Pixel 8a review: Google brings its A-game to the mid-range, but also some surprises

I have a confession to make. 

I almost bought Google’s latest ‘mid-range’ phone, the Pixel 8a. As soon as it was announced, I realised that it came with a generous exchange price for my current phone, the Pixel 7. The prospect of upgrading to a 120hz screen, a smaller form factor, and seven years of updates was a bit tempting – even though my Pixel 7 is hardly old and works perfectly. But very soon I got to know that I’d be getting this review unit, so I thought I’d spend some time with it and then decide. 

I’ve now been using the Pixel 8a as my daily driver for a little over three weeks and have a clear idea of how good the phone is. So, what did I end up deciding? Am I going ahead with the purchase? You’ll have to read this review to find out.

Variants and hardware

The Pixel 8a is available in two variants, one with 128 GB of storage for Rs 52,999, and one with 256 GB of storage for Rs 59,999 (although, like I mentioned, there are some generous exchange offers going). Both feature 8 GB of RAM. 

For a flagship phone, 128 GB of storage would have seemed a bit anaemic. But for what is ostensibly a mid-range phone, I suppose this just about clears the bar. I say ostensibly because at the same price, there is at least one phone that runs a flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and comes with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage to boot (the IQOO 12).

The Google Pixel 8a carries over the aesthetic of the Pixel 8 with slightly more rounded corners, making it look almost iPhone-esque with the screen off. The variant I have is the rather fetching Porcelain white colour, but it’s also available in a black (Obsidian), a blue (Bay), and a green (Aloe). I was delighted to discover that Google has gone with a plastic back for the Pixel 8a – not only does it look and feel every bit as premium as the glass backs, it makes the phone very grippy to hold. I’ve been using it without a case and not once did I feel like it would slip out of my hands or my pocket. I don’t use this term lightly, but I consider the Pixel 8a an ergonomic triumph.   

This is in stark contrast with its pricier stablemate, the Pixel 8, where you’re in constant terror of the slippery glass slab escaping your grasp and plummeting to the ground. I would in fact pay a premium for this kind of plastic back construction. 

The other notable aspect of the Pixel 8a’s hardware is the sizable bezels. The bezels make the front of the Pixel 8a hark back to phones of the pre-pandemic era. Of course, this is not a dealbreaker, but it definitely stands out from the competition. That said, you will probably forget about them in a couple of days.

The screen itself is a 120Hz 1080p OLED with a peak brightness of 2000 nits. It’s not quite a flagship grade display (it’s missing Dolby Vision and HDR 10+ etc) but the brightness is frankly the most important attribute in daily use. 

The cameras are carried over from the Pixel 7a, so it’s a 64MP 1/1.73” main sensor and a 13MP ultrawide. The selfie camera is a 13MP unit as well. Both the ultrawide and selfie cameras lack autofocus. 

At 4492 mAh, the Pixel 8a has a slightly smaller battery than the Pixel 8. The top charging speed is a glacial 18W, with proportionately slow 7W wireless charging (but on the glass half-full side, it has wireless charging!). Ingress protection is a decent IP67, and, as is custom, there’s regrettably no headphone jack.

In use

Considering the Pixel 8a has the same chipset, similar dimensions, and many of the same features and specs as the Pixel 8, you might think the user experience is so similar that you may as well read my review of the Pixel 8 instead. But it’s a little more complicated. 

Firstly, I want to reiterate the superb ergonomics of the Pixel 8a. The Pixel 8, despite similar dimensions, was slippery and therefore challenging to use one-handed without a case. The Pixel 8a is beautifully grippy to hold and I can very well imagine slapping a tempered glass cover on the screen and using it happily without a case. To me, this alone makes it a standout device. 

Coming to the rest of it, the Tensor G3 may only have the chops of a mid-range processor by the standards of the day, but the Pixel 8a is very well optimised and delivers fast and fluid performance in day-to-day use, helped in no small measure by the 120Hz refresh rate. 

I am not sure whether it’s my imagination, but the fingerprint sensor also seems to be working better than in Pixels of the past, although still not nearly best in class. For what it’s worth, the face unlock also works reasonably well.

The display is plenty bright and even outdoors in the sun you can see everything clearly and vividly. Once you are used to this new generation of displays, going back even to my Pixel 7 felt like a serious downgrade.

The bright and punchy display also means that watching Reels or Netflix is a real pleasure. This is enhanced by the very loud and clear stereo speakers on the Pixel 8a. There is a real weight to the sound as well as some sense of stereo separation while watching videos.

My relationship with the Pixel OS keeps swinging between love and hate. I still resent the various limitations it has vis-à-vis its Chinese rivals, but I must also highlight all the things it does very well. Circle-to-search is very well implemented, and it’s very quickly become my default way to search for all kinds of things. Some of the AI razzmatazz also works well, including Best Take, Magic Eraser and especially the Audio Magic Eraser. There are also small elements of Pixel OS that are thoughtfully designed, including the little details of how gesture navigation is implemented, that set it above its competition. 

Needless to say the downsides of the Pixel 8 also present themselves here. The Tensor G3 is not a flagship-grade chipset. Not only does it fall behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in performance, it also suffers from inferior thermal performance. Now, it’s a credit to Google’s engineers that you very rarely feel this difference, and in most day-to-day use it feels entirely like using a flagship phone, but push things a little bit and you can hit the limits of the chipset. 

Shoot a bunch of 4K videos outdoors on a hot day, or indulge in some intense gaming, and the Pixel 8a gets warm. So for those that demand top class sustained performance in this price range, this would not be the best choice. 

Battery life is absolutely solid. And the testament to this is that while the wired charging on the Pixel 8a is painfully slow, I’ve almost had no reason to use it, since I wirelessly charge overnight. I’ve not had a day where the battery threatened to run out entirely, although on a couple of heavy days it dropped to single digits by bedtime. It’s roughly a 6-hour screen-on time phone, which is about as much as you expect from a relatively compact device. But it must be reiterated that 18W wired charging is a disgrace, especially at this price point. The IQOO 12 I had mentioned earlier, which features a flagship processor and specs at the same price, also boasts 120W wired charging.

I must also mention that this is the first A-series Pixel phone which promises 7 years of OS and security updates, which makes it as future-proof as smartphones get these days. 

Camera

The age-old Pixel tradeoff has been that for the money you pay, you get a less powerful chipset and fewer features, but all that is made-up for by the stellar camera, so I was curious to see how the more affordable Pixel 8a performed in this department. To cut a long story short, I was a little disappointed. 

I genuinely expected overall performance to be on par with my Pixel 7 (perhaps even better), but in many regards the Pixel 8a’s camera felt slightly inferior. Before I get down to my whines, let me clarify that overall the camera is excellent, especially for photos. At this price point, you’re unlikely to find anything better.  

Now on to my complaints. The first noticeable weakness is autofocus. In good light, it works fine, but when you’re shooting in low to very low light you see the camera hunting and giving up a few too many times, while the Pixel 7 breezes through.

Despite the higher megapixel count, the images are also a tiny bit less detailed than those from my Pixel 7. Skin and fabric textures are just a smidge less crisp. This could be because the smaller sensor forces it to use slower shutter speeds more often.  

There is also one other issue that is Pixel-wide. As of a few months ago, my Pixel 7 also got ultraHDR for photos. Now when a Pixel camera encounters a black/grey subject in relatively low light, some of the black detail (like strands of hair) tends to smudge into blocks (so far so normal). But when you view these images on ultra-HDR displays the smudging looks painfully obvious, and the boundary between the detailed image and the black blocks is vivid. If you post the same image on Instagram or send it on WhatsApp it won’t be visible, and therefore I cannot even demonstrate the problem here, but while looking at it on your phone (or on any other HDR compatible device) the problem looks stark. I do hope someone at Google is working on fixing this. 

Okay now that I’ve got my whining out of the way, let me get back to the good stuff. The camera is still broadly Pixel-grade. In most circumstances it delivers great images with accurate colours and a great tone curve. The auto white-balance biases to a cooler colour tone than that of the Pixel 7, and what you prefer will come down to a matter of taste (I prefer the Pixel 7). Skin tones are overall excellent and accurate, and once again easily put most of the competition to shame. 

The ultrawide, despite lack of autofocus, performs creditably, with consistent colour performance to the main unit. 2X digital zoom images are impressive, although again, not quite as good as the Pixel 7 (and well below the Pixel 8). 

Low light performance is solid, although here the smaller size of the sensor comes into play, and the camera is forced to use slightly slower shutter speeds, leading to less sharp images, sometimes.

Video performance is generally good. While in bright to average light the results are very good, as the light levels drop, the video starts to get noisy, with some dropped frames to boot. This is mainly a result of the smaller sensor. Video results are still very much usable, but the Pixel 8a would perhaps not be your first choice if video is a high priority.

Overall, while the camera is good, I found that the ratio of great images it achieves is notably below that of my Pixel 7, not to mention the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. 

Should I buy it?

If  you’ve read my reviews of Pixel devices before, you’ll know I am a fan of them. I own and use a Pixel 7. So I am a bit conflicted on how to conclude this review. On the one hand, the Pixel 8a serves up a lot of what makes the Pixel 8 a terrific phone, including the compact size, the fast and fluid performance, the bright screen, wireless charging and all the Pixel exclusive features. But on the other hand, it does fall short of its pricier sibling on the camera front. While the Pixel 8a’s camera will match or exceed virtually every competitor at its price point, the fact that it has some noticeable drawbacks gives me pause.

If you like compact devices, then the Pixel 8a is a very good choice. I cannot think of any other compact device at a comparable price point (iPhone 13, Samsung Galaxy S23 - both a bit long in the tooth) that I would pick over this. So in that sense it stands alone in its price category.

But if you don’t mind a bigger device, then a phone like the IQOO 12 poses a stiff challenge, delivering spades of value, and comfortably exceeding the Pixel 8a in virtually every metric. I don’t expect the IQOO’s camera to be quite as good, but it should still be a solid performer.

If you’re simply a Pixel fan and want to pick up a new one, and you have the Rs 10,000 extra to spend on the Pixel 8 (or the patience to wait for the Pixel 9) I would recommend you do that. The Pixel 8 has a decidedly superior camera, and hopefully the Pixel 9 will also build on that. If you don’t mind a 90Hz screen, bigger size and slightly older processor, the Pixel 7 is also still available for a little less cash.  

Of course, when you factor in the generous exchange offers (since the Pixel 8a is new), then the decision to pick it over alternatives will become a bit more compelling, as long as these offers last.    

And to answer the question I raised at the beginning, no, I will not be buying the Pixel 8a to replace my Pixel 7.

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