Google Pixel 4a: Road Trip Review By MrMobile [Michael Fisher]

- Sponsored by Surfshark VPN. I used to be a giant fan of the complicated smartphone camera because, you know, made me wanna be a better photographer, rise to the level of the equipment. I still do sometimes. But around 2016, I started to recognize that I was beginning to value the exact opposite, a camera that I could just point at my subject, hit the button and, more often than not, it would give me the shot I wanted. The phone that led to my attitude adjustment was the first-generation Google Pixel, launched four years ago, and since that time a Pixel of some form has always populated one of my Peak Design pockets. As someone who spends so much of his time capturing content, the Pixel camera is just too good not to own.

Yet despite its picture taking prowess and the other benefits I'll touch on, the Pixel has never sold well, in part because its misses are usually big enough to counteract its hits. The Pixel 4 had atrocious battery life for a mainstream smartphone and its launch price started at $800. Well, this phone packs solid battery life for its size, it includes the most important features that make a Pixel a Pixel, and it only costs $350. I'm Michael Fisher. Let's see if I can remember how to drive this thing.

Join me for a weekend road trip with the Google Pixel 4a. (upbeat music) Because the Pixel hasn't sold very well, a refresher for the non-phone geeks among you who may not be familiar with the features endemic to the line: three years of software updates guaranteed from Google, always-on music identification, exclusive utilities like the voice recorder with transcription and an on-device dictation database, so that even when I have slow or no data connectivity I can dictate a message like this and it comes out the way I want. On the Pixel 4a, that's all packed into a device very similar in look and feel to its higher-end predecessor, but it doesn't take long to spot the differences. The back is polycarbonate instead of glass, there's no wireless charging or water resistance and you can no longer squeeze the phone to summon Google Assistant, which I didn't expect to miss, but turns out I do. Some, quote, downgrades, are actually improvements, in my opinion, like the Pixel 4a using a fast, reliable fingerprint sensor that also allows for notification shade shortcuts instead of the face unlock that doesn't work well in the era of masks.

Similarly, spec seekers may balk at the cheaper processor in the 4a, but as I said in my review of the OnePlus Nord, there's much more to a smartphone than its silicon. The 4a is responsive and fast, even considering the downgrade in display refresh rate to a more conventional 60 hertz. Over the course of my weekend foray with the 4a, I used it just like a regular daily driver. That includes keeping up with comms on every one of my 10-plus social and communications apps, proofing thumbnails on Airtable, proofing Instagram posts on Frame. io, wasting time on Twitter.

com and documenting my trip to go pick up the Chevy Bolt press vehicle, a loaner from GM that'll get me reacquainted with today's electric vehicles ahead of new content this fall, and also take me out to my ancestral homeland in the Long Island countryside for today's camera tests. Those camera samples and battery results, right after this. It's rare that I get to say this about a sponsor, so listen up: I haven't stopped using Surfshark since the first time we partnered. There are plenty of great VPNs out there, but Surfshark is the only one with this combination. One: traditional VPN features like browsing safely from public Wi-Fi or watching geo-restricted movies or TV shows.

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You'll get an 85% discount and three additional months for free. Thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring this video. Okay, so the battery bit won't be a surprise if you were listening during the intro. The Pixel 4a packs a 12% larger power pack than the Pixel 4 and that, combined with the lower refresh rate and some of the spec tweaks, means that for three days running it's lasted all day long, even with the near-continuous camera testing that constitutes our conclusion. (upbeat music) As you can see with your own eyes, we're not talking about a perfect camera here.

Google hasn't substantially upgraded its camera hardware since the very first Pixel, preferring to hone performance with post-processing, and in some cases that's just not enough. As innovative as the Super Res Zoom is, I found many subjects on Saturday, both natural and man-made, that would've benefited from a true telephoto lens as offered by companies like Samsung and Huawei. Also, video has never been a particular strength of the Pixel line. While you do get excellent stabilization, you also get a fairly large amount of digital noise, and the lack of a wide angle camera in both video and still modes, on back and front, continues to be a real encumbrance. But whether it was snapping shots from the fantail of the East River Ferry, documenting my odometer readings from the Chevy Bolt, hanging with my fast-moving nephew, hey Aiden, or trying to snap captures of the bunny rabbits hopping their way through a country garden, the one thing you gotta give the Pixel camera is fire-and-forget reliability.

Like its predecessors, the 4a lets you double-click, point and shoot, and you're more likely than not not gonna be just happy but surprised that this came from a phone. Of course, it's still subjective, and photo aficionados may balk at the over-sharpening and excessive dynamic range, just as they always have with this line, but over four years of showing and sharing Pixel photos with friends and family, I've received by far more compliments than complaints. And while the viewfinder is simple, it still has awesome perks like artificial horizon and tracking autofocus that follows a subject. Those should be standard on all phones. As always, Night mode is here for maximum dynamic range, both before and after the sun goes down, while Astrophotography mode, which I didn't get to play with on the Pixel 4, is absolutely unmatched if you happen to have a tripod and four minutes to wait out an exposure.

If you're wondering where my side-by-side comparisons are, or my notes on phone calls or data speeds, well, folks, just to be straight with you, my review device came quite late, so the most I can say is I didn't have any trouble with any of the 4a's fundamentals. If you have an objection to someone rendering a verdict on a phone after only four days of use, which is perfectly reasonable, I'm gonna link you to Android Central's review, which had the benefit of two full weeks of preparation. And if you liked me dipping my toe into the vloggy format, I'm gonna encourage you to check out David Cogan's real-world test. He's been doing this for a while, where he takes a phone from sunrise to sundown and essentially creates a vlog that shows you camera and endurance performance firsthand. I'll link to that below as well.

As much as I wish I could've had more time before publication, I'm also pretty confident in my verdict. Yeah, you folks overseas may have many more options, but for those of us in the States, there is nothing on Android that delivers quite as cohesive, reliable and fun an experience in its price range. It's not gonna lure someone to switch ecosystems, I don't think. At $400, Apple's iPhone SE packs more features in a prettier package. But for anyone looking for the absolute best value on Android in the U.

S. , the Pixel 4a is my new best of the budget phones. This video was made possible thanks to a Pixel 4a review sample provided by Google. However, Mr. Mobile works for you, not the manufacturers.

The review sample is the property of Google and the company provided no compensation in exchange for this coverage, nor was it given any copy approval rights or early preview of same. Please subscribe to theMrMobile on YouTube if you'd like to see more videos like this. Until next time, thanks for watching, and if you can't stay home, then at least stay safe and wear a mask while you stay mobile, my friends.

Source : MrMobile [Michael Fisher]