Pixel 4a vs iPhone SE: Which Should You Buy? By Mark Spurrell

Hey guys mark here, and these two phones seem to be crowd favorites when it comes to the budget, slash mid-range segment of phones and rightfully so they both offer a lot of great features at a lower price point. The thing is: they're wildly different phones, and they're intended for completely different audiences, so which one should you get? Let me break this down for you, I'm going to split this video into five different categories and then explain the pros and cons of each phone for each category. First, we'll start with build quality and durability. The Pixel 4a is a very lightweight phone for its size. It weighs around 143 grams, so it's very comfortable to hold in the hand. The reason for its lightness, though, is because Google has decided to go with a plastic back on this phone.

It's got a nice matte texture on the back for saying goodbye to fingerprints, but it's definitely not quite as premium feeling as the all glass iPhone SE. The SE is the slightly heavier phone by like five grams, or something like that, and while I do dig the all premium glass look, this black version is an absolute fingerprint magnet, so you might want to throw a case on it when it comes to drop protection, though the durability of the Pixel 4a gets a win. Plastic is much more durable than glass, and it's much easier and cheaper to replace if it does break, so I'm going to give the 4a the advantage there. The Pixel 4a does not have any form of water resistance, though through an IPA rating, so dropping the phone in water could potentially damage it. That's not something you have to worry about on the SE, as it has an IP rating of 67, so it's been certified for water and dust resistance.

An ip67 rating means you can drop the SE in water up to about a meter deep for about half an hour, that's big for peace of mind and for its water resistance and premium materials. I'm going to give the SE a win in this category. The next category has to do with the display and overall design. Now, in my opinion, when you put these phones side by side, face up, there's no contest the Pixel 4a wins by a landslide, with its 5.8 inch OLED display the 4.7 inch lcd that first debuted on the iPhone 6 makes a reappearance here on the SE and in 2020 it just looks pretty dated it's not a bad display. Colors are good and contrast is okay, but it's just no match for the OLED panel on the pixel, with its excellent contrast, ratio and much bigger display.

Some of you may, like the touch ID, enabled home button on the front, but I actually prefer that fingerprint reader on the back, like the Pixel 4a, has it makes for a much more bezel-less front display, and I find it more comfortable to unlock the phone when the reader is on the back. The pixel also sports a headphone jack, something that apple has refused to include since the release of the iPhone 7. If you're not gonna, case these phones, I think the Pixel 4a has the cleaner look here anyway, since the second. You start using the SE you're going to fill the back with this glass phone with grimy fingerprints, either way with the better display fingerprint sensor, positioning and headphone jack. The Pixel 4a is the clear winner in this category.

Don't count the SE out yet, though, because the tables are about to turn just a little when we talk about performance and the software experience, while the pixel, 4a and iPhone SE look very different on the outside they're, even more different on the inside, the SE has apple's flagship, a13 bionic CPU inside, whereas google opted to put a bit more of a budget snapdragon 730g on the inside of the 4a, so in synthetic benchmarks, the differences between these two phones are staggering, with the iPhone doubling the results of the pixel in real life usage, though, most of the time the differences are negligible. Both phones are very fast, open, apps, flick through menus and capture photos and videos. The only time you'll really notice, a difference is when you're either playing games or doing something. That's very CPU heavy like encoding video, which the SC will obviously have an advantage in this lack of difference. In real world use comes down to the incredible job that both apple and Google have done in optimizing, their OS's for their devices.

Pixel devices get the best of android, since Google makes android and of course, apple's iOS is no different, which one you like is obviously going to come down to personal preference, but know that no matter which phone you choose here, you're going to be getting a really great software experience. The SE wins this category by technicality, since it is technically the faster device, but I've had no real issues with the performance on the 4a either. So don't let this be your deciding factor. Next up is battery life and folks. This is a spicy one.

The iPhone SE has a battery capacity of just over 1800 William hours, whereas the Pixel 4a has a capacity of over 3100 and the results are about what you'd expect the 4a has great battery life and the SE just doesn't. I mentioned this in the full review of the 4a, but I routinely get around four to five hours of screen on time with this phone and still have around forty to fifty percent battery left. Whereas if I spent four to five hours on the SE, it would leave the phone just completely dead. The a13 bionic is a fairly efficient little CPU when it comes to doing light tasks. But if you tax it by shooting a lot of photos and video or by playing a bunch of mobile games, you can absolutely decimate the tiny battery in this phone.

By contrast, since the snapdragon 730 g in the 4a isn't all that powerful to begin with, it doesn't really matter if you're doing more demanding stuff, because the 730g just won't be drawing as much power from the battery plus the battery size is like twice the capacity as the one in the SE, so the Pixel 4a is easily the winner in this category. Last, but certainly, not least, is my favorite category in the smartphone segment and that's the cameras. The Pixel 4a has the same 12 megapixel wide-angle camera on the rear of the phone as the one on the flagship, pixel 4. , whereas the iPhone SE seems to have the same hardware as the one on the iPhone 8 with just some improved processing from the a13 bionic inside the results are interesting. I took both phones to a local museum to test them in a variety of scenarios, and what I found is that the 4a seems to be the better camera for photography.

Most of the time dynamic range is higher on the 4a photos are consistently sharper and have more natural, colors and better contrast. This is a picture that will illustrate that perfectly the sky on the SC's photo is blown out while it is correctly exposed on the 4a. The color balance is often a little skewed towards blue in the SC. While it looks much more natural on the 4a, if we crop in about 300 percent. The word theater in Canadian English of course, is sharper on the 4a's pitcher than it is on the SE.

The 4a also takes better photos in dimly lit scenarios, since it has night sight, whereas the SE does not have any form of night mode whatsoever. The one thing I don't like when it comes to photography on the Pixel 4a is that in portrait mode it digitally zooms into a 2x crop, and I don't see any options to change that in the settings. This means that portrait mode photos on the 4a tend to be noisier and less sharp than their SE counterparts. The SE also has the advantage in shooting video, especially when it comes to that selfie camera they're both limited to 1080p in resolution, but the SES video looks closer to 4k than 1080p, and the pixel looks much softer in comparison. Both the pixel, 4a and SE shoot 4k from the rear, camera, and they're pretty similar in terms of sharpness, but the SE is the clear winner when it comes to image stabilization.

I also kind of prefer the colors in the SES video, but that might be just me either way. I think apple still reigns supreme when it comes to smartphone video between these cameras. These days, there's a lot more. That goes into choosing a phone than specs or performance. For me personally, the Pixel 4a is the phone that I would pick if I could only have one of them.

Battery life and camera performance are both huge factors for me, so the 4a is a bit of a no-brainer, but if you're, someone that prefers the iOS experience, and you like buying into the diverse Apple ecosystem, the SE is still a great phone. That said, there's still one more element that we haven't talked about and that's price. The iPhone SE is apple's cheapest new smartphone. Yet, and it comes in at a dollar shy of 400 us dollars, that's a great price, and I'm glad that apple decided to make an affordable phone for the masses, but the Pixel 4a comes in at 50 less than that at 349 USD. And for me, that's just icing on the cake.

I've got full reviews of both the iPhone SE and the Pixel 4a that you can check out right here if you're interested- and if you like this video, please give it a like and subscribe to support. My channel and as always, have a great day.

Source : Mark Spurrell