Google Pixel 3a review: A budget phone that acts like a premium flagship

The Google Pixel 3a makes a robust case for tossing out the spec sheet. On paper, it seems like one more boring budget smartphone, with a middling processor, single entrance and rear cameras, and a bare-minimum 1080p display screen. But in your pocket, you would possibly simply mistake it for a premium phone.

Part of the rationale why is as a result of, nicely, it’s a Pixel. Specifically, it seems a lot like the notchless Pixel Three and the rumored design for the Pixel 4, and naturally, it runs the newest model of Android. But whereas the high-priced G-stamped telephones all the time left one thing to be desired when it got here to design, the $399 Pixel 3a seems like a budget phone however acts like a premium one. It’s nearly like Google has been setting us up for this all alongside.

Ignoring the numbers sport

For so long as high-end Android telephones have existed, we’ve been educated to imagine that we want the most important battery and greatest processor to get the perfect expertise. As such, handsets have crossed the thousand-dollar threshold to offer us the specs they’ve satisfied us we want, as premium telephones have all sought to outdo one another with cameras, RAM, storage, and pixels.

Michael Simon/IDG

The Pixel 3a does none of that. Spec-, design-, and most significantly, price-wise, it’s the antithesis of a premium Android phone. It’s made from plastic slightly than glass, has a Full HD display screen as an alternative of a Quad HD one, and its inside attributes are decidedly non-premium as nicely:

• Processor: Snapdragon 670
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: 64GB
• Battery: 3,000mAh
• Front digital camera: 8MP, f/2.0
• Rear digital camera: 12MP, f/1.8, OIS

But numbers aren’t what the Pixel 3a is promoting. Much like the premium Pixel—which additionally has simply 4GB of RAM and 64GB of base storage—the 3a makes probably the most of its elements, providing an Android expertise that rivals telephones that price greater than twice as a lot. Plus it has a headphone jack, which makes the dearth of 1 on the higher-priced Pixel extra obtrusive. I’d like an choice for extra storage or a minimum of a slot for an SD card, however because it stands, the Pixel 3a maxes out at a comparatively paltry 64GB of storage. Keep in thoughts that you don’t get free limitless storage of pictures in authentic high quality like you do on the Pixel 3, so house would possibly turn out to be a problem.

In benchmarks, the Pixel 3a’s Snapdragon 670 scored round 7,250 within the PCMark Work 2.Zero take a look at, decrease than the Snapdragon 845-based Pixel 3’s 8,828, however not crippling by any stretch. Geekbench Four returned related outcomes, with the Pixel 3a posting a 1,600/5,125 (single-core/multi-core) rating versus 2,358/8,337 on the Pixel 3, however all in all, the Snapdragon 670 wasn’t as laggy as I anticipated. Only sometimes throughout my testing was I consciously conscious that I wasn’t utilizing a near-thousand-dollar phone, and even then, it was fleeting. More usually than not, I forgot that I wasn’t utilizing the grown-up Pixel.

Michael Simon/IDG