Google Pixel 3a Impressions: Flips the Script! By Marques Brownlee

Hey, what's up guys I'm cabby HD here, and this is the new Google Pixel 3 a don't know yet what the a stands for, but we can basically think of this phone as the budget version of the pixel 3, and this is yet another phone that was leaked into oblivion. We knew pretty much everything about it on paper before it came out the 3, a name, the design, all the specs pretty much the packaging. The only thing we didn't really know was the price we knew it would be the budget pixel, but how low could they get the price? There was some speculation on it, but now that it was fully announced yesterday at Google I/o, we have that too it'll start at 399. So this is the 3a XL there's a larger version of the two phones as well and on the outside, as you can tell it's almost impossible to tell it apart from a regular pixel three just by looking at it. It shows the design language of it's more expensive brothers pretty clearly. But to me this is a fascinating and potentially awesome $400 phone.

So when you think of a typical champion budget, Android phones in 2018-2019, that's the one that brings the high-end specs all the way down in price, which is amazing, but you know you're gonna sacrifice in three main areas and that's the camera always and the screen and the build quality like it's so consistent in this world. Think of the polka phone f1, for example, budget phone of the year last year it turned everybody's heads because it got the latest and greatest snapdragon 845 and freaking 8 gigs of ram and a four thousand William hour battery. So it killed it with the specs. But again with those three main things the screen. You know it was okay, it's fine! It was a six-inch LCD screen, so nothing to complain about, but it's not flagship the camera.

It was better than actually most people expected for the price, but it was definitely not a flagship camera either and then a build quality. Are you know it's plastic, but this Pixel 3a in that same world kind of flips that formula it flips the script backwards on its head, where this blatantly sacrifices in the specs? This is a Snapdragon 670 and four gigs of RAM. You know obviously mid-range, but it has a killer camera, and it has a pretty great screen. I, don't think I've ever been able to say a budget Android phone actually legit has an excellent camera, like sometimes it's great for the price you know like the polka phone, but actually competing with flagships yeah. This would be a first.

So if your priorities are in image quality, specifically, this turns into an excellent option. So build quality, of course, is still what they make sacrifices on. Like I said it looks just like the pixel 3, but as soon as you hold it, you know it's lightweight. It's made of this hard plastic instead of glass. I mean its polycarbonate is what they call it, but you know plastic and then there are some corners cut out with the hardware.

There is no wireless charging in this Pixel 3a there's also no water resistance. They didn't spend money on the IP certification and there's also, of course, still no expandable. Storage. Pixel 3 also had a pair of stereo front-facing speakers, while the 3a is giving you a single top front facing speaker up where the earpiece usually is, and then there's nothing in the chin. It's still the same size, but you have speakers now at the bottom of the phone, but that's still more front-facing power than I can say about some flagships, and then it's down to a single rear facing and single front-facing camera instead of the dual front facing cameras of the bigger brothers.

But it's not all cons, though I mean they did obviously take those shortcuts to save their money, but there's still some things from the pixel that have trickled down and are now top of their class for a 400 dollar phone. First, then I've been trying to go. Bezel as', which some would have argued would have looked cooler, but that means no notch. So some people will definitely appreciate that in a world where the pixel 3 excels, bathtub notch still exists. It also has the same haptic motor or the same excellent vibration motor as the pixel 3, which, from my experience, has been literally the best in any Android phone, which is great because there are a lot of Android phones that have bad vibration motors that make them feel even cheaper than they are so having an excellent one.

Is a nice touch? Oh, and it has an extra port. You see this little small circular, three-and-a-half millimeter circle up here. That's for headphones! It's got a headphone jack. Also, on top of that, this is a 1080p OLED display a lot of budget phones in this range are rocking. IPS LCDs, OLED screens generally have looked better, have pitch-black blacks and are more common on higher-end phones, so an OLED display in this one like OnePlus used to when they made $400 phones.

It is a nice to have and then, of course, the camera. The Pixel 3a shares the same single camera sensor and essentially the same camera software as the current image quality reigning champ, the older-brother pixel 3, which is incredible, and that not only makes this instantly the best camera in any budget phone I've ever used, but arguably right up there as the best camera on any phone period, which is awesome for this price. So that's why I say they liked they flipped the typical formula for a budget Android phone sort of backwards. They used to always be it's so predictable. You know, you're going to get some high-end specs brought down, but you know where the sacrifices are going to be, but this is uh.

This is very different, like Google is definitely trusting your software to give you a good enough user experience in spite of the mid-range specs, but having an incredible camera and having an actually pretty great screen on this phone is just a very different set of corners to cut now. I do think it makes sense to be concerned a bit about those specs just because it's a pixel again and even the flagship pixel three with this newest silicon hasn't had the best time staying fast over time, so an even lower end set of specs, while the pixel three a might suffer the same fate and in the three thousand William hour battery or thirty. Seven hundred William hour on the XL are not massive, but I still think they should fall right in line with about average again considering the more expensive brothers weren't really endurance, champs either, but overall I'm glad I have this phone in my hands. It feels like it's gonna, be a fun one to play with, and let me know what you guys want to see in the full review. It's been a wild since I've reviewed a sub $500 phone thanks to phones getting so expensive lately, but let me know what you're interested in and if you would carry you know, a phone that makes the right trade-offs like this.

For 400 bucks, it's not a bad start. Let me know what you think, thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee