Pixel 9a Review - Flagship Killer?
Should you buy this over a flagship?
After spending a week with the Pixel 9a and harshly testing the limits of its battery and thermals, I was incredibly impressed by what this device had to offer.
Let’s start by talking about the camera.
Camera
The Pixel’s photos have famously great post-processing, putting Google in a unique position to use mediocre specs for their cameras, while still getting high-quality photos. Photos that appeared extremely blurry when previewing them, looked much clearer after looking in Google Photos after the fact.
Despite the 48MP camera, the Pixel 9a can take beautiful photos in full light. The sensor captures great colors and the processing takes care of relatively accurate background blur.
The Pixel also has a 13MP ultrawide sensor, which is used in conjunction with the 48MP to make panoramas. The panoramic mode is very intuitive. The camera plots points that you are directed to angle your phone towards. After capturing data from at least two points, you can finish the panorama. If you’re like me and struggle with having steady hands for panoramas, you’re in luck. As long as you don’t violently jerk the phone while taking the photo, you will get an incredibly clean shot that doesn't have blank spaces near locations where you didn’t keep the phone steady enough. Despite that, the common panorama issue of ghost-objects still exists with the Pixel 9a.
Another highlight of the Pixel’s camera system is the Magic Editor. The Magic Eraser tool has always been fine. But it has certainly come a long way since the last time I tried it. After taking a photo of a flower with both my hand and an umbrella in the image, I was able to convincingly remove both objects. In the second photo below, you can see some not-so-convincing shadows on my hand, but in the third image, the grass looks incredibly realistic.
Performance
With smooth animations and fast performance on light mobile games, the phone only slowed down a few times during my testing.
When I set up the phone and transferred all of my apps, it became abnormally warm and froze every few seconds. Thankfully, this only happened on one other occasion while leaving the phone on for multiple hours while playing lo-fi jazz music (hey it helps me focus!).
Overall, this phone performed very well and was even snappier than my previous daily driver: the S23+.
Battery Life
At a whopping 5100 mAh, this battery was reported by Google to last 30+ hours before it needed to be charged again. As long as I remembered to charge the phone every other night, I didn’t have to worry. I drained around 50% of the battery each day, depending on usage. On my toughest day of testing, I finished out the day with 20% left on the device (with Always On Display).
One of my favorite features of this device is Adaptive Charging. I really enjoyed waking up to a fully charged phone while also knowing that I wasn’t destroying the battery by leaving it plugged in overnight. It referenced the time of my alarm for the morning and had it begin charging at an apt time to reach 100% by the time I woke up.
Build Quality
Despite the fact that the Pixel 9a is a budget phone, the device has a matte backing (I love that texture!) as well as a metal chassis that uses completely recycled aluminum. The device is also IP68 certified — meaning that it can easily survive rain or even a quick submersion incident.
I personally love the way this phone feels. It stays in my pocket (even without a case) and is heavy enough to feel premium, but light enough to feel usable. Despite coming from a larger phone, I really enjoyed the smaller screen size. After coming from a Galaxy S23+, I loved having the extra pocket space.
The 6.3” display has protection in the form of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and received no scratches over the course of my week of testing the phone.
Should you buy the Pixel 9a?
If you are looking for a premium smartphone with a large screen, highly-specced cameras, and a powerful processor, this device is not for you.
On the other hand, if you want a smartphone that takes better-than-decent photos, lasts you through the day, and is suitable for mobile gaming - the Pixel 9a is perfect. For a device that comes at such a low price-point, its performance came shockingly close to being at the level of the most expensive phones on the market — in some cases even surpassing them in areas such as battery life.
I would absolutely recommend this phone to anyone who is looking for a functional device at a less outrageous price.