GOOGLE PIXEL 3A CAMERA REVIEW | Can $399 smartphone camera hang?! By Robb Sutton

How's it going its Rob Sutton, we're back here with another video back in the beginning of May. Google, actually sent me out one of their new Google Pixel 3a smartphones, and they asked me to test it out and see what I thought so, instead of doing a regular comparison, video just like you would see on most of the tech channels. I really want to focus on the camera and compare what a 399 phone does versus a $1,200 phone, which is my daily driver, iPhone, 10x Macs, and while we do this today, we're actually going to be enjoying a scofflaw double jeopardy. There are new breweries out of Atlanta. One of the Brewers is actually from Russian River brewery out in California. So if you like IPAs- and you know the world-renowned Pliny the Elder, this is one of those Brewers, and he's now down in Atlanta, making some great IPAs and other beers.

If you have a chance to check them out. So let's get into it. So at least on the spec list. You are getting some discounted features and one of those discounts does mean you are not getting Google's visual courtship, which would get in the Google Pixel 3 or the upcoming for all of that image. Processing is offloaded to the processor and graphics processor inside the phone.

So what kind of difference that makes I'm not really sure, but typically it's a little of a performance. It is other thing to keep in mind when you're. Looking at the three versus the three an is that you're, unlimited storage on Google photos is actually limited to compressed images on the three a versus your originals on the three, but that actually equates to is because of the compression. What would be a 3 megabyte file? Size is actually closer to 1.2, so you're not getting that full quality that you would have like. You would with the 3 another thing to keep in mind which I'm not going to talk about too directly here, because I'm, not a big selfie guy I'm, always the guys taking the picture not being actually in it.

You are not going to get the wide-angle selfie camera like everyone seems to have loved on the Google Pixel 3 you're, getting just your regular single lens on the front. So Before we jump into the computer and actually take a look at the images and I. Tell you what I think about the overall Google experience. Let's take a quick spectra view on what the iPhone xx max camera is versus the Google Pixel 3 they're going to be 12 point 2 megapixels on the 3, a versus 12 megapixels, on both of the cameras on the iPhone, the wide-angle lens on the iPhone is gonna, carry an aperture of 1.8 and the telephoto is gonna, be 2.4 on the 3. A single lens is gonna, carry a wide open aperture of 1.8 on the iPhone. You have optical image, stabilization on both of the cameras and on the Google Pixel 3 a actually get optical + electronic stabilization.

So, overall, both camera systems seem to be really comparable. The biggest difference being the X x max is going to get that 2 lens system or the Google Pixel is going to have a single one, but the Google Pixel also adds an electronic stabilization on top of their Hardware optical stabilization. So now that we got a know the initial vs out of the way, let's go ahead and take a look at some images. I took with both of these phones. Okay, now, let's sit down, go through the images and see what I came up with as I mentioned before.

These are snapshots style images they are not going out and trying to the nastiest picture of a waterfall you've ever seen that words, it's mostly dogs, kids and regular, just life. So let's take a look, so these first shots are actually of our jeep out in the sunrise in the morning. First, we're going to take a look at the iPhone, then switch over to the Google phone I. Don't know if you can notice through these, but I'll try to zoom in here in just a second. What you're looking at is a little warmer picture on the iPhone side, with a little colder image on the actual Google side, the Google Sites tend to have a little more contrast as well as you can see.

Actually through the Jeep area and up in the tree, I found some unique characteristics with each. So let's go ahead and run through that now. First, if you start up on the Jeep side, there seems to be more noise and less sharpness and the iPhone photo versus the Google phone. You can see the black fenders and black tires, don't have as much noise and the lines seem a little clearer. However, when you go up into the trees, you seem to get a little of haloing effect around the trees and the increased contrast, almost kind of hurts the detail up on the tree end where the iPhone looks a little more natural up on the tree line, and you don't get as much as that hit of that haloing effect.

So it really seems like farther out the iPhone team tended to do a better job of actually capturing. What was real, where the Google phone tended to capture the Jeep better in the foreground? The next picture is a sunset on Lake Lanier, there's the iPhone and the Google phone. Ironically, on this side, the iPhone seemed to live beyond a little cooler end, while the Google phone seemed to capture a little warmer image with the sunset again I'm, starting to see more contrast on the Google phone versus the iPhone. There also seems to be more detail and less noise in the Google phone versus the iPhone when it gets down into the shadows. So the next picture here is of my son, just while we're waiting on the sunset kind of just being goofy.

So in this case the Google phone actually looked a little warmer again. So if we go back to the iPhone shot, you can see there's more Blues in the shadows versus oranges. Like you see, with the Google phone on this shot, I didn't notice a lot of difference in detail noise you can see. All the lines seem to be really crisp, there's not a lot of difference between the two. Now, let's go into portrait mode, so I decided here to do the token shot of whatever you're drinking while grilling, and so I did this one actually on purpose, because the Google phone and the iPhone handle portrait mode very differently where the iPhone uses both the telephoto and wide-angle lens, to actually create a map and give you the depth from there in software, Google phone relies solely on software.

To give you the depth effect, both of them are adjustable. Aperture wise is really just the know. Software blowing up the background, but the unique difference with the Google phone is that you can actually pick where your focus point is and on the iPhone you can not. If you see in this iPhone shot, it loses half the glass. It can't distinguish the glass from the background.

So what you get is clear. Looking beer going around the edge of the can and the edge of the glass it'll actually disappear and fake it like it's the background when it isn't and contrast when you use the Google phone, you can actually pinpoint that focus point right here on the lip of the glass, and it'll actually capture that entire glass. Now it isn't perfect, there are some blurry areas back here that shouldn't be on both the can and the glass. But the overall experience on using portrait mode with difficult situations is much better on the Google phone I've also found since the iPhone uses both lenses to actually map that distance. You run into a lot of situations where you pick up portrait mode in the iPhone.

You find yourself walking forwards and backwards, trying to find that sweet spot where the iPhone is happy with being able to create that depth with the Google phone as soon as you put it in the portrait mode, you can just frame it and go you don't have to do any of this walking back and forth where it says, move farther away, like you do with the iPhone. The overall portrait mode experience is much better on the Google phone with the iPhone, and they should take note on being able to adjust that focus point, because it makes a big difference. When you're trying to capture images, then we go back into the gist. The standard image right now we're looking at the iPhone and then over to the Google phone. The Google phone here seems to pull out a little more of the reds.

This is a direct bright. Sunlight in the middle of the day seems to be very comparable. So the next thing I wanted to do here is kind of subtract. The software side from each of the phones, so I took both of these images and DOG RAW in Adobe Lightroom cc mobile. It's in a low light situation of my ROG sleeping on the stairs sticking his nose through the bars, here's, the Google Pixel 3a, and then the iPhone, like we saw with the Jeep shot, the iPhone seemed to get a lot warmer and actually pull out some saturation even with shooting in RAW, then the Google Pixel.

That seems to be a lot cooler when you zoom in on the image they both do a good job of being pretty sharp, but the iPhone seems to pick up the hairs on my ROG a little better than the Google Pixel. Did one thing to note: I also tried out the night shift mode that you can get on the Google Pixel three-egg I wasn't overly impressed with it, but it really seems to be doing is using the electronic image stabilization to create a long exposure shot and basically crop in on it, and what it's trying to do is really heighten the whites and the brighter colors of whatever subject: you're shooting and leaving the shadows alone. It ends up with a very muddy looking picture if you actually zoom in on it. It's like someone that used noise reduction too heavy and the lines aren't really sharp. Furthermore, it do I guess help out for like an Instagram photo, if you really need it in a really dark situation, but if you have any subjects that are moving, it makes it really difficult to get a shot.

That's worth anything. So what was my overall experience on the Pixel 3a versus the iPhone? One I think Google nailed it on the user experience when it comes to taking photos with a smartphone. The portrait mode is a lot easier to use. It has a lot better accuracy. It seems to be quicker to just take that snapshot and move on with the rest of your day, where the iPhone takes a little more to clunk around.

In my opinion, they really could take some notes from goo. It's like to take an image quickly and just get that snapshot and run on the other side. Both of these phones have a lot of features. I really don't use. We didn't talk about the selfie cameras today, because I don't really do selfies I also don't use a lot of like the portrait mode settings.

The iPhone has for studio lighting and all this other stuff, either when I'm shooting with my phones, I really just like to get the shot when we want so overall I got a hand it to the Google Pixel here on this one, especially given the 399 price I'm using a $1,200 film. As a daily driver, I pick up a $400 phone and my photo experience is better I think we all can agree that we're actually using our phones now Moore's devices than talking on and one of the major things I do with my phone is take snapshots of my family pets. Everything else so I was really impressed, especially for a $400 device. How well it did, and after using some friends of my pixel threes, I can't really tell that big of a difference. So when it comes solely to taking pictures, I have to believe right now.

The Google Pixel 3 8 is the best bang for the buck for taking pictures of the smartphone. So guys, that's why I had on the Google Pixel 3a. As far as photography goes on the rear-facing camera, if you guys have any experience with it, please hit up the comment section below I'd love to hear what you think. If you ever get a chance to check out scofflaw go for it, be careful, there's double jeopardy, though it is 10% and until then on to the next one. Thanks for watching guys, don't forget to subscribe and hit that like button peace.

Source : Robb Sutton