Google Pixel 4a: The Best $350 You Can Spend On A Phone

With 2020 being a clusterfuck of a year, on the tech side of things – it hasn’t been as bad. The industry has been bringing the mid-range smartphone back up to speed while the budget smartphones have been getting some amazing options.

Although its arriving a bit later than we all expected, Google’s Pixel 4a is adding to the mix in the budget arena. Now unlike last year’s Pixel 3a, you only get one color, one size, and one storage option. The upside is that you get double the storage and an even cheaper price point at $349. Let’s talk about why this is a great phone – not because its a cheap one either.

Google gave the Pixel 4a a polycarbonate (plastic) body w/ Gorilla Glass 3 feels like a step up from the Pixel 3a in hand. The plastic body on the 4a is solid + well-built. Definitely more towards the premium side w/ an industrial look to it. You got sturdy + clicky buttons, great haptics we expect from Google, a headphone jack, pretty good stereo speakers on board, and a fast rear fingerprint reader that brings back the swipe down for the notification shade.

Think Nokia Lumia build not the cheap plastic kind.

The 5.8inch OLED panel is Google’s 1st w/ a hole punch for its selfie camera. You get a bright panel w/ great color reproduction, good detail + viewing angles, and HDR support. It just doesn’t do well in direct sunlight like previous Pixels before this one. Outside of that, this is an amazing panel that could be one of the best on a budget device.

5.8inch OLED display w/ 2340 x 1080 resolution
Snapdragon 730G CPU
6GB of RAM + 128GB of storage
A rear-facing f/1.7 12.2MP sensor w/ dual pixel phase-detection auto-focus/OIS + EIS + single LED flash
A f/2.0 8MP hole-punch selfie camera
Android 10
rear fingerprint sensor
Bluetooth 5.0 w/ aptX/aptX HD/AAC/LDAC support
stereo speakers
3.5mm headphone jack
3140 mAh battery w/ fast-charging

The 4a has only one option for storage size + color this year w/ 128GB + Just Black. Inside you have a Snapdragon 730G CPU + 6GB of RAM which handles everything from everyday tasks/multitasking, Call Of Duty Mobile gaming, streaming, and more. It can handle it all w/ ease but not to the speed of a flagship chipset though.

Google included a 3140 mAh battery w/ 18W fast charging inside which sounds like it would be a mess – especially coming from the last batch of Pixels. Definitely not the case here. I easily got over 14 hours on a single charge giving this a better battery life than on the smaller Pixel 4. This is w/ chiming in a techie Group Chat, emailing, browsing social media, listening to a few hours of podcasts/music on Spotify, and a few hours on YouTube. Just no wireless charging though.

There is a 12.2MP single sensor w/ OIS + EIS handling all of its photo/video duties. So no wide or telephoto angles to play w/ here. Despite that, you still get the power of Pixel 4’s camera. It matches the results of the Pixel 4 line while giving you a high-end flagship for a fraction of the cost – even besting some of them as well.

$350 body that shoots $1,000+ photos

Your results give you life-like colors, great sharpness, amazing details, and overall great dynamic range effortlessly in almost every shot. It is worth noting that you don’t have the separate image processor that’s on the Pixel 4/4 XL. So keep in mind that, it will take an extra second or 2 to process your photos.

You do have the latest feature of Live HDR+ w/ dual exposure controls and even got the Super Res Zoom up to 7x digital zoom w/ only one camera + software. However, you can still the difference between these shots and the Pixel 4 line w/ the added telephoto lens. And last but not least you got the amazing Night Sight feature w/ Astrophotography.

Of course on the video side of things is probably the only area where you get what you pay for. Google’s focus has been on computational photography while leaving their video side to the basics – at least for this go around. It can record in 4K@30fps/1080p up to 120fps/720p up to 240fps BTW.

The Pixel 4a gives you all of the software goodies from the Pixel 4 line and a few new ones as well. You got the faster Google Assistant, the must-have Now Playing that acts like an always-listening Shazam that works offline, Live Caption now w/ added support for calls (phone/video/Duo), the new Recorder app now w/ added support to work w/ Google Assistant and for Google Docs,
and the must-have Call Screening to fend off Robo/spam calls. However, you don’t the Active Edge feature where you squeeze the edges to activate Google Assistant. Not sure many people would be upset about this or not.

Google's Pixel 4a gives you the best value, camera, & software on any smartphone today.

Google definitely did so more here than it done w/ the Pixel 3a and some might feel the 4 (not the 4XL). I actually prefer the 4a over the more-expensive Pixel 4. The performance is good enough and video quality gives you what you pay for. But you got the amazing camera + software features from the Pixel 4 as well as fingerprint reader, and an all-day battery life.

What was thought of being late to the party, the Pixel 4a is only the beginning for Google. We got the $499 Pixel 4a 5G (aka the Pixel 4a XL) and the Pixel 5 coming in the fall. So get ready for more Pixel phone action from Google. Now you gotta decide on whether to pick this one up or wait to see wait the other 2 Pixel devices will look like/offer.