Google Pixel 3a XL With Android 11 In 2020-2021? An Excellent Smartphone Camera! (Now $200) By Matthews Tech

What is up guys today, we'll be taking a look at the Pixel 3a XL. I've had this phone for a while now and this phone has come down in price to 200 bucks and that's why I wanted to discuss it because I think it's pretty unique at this price um right now. This is the version I have the refurbished version. The new one is like around three: what is it like? A new one is like 339, which, honestly for that you would get the Pixel 4a right here, so I would not recommend buying this phone brand new. I would definitely try to pick it up in the use, slash refurbished market um. So let's go ahead and talk about this phone because I feel like I got 200 bucks.

This is 100 one of the best camera phones, uh that you can buy. If you really care about pictures at a cheap price, this is pretty much the best deal. I use a lot of budget phones, and I've always loved taking pictures with this phone, but let's go ahead and talk about uh, the rest of the phone uh. So basically, it's a plastic design, so it's a plastic design, but it does not feel super cheap. It has like a matte uh texture on it on the back, which does not attract fingerprints, especially with this white color, which is something that I really appreciate, but I do have like little kind of little dirt stains, but I'm sure I can just clean them off.

So this white color does get a little dirty um, but yeah, it's still a very nice looking device in my opinion. So you do have this really cool orange accent on the phone for the power button. Uh your volume rockers, of course, and we go down below this phone actually has stereo speakers which actually pretty loud, and we'll get to that, and you also have USB type-c. This phone keeps the headphone jack, which is really nice as well, and you do have the fingerprint scanner on the back with just a single fire wind camera led flash of course. So let's talk about the display, so on the front of the 3axl, we have an OLED display, actually, which is really nice at this price point.

Most phones will have an IPS display at this price point, so you get a really nice OLED, really nice, deep blacks. It's a six-inch display. It's 1080p 402 for the PPI display, looks pretty good, in my opinion, again very vibrant, nice colors uh. You have that always on function you can take advantage of, and we know the benefits with ole duh with battery life as well, and the display one here is fantastic. I think at this price point it looks really nice.

Now this phone does kind of look a little older uh from the front, because you just have these huge bezels right here, as you can see, uh kind of reminds me of like, like the iPhone SE, that I have just these huge chunky, bezels, which it's not going to bother most people from what we saw from the SE.2020 most people didn't even care so uh. This design does not bother you. The display is fine on here. It's really beautiful in the benefit with this display is you have no notch. So if you're anti-notch person, you don't have to deal with that on this phone, but they do have the speaker grille up front, actually, which kind of makes up for it.

So it is a perfect use of having that space I'll go ahead, and let you guys hear the speakers real, quick turn the volume all the way up. So the sound is coming from this one right here and this one. The speaker quality is pretty good on this phone. It has a pretty good face. Presence, uh, mid and highs are pretty good.

Overall, I was really impressed. Any front facing speaker is going to be really awesome to have on your smartphone uh, definitely better than just a single firing bottom speaker that can be easy to block out as well. So this phone has android 11 and let's go ahead and touch on that, so these pixel phones get updates really fast. That is one of the main benefits of having a pixel phone. Now this phone used to have some kind of animation stutters, but with android 11.

It's really cleared up a lot of these stutters with this phone, and it's relatively smooth now. So when this phone first launched it got a lot of flack for being kind of laggy, and definitely that issue is gone. It is butter smooth with android uh 11. Here you don't really notice a bunch of hiccups and stuff like that animation, stutters um, it is just really smooth. So I was really impressed when I got the update, I let it sit for a little before I.

I really said anything because I wanted to see how it will last over time and this phone definitely um is a champ when it comes to uh just performance. So I was really impressed uh with that also the main benefits with android 11 or having the pure Google experience is that you don't get any bloatware, as we saw with like the menu uh. You can see it's very bare minimum. There's really nothing here. So with phones like this, if you want a phone, that's super simple! You don't want all the bells and whistles you just want everything to be spotless.

Looking uh, then the pixel is definitely the way to go, and again you get updates uh really fast with Google, so that is something that I've always really loved about the pixel brand all right. So this phone has the snapdragon 670 chips in arena 615. So it's not going to be a flagship chip. Of course, it's kind of like a mid-ranger, a kind of chip, but for gaming and stuff, like that, it's relatively smooth I've never had an issue uh with gaming on this phone, especially again with android 11, everything has been a buttery smooth on this device. So I can't really complain and again the speakers sound, perfect on this phone too.

Oh wow, but uh again, the OLED display is great games play pretty smooth, as you can see so overall performance wise again, this isn't the most. You know favorable uh chip when it came out with this phone, but again it plays games fine. So if you do want to play games on this phone, you won't really have an issue with it. Now there are some things that I kind of don't like with this phone. So it does not have any kind of micro SD support, which I think sucked uh when it first you know, was announced when I heard of it, and you only get 64 gigs of internal storage, which might be a little low depending on what type of person you are.

If you like to play a lot of games, but it kind of forces you to use the Google Drive and google photos and stuff like that. Basically, you have to use the cloud if you're like a real hardcore user, because you don't have that expandable storage. So I would have liked to seen 128 gigs on this when it first came out, but you know there's nothing you can do uh, it does have four gigs of ram, and it handles multitasking. Well um. It used to kick a lot of applications out, but it's it actually holds applications now uh with the android 11 updates.

So, as you can see, it's not refreshing see if Call of Duty stays open, yeah, so uh it's keeping applications open again. It's not gonna, be a multitasking beast with four gigs of ram. So I wouldn't try to go crazy hardcore on this phone uh, but, as you can see, it's fine uh, it's not lagging all over the place, and it's keeping applications open uh, which is great well. Actually, let's see if let's see a silver surface, that's still open. I don't know.

Let's refresh see like I said, so, it's not going to be like uh. Multitasking beats. If you're doing like hardcore game, switching and stuff like that, but for casual multitasking it will be fine uh. So let's go ahead and talk about getting into the phone. So the only option is your physical fingerprint scanner and of course you can do your pen pattern thing.

This phone does not have a face unlock option, and I was looking for it in the settings. It just does not have it, so they opted to leave that out. For some reason. I don't know why. But you only have you know the physical fingerprint scanner option on this phone.

I guess they leave it out, because I guess if Google thinks it's not secure, then they're, just not going to put it on um but yeah. So that's not there, but it's fine. The fingerprint scanner uh works, just fine uh. So, like I said you do have NFC on here, which is really nice. So you have your mobile payments on this phone uh, which is great, and again you have that 3.5 millimeter jack, which is awesome. So you can use your headphones, no problem.

So let's go ahead and talk about uh the cameras, so you only have one lens at 12.2, megapixel uh lens. It's also 4k video at 30 fps, and you also have a single firing, selfie camera at 1080p uh. So the cameras on here are basically why you're buying this phone. It takes some excellent photos. I mean really beautiful photos.

Dynamic range is really solid. Uh the depth of field, the portrait mode selfies, are really great as well. Skin tones are excellent. It just takes some perfect photos for this price point. Like I said I don't have a budget phone that I think is comparable to the pixel uh.

The portrait mode is just awesome on this phone. It just does a great job, nailing portrait shots. It also takes some pretty good photos outdoor when its harsh lights, with the white balance. Furthermore, it still does a perfect job. Depth of field is just excellent on this phone.

It just takes some perfect cameras. I was really impressed with the pixel cameras. I've always been impressed and every time I show family members and stuff like that, they're always impressed with this phone. Furthermore, I took a couple photos of people and uh. They thought it was like with an actual DSLR when my mom posted it on Facebook, and it's just an awesome camera.

So that's the effect of this camera, especially the portrait mode photos uh. It just really impresses people now video isn't super impressive, but I think compared to like a lot of phones in this price point. Video is also uh, pretty exceptional as well. I actually cut and let you guys uh hear the audio uh in the video all right guys here is the video on the pixel guys are also hearing the mic. Uh as well looks pretty good.

Let me know how it sounds not bad at all, so the Pixel 3a XL uh camera is awesome. So again, if you want a perfect camera phone at a know: crazy, cheap price right now. This is the phone you're going to be looking at. So I just absolutely highly recommend this for the camera alone. I would pick it up for the camera alone, but let's go ahead and talk about the last thing battery life.

So it's got a 3700 William battery. You have 18 wide fast charging. No wireless charging, of course on here uh battery life is average um you get around six hours. Well, I get around like six hours and 30 minutes uh, which isn't like super impressive with this phone, but you can get through the day. I usually can get through the day.

No problem, but you're definitely going to be charges, not one of those phones where you can go a day and a half or two days, it's one of those phones that you can get through the day and that's it. You put it on the charger. So battery life is fine on this phone. So what do you guys think of the Pixel 3a XL be sure to let me know, and I'll catch you guys in the next one.

Source : Matthews Tech