Google Pixel 3a camera test vs Pixel 3, Xperia 10, and Pocophone F1 By Tech Advisor

Hey Tech Advisor fans, Adam here from the San Francisco office, and with the announcement of the The Pixel 3a at around half the price of the main Pixel 3's I was curious to see just how close the camera quality is to each other. Google says it sports the same great camera, but even if the 3a has the same lens and sensor as the 3 it doesn’t feature the Pixel visual core - and as we all know, processing is a huge part of smartphone photography so I wanted to test it for myself. So I have 2 goals with this video. First off I want to see how close the 3a comes to the 3 in terms of photo quality and see where the two phones differ in experience. And second I want to see how it stacks up against a couple other phones around the same price range, namely the Sony Xperia 10 and Xiaomi Pocophone F1. Starting off with the direct comparison between the two pixel phones, I’m pleased to report that in everyday scenarios these cameras produce damn near close photo results.

The same great things I’ve found when testing the Pixel 3 in Last Cam Standing are present in the 3a. There are very minor differences here and there, but none that I can’t rule out as variations in trying to test in the real world. So thats great to hear, especially considering the 3a is almost half the price of the flagship pixel. But even though these seem to be the same great cameras there were a couple changes I was able to find. The first one lies in the settings, and this was pointed out to me during our hands on time at Google I/O.

In the list of possible camera resolutions there is one option that’s different. The 3a has an 8 megapixel option where the standard 3 features a 7.7 option. Not quite sure for the difference in resolution choices here, and it’s definitely not a deal breaker, but something to investigate for sure. The next difference is a bit more substantial, but also not a deal breaker, and it’s with Night Sight. There is a small disparity between the results of the two phones, especially around color accuracy and clarity.

The 3a had a harder time focusing in low light, and while the resulting images were usually just as bright, they weren’t as sharp. Each phone tweaked the capture settings in different ways to achieve the same results, which you can see in the EXIF data here. This was not the case if normal shooting, as almost every photo was captured with the same settings. Once again, not a deal breaker but something to take note of. Another difference that does happen to be major is how the two phones handle portrait mode.

On the standard Pixel 3 Portrait mode crops in a bit on the sensor, but on the 3a the jump is way more drastic. Not only that, the reproduction of bokeh is far more pronounced on the standard Pixel 3. The resulting image is still at full resolution which means it’s cropping on the sensor then upscaling on output. I’m very curious to see this behavior, and I’m not 100% sure why this decision was made, but if I were to take an educated guess it would have to do with the lack of a Pixel Visual Core processor in the 3a. Without that dedicated hardware to handle heavy computational tasks like portrait mode and even night sight, cropping in on the sensor and producing less bokeh would be easier to do on the mid range snapdragon CPU.

This is just a theory, but it makes sense. It would also explain the longer processing times for saving photos. But even with those differences I must say that Google was right, you are getting almost the same camera in the cheaper pixel 3a, and thats damn exciting for people who like having a powerful shooter in their pocket. So with that out of the way, let’s compare both pixels to the Sony Xperia 10 and Xiaomi Pocophone F1. In terms of color reproduction I wasn’t impressed by what the Pocophone had to offer.

In some situations the white balance was off or the colors just weren’t as punchy as the others. On the other hand the pixels color chops are top notch, and even the 3a can hang with or beat other flagships like the P30 Pro or iPhone XS. When talking about clarity, the two pixel phones are once again the strongest choices. That’s not to say the Xperia 10 was a slouch in this department, there was plenty of information present in the Sony phones shots. In most cases it even beat out the Pocophone, except in low lighting scenarios which saw the xiaomi device perform on par with Sony’s.

To round out the comparisons and talk about exposure settings, I’ll say that each phone was pretty damn close. Only the Pocophone was slightly different in standard shots, typically exposing a bit brighter than the rest, but never to the point where it would blow out the scene or ruin a shot. In low light it was typically as bright as the pixels, but at the expense of noise. In conclusion, I’m pretty damn impressed by what the pixel 3a is able to achieve in the photography department. At $400 USD it seems like it will be the camera to beat, and might just help Google gain some traction in that price range.

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Source : Tech Advisor