NEW GOOGLE PIXEL 3a [In-depth Honest Review] By Mike O'Brien

Welcome back to the channel in this video I'll be showing you the all new Google Pixel three a now. This phone was just released by Google. Today and honestly, it really packs a punch coming in at under $400, which is absolutely unbelievable, and even more so than that. I'll tell you later on in this video, how you can get it for under $300. So really a great deal. There's really a lot to talk about, but before we get into it, I want to say, I've seen a lot of other videos out there, where, if some big-name people go and review this phone, they give you the lowdown.

They tell you pretty much most of the stuff. You want to know about it. So this video as an engineer I, want to dive in and talk more about the design and show you the pros and the cons of it and really make this a more in-depth review than some other ones. You might see. Now, that's not to say the other ones aren't great because they honestly are great reviews, but this one I just really want to answer any questions.

You might have so be mindful. This is probably gonna, be a slightly longer video, but I'm hope to make it the most in depth. Video to answer any questions you could possibly have before buying this phone. So with that being said, let's get into the video, so I'm Mike O'brain and, as I said before, this is my channel, where I review tech. Now, if you are new here, and you're interested in the newest products out on the market or the newest tech, please consider going down and clicking the subscribe button and the bell icon.

So you don't miss new product videos just like this one, so starting off with a quick overview. This phone is very light. It's made cheaper than the other phones, but something that Google tends to do very well, as we've seen with the Chromebook and the Google homes and a lot of their other products. Are they take something that a lot of people like they make it with very cheap mechanical parts, and then they make up for it with amazing software? To give you the same experience that you might have had with a more expensive product, so Chromebooks are a great example of that, as I said, and this phone right here is another great example where they cut a lot of corners. They made it cheaper.

The back is plastic, it's polycarbonate! It feels lighter and there's a lot of corners cut I'll talk about those, but they make up for almost everything with their software to really provide the same experience with this little phone. So looking at the mechanical features of this phone you'll see first I have the white phone, of course, and there are three different colors there's a white one, a black one and now a purplish one, which it's essentially just a light purple. Now you see they have one camera on the back. Unfortunately, they don't have the same. You know two or three cameras that you might be seeing on a lot of other flagship phones.

Then you have your flash right there. Next to it, you have your same fingerprint sensor that you've been seeing on the other pixels just sign in with your finger right there, which works very well, it's a great spot for it. Honestly, it's not too high, not too low. You don't have to reach far for it like some side buttons and then, as we go across the top you'll see right there. There is actually a headphone jack, which is very exciting.

I know a lot of people still like headphone jacks I personally, have some older, headphones they're like four years old, but they work great, so I use them and I love having a headphone jack on the side right there you'll see. This is where you can put your sim in, but you'll notice. There is not a spot for a micro SD card. You cannot put any expanded storage into this. They all come with 64 gigabytes and that's all you get.

Unfortunately, now as we go down, the bottom you'll see essentially very clean sides, not a lot there, but on the very bottom, there are two different speakers. They say stereo speakers we're going to test them out later in this video and then, of course, the charging port which they have some very impressive claims. For this. They say that this little charging port on the bottom, you can charge it with 18 watts and in 15 minutes get seven hours or the battery. So we're gonna talk more about that later.

On. Looking at the front, then you see a very normal looking phone honestly, it almost looks like a sort of older design in a way where you have a really chunky, bezel, all the way around the entire phone, which is a little unfortunate now. Another thing you also see is Google is unique in that you can squeeze the sides right there and Google Assistant comes up. Hey Google, tell me a joke. Times Square, so you'll see on the phone right here it comes with the latest Android.

Now they promise that you're, always going to get Android before other people. So you have the newest, updated Android at all times. It looks really cool, in my opinion, I'm trying to use it backwards here. So you have your little home button right there. It brings you back home if you sly, swipe up sort of like apple you'll, see the open, apps right there and sort of little quick shortcuts on the bottom.

When you can swipe up again, you'll see all your different apps. So honestly, this is a lot like a Chromebook in the interface. They were sort of standardized. That and I do like that. Now here you have your typical, you know swipe around look at your apps, or you can swipe the other way and get into like a Google, just whatever updates for your day.

Basically, your assistant, the interface, is honestly, it's pretty nice I like this, and it is essentially going to be the latest and greatest Android Google is, you know, they're the best with Android, and it makes sense that they'll bundle it in so nicely on here. So I've been using the S 10 for quite some time now, and you can really see and feel the difference between these two phones how this one's a lot of lighter, the pixels lighter it feels cheaper, and you can really tell that the mechanical features were a little compromised on this phone. Now, that being said, I don't think this phone is really going to beat out the flagship phones that cost $1000. But if this is going for almost a third of the price of a lot of those phones, it makes sense that this is gonna, be cutting a lot of corners. But honestly this software, as I, said before it definitely makes up for in this phone easily feels, like you know, a six or $700 phone, despite being only three or four hundred dollars.

So now the camera on this phone, there is a 12 point, two megapixel camera on the back and then eight on the front. So not the best looking cameras there, but you will find out that the cameras are actually really packing a punch and a really high quality. You know- maybe it's not a thirty megapixel camera on the back. Maybe there aren't three cameras, no telephoto, nothing like that, but this is where the software starts to kick in, like I said so, you have some really cool features in the camera app when you open it up. You know, of course you have panorama in portrait mode.

Portrait mode is sort of new to this, that's one of the things that they were rolling out. You also have a really nice interface, where, if you're just shooting automatic, it's really, really easy to use, and it shoots really great pictures. So I'll just take a picture right here of this box, and I'll show you what it looks like with my phone, which is the s10 as well as this phone right here, and you can really see the difference. So now, if you go over to Moore, this is where it gets really cool. You have nitrite right here which takes perfect low-light pictures.

You just have to hold it steady, and it takes slightly longer pictures, although I will say that just using it is really nice. There's a great software there, where it's sort of taking a longer exposure and trying not to blur it as well as it can, and honestly it does a great job of that just looking at this, so in the more tab, besides a night site, you also photo booth, which is kind of fun it'll. Just take you know multiple pictures of you like a photo booth. Would you have slo-mo? You have Google sense, which of course you can use an assistant as well and that'll. You know identify things that you're looking at, and then you have photos for you're nice.

Photosphere is a really cool concept where you can, it'll tell you to take pictures at different angles, and it'll put it together to like a big panorama that you can look around at 360 degrees. But honestly it takes a long time for the photos to actually process and mash together, because the processor on here isn't really that powerful and from my experience, the photos for your pictures sometimes didn't come out quite as well as you wanted them to so guys. This is video mode right here when you're shooting a video. This is what it's gonna look like and sound like. Let me know down in the comments below what you think of this, honestly.

I think the audio might be a little better here, because I'm in the studio so keep in mind if you're out in public. It might not sound quite as good as this, so we talked about the camera. Next is the mechanical features of this. Like I said it's a lighter phone, it's made with a polycarbonate back, it's polished on the top right there and sort of matte on the rest of it, although it is still the same piece of plastic all the way across, so you're, not having that nice glass finish that you might be used to. You have a bright orange power button on the side.

I'm, not a huge fan of that. Maybe some people are the larger bezel is a little of an eyesore, and again it's not waterproof. So if you drop this in the water, you're not going to be saving this, like you might with the iPhone or the Galaxy. You know with you know they could drop in the water. For like thirty minutes and be fine, so a big trade-off there, that's one place where they cut a lot of money out was in the mechanical design and sort of the case of this entire phone.

Now, to just do a really quick speaker test, I'm going to compare it to the s10, maybe not a fair comparison, but just to give you a reference for how good this one is or isn't so starting off with the Pixel 3a. So what else comes in the box with your Google Pixel? First, I'm shooting this video right now with the Google Pixel. So hopefully, this one's still good you'll have a manual right there telling you basically everything about it, also the little sim tool right there. Then you have your gigantic power block, and now this thing is huge because it's going to be required in order to support the 18 watt charging which charges your phone way faster than most other things out there. You also have this little adapter right there, so USB see on that side plugs into your phone and then over there will plug into any other older phone.

You can also use that for a lot of other things, just a neat little adapter to have a lot of phones come with that now. What a lot of phones might not come with yet is the double-ended USB-C charging cable right there. So if you have an old laptop, that's not USB-C! You know you don't you're going to want to buy an adapter to plug this in, but it's really nice for a lot of newer laptops like, for example, my HP Specter, which has more USB-C ports than anything else, and so it's nice that they're finally doing a double-ended USB-C to charge and to plug in now getting into the electrical components of this like I said before. You cannot have an SD card on here, and you cannot have wireless charging on there, plugging in with the USB-C on the bottom, and charging very quickly might make up for that. Honestly, in my opinion, where you can charge, like I, said seven hours worth of battery in 15 minutes of charging, that's very, very impressive! There's a 3000 William hour battery in this.

So it definitely should. Last you all day they claimed 30 hours, so is that really a battery upgrade I? Think more of it? Is a software upgrade on here, where they're better at managing your battery and better at managing the power usage on here to make it last as long as possible. So as far as the display goes on this, its OLED with fog plus so not a bad screen, it's 2,200 by 1080 pixels, so you're going to have you know. HD is what you're looking at, but it's not going to be a 4k screen, not that it makes a huge difference to me. In my opinion, also, the brightness on this is decent right now, I'm in a studio, if you go outside, it might be a little tricky to see this you're not going to have the maximum brightness that you have, unlike the s10.

So as far as sensors go on this, you don't have a heart rate sensor. Unfortunately, but you have a fingerprint sensor on the back. You have the active edge where you can squeeze on the sides. You also have all the standard things like you know, magnets and whatever else inside the phone that'll be your normal sensors. Even though there is no heart rate sensor on here, you can still get google fit, and you can use it quite a bit with you know how far you're walking in a day and stuff like that.

So, of course it is gonna, be very well compatible with Google Pay, which, in my opinion, is really nice, so you don't have to go into the app or anything instead as long as you sign in you just tap it, and you'll have Google Pay, you know working and paying with your credit card. That seems a little unsafe to me, I kind of like how other phones require you to use touch ID again too really. You know verify that it is you, and you do need to use your credit card now. The actual processor inside this is a 600 series Snapdragon, which is your know, significantly slower than the 800 series you'll see in like the Google Pixel 3, so a little of a downgrade there. But again, Google comes through with the lighter software on here and, if you're, using a lot of Google programs or if you're just texting or calling it's definitely a very quick phone, you know and once you get used to it, it's not really a problem.

As far as security goes. This is secure but tighten as I said. So that's like Google's sort of security line. Is there tighten, so that should be pretty safe to use. Although I will say, the fingerprint sensor on the back is slightly less safe and less secure than some other ones out there.

Another reason I really liked the Google phones, it's the compatibility with so many other Google products available out there, and they're all great products, and none of them are really that expensive. So Google Phi is a great example of a provider for this phone, which is really cheap and flexible. It's great if you're going international or if you use you know a little of data one month and a lot the next month, so definitely a great plan, and if you're going to get google fight, it makes so much more sense to get it with a Google Pixel, because you're going to have smarter coverage, as they say, with more places, so you're going to have you know, active Wi-Fi hotspots and just a lot of other benefits in using this phone with Google 5. Now, on top of that, you also have the compatibility with this among any other Google device, so Google home, for example, or a Chromecast or maybe a Chromebook whatever it is. It's going to be really seamless between this and any other Google device.

That's what Google really shines and that's what they do best in now, unless you're looking to get an older model of a phone I think this phone is by far the most economically efficient phone on the market today, coming in just $400. I think this is gonna, be a really hot seller for Google for a lot of different reasons. So because the average American household income is only between like 65 and 75 thousand, if you're a family of four or five and everybody wants to have a flagship phone, that's going to be really, really expensive to drop. We know five thousand dollars every year to get new phones or maybe five thousand dollars every other year, regardless. That's a lot of money for people to spend.

So if you're able to buy this for four hundred dollars, or honestly I got this one for three hundred just by going to Best Buy, they have a sale right now, where they give you a hundred dollars back when you buy this and set it up there, it's really a great phone for that price and I. Think Google cut the right corners on this, where you have a slightly cheaper mechanical bill, but it still looks perfect. Maybe you don't have the waterproofing, but honestly, how often are you dropping in the water- hopefully not too often, and if you are just get a case for it, that's waterproof. Now, on top of that, you have, if you don't like the security on here, if you want to have something more secure than the fingerprint sensor just use, you know of more advanced password and disable the fingerprint. You can also disable saying Google Pay if you want, if you don't like the security on that.

So big summary right here, it's going to be a cheaper mechanical, build. There is a slower processor on board, but that's basically, all they cut on corners. That has a great camera has a great battery. It charges really fast and the overall you know the interface on this is gonna, be great. You're going to have the newest from Google all the time.

You're going to have Google Assistant on here, and it's going to be super compatible with anything in your home. So I would give this phone five stars for the price keep in mind. That is, for the price, but of course, if you're ever comparing it to you like an iPhone or a s10 or something of that sort, I, don't really think it has a leg to stand on there. That's my opinion. Let me know what you guys.

Think down in the comments below, do you like this phone and are you going to get it? Let me know why. Thank you all for watching, I'll see you next time.

Source : Mike O'Brien