Google Pixel 3a Smartphone Review - Camera, Performance, Gaming, Battery Life and More! By Lon.TV

Hey everybody you fly in Madman, and we're taking a look today at a new phone from Google. This is the Pixel 3a. This is a lower-cost Google Pixel phone. That makes a few compromises, but not many, and I think it's actually a pretty good deal, and we're going to be taking a closer look at this, including its camera system, which is its main selling point here in just a second, but I do want to let you know in the interest of full disclosure if this came in free of charge from Google their team pixels sent it to me all the opinions, though you're about to hear, are my own. Nobody is paying for this review, nor has anyone reviewed or approved what you're about to see before it was uploaded. So let's get into it now and take a look at what this mid-range phone is all about.

So let's take a closer look now at the hardware. This is the 5.6 inch version of the phone that starts at 399 dollars. They have a six-inch version of the phone, that's 479, that is a lot less expensive than many of the flagship phones that are out on the market. So, for example, the pixel 3, which is the big brother to this phone costs about $800, and, of course you could look at Apple, Samsung and LG and others who sell phones that sometimes can go north of $1000. So this is very reasonably priced and what's been interesting as I've been playing around with, it is how they picked the flagship features to include in the phone that consumers are most likely to notice, and they compromised in areas that they are less likely to be concerned about, and we'll talk about some of those compromises as we work our way through the review now, I want to start off with the display.

It is excellent. It's an OLED display, nice and sharp. This one is 2220 by 1080 for its resolution. That's 441 pixels per inch, so text is nice and sharp the photos. Looks great.

The black level is very deep on this. A really nice contrast on the display I can't find anything to complain about here. It's a very, very nice display for a mid-range phone. There is also a 6-inch version that also has an OLED display. Interestingly, though, the larger screen is the same resolution as the smaller phone.

The 6 inch is 2160 by 1080 at 402 points per inch, so things will look a little sharper on the smaller phone they didn't bump the resolution up when they boosted the display size on the larger phone and, again that's one of those compromises that they likely had to make in order to hit the price point. You'll also notice that the bezels on this phone are larger than what you might see on flagship phones, which now have the displays taking up pretty much the entire front of the phone. So you have a little of an area down here and up top, but that is really pretty much it on the display compromises. It looks great, and it was nice to see them pack in a really high quality OLED display here for the price point now the processor they chose for this phone is a Snapdragon 670 from Qualcomm. It is definitely not the fastest chip, that's out there, but I think for what most consumers are going to do it's going to be more than adequate, and the reason is that most mobile phones are not running to their full potential because most of the software for those phones are targeting the lower end devices and as a result, if you're browsing the web.

With this thing, it is going to feel just fine. In fact, if you've got a phone, that's 2 or 3 years old, this is going to feel a lot faster than what you're currently using all the apps here are springing up very quickly. I can jump around to different videos here on my YouTube channel and have them spring to life very fast. There's really nothing here. That feels like a compromise from a usability standpoint.

One area, though, where you'll see some slowdown is when you're doing things with the camera. That requires some image, processing, and we'll talk about those things when we get into taking photos. So there are some things that you'll notice, where the processor really has a hard time keeping up, but generally for what most people are going to do.85% of the time on their phone, I think you're going to be just fine with what they have decided to put in here again a compromise that most consumers may not really recognize for RAM it's got 4 gigabytes which isn't bad. There are phones, of course, with more RAM these days, but it's more than enough for what I think the target audience will need, and it's got 64 gigabytes of storage. Unfortunately, there is no SD card slot here on the phone, so you won't be able to augment that storage.

The 64 onboard is all you're going to get at the time. I'm recording this video I don't believe there is a version with more storage available. But who knows, maybe they'll give you some options later on, but right now the storage is fixed at 64 gigs. Now the build quality on the phone feels quite nice. It's got a metal frame along with a glass display.

It's got a very sturdy feel to it, but it is lightweight 5.2 ounces or 147 grams on the 5.6 inch version here it is very thin, as you can see as well. Furthermore, it's got a little of a camera bump, though the larger phone is only about 20 grams heavier, so it's not heavy in either configuration, and again it really feels nicely put together now. One feature: this phone has that many of the flagship phones, don't is a headphone jack like a real one here at the top, so you can plug in a pair of analogs, headphones and microphones into the top port there. It also has USB type-c here at the bottom, which does support audio devices as well. So you have a choice to how you want to connect up your headphones, and it also supports Bluetooth.

If you want to go that route. The speakers on it are also very nice. It has stereo sound. It comes out of the top and bottom here. Furthermore, it's very crisp and clear.

The base isn't great, but the quality of the audio is so. It's good for phone calls, I think decent for music and podcasts listening. Then, of course, you have the audio options for connecting up other devices to it. I did try to see if the USB port would output video. It does not, so it's used for charging or for audio, and I'm guessing a few other USB devices like game controllers and keyboards and mice would probably work through that port as well, but you won't get any kind of display output out of it beyond that.

You've got a sim card slot over here on this side, the other side has a power button and a volume rocker. There is a fingerprint reader here on the back. That is very fast, so I'll just lock the phone up here, real quick and just tap my finger there, and it unlocks very quickly. So it's pleased with the speed in which things operate. They even added a neat feature where you can get the assistant up just by squeezing the phone at the bottom and that will pull up the Google Assistant without having to ask for the Google word to get it going there.

So, all together a nicely designed phone and one that rivals I think a lot of flagships in its overall design, but just know there are a few things you can't do with this phone. One is that you cannot wirelessly charge it like you can with some higher-end smartphones. So if you have one of those charging pads, this can sit on it, but nothing will happen. It also is not waterproof. So if you are prone to dropping your phone in bodies of water or toilets or whatever else might be out, there be advised that this one is not rated to give you any kind of water protection, which is something you often get on a more expensive device.

So, let's take a look at the key feature of this phone, which is the camera system. Google says this is the same exact camera, that's on the much more expensive, pixel three, and that camera system was widely praised when it came out, and I've been very pleased with what I've seen out of it. So far, I'm going to show you some images in a minute, but I wanted to show you first, where the slower processor might become more evident. So right now, I'm setting up a portrait mode photograph here, and you can see that we're not getting any blurring of the background here as I'm previewing. The image I can tell it what I want it to focus on, but I won't really be able to see the output of that image until after I take the picture and then jump into the image itself, and you can see it takes a second to process what it's doing for some reason is jumping back to the prior photo that I took.

But nonetheless this is the final output which looks great. Doesn't it, but you won't really have an idea as to how the photo will look until after it is taken. A phone with a faster processor can do this in real time and give you a much better preview of the image before it is shot. So that's one of the little things that you'll notice here along the way, but the image quality itself looks great. You can also go in and edit the photo.

So if you want to maybe reduce the amount of blur, you can do that or increase it, and it does seem to process pretty quickly when you are in there working on your images, so overall not a bad experience, but you won't get some higher-end image processing preview to you in real time. So, let's take a look at a few other images that I shot in portrait mode. This flower came out really nice a lot of detail on this, and it really pulled that flower out from the background pretty nicely. This is all a software process. There's only one lens on this camera.

Yet it's able to through its software figure what is in the foreground and effectively pull it out. Some things work better than others, but you're going to have a lot of good images like this one come out without a lot of effort or additional work. In fact, I've done nothing to process that image. Here's another one very similar again. It just found those flowers budding there on the branch and effectively pulled them away from the backdrop that came out really nice.

What it will do in portrait mode is give you the original image that hasn't been processed also. So, if you don't like the way it came out, you'll still have the original that you can use without the blurring, but this time it did a really nice job here. I will take a look at my daughter. This one had a little more difficulty just because of the hair strands. This is always a challenge for these portrait mode systems.

Even when the camera has two lenses, so you can see a little of roughness there and then down over here. You can see it had a hard time, discerning her strands of hair from the siding. So it's blurred right up until it hits her hair, and then we still see some detail on the siding there in the background, but overall not bad at all and again something you would see on other phones also even ones that cost more than this one. This image had one issue here, which is right at the top of her head. That detail is from the chair that was behind her, so it has sometimes a hard time with these fine lines and pulling them out.

So I was able to do that up here by her ears, but for whatever reason it got confused where the strands of hair were coming out. Against that chair backdrop there, but overall it's really not bad for a single camera system and Google really is doing quite a bit with image processing. Now the rear camera is twelve point two megapixels and that's why it's got such nice detail in these photos. The front camera is eight megapixels and I took a portrait mode shot on the front as well, and you can see it did a pretty good job of pulling me away from the backdrop there for a little selfie photo so overall I think you'll be quite pleased with the portrait mode on here. Let's take a look at a few other images.

I took now. The next set of images we're looking at is from the normal camera mode. There is no special portrait processing happening here, and you can see you get a lot of detail out of that 12 megapixel sensor, really nice and sharp. This is just a handheld photo, and you'll notice too, that we do have a little of background blurring too, and that's because the lens is fixed at a 1.8 aperture. So it's not a terribly shallow depth of field, but it will give you some nice both, even when you don't have that digital processing enabled and what's nice about the lenses natural aperture here is that you don't have any weirdness, because this is no processing.

This is just optical, and you're, getting what's actually coming through the lens, and if you are looking to have a little of blur on your background, you can do it very cleanly, just in the regular camera mode. Here's another shot, I took very similar. It is to give you some more detail as to how things look here. So really nice and sharp there so good stuff, and you can see again, we got a little of background blur there just from the aperture on the lens, here's another one where we've got a lot of twigs and trees and stuff in the picture, and again it all looks nice and sharp out of that lens, and this was just a quick shot. I took while I was walking.

The ROG a little earlier spring is finally returning to where I live. Here's a shot of my ROG and the reason why I wanted to pull this up is that occasionally will over saturate, colors and I. Think in this photo, because it was so great and the deck she's standing on were kind of a monotone that it just over accentuated the color. Here and one of the things that's happening with smartphones, these days is that these are as much software cameras as they are Hardware cameras. The processor is working on these photos after they're taken to try to deliver the best image possible, and sometimes you'll have something like this happen, where one color might be a little too saturated, and that's where you might want to dial back the color a little just to make the eyes look a little more realistic.

Her eyes are blue, but not that blue, but nonetheless you can see just the level of detail you get out of the sensor on that camera. It's really nice for a mid-range, smartphone, and I was very impressed with that. I also took a low-light photo. This was in a darker room of my house, and this gives you an idea as to what you'll get indoors when you don't have the best lighting conditions, and it did a pretty nice job with this too, not too much noise here, good color out of that image, and overall I was pleased with how well it shot just in its normal camera mode. But there's another mode, that's kind of cool where you can shoot in almost pitch darkness and still get usable in.

Let's check that out, so they call this mode nitrite, and you have to switch the camera into this mode in order to take these pictures now, what it does is. It takes multiple images and then composites them together to get what you see here. So you have to hold your wrist very steady while it is taking those pictures- and you also want to instruct those who are being photographed to hold still until it is done with the image sampling. It then does a little of processing and then delivers you the final outcome here now. This is what the pixel took.

This is what my iPhone took in the same spot at the same time, so you can see it really does a wonderful job here of not only pulling out detail but also color that you normally wouldn't see. You will get some noise here in the darker areas, but it's usable as an image, something that I think would work fine on Facebook or Instagram, or something like that and it's really the difference between getting an image that is usable and one that is not I. Typically, do these kinds of photos of my SLR at a very slow shutter speed and a high ISO, but it's kind of nice to have a phone in my pocket that can do similar things. Here's another shot that might give you a better idea as to what it might look like when you have some light around. You had a streetlight over here and one behind me that illuminated things quite well.

You can get a good amount of detail here. Furthermore, you can read the words on the trashcan there, for example, so it did come out pretty nice now I did try to do some macrophotography with this to take pictures of the stars. It picked up a good amount of them, but, as you can see, there's also a lot of noise here that came into play too. So I don't think this is a long exposure alternative for doing Castro. Photography you'll probably want to stick with your SLR camera for that, but it is able to do some decent stuff in the dark, and this is something that I certainly want to play around a bit more with, because you're not going to pull out that level of detail on most smartphones.

Now the camera on the Pixel 3a can also do video. Video is not its strong point, but it's certainly usable video that looks good, but the frame rates are a bit limited out of both cameras, so the max you can do on the rear. Camera is 4k at 30 frames per second I would have liked to have seen 60 there. The front camera can only do 30 frames per second at 10. However, there are higher frame rates.

You can get at lower resolutions, so, for example, you can do slo-mo video at 120 frames per second at 1080p out of the rear, camera or 240 out of the rear camera at 720p. Video quality, though, isn't bad. It's certainly usable, as you can see here, I was pleased that it gave me a decent result. Just nothing spectacular, but I was very pleased with the quality of the stabilization out of that rear camera. It has an optical stabilizer and then, of course, Google's software and, as you can see here, it almost looks like we're on some kind of tripod as we're walking around.

There are a few things where you'll see a big step kind of get noticed on the video there, but generally it was keeping it rock-solid, even while I was walking with an exaggerated heavy step, just to see how it did. I was very impressed with that. So, let's take a look now at some gaming, and we've got goat simulator here running on the phone, and I was very pleased with how smooth everything has been rendering on this device. I don't get a frames per second counter on here, but it looks and feels like 60 to me as I'm playing through here very smooth, no lag, no stuttering. The phone is able to execute this 3d game quite well, and I.

Think one of the things that you'll find when you do download android games is that most of these games are targeted at low-end phones, not mid-range ones. So this will do just fine with a bulk of the android game library, and you shouldn't find much that doesn't run on here. I also took a look at the dolphin emulator which emulates the Nintendo Gamete. That is often very challenging for devices like this to successfully emulate, but actually it does work pretty well on here. Let's have a look so here we have burnout 2 running on the dolphin Gamete emulator and if you look in the upper right hand, corner you'll get an idea of our frames per second, which are hovering at or close to, 60 the entire time we're playing through here.

It's very good, actually and I. Think they've done some work to improve the dolphin emulator on Android, which helps, but I was very surprised to see that this ran as well as it did now. Not all the Gamete games will perform this well, but many wills and I found that a lot of games did run at playable frame rates, I tested out wave race a little while earlier. It was largely a tour around 30 frames per second, as we were playing through and, as you can see here, burnout 2 is running quite nicely to a couple graphical glitches here or there, but nothing deal breaking here. So I think dolphins come a long way, but this hardware is not bad for a mid-range smartphone.

Now we also ran the 3dmark slingshot benchmark test to see where this phone lines up on paper and there you can see. We got a score of two thousand five hundred and twenty-eight, which lines up with the iPhone 6s and the one plus three, which were flagship phones from three or four years ago. You can see the Galaxy S8 from about two years ago performs a lot better. So this gives you an idea as to exactly where this processor is in the pecking order of modern mobile devices, but it really isn't hindered all that much because again, the software. That's being targeted at these phones are targeting processors slower than this one, and I think you're going to have a very good experience overall, if you don't want to spend eight or twelve hundred dollars on a smartphone, I also experimented a little with some augmented reality features that are coming into these phones- and this is the playground feature that is built into the camera app.

You can drop in these little 3d characters and have them do stuff, like swing baseball, bats and whatever so overall, it seems to be working pretty well for a mid-range phone here. I also tried out the Google Maps AR feature out in the field that worked pretty well too, so I think, if you're looking at this and deciding is it enough for what I need to do. I think most of what you're going to try to run on this phone will execute just fine, even though its processor is not the fastest thing out there. So now, let's talk about battery life, which is always a tough thing to do with smartphones, because we all use our phones in different ways. So let me tell you what I did with this phone over the last 24 hours, to give you an idea as to what you can expect, so I plugged the phone in and had it fully charged at about 2:00 p.

m. yesterday, I took it off the charger. I installed, apps I went out and took a lot of photos. I brought it around town with me: I've had it connected up to Google's PHY service, so I'm getting a real cellular connection to it, so that should simulate what you might get with your phone under normal use and at the end of the day, after all that activity I about 45% left on the battery when I went to bed around 11:00 p. m.

Furthermore, I didn't charge it at all last night and then, when I got up in the morning, it was pretty much around that same battery level. It didn't consume all that much overnight, and then I took it out and started doing some AR mapping features and a few of the other things that were really taxing the processor and the data performance a bit and that's when I started to see the battery drop off a lot faster. So by about noon, I was down to about 15 or 20 percent. Now does support USB fast charging I think it goes up to about 18 watts, so it'll recharge, very quickly and I. Think I'll get out of this about the same battery life I get out of my iPhone X throughout the day, so I think it will last a full day for most people, but if you use your phone a lot, and it's always out, and you're always doing something on it, that's going to impact the battery life more than an occasional user who picks it up every couple hours to look at it now.

They've implemented a couple of features on here to try to extend the battery life. One of those is that it will automatically manage background applications if it sees things running. In the background that you're not accessing all that frequently it'll actually pause the app from running and only check on it every so often, so you might see some delayed notifications for apps that it put into that little box there, but it will tell you in the settings what exactly it is doing to try to extend your battery life, but I didn't see anything that concerned me about the battery life on this. It fell about what I would expect out of a mid-range to high-end phone and I think it will get most people through the workday, so I have to say: there's not much. I can complain about on this phone.

In fact, it exceeded my expectations. I look at a lot of low-cost devices. A lot of mid-range devices and I found that when there's an expensive flagship in the product line, companies really don't want to make the mid-range phones all that good, because they don't want to deter people from the more profitable products here. Google did something few companies do, which is make a great phone and I think a pretty reasonable price and put a camera in here. That is on the flagship, it's the same one and as we saw it really does a nice job of capturing images, and it's four hundred bucks, which again is not bad for an unlocked phone.

So I think if you are in the market for a smartphone, and you don't want to spend 1,200 bucks, if you don't have to give this one a try, because this is really one of the nicest mid-range phones, I have looked at in some time and I hope. Other companies take note of what Google is doing with this, because I think this phone will sell very well, and I hope we start seeing more good stuff in the mid-range, because there's really been too much of a focus on these super expensive phones, and we haven't seen a lot of good things for consumers at an affordable price point. This one is perfect. In fact, I would say it is a great phone for a reasonable price, so definitely check it out. If you are in the market for a phone, I am quite pleased with it and if there's anything else, I didn't cover in this video.

Let me know down in the comments below we'll try to do a follow-up in the next couple of days until next time this is Lyon Simon. Thanks for watching this channel is brought to you by the Lon TV supporters, including gold level supporters, the four guys with quarters podcast Tom Albrecht in Cali, a Kumar. If you want to help the channel you can, by contributing as little as a dollar a month head over to LAN TV, slash, support to learn more and don't forget to subscribe visit, LAN TV, /s.

Source : Lon.TV