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The Google Pixel a-series started out as a pretty mind-blowing option for its price. This was way back in 2019 with the Pixel 3a. That phone started at $329, and $379 the Pixel 3a XL, using the same camera as the higher-end Pixel 3, but a slightly lower-end processor and a plastic back versus glass. It was an incredible value and a phone that I actually used as my daily driver for over 6 months. As a reviewer, that’s pretty rare.
Throughout the years, the Pixel a-series has differentiated itself more and more from the flagship models and also gone up in price. Now the Pixel 9a has a starting price of $499 (and technically saw a price increase this year, but only on the 256GB model, as Google moved to upcharging $100 per 128GB of storage, instead of $60). However, these days, it’s still not that different from the base model that was released last August.
Now with the Pixel 9a, Google is differentiating it a bit more, adding a fully flat back so the camera is now flush, adding in the largest battery ever in a Pixel device. But also doing some weird things like, including an older modem with its current Tensor chipset. Which makes you wonder if the Pixel 9a is worth the $499 price or not. Let’s find out in our full review.
Google Pixel 9a Review: Hardware and Build Quality
While the Pixel 9 series got a pretty major overhaul last year, the Pixel 9a also got a pretty big design overhaul this year. However, instead of going with the flat camera bar of the rest of the Pixel 9 series, Google has decided to use smaller camera sensors, and make the back flush. It’s a good look, even though some think it looks boring. Though it does take some getting used to.
The backside of the phone is plastic, as were the past few a-series, which isn’t a problem. It’s matte plastic, so it looks great and also feels pretty nice. Though I have noticed, where the plastic back meets the metal frame, is a tad sharp. Not sharp enough to cut you, but it can be a bit uncomfortable. I’d venture to guess that will get softer over time. Another interesting tidbit is, the antenna bands on the frame are different, versus the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro. For example, at the top, there are two antenna lines versus just one.
Google is keeping its design quirk of having the volume rocker below the power button on the right side of the phone. Despite almost every other phone having it the opposite way. The SIM card slot is at the bottom, with the USB-C port and a speaker. Yes, the Google Pixel 9a does support eSIM, but it does also still sport a SIM card tray, unlike the recent iPhones.
Of course, the front houses that 6.3-inch 120Hz display. Google is putting a 120Hz display on a $500 phone, while Apple refuses to even put a 90Hz display on a $800 phone. Google and Apple are not the same. Now, this display does have some pretty large bezels. Typically the bezel size really doesn’t bother me, and I review many phones throughout the year – not just flagships either. But for the Pixel 9a, it really does bother me, and I’m reminded of it everytime I look at the phone. Now, that doesn’t change how you use the phone, however, it does make the phone with the same 6.3-inch display as the Pixel 9 Pro, be physically larger.
Overall, the design is fine. It’s probably one of the more high-end looking and feeling phones with an MSRP under $500.
Google Pixel 9a Review: Display
The Google Pixel 9a has a stunning display for its price point, but it’s almost ruined by the size of the massive bezels. Despite having the same size display as the Pixel 9, the Pixel 9a is two millimeters taller and one millimeter wider. That just shows you how large these bezels are compared to the other Pixel 9 models. Why? Likely so Google can differentiate its lineup more, but this panel might also be cheaper, since it is a P-OLED panel versus an OLED panel on the Pixel 9.
Google has also brought its Actua display over to the Pixel 9a (as it did with the Pixel 8a last year). So we’re looking at peak brightness of 2700 nits, and 1800 nits in High Brightness Mode. This is the same as the Pixel 9, and it means that you can use this outdoors without any issues. In fact, I’ve been using this outdoors, in direct sunlight, and had zero issues seeing the display. Though, keep in mind that using it more outside, especially in warmer weather, is going to cause the phone to get hotter.
The display has fantastic colors, watching videos on this display is definitely a treat, and likely one of the best in its class. Google is also using Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 on the Pixel 9a, which is a decade old. But that’s not a bad thing. You see, more recent Gorilla Glass models are softer, as they are looking to keep your phone’s display from shattering when it is dropped. Whereas Gorilla Glass 3 is great at keeping it from shattering and scratching. Which is why we still see it used on many devices these days.
Google Pixel 9a Review: Performance
The Pixel 9a is sporting the Tensor G4, the same processor as the rest of the Pixel 9 series. It has been a pretty decent chipset. Of course, it won’t score as high on benchmarks as the Snapdragon 8 Elite or the MediaTek Dimensity 9400, but in day-to-day usage, it’s been perfectly fine. I haven’t had any issues with the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 Pro, and the same can be said for the Pixel 9a so far.
However, there is a pretty massive downgrade on the Pixel 9a’s performance, which is the modem. Google decided to use the older modem on the Pixel 9a instead of the new modem that debuted with the Pixel 9. It’s well documented how bad the Pixel 8 series modem was and how much of an upgrade the Pixel 9 modem was. So it was kind of surprising to see Google make this decision. However, knowing the difference between these two modems, I decided to test them side-by-side on the same network. I tested them on my WiFi network at home, as well as on AT&T’s network (via US Mobile), and found that the Pixel 9a actually had better speeds or similar speeds every time. Which, to be honest, surprised me.
But where you can really feel this older modem is using the Pixel 9a on mobile data for an extended amount of time. Using it on US Mobile’s 5G network for, say, an hour or so, you can really start to feel the device get warm. The hottest temperature I got from using it as a daily driver was around 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Which isn’t that bad, but keep in mind that it is Spring in Michigan. So it’s not that warm outside most of the time. I’d expect this to be much different come June, July and August.
This older modem is likely why Google needed to add a much larger battery capacity to the Pixel 9a. As we all know this modem does get quite warm, which then affects the battery performance.
Other than this, performance hasn’t been an issue on the Pixel 9a here. Though, there are a few AI features missing from the Pixel 9a versus the Pixel 9 series, like Pixel Screenshots.
Benchmarks
Now let’s talk benchmarks. Arguably the Pixel’s biggest negative, is the benchmark tests. But we still have to run them, to see how well this device will actually perform. In these tests, we are comparing the Pixel 9a to the Pixel 9, Pixel 8 Pro and the Galaxy S25 Ultra. So we can see how it compares to the current flagship from Google, last year’s flagship and then the best of the best – Galaxy S25 Ultra.
First up is Geekbench. On Geekbench, we are able to test the raw power of the CPU in both single and multi-core. As well as the GPU. These scores are usually quite low for the Tensor processor. But what we’re seeing with the Pixel 9a is that it’s pretty similar in scores. Surprisingly a higher GPU score though. But all three scores are roughly half of what the Galaxy S25 Ultra scored. Pixel 9a had a single-core of 1705, multi-core of 4416, and GPU score of 7721.
Next up is 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress test. This test is going to push your device to its absolute limit, running a 60-second loop benchmark, 20 times. This allows us to see the best loop score, as well as its lowest loop score, and give us a stability percentage. Which helps us see how much thermal throttlignt here might be.
For the Pixel 9a, it had a Best Loop of 2,634 and a Lowest loop of 1,795, with stability being 68.2%. These are actually very close to the Pixel 9’s scores, but again, much lower than the Galayx S25 Ultra.
Then there’s AnTuTu. This tests pretty much everything under the sun. The Pixel 9a had a score of 1,253,414 which is actually about 100k higher than the Pixel 9, surprisingly. Despite having the same processor, with less RAM and likely slower storage. But it doesn’t hold a candle to the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Our last performance-based benchmark is video exporting. In Capcut, we load up the same 1-minute long video, and export it at 4K30, timing how long it takes to export. Tensor has notoriously been very slow in this test. However, there was a huge increase this year, when we compare it to the Pixel 8 Pro in 2023 which had a time of 40.05 seconds. The Pixel 9a was 11.89 seconds, almost a full second faster than the Pixel 9. And of course, those numbers look ancient compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra at 5.56 seconds.
interesting that we’re seeing in these benchmarks that the Pixel 9a is scoring slightly better than the Pixel 9 in every test, despite using the same processor with an older modem. This tells us that we should expect relatively the same experience on the Pixel 9a as the Pixel 9, however.
Thermals
Perhaps the most important aspect of this review, given the older processor and Google’s delay, is thermals. As we do with every phone, we ran four different tests on the Pixel 9a to test the thermals of this phone. And I have to say, I was quite impressed with these numbers. Keep in mind that the Pixel 9a does have a vapor chamber this year, for the first time in an a-series phone.
First up, we measure the temperature after running the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test benchmark. This typically gives us the absolute highest temperature of any of the tests. As this benchmark does push the phone to its absolute limit. The Pixel 9a had a temperature of 107.9 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s almost 3 degrees lower than the Pixel 9, and a few degrees warmer than the Galaxy S25 Ultra which has a massive vapor chamber.
Next up is Genshin Impact. We play Genshin Impact for an hour straight at max brightness and max graphics, to see how well it performs. And once again, it was cooler than the Pixel 9. It was 105.8 on Pixel 9a and 107.3 on the Pixel 9.
Finally, we do a video test. Recording 4K30 (because not every phone can do 4K60) video for 10 minutes, recording the temperatures at 5 minutes in and at the end of the 10-minute test. After 5 minutes, it was 93.5 degrees, versus the Pixel 9’s 97.2 degrees. At 10 minutes, it was 99.6 degrees versus the Pixel 9’s 99.3 degrees.
So overall, the Pixel 9a performed quite well in these thermal tests. While you might feel some heat from different things you’re doing with this phone – as mentioned already – it doesn’t seem to get overly hot. Which is definitely a good thing.
Google Pixel 9a Review: Battery Life and Charging
The battery life on Pixel 9a is quite good. I’ve had trouble killing this in a single day, which is becoming more and more frequent with phones for me. But that’s never happened with a Pixel, in my history of reviews. I’m typically getting 7+ hours of screen on time, and if I don’t charge overnight and use it til it does, it’ll get close to 10 hours of screen on time. That puts it on par with my experience using the OnePlus 13. So definitely impressed with its performance.
When it comes to charging, however, that’s where the Pixel 9a will let you down. Google touts that the Pixel 9a can charge at 23W, however, I’ve seen it sitting at 25-26W for most of the charging curve, which is nice but still incredibly slow. So this is a phone that’s great for keeping you going throughout the day, but you will definitely want to charge this overnight.
Benchmarks
We also run benchmarks for the battery life and charging for every phone we review. For the battery, we charge to 100%, and let it keep charging for another 20 minutes to ensure that it is fully charged. Then, load up a YouTube video that is around 24 hours long and play it at full brightness, unplugging the phone and letting it play until it’s dead. Weirdly, the battery life screen on every phone struggles with this, so we time it ourselves.
The Pixel 9a had a time of 21 hours and 23 minutes. That was about 2 hours less than the Pixel 9, and only about 40 minutes less than the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Even though in my experience, the Pixel 9a battery life is better than the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro. But my usage is more than just YouTube video streaming.
Then there’s charging. After we run the battery test above, we move onto charging the phone, plugging it into either the charger that came in the box, or one that can max out its charging speed. The latter in this instance, and time how long it takes to get to 100%. For the Pixel 9a, we’re looking at 1 hour and 32 minutes. Surprisingly, it was slightly shorter than the Pixel 9, despite the larger battery and slower charging speeds.
Google Pixel 9a Review: Software
Before we start talking about software, it’s important to note that the Pixel 9a is launching with Android 15. And Google is promising 7 years of updates – that’s Android OS, Pixel Feature Drops and Security Patches. Meaning that the Pixel 9a will get updates until April 2032. That’s pretty impressive, though one has to wonder how 8GB of RAM will hold up, 7 years from now.
On the software front, we’re still looking at most of the same features as the rest of the Pixel 9 series. One feature that is missing that really jumped out at me, is Pixel Screenshots. This is the app that debuted on the Pixel 9 that saved all of your screenshots and allows you to easily search them, and find what you were researching. Honestly, it’s one of the AI features on Pixel that I use all the time. So, seeing it missing here is quite sad.
But the Pixel 9a still has other AI features like the Pixel Studio. This is a Generative AI app that lets you create images from a prompt. It still doesn’t let you do certain images, particularly of people. But it does make some really cool images and stickers that you can then use in messaging apps and such.
The Pixel Experience is still one of my favorite Android skins right now. It’s just so clean and easy to use. Not to mention it has a lot of my favorite features, like Call Screening. It’s just so satisfying to send spam callers to Call Screening and watch them hang up almost instantly.
If you’re looking for a clean user experience with plenty of updates to come, then the Pixel 9a is a really good option.
Google Pixel 9a Review: Camera
Google did make some changes to the Pixel 9a camera this year, swapping out its 64-megapixel primary sensor for a 48-megapixel sensor that is also smaller this year. Which had me wondering how good this sensor will actually be. The ultrawide is virtually the same as the past few years, so I wasn’t too worried about that. But with Google’s incredible computational photography, the camera is still quite good.
Now, I’ve only had this phone for a week, and most of that time, it was raining, because April Showers bring May flowers. So a lot of my pictures are inside, and of my dog. This is actually a very good test, as I have a rescue dog that is an American Staffordshire Terrier and mixed with a few other breeds. So she is black, brown, and white, making it very tough for many smartphone cameras to really get a good picture of her. Typically, they change the color of her fur and sometimes will smooth it over. Pixel has never done that. It’s been the best at taking pictures of dogs for quite some time, and that’s still true on the Pixel 9a. Her fur is not smoother out, and the colors are actually very accurate. Despite her constantly moving, her fur is sharp as it should be.
Taking pictures outside in pretty good light, the camera still does very well. In low light, the camera does suffer as you’d expect. Since it is a smaller sensor, so it can’t take in as much light. But with Night Sight, it still provides some pretty decent pictures. Of course, we have to keep in mind here that this is a $500 phone, and not a $900 or $1,000 phone. So when we are testing the camera, we have to remember that too. And for a $500 phone, the camera is very good.
Should you buy the Google Pixel 9a?
The Google Pixel 9a is pretty strange this year, and it’s hard for me to recommend. Why? Because the Pixel 9 exists. And because it is often on sale for the same price as the Pixel 9a, or slightly more. Making it a no-brainer over the Pixel 9a. As it has better cameras, a better display, better build quality, and a better modem.
But, that doesn’t mean the Pixel 9a is a bad phone. It’s quite the contrary. But it is competing pretty heavily with its own brother, so to speak. So who is the Pixel 9a for? Well, anyone that can get it for less than $499. If you can get the Pixel 9 for that same price, or even $549, I’d recommend getting the Pixel 9 instead.
You should buy the Google Pixel 9a if:
- You want a cheaper phone.
- You want the Pixel experience.
- You want Google’s AI in a smaller phone.
You should not buy the Google Pixel 9a if:
- You have a Pixel 9 or 9 Pro.
- You can get a Pixel 9 for the same price (or slightly more).