Google Pixel 4A unboxing + overview - the best budget smartphone on the market By Tong Zou

Hey guys how's it going today we're going to do an unboxing and overview of the Google Pixel 4a. Now this is a phone that google just released. Uh just came out this month, um August 2020- and I literally just got it today, so I want to show you guys um the whole experience. Um again, I haven't opened this box, yet everything's brand new in the packaging. This is a budget version of the Google Pixel 4, which came out late last year and uh. Google has made these a device available for budget-minded consumers and I think they're amazing values.

Um a lot of reviewers online have said uh great things about the Pixel 3a before this, and now the Pixel 4a, because they're just such fantastic values. Okay, so google sells this for 350 brand new, which is an amazing price because it undercuts the iPhone SC, the new one by 50 dollars and also has better specs as well. So let me go with the specs for you um. This is a 5.8 inch. Uh display OLED display 1080 by 2340 um, whereas android 10 has a Qualcomm snapdragon, 730 g, um, arena 618.

So this is an it isn't the top of the line snapdragon but uh it's going to get most of your work done still. So I think this is really the only major difference between this and the Google Pixel uh four right, the uh, the regular one. So I think most people will notice that difference, and you save a lot of money by getting this one. It also comes with 120 gigs of internal storage, which is a lot actually because even my iPhone 11 Pro, that was like a thousand dollars that only came with 64 gigs right, so you're getting an upgraded storage which usually you have to pay, for. You know extra on flagship phones for to get 128 gigs.

This one comes with 120 gigs straight out of the box, and it's only 350 bucks. So that's amazing, six gigs of ram, so you get USB charging on the bottom of course, and you get stereo speakers uh, which is nice um better than the mono speakers. A lot of flagships come with actually uh, but I would prefer it if they had these on the front of the display. That would be nicer, but I understand why they couldn't do that, because you would have to add basis. I guess- and we live in kind of this basilisk world right now, so yeah no front facing stereo speakers that would have been better but still getting.

Two stereo speakers is something to be something um, that's not common any more right. You still have the mono firing down speaker even for flagships these days and drum roll. You get a headphone jack. Yes, google brought back the headphone jack, and that is somewhat um. It is a very nice surprise.

Indeed, I mean that's one of the things I really didn't like about my Google Pixel 2 is that it removed the headphone jack. That's probably the only thing. I really don't like about it, because I've done this so many times when uh. You know, I probably ran out of battery on my Bluetooth, headphones or forgot to charge them or whatever, and I had to take a meeting and I didn't have anything to connect with you know I don't bring a dongle or anything so uh, that's those are. Those are circumstances that happen.

More often than you think right, there are circumstances where you really like to have a headphone jack, because maybe you forgot to charge your Bluetooth stuff or when you forgot to um, you know uh, you, maybe you didn't bring the dongle adapter right, and then you really need to have. You have just the wire right so obviously having a headphone jack gives you that extra option and that's really nice- that google brought it back. So just like Sony with the Xperia one mark ii, they brought back the headphone jack. Very, very nice never should have been removed to begin with, but always uh very welcome to see back so headphone jack is back again 128 gigs of storage, but it is not expandable. I don't think, has ever been expandable with the Google Pixel um, but that is what it is, and this is a pretty nice size, even those 5.8 inches. I'm going to give you a comparison.

So I have my Google Pixel 2 right here and this. The Google Pixel 2 is a 5-inch phone and I found this to be the perfect size for me um. I did not want the XL. I thought that was too big, but the regular pixel 2 was fine. For me, this is the.

I think I would not go like much bigger than this. This is actually also the same size as my iPhone 11 Pro um. This is probably the maximum size I would go to for a smartphone right now, and so, if you compare it uh, this is the Google Pixel 4a, which has a 5.8 inch display, and you can see that the dimensions are roughly the same. There's really no change in the dimensions here. All the volume buttons are in the same place.

I actually think that the pixel 4 might be a tiny bit smaller. Look at that yeah. It's like a smudge, actually smudge smaller yeah. It looks like the pixel 2, even though the pixel 2 has a much smaller display, five inches pixel four and has 5.8 inches, it's actually a little smaller, which is really nice. Actually, because I, like small phones, and then you get the sim card slots actually in different areas.

You have it right here on the pixel 4 a and you have it here on the pixel 2. , so that's kind of interesting um and yeah. They both charge with USB. I think the pixel 2 also has stereo speakers, but they're front-facing stereo speakers, because they have a Basel here, whereas the Pixel 4a, because it's basilisk has to put the stereo speakers down there, but either way you get stereo speakers which is nice and yeah. It is actually a pretty nice surprise that both of these phones are roughly the same size, the Pixel 4a, even being a smudge smaller, in fact.

So that is actually a very welcome surprise because I do like to have smaller phones um. I don't like to have phones that are overly large, and I think that the Pixel 4a is actually perfect in the size. Just like the pixel 2 was, and you can see that. Obviously the camera is better on the Pixel 4a, the fingerprint sensor in the same spot. Otherwise, the exterior wise, uh they're, pretty similar.

It's really just the camera, that's different and the fact that this is basilisk. This one has a Basel, that's the only thing externally that you'll notice, of course, internally the pixel 4 is a lot better. So I think this is definitely the best value phone on the market right now. The fact that you get a top-notch camera right, the pixels have always been known for their cameras, probably the best cameras on any android device, very, very competitive, with the iPhone and Samsung Huawei top tier of cameras right there, and you get the beautiful 5.8 inch. Basal is OLED display you get a not a top range snapdragon processor, but I think one that most people can live with, and you get 120 gigs of storage, which is a lot that's more than a lot of flagships, give you without having to upgrade it and six gigs of ram.

So that's all uh really nice to have so. I think this is definitely one of the best value phones on the market, if not the best value phone on the market right now so uh yeah. This is uh. I think, compared to the iPhone SC that just came out um. This one is probably the one to get unless you really want iOS.

If you really um can live without iOS, I do recommend the Pixel 4a instead of the iPhone SC that just got released. I think this one is definitely the better value and uh yeah. I'm going to turn it on here. Okay, this is googled, so another thing is the cutout. So there's a selfie, the selfie camera is a cutout camera, of course, on the pixel 2.

It is on the basil right, okay, while we're waiting for that to get set up. Let's look at what's up what else is in the box, so it comes with a standard, USB c cable right here, and you get an adapter. This is an USB a to USB adapter. So this is pretty good, because I know a lot of people still have the legacy ports right, the USB a port. So you get that adapter as well as the USB c to USB cable and of course you get google's little white charger here.

Okay, very reminiscent of the iPhone chargers right everything's in white um and the cables as well, and then this is the only piece of documentation that you get here uh. So you get some basic warranty stuff. You get a sim card removal tool, of course, uh, and then you get a quick start guide right here. So pretty standard stuff, um not too much going on here. Yeah, sim card removal, tool, warranty and uh quick start guide, and that's it.

That's all! That's in the box all right, so I got everything set up and of course the fingerprint sensor works really well. I've actually never had an issue with pixel's fingerprint sensors before and this is the third pixel phone I've owned. I own the original pixel uh when it came out back in 2016 and also the pixel 2, of course. So again this is android 10. So if you've used android 10 before then, this should all be very, very familiar because you know pixels are very, very stock android um.

They are basically stock android, so you wouldn't see any kind of UI interface or layer on this whatsoever. This is pure android, because it's a pixel phone and, of course I can use project five with it. That's one of the main reasons I keep going back to pixel phones is because I use project phi, which means I can use the same data plane anywhere. I don't need to use an extra sim card or anything like that, so it's really useful for traveling um and uh yeah. I just this.

This is very, very similar to the uh iPhone interface actually because of the basal is design. So yeah you got to keep in mind like I've, been using the pixel 2 for a very long time right and the pixel 2 have always had the traditional android home button that you press to go back and the pixel 4 does not have that. Instead, like say you open an app right here, you have to swipe up from the bottom, just like you would on an iPhone 10 or iPhone 11 uh, and that's something that I've gotten used to with the iPhone 11 Pro. But if you're coming from an older pixel device or an older android phone uh, that's not baseless, then you'll have to get used to this slow motion right here of swiping uh up from the bottom to go to the home screen instead of pressing a dedicated home button or a menu button for that matter, right there, there used to be android menu button. Instead and now you just you- have to go from the bottom right to get that menu.

So yeah, you decide to get yourself familiar with those gestures, but other than that this is pretty standard, android, 10. Um, so anyone who've used android 10 devices or used the iPhone, 10 or 11- can get used to this pretty fast. So yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't really need to show you anything on android 10, because you pretty much used it already. I will note that this on the back here is something else I forgot to mention, which is that the Google Pixel 2 has this top part right here, which is kind of glossy um.

Yes, it's kind of this glossy finish, and it's a different material than the rest of the phone right here. The rest of the phone back is different from this part here, as you can see right, whereas the Pixel 4a it's pretty uniform and honestly, it feels like a lot like the back of the iPhone 11, and it feels like very, very matte feeling right. This feels very smooth. This feels like it's not totally smooth, just like a matte feeling right, so I don't really know how to describe it in words. It's just.

It feels different um. That's all I can say it doesn't feel better or worse, just different and doesn't have that top part there and uh yeah, that's pretty much it. I'm actually going to be doing a photo comparison between this and the iPhone 11 Pro right. Obviously, the camera is better than the Google Pixel 2. So you don't you don't need to see the comparison there, but I'm going to compare to the iPhone 11 Pro, because that's pretty much um pretty much.

If the top end cameras are going to be competing with that right. So I'm going to show you guys: selfie camera uh in the back camera, both uh using pictures and video and comparing the Pixel 4a to the iPhone 11 Pro um. So you guys can see what the cameras are like right, because to me my camera is probably one of the most important things uh when I'm buying a phone. I know it is for a lot of people too. So I'm doing that comparison, um and that's pretty much it uh.

That's the Google Pixel 4a uh once again, thanks for watching and uh stick around for the comparison. One other thing I forgot to mention this phone is that it doesn't have an official water resistance rating. It doesn't have an IP rating which to me is kind of odd and strange because uh, my Google Pixel 2 had it right. My pixel 2 had an ip67 rating and this phone is supposed to be newer and better than the pixel 2. So why doesn't it have something as basic as water resistance right to me? That should be a basic feature of phones.

These days right. I know it's only 350 bucks but still like to me: that's not a hard feature to implement, so it looks like you have to move up to the uh Google Pixel 4 um. You know the higher version just to get water resistance. So that's um, that's kind of strange to me. I guess they couldn't put everything on this phone, but it really would be nice to have uh IP rating on this phone.

So if you're going um, you know if you use this you're near the beach a lot or if you live near uh, a very rainy city like I do like Vancouver or Seattle um, then it might be a dealbreaker honestly to not have the IP water resistance um, because I know that's a feature that a lot of people like me. We really look for in phones, because you know a lot of the like Sony, opera, Samsung, galaxy um. You know the uh, google, the flagship google pixels iPhones. They all have water resistance. It's just something! That's pretty basic to me um! So I don't understand why the Google Pixel does not have it.

So that's uh! That's kind of a shame. I think that's the only thing about this phone that I would consider might be a dealbreaker for some people near a pool or something like that or even just you know, using this in the kitchen. All these things you have to take into account right, just something as basic as water resistance. I know they added the headphone jack, but that's no, not an excuse right. There's, lots of phones! I have headphone, jacks, and I'll also have water resistance on them.

So uh yeah, I don't know- maybe that's one of the things google wants you to pay extra money for to upgrade to the Google Pixel 4 and not the 4a. So I don't know, that's just my theory. Um very, I think that's a that's a big deal for me at least um huge shame that google didn't put an official IP resistance rating on this, but otherwise it's a great phone in all of your aspects, so yeah anyways. Yes, let's get on to the photos. Comparison you.

Source : Tong Zou