Google Pixel 5a vs Pixel 5 - What's the Difference? By StateofTech

Hey it's jarred with state of tech. Today we have the new pixel 5a 5g from Google, and I have my original five here that I've had for a little while I wanted to do a comparison. You know, Google has been now releasing these more budget-friendly phones that look pretty much the same and have a lot of the same specs um. You know about three-quarters, maybe a little more than three-quarters of the way through the life cycle of their flagship model. We know that there's a pixel six coming soon. So when it comes to the pixel 5a, is it a good buy right now? What are we sacrificing for the price? That's what we're going to talk about now.

So, let's start by talking about some similarities between these devices, while I unbox the five just arrived today, so I'm excited to spend some time with it. I know that this device is relatively similar in specs and pretty much everything, but it's a little bigger, and we'll talk about some of those things and some of those differences here. This is the pixel 5, not the larger 5xl, and so it's a great comparison to the 5a. So also in the box, we have a sim card ejector tool. We've got some information here, and then we have our data transfer dongle.

We have our charging cable, and we have our charging brick here, which is an uh wait for it wait for it an 18 watt, which is what I know the device supports. So I'm glad that the charger is equivalent to what the phone supports all right. So, let's put the box to the side, and we'll start talking about some similarities of these two devices and some differences. So here they are side by side both devices. You can see that the 5a is a little larger.

I'm going to go ahead and remove the case that I have on my 5 just so you can get a better idea of the size of the two devices side by side there we go so the similarities of these two devices, both of them right now, have android 11. I've actually been running android 12 beta on my pixel 5, and I'll have some thoughts in a later video about that, as we get closer to android 12. Releasing both of these devices have OLED displays, which is great, that google went ahead and still put in a nice OLED display in their budget model. They both also have the same processors, the Qualcomm snapdragon 765 g. That's an outscore with 2 400, megahertz, um, 64-bit, 7 nanometers, I mean those are all the specs, and they're both the same.

They also have the same uh arena, 620 GPU. So both of these, as far as horsepower goes, are relatively the same. They both have dual cameras. The interesting thing when I saw the pictures and then, of course got the box in was just how much the same both of these devices look. I mean you can easily mistake this phone over here, for maybe a pixel 5, XL or a larger version, even though the larger version is still a little bigger than this.

So definitely looking the same, but we have the dual cameras on the back. Both of the dual cameras are pretty similar with a few little differences, so we have the ultra-wide and then the regular camera they both the main camera is 12.2 megapixels with that f 1.7 aperture and then the ultra-wide camera is the 16 megapixel, with the f 2.2, so very similar there on the front of the devices we're rocking the hole, punch design, as you can see, uh the hole, punch, design here same 8, megapixel camera that supports HD, so very much the same as far as the front-facing camera goes. When we were looking at the back, you saw it still has that fingerprint unlock that they ditched for a little while and brought back. Thank you very much, google. I love the fingerprint unlock on the back, even though their face unlock is extremely fast and was in the pixel 4.

I'm glad that they brought back the fingerprint unlock because, as you're pulling that phone out of your pocket, you, you know just naturally your finger and is in position right there, and you can unlock the phone. It's ready to go it's faster than pretty much anything still with the technology advances that we've seen. So, let's talk about the differences uh. There are some differences here. Obviously there should be based on the price, but we do know that we have the pixel six right around the corner.

So with that happening, the lines are definitely a lot closer. I recently got the Pixel Buds uh, there's the Pixel Buds, um standard edition and then also a kind of edition like this, so they have products in line with either kind of their flagship or their budget friendly. I guess you would call it line and there were very few differences between those Pixel Buds, except for the fact that there had been a good amount of time between the flagship version and the cheaper budget version, release dates, and so we're seeing the same thing here with these phones. So the pixel 5 is a six-inch screen. We've got a 6.3-inch screen here. Of course the 5xl is rocking a bigger display, and so, if you uh, you know I have these two phones.

This is why I'm comparing these two, but, of course the pixel 5a, is going to have a little bigger, uh specs when it comes to screen size. The resolution is also going to be a little different because of the two screen sizes on the pixel 5. We have 2340 by 1080, that's a 19.5 to 9 aspect ratios and 430 pixels per inch, whereas on the 5a we have a more standard. I guess you can call it 2400 by 1080 pixels, that's a 20 to 9 ratio and a few less pixels per inch at 415. So you shouldn't even really tell that much of a difference on this phone because they're pretty much similar, but on the pixel 5 we have the 90 hertz refresh rate, which we do not have on the pixel 5a I'll insert a little of b-roll of kind of scrolling around or whatnot.

So you can see the differences there. It's not going to be super noticeable unless you're doing something like playing a game, or you're in some sort of app that utilizes that refresh rate. Otherwise, the pixel 5a is going to be just fine for you there. Of course, the 5 has HDR support which the 5a does not um their scratch. Resistant glass may be different on the two, but I'm not 100 sure.

I couldn't really find anything that said that this 5a doesn't have scratch resistant glass, but it could be a slightly different glass material that they're using um. Of course, the 5 has 8 gigabytes of ram, and the 5a has 6 gigabytes of ram.6 gigabytes of ram is still plenty for a stock android device for doing most things. Six gigs is gonna, get you by and even into the future. Six gigs is still going to be a pretty good amount of memory uh, except some of those really heavy apps. When you have a lot of heavy apps going, and you're multitasking, you may start to feel it a little, but I know on a Google device, six gigs is still going to be just fine, and it's going to get you by for at least the next couple of years before you start to see things slow down.

A little so, of course, this being a slightly bigger phone, the 5a it actually has a slightly bigger battery than the 5. It's got 600 more Williams of battery than the 5 does. Of course, the larger pixel 5 is going to have a bigger battery than that. So there's the difference there, but between these two devices, 600 more Williams, so this phone has 4080 versus 4, 680 Williams. Of course, charging is a bit different on these devices too.

We know that the pixel 5 um has QI charging 18 watts. I mean fast wireless charging, and it also has the reverse wireless charging as well. So you can charge a device wirelessly uh, for example, if you have your Pixel Buds, and you put your Pixel Buds up to the back of the phone, the pixel 5 can pass some charging to your Pixel Buds. The 5a does not have that. It doesn't have wireless charging, it doesn't have the reverse charging either, but it still does have fast charging that supports 18 watts.

So that's still going to charge pretty fast as long as you've got your cable available. So the first thing that I did notice when I pulled this out of the box is that it does have a plastic back, and you can see it. It is affected a little by fingerprints but wipes off really easily versus the aluminum design of the pixel 5 and the pixel 5 definitely feels heftier in the hand these devices here, if you know, see them side by side, you can see there's a little more thickness to the 5a than there is the pixel 5. But you know that's going to happen because the plastic it has to be thicker in order for it to still remain strong, strong enough to keep the device from flexing or have any issues. So, of course, the pixel 5a is a little thicker.

It's a plastic design versus the aluminum design of the pixel 5. So there's also a difference in the water resistance between these two different phones. You've got ip68 over here on this device and ip67. So ip67 still is a layer of water resistance, but I would not submerge a phone. That's ip67! I would even questionably submerge a phone.

That's ip68 because I've had ip68 devices fail when submerged before in the past, so you definitely want to be very careful with any device that says that it's water resistant, because it's all subjective but ip67, you definitely don't want to go sticking that phone into water, at least that's my humble opinion, so we also in the 5a only have what's called mostly black, it's like a gray, but it's black it's somewhere in between, and they call that mostly black on the pixel 5 line. We have just black and sorta sage. Obviously this is the sort of sage color that I have right here and then, of course, there's the pricing difference. Now I just went on Google's website and the five is out of stock, and that makes sense, because soon they're going to be releasing the six, probably in the next month or so the six is going to replace the five this at the moment is out of stock. It doesn't mean that you can't find the pixel five.

You could find the pixel 5 pretty much everywhere, still just on Google's website. At this moment, it's out of stock I'll put some links down in the description to the pixel 5 and the pixel 5 XL. So you can check that out, but the pricing starts at 699 for that phone and then with the 5a. It starts at 449, which is a fantastic price for a phone uh that contains this much. This phone is still absolutely fantastic, a stand-up device, and I don't even need to do more than power it on to know that, because it has so many of the same specs as the pixel 5.

So if you're interested in an actual review of the 5a, I think I will come back and do that. I know there are a few other things that I kind of forgot to mention in my list um, for example, the cameras do have a difference on these devices. I forgot to add it to my list, but I'm remembering it now. There is optical stabilization on the 5, where there is no optical stabilization on the 5a. So there 's are a few little things different with the camera, but they're still going to have that fantastic, google software.

That makes your images amazing. It's still going to have that ability to change the lighting and all that cool stuff that Google does with their software in post after you've taken the photo, so lots of perfect features still there. So, if you're interested in a review, you have any questions at all. Definitely let me know down in the comment section below give this video a like a thumbs up whatever it's called and make sure to subscribe to the channel here on state of tech, because you know when I get that pixel 6 I'm going to do a video, I'm going to compare it to the five uh, it's supposed to be pretty cool, and I think they're going back to their roots of putting fantastic parts in their pixel flagship, and I'm excited for that, so make sure to click subscribe. So you get notified when I get that video ready when I get one of those pixel sixes in hand, but that's going to do it for today, thanks so much for checking out this video.

I hope to see you back in another. One soon take care.

Source : StateofTech