Google Pixel 4a: A Simple Review By ThioJoe

The, Google Pixel for a phone. Obviously the topic of this video- and you know honestly, I kind of kept putting this video off. I felt like I didn't really have enough to say about it. I felt like it would be kind of a bland, boring review. If I didn't have enough to really talk about, but then I kind of realized, that's almost the whole point of the phone. It's a dead, simple phone, not really any nonsense.

Obviously the main draw is the price. It's just 350 stock android, it's a pixel phone, it's affordable! That's pretty much! All there is to it, there's not really any gimmicks. There's no really wowing features that we haven't seen before. What you kind of expect is what you're getting here and that's actually the main selling point. So this is probably going to be on the shorter side of my typical reviews, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing worth talking about, of course, so we'll quickly start off by going through the specs and then move on from there, and I should point out that there's just one Pixel 4a there are no options.

There's just black literally is the color name, just black, you get the 128 gigabyte storage model, there are no others and that's it. The rest of the specs include the screen which is 5.8 inches, and it's OLED, and it's 1080 by 2340 and that's 443 pixels per inch, a very good pixel density, I must say- and it's OLED so not bad at all. Considering the price the battery size is a respectable for this size, 3140 William hours, you get a decent six gigabytes of ram and the CPU is definitely a mid-range, so they definitely kind of went for a budget one here. It's the snapdragon 730g. It is eight cores, but you know it's going to be weaker than say the iPhone SE, which basically has the same flagship CPU as some iPhone 11 pros.

So definitely you're going to miss some going with the Pixel 4a in terms of CPU power, but really you can't beat the price as for the cameras, so on the rear, you get a 12.2, megapixel, f, 1.7 lens and on the front you get an 8 megapixel f2. Now talking about the external hardware and design, I have to say that the screen bezel it's not too bad at all. It's its a reasonable size, bezel. It doesn't stick out or anything you know like previous pixel phones or even like the iPhone SC. You get those huge bezels in the past.

This pretty much is out of the way it's not the smallest bezels I've ever seen, but I definitely think it's fine you'll also obviously notice that the front camera is a hole, punch design. I personally strongly prefer this actually to a giant notch on the top. So that's just my opinion and part of this is probably because there's only one camera there's no face ID or anything, so they didn't have to hide any other hardware in there for that. So I actually like just having a little notch and then that can just mean that all the top info bar can just be on the side of that it doesn't kind of cut things in half. So this is something I just prefer over a notch.

You also, of course, get an USB c jack. You have a headphone jack at the top, which is nice, there's a single rear camera, though it does have a square housing, so it might look like there's multiple cameras like in the other designs and other phones, but no it's just one. Of course, you have the side, NATO sim tray, and it also has ENIM so if you're using it with like google phi or something you don't need a physical sim card, also in the back you'll notice. This goes back to the classic fingerprint sensor in that position. So if you prefer that you're going to be happy with that- and the final thing I'll point out are the speakers, so you have the bottom speakers.

Obviously, and then you have a top front facing speaker, which is almost kind of invisible. It's like right on the bezel. So that's kind of nice that it's sort of hidden. So now, let's move on and briefly talk about the camera which, obviously in any pixel phone, is going to be one of the main selling points one of the main draws. So, unlike the pixel 4, which has two cameras, a regular and a wide angle, the Pixel 4a seems to have the same wide angle as the 4 as the main camera on the 4a.

Now I'm not 100 certain about that, but I'm relatively certain, based on looking at the comparison of the megapixel, counts the size of the pixels themselves. That sort of thing it does seem like they just took the wide angle and put it into here from the pixel 4. And obviously being a pixel phone. Even though it's the budget version you are getting. Basically all the image processing features that you get with any other pixel phone, so you're going to be able to get that night sight.

This smart HDR, also the portrait with the blurry background adjustable all that sort of stuff look. The camera just looks great, like you'd expect in a pixel phone, I'm sure you can find camera reviews. Other people have done, I'm not going to go super into detail about it. It's a pixel camera. It's going to look good and, as for hardware features well, there's not really too much more to speak about.

There are several features that you might have possibly expected that are not in here. So, first, you're not getting any gimmicks like the radar thing that I did not think was anything more than a gimmick in the pixel 4. I didn't like it. I didn't use it, but you don't have that, so that's going to bring that cost. Obviously, but you also have other stuff that was excluded, such as wireless charging.

No wireless charging, that's kind of a shame and also no water resistance of any kind, which is also just kind of shame. But again I guess that's all to contribute to the price. But again I should point out the point of this phone is not really for the hardware features it's to be able to get an affordable stock. Android experience, one thing that is notable is googled has guaranteed at least three years of OS and security updates on the Pixel 4a. Now I have to say that's a little actually disappointing because compared to the iPhone, where apple has really made a point of basically making older phones more compatible, you have something like iOS 14, which is going back five years now.

They are saying three years guaranteed, but it does seem, like Google has less of a priority on supporting older devices compared to apple. So just kind of be aware of that, and you might be saying wait a minute. This is an android review. Why are you talking about the iPhone SE? Well, it is the most comparable one, and it's the budget version of iPhone. So I think it's fair to compare them now.

I do have some other general thoughts. So basically, in terms of experience, I really haven't experienced too much lag. I've seen other reviewers mentioning that it doesn't seem, maybe as snappy, maybe it lags every once in a while. I haven't really seen that to be the case, although I'm not really a heavy user. Furthermore, I haven't really used it too much as my daily driver, but in my experience just using in general it seemed fine.

Furthermore, I wasn't disappointed especially compared to what the price is now. One thing I was really surprised was how good the speakers are. I have to say that watching YouTube videos, the sound was much clearer. It just sounded better compared to the iPhone 11 Pro, even that I used normally, which sounded very tinny by comparison with the front-facing speaker and even the bottom facing speaker on the Pixel 4a. It sounded very, very good.

I have to say so. If you watch a lot of videos on your phone, and you like sound quality, this is definitely one you're not going to have to worry about. It sounds great another really cool feature, and I'm not really sure. If this is a pixel exclusive feature, I think it might be is live captioning. So this is a feature that is right accessible when you press a volume button, and basically you press the button, and it will start transcribing spoken voice right onto the screen, no matter what app you're using it doesn't matter.

If it's a YouTube video that doesn't have closed captions, it doesn't matter if you're on Instagram, whatever it's gonna, start transcribing that speech using google's AI, and it is actually really, really good. Even when I was watching videos on faster speed, like 1.75 x speed, it was still able to keep up and be reasonably accurate, so it's going to be even more so if it's on a slower, regular speed. So I was very impressed with this feature, and it's definitely something I could see myself using and even though I'm not hard of hearing, you might not be either, but if you want to maybe watch a video in a setting where you can't have the sound on this is a perfect alternative. Now, as for battery, I would say it's good. It's pretty much on par with most phones.

These days I usually used it to watch a lot of videos and even on relatively high screen brightness, I didn't find that it drained any faster than I kind of expected or wanted it to so. Basically, the battery is just fine, not much more to say about that. Another cool feature worth mentioning in pixel: phones is stuff, like call screening, so basically you can have the Google Assistant basically answer the phone for you, and then it will transcribe what the person is saying. So if it's a robocall, you don't even have to answer it. So you just get all those little pixel features in a more budget version of it.

So that's always nice, but really, I would say, there's not really all too much more to say about the phone. It's just a really basic, but good budget phone and that's kind of the conclusion I come to myself. So if that's all you're looking for 350 bucks, not a bad price, that's it pretty much! So let me know down in the comments. If you have any more specific questions, I'll try to answer it as best I can, if I see it, but if you guys want to keep watching the next video I'd recommend is where I do review the iPhone SE. So you can see that comparison up there.

So thanks much for watching guys, and I'll see in the next video.

Source : ThioJoe