Google Pixel 4a Review: An Incredible Deal! By Android Digest

What's up YouTube: my name is Zach with android digest, and today I'm going to be reviewing the Google Pixel 4a this phone retails for 350 dollars, and I want to let you know if this phone is worth buying in 2020. I also want to let you know how this phone compares to other phones like the iPhone SE or the OnePlus note, or other phones around this price range, and also I want to give you some close-ups of this device. I want you to see it up close and personal, so you can decide for yourself if this phone is worth buying for you. So how does this phone stack up? Is this phone a phone that we should all buy in 2020? Let's get into the review right now, all right, so I've got the Pixel 4a here in my hand, and if you take a quick look at it, you're going to notice that there are some nice upgrades over the pixel 4. That's right! This phone not only upgrades over the Pixel 3a, but there are some ways that it's actually better than Google's flagship phone from last year. If you take a look at the top of the phone, you will see a headphone jack, which is a very nice bonus.

It's a very nice thing to see on the right side of the device. You'll see a normal colored button here with the up and down on the volume. So the power button has that nice color that we're used to from Google. You also see an USB port with fast charging, and you got two speakers here, and you also have a little speaker up here in the earpiece that does also work and on the left side of the device. You will see a normal sim card slot, no micro SD card is available, but this phone for a budget phone comes with a gigabyte of storage, which is a big bonus and that's another upgrade from the Google Pixel 4.

If you take a look at the front of the screen as well, one thing you're going to notice is very small. Bezels have a more modern design on the front of the phone. I even got a timbered glass to fit on the front of the phone, which is a big plus check the description for a link for that, and also on the back of the device. You see a fingerprint sensor, and this is a crazy season of life right now, where a lot of people cannot get face, scan to recognize them because they're wearing a mask, so a fingerprint sensor is very needed in this time and honestly, I think it works a lot better than the in-screen fingerprint sensors. I think it works better than face unlock, so I was very glad to see a return of the normal fingerprint sensor on this device now, even though the phone is made of plastic on the back, that might be seen as a bummer to you, but a lot of us, especially those of us looking for a bargain around this price range.

We want a durable phone okay, so it's not all about looking pretty and nice. We just want a phone that works and a phone that is durable, so this plastic on the back. It is more durable, it's more resistant to cracks and things like that, so I'm really glad they came with a plastic bag, and I also noticed the weight of this phone. It is just very lightweight, and I'm sure the plastic back contributes to that some. Now.

If we take a look at this nice screen you're going to notice that it has a very good resolution, it's a 2340 by 1080 resolution and again this phone. It only has a 5.81-inch screen, so the screen size- it is small compared to most modern phones. So I'm happy to see this display is a little smaller, and it really is the size of the Google Pixel 4. So I'm really glad to see that they retained that small form factor that we're used to, and I'm very happy to see that the bezels are smaller compared to phones like the Google Pixel 3a or the Google Pixel 4. Now, when you're using this display, maybe you're reading the news, maybe you're scrolling through the phone and just doing your normal thing, you're going to find that this screen it looks very good.

In fact, this is an OLED screen, which is a big, big plus, and I was very surprised to see that at the 350 price point so colors they look very good on this phone. The phone just looks great overall, and it has pretty decent brightness. I was also surprised that the brightness was pretty good and when I say pretty good, I'm keeping in mind that this is not a thousand dollar flagship. So that means, if you are going in the sun, the bright hot, 100 degree sun, that's out one day, if you are going through and driving through, you are probably going to see a little of glare. There's really only one thing that I wish was in this display, but I understand that it's not, and that is the 90 hertz refresh rate that 90 hertz refresh rate that we see on the Google Pixel 4, or we will probably see on the Google Pixel 5.

Well, that's a very, very beautiful thing to see because it does make scrolling a lot smoother, but this phone, the performance is actually very surprisingly good, so because it performed pretty well. I didn't really notice any Jacky scrolling or anything like that. Speaking of performance, this phone has the snapdragon 730g processor, and it does have six gigabytes of ram as well. I've heard reviewers say well, this phone felt slow to me and truth be told. That's because a lot of these high-end tech reviewers they review the high-end galaxy s20.

They review the note 20. They review the very best of the best, and they're on those phones, all the time, with high refresh rates and all these different things. So when it came to performance with this phone, it was easy to say that it wasn't quite the best now. Yes, an app might take just a little longer to load up, but I did not even notice in my testing. I did not notice a performance difference between this or the OnePlus word.

Once a phone starts performing so good, you don't really notice a lot if you are coming from a flagship phone like the galaxy s20 or the note 20, you might notice that it's just a little slower, and that is true, but this phone isn't going to be that much slower than the Google Pixel 4. It's going to run very nicely going through this phone. It performed like a champ, and I'm happy to say that it's going to perform similarly, just maybe slightly slower than the snapdragon 765 g, and that snapdragon 765g performs a little slower than the Google Pixel 4. So this phone is much better in performance than the Google Pixel 3a. I'm happy to report that, but it is still a little below flagship level, but I don't think most people will notice, because this phone was so much smoother than the Google Pixel 3a.

I cannot explain enough how much faster I felt this was than the Pixel 3a, and it does pretty good with gaming. Of course, it's not going to run the games at the absolutely the highest settings like some flagships, but it's still going to run games pretty well. Now, let's move on to the battery. How is the battery on this phone? Well, I found it was a little better than I expected, and it was a little worse than some reviewers said a lot of reviewers said this phone would be great, and they gave you over six hours of screen time. They were very shocked.

I did not experience that I did get about five hours of screen time, but the battery on this phone has been significantly better than the battery in the Google Pixel 4. So again, another upgrade over the Google Pixel 4. I don't want to make it seem like this phone is an upgrade over the pixel 4 I'd say it's pretty close for your average user. Now, let's talk about the camera on this phone. How good is the camera you're going to notice? There's just one camera on the back and then there's one flash, so they don't have a bunch of ultra-wide cameras.

They don't have a bunch of zoom cameras, they just have one camera on the front, one camera on the back, and they keep it pretty darn simple. Now the main camera is a 12.2 megapixel camera, but that does not mean it's not good. Megapixel does not mean a good camera and the selfie camera should say 8 megapixel camera. But if you take a look at these shots, you're going to see I got great photos. I even took a picture of this goat because that's what happens when you live in the middle of Missouri people just have goats in their backyard.

So you'll see that this goat, what it did it took multiple photos, that's what happens when you zoom in it takes multiple photos, and it just puts them together and that's what happened and I surprisingly, through a window with the full seven-time zoom, I was able to get a decent picture of that goat. Now, with other pictures, I took pictures of my wife and my daughter and myself, and you'll see whether it's a selfie or whether it's a picture with a regular camera. The pictures are phenomenal. I'm talking 80 or 90 percent of what you will get from a thousand dollar flagship phone. I take normal pictures and average lighting, I'm not trying to get the perfect shots or anything like that.

So a lot of photos you see on my reviews, they're just pictures of my family, and you can see they came out pretty darn well and that's just in the house, with the lights on, not with all the outside light, always coming in. Sometimes the light is not coming in and despite all that, I thought all the pictures they came out pretty darn. Well now. Video is not quite as good. That is not the strongest point of this phone, so it will lag behind, and you could say it's a step below flagship level, but it's still pretty impressive out of a 350 dollar phone and when we look at everything I've talked about so far, you're going to see that this phone has a perfect display.

It has perfect performance, and it has a good camera. I mean it is one of the best cameras out there. So if you're, just wanting a phone that performs well that doesn't have a lot of hiccups, you want a phone with a good display, a good camera and if you like, a smaller phone well you're on the right track, because this phone, what they're trying to do is find a phone for a normal user who wants a good phone but doesn't want to spend a thousand dollars. So they've done an absolutely phenomenal job of finding a lot of value in all these things. So this phone is 350 bucks.

So when we look at extra features, yeah, it has fast charging doesn't have wireless charging, and it doesn't have water resistance. So they have to make some cuts to make this phone affordable. So they did cut wireless charging. They did cut water resistance, which is a big bummer for some of you, but the speakers well they're not great, but they're, not bad. At least they have dual speakers in this device.

They have the speakers on the bottom, and then they do have the speaker in the top of the phone. Now one thing to keep in mind with the fingerprint sensor: it works phenomenally, but it is a little hard to feel it on the back. So it's not really deep down in the device like it was in the Pixel 3a. So just keep that in mind when using the fingerprint reader alright. So let's give a quick summary of this review.

This phone has a great display, an OLED display with good resolution. It's not a 90 hertz display, but it's still very, very good, especially on a 350 dollar phone. This phone has great performance and part of the reason for that is that it has android 11 already, because this phone has great software optimization and that's what makes google so good, but the bottom line is performance is buttery smooth overall and your average user is not going to notice a significant difference between this and the flagship phones of the day. But if you have had flagship phones and your expectations are pretty high, I would stick to those. But if you're looking at a phone under 500, I think you're going to find an excellent value with this phone, because you've got a great display, great performance.

You have good battery life, and you have a phenomenal camera that is really at flagship level quality, I'm talking very close to those thousand dollar smartphones, and you're only paying 350 bucks. That is absolutely insane. So, if you're, okay, with these cons, if you're, okay, with no water resistance, if you're, okay, with no wireless charging, if you're, okay with fast charging being a little slower, it's 18 watt fast charging. So it's a bonus that it has it. But it's not 30 watt fast charging.

Okay! So that's a bummer! So those things are bummers about this phone and no 90 hertz refresh rate those things stink, but your average user isn't looking for the best out there, they're, not always looking for a thousand dollar flagships if you're wanting a phone with a phenomenal camera. Good performance, good battery life. Well, you've got that right. Here. You've got a lot to like in this phone for 350 bucks.

I would say this phone is better than a lot of five and six hundred dollar phones out there. I would take this phone over most phones on the market. Even I would take it over some five and six hundred dollar flagships, because this phone is phenomenal. Google gives great software updates and this phone. It reminds me of like the nexus 5x.

This phone is simple: it doesn't look the flashiest, it doesn't look the best, but this phone is simple. It just brings things together. It's a simple google experience. That is just absolutely great now, should you wait for the pixel 5? Well, if you want a phone, that's just like this, but maybe you want 5g capability, and maybe you want that 90 hertz refresh rate. Well, you should probably wait for the pixel 5 if you're wanting those things, but if you could sacrifice those things you're going to save almost 300 bucks, I'm sure the pixel 5 will be around 5.99 or 6.99, so you're going to save around 300. By going with this, so it's a great value, a great phone, and I can happily give my stamp of approval on it.

Absolutely no problem whatsoever. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really appreciate it. Please support my channel, I'm begging you I'm just a normal dude. Okay, I'm a normal dude who loves tech, who's, trying to do a lot of things on YouTube to help you all out to give you some great content.

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Source : Android Digest