard. IP67 vs. IP68 for Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.

Display

Google Pixel 8a has a 6.1-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2400×1080 and an aspect ratio of 20:9. The pixel density is about 430 ppi. It has a refresh rate of 120 Hz and supports HDR10. It is claimed that the peak local brightness in automatic mode is 2000 cd/m². There is support for Always on Display.

There are not too many settings: dark and light themes, a choice of refresh rates (for some reason, 60 Hz is set out of the box), font sizes, interface scale, color schemes, night mode, and two color display modes: adaptive and standard.

The screen is really very bright, the picture does not fade in the sun. The viewing angles are maximum. In Adaptive mode, the brightness is 729,292 cd/m². But the color reproduction is not perfect. The color gamut is larger than sRGB, but it doesn’t cover it completely. The picture has a slight lack of red component and an excess of blue, so the picture tends to be cold.

In “Standard”, the brightness is: 727,944 cd/m². The color gamut is slightly narrower than in Adaptive mode, and the color accuracy is at about the same level:

Safety

Biometric identification of the owner in Google Pixel 8a is provided by the in-screen fingerprint scanner and face recognition system. The fingerprint scanner is an optical type, which means that it highlights the fingerprint during scanning. It works well: the accuracy is high, the speed is not so good. It’s hard to call it frankly slow, but there are much faster ones. It is located quite high. But, given the compact size of the case, this position turned out to be quite convenient.

The front camera is used for face recognition without any additional sensors, so you can count on fast response only in good light.

Продуктивність та програмне забезпечення

Starting from the 6th generation, Google Pixel smartphones use Google Tensor processors of its own design, which are manufactured by Samsung. The most current is Google Tensor 3, which is used in the entire Google Pixel 8 line, including Pixel 8a. It is manufactured on a 4-nm process technology, contains one powerful ARM Cortex-X3 core with a clock frequency of 2.91 GHz, four Cortex-A715 cores with a frequency of 2.37 GHz and four energy-efficient Cortex-A510 cores with a frequency of 1.7 GHz. The graphics accelerator is Mali-G715 MP7. The smartphone has 8 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a 128 GB UFS 3.1 storage. There is also a 256 GB version.

In synthetic tests, Google Pixel 8a demonstrates the performance typical of mid-range smartphones. This is quite enough for fast operation of Android and any applications. But for the most demanding gamers, performance may not be enough.

The stability is not so good. In the CPU Throttling Test, under prolonged maximum load, the processor can drop power by up to 74%. At the same time, the case becomes noticeably warm. The situation is the same during a long game.

Games are generally fine. Call of Duty Mobile on high settings runs at a frame rate of about 60 FPS. Diablo Immortal does not allow you to set a high frame rate. But at high settings we have a stable 30 FPS. XCOM 2 has a locked frame rate of 30 FPS. At high graphics settings, we also have a fairly stable 30 FPS.

Google Pixel 8a is equipped with dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e, Bluetooth 5.3 with support for SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, LDAC and LC3 codecs, as well as NFC. Global positioning systems such as GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS, QZSS and NavIC are supported. Among the nice bonuses, it is worth mentioning that the Type-C port of the smartphone supports DisplayPort, so you can connect it directly to a monitor with a cable.

For some users, one of the important advantages of Google Pixel smartphones is absolutely pure Android without any shells, as Google intended. Pixel 8a runs on the current Android 14, with 7 years of updates promised. So there is nothing superfluous in the software, the operating system is very fast and stable.

All smartphone manufacturers are actively integrating AI tools into their models. Of course, Google AI is integrated into Pixel 8a. The features include searching the circled area of a photo, enhancing photos (including generating multiple similar ones), removing noise from videos, generating notifications, and more.

Sound

Stereo sound can already be called a standard not only for modern flagship smartphones, but also for the mid-range price category. Google Pixel 8a also reproduces stereo sound. For this purpose, the main and earpiece speakers are used, as in the vast majority of models.

The sound is well balanced, the difference in volume and speaker quality is not very noticeable. The volume margin is high and you shouldn’t crank it up to the maximum. The sound quality is quite good. At low volume, there is a little bit of bass. But with the volume up, the sound generally becomes flatter and the bass is almost inaudible.

Cameras

Google Pixel smartphones have always been considered one of the best when it comes to cameras. First of all, this was achieved thanks to competent software. Despite the fact that Google Pixel 8a is the most affordable model in the lineup, expectations from the camera are quite high.

Google Pixel 8a has a dual rear camera. The main one is a 64 megapixel Sony IMX 787 with a sensor size of 1/1.73″, 0.8 µm pixel, f/1.89 aperture, 26 mm EIS, dual pixel PDAF and optical stabilization. The camera uses the standard Quad-Bayer pixel combining scheme, and the image resolution is 16 MP. The maximum video resolution is 4K 60 frames per second. The ultra-wide-angle camera has a resolution of 13 MP, uses an IMX712 1/3.06″ sensor with a pixel size of 1.12 µm. The optics are 13 mm EFE with f/2.2 aperture. Unlike the Google Pixel 8, it does not have autofocus and cannot take macro shots. The front camera is a similar 13-megapixel sensor with a 20 mm EPS lens and f/2.2 aperture.

The interface of Google’s proprietary camera has a very simple and straightforward interface with a carousel of modes and a pull-down menu of additional settings. There are fewer modes and features than competitors, but Google has always focused on the “point and shoot” scenario. There is a long exposure mode, portrait, panorama, but there is no manual mode.

Daytime photos from the main camera are excellent: high definition and detail, wide dynamic range, good shadow work, and mostly natural colors. During night shooting, the detail is generally good, but the photos are slightly overexposed. And some of the night photos look like they’re in the evening.

There is a so-called 2x zoom without reducing the image quality. In fact, it works well for the most part. But in some places, traces of processing algorithms are still very noticeable.

The ultra-wide-angle camera, of course, loses a little in detail and dynamic range. But photos with a sufficient amount of light are very nice. Night mode is more difficult for it and the detail is already noticeably reduced. At the same time, there is also overexposure, just like in the main camera.

Google Pixel 8a shoots video well in 4K 60 FPS, the picture has good detail, the stabilizer works well, there are minimal sharp movements and the jelly effect is practically absent.

Battery life

The Google Pixel 8a is equipped with a 4492 mAh battery. Given the small display, this is quite enough. The smartphone turned out to be hardy and even under high load (with benchmarks and frequent use of the camera), Google Pixel 8a can withstand a day without any problems. So with moderate use, a day and a half will not be a problem.

But the charging speed of the Google Pixel 8a was very disappointing. Power Delivery of 18 watts is supported. It takes a little over two hours to fully charge, which looks quite unpleasant in 2024. In addition, there is support for wireless charging, which also does not differ in speed. It supports a power of only 7.5W.