Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Pixel 8a: 5 things I LOVE (and 3 things I DON’T!)”.
The pixel a series is Google’s budget version of the Google pixel and the AA this year is no exception and it’ll be compared. I think pretty fairly to the Google pixel 8, because Google have got themselves in a bit of a weird situation here, but as a standalone upgrade from the pixel 7A from last year. There’S some things I really like about the pixel 8A and some things that I’m a little bit on the fence about this. Video is brought to you by the cook tech, 20 power bank, and this is a really nicely designed power bank which we’ll talk to you.
A little bit more about later later on. Let me just start with a few of my favorite upgrades from last year’s pixel 7A, and this year, like I said there are some really nice upgrades the first. One of them is the design and I’m a big fan of this, because this year the glossy back has finally gone.
I can’t stand glossy and this year it’s still a plastic bag, but we have this really nice feeling matte texture to it, and I feel this is probably as premium as plastic can feel, and the bay blue on the pixel 8A is way more blue than it Is on the pixel 8 Pro and I’m so for it. It has a more rounded design from last year’s 7A and it does feel a lot more comfortable when you’re holding it. And, of course, this does look like the older brother of the pixel 8 and at first glance you might actually struggle to see the difference, but it is there. Just. The pixel 8A definitely feels a little bit more rounded than the regular pixel 8, and I’m fine with this. It is a shame, though, that the bezels on the pixel 8A are huge and Google says that they have shrunk from last year’s 7A, but I mean if it has shrunk, then it is just like my n, because to the naked eye it just doesn’t look like It’S changed at all when you first look at the phone. They are a bit of a standout and like instantly noticeable, but I’ve noticed that just using the phone over the last couple of days, you do get used to it and you don’t really notice them once you start using the phone, but I suppose bezel is how Google lets you know that this is their budget series phone. One part of the phone that I really like this year is the display and for a couple of reasons. First of all, it now goes to 120 HZ and last year’s pixel 7A was 90 htz.
So now that’s a really nice upgrade, and I know a lot of people might not even notice the upgrade from 90 to 100 and especially that it’s off by default. So you have to go into settings and turn on the 120 HZ smooth display, but having that makes it such a better experience, and sometimes you don’t need to notice every single change to have a better experience, and I just think 120 HZ should be the standard Across any sort of phone these days, the other really nice change is the brightness. So this now gets a new top peak screen, brightness at 2,000 nits and that’s 40 % brighter than last year’s pixel 7A, and usually this is something I wouldn’t notice living in the UK, because it’s always gray and miserable.
But actually, the past couple of days have been really bright and nice outside and I’ve really appreciated having that bigger brighter display. So I can actually view it properly in direct sunlight. There is a really minor upgrade, which I was hoping would be a little bit better and that’s the battery life now battery on the pixel 8A has gone by 100 Milah hours, huge change from Google, and this takes it to just under 5,000 Milah hours. So it is a bit bigger than it is on last year’s pixel 7A.
But again this is a pretty small chain, so I don’t think anyone’s going to really notice that 100 Milah hours, but so far in the past couple of days of me using the pixel 8A, it’s actually been fine. It can easily get to the end of the day with battery remaining, even if that’s kind of hitting around about 10 % battery left, it can still fully get you to the end of a day. One part of the B that I don’t like, though, is the charging speed and it is so slow and just seems to take forever to charge, and it is 18 W wire charging so the same as like the pixel 7A. But this is more of I think, a general pixel complaint than it is just specific to the AA and even slower is that snails pace of 7.5 W wireless charging? It’S there, it’s nice, that we have it, but at this point I would just plug it in talking of charging your pixel 8A, though, if you are out at and you ever need a power bank, then you might want to have a look at the cook. Tech.
20 power bank, this cook tech, 20 power bank – is got 25,000 milliamp hours and it’s airplane safe. So you can take it with you wherever and whenever you need it has a really nice Sleek design and it has a TFT display. So it can easily show you information like battery percentage, current and voltage, and I think this looks really cool. One of the added benefits of this power bank is that it can charge itself to 40 % in just 19 minutes and if it soundss like this is something that you might want to pick up. Then just check the description below, because there’ll be a link that can take you straight to away. You can buy that cup tech 20 power bank, the pixel 8A this year does have one really nice upgrade and we can’t complain about it, because that is the tensor G3 you’ll probably already know, but this is the same chip that is inside the pixel 8 and The pixel 8 Pro, which actually means a couple of things. Firstly, it gets a lot of the same.
Ai features like Circles of search, call, assist Magic editor and it will also get Gemini Nano with a future pixel update, so it can perform tasks on device locally. So for $ 499, you can still be getting the latest and greatest from Google in 2030 and when you think about it, that’s just a little bit mad. One thing that I was really hoping for was a more secure Face, Unlock like we had on the pixel 8 and the pixel 8 Pro, and thankfully, we’ve got this on the pixel 8A. It’S way more secure than face unlocks that we’ve had in the past, and it’s a nice upgrade because it now means class 3 Face Unlock and you can use it for Biometrics to unlock apps such as Banking and overall, it is just a better, faster, more secure Face Unlock and I’m really happy that we’ve got it when it comes to the cameras on the pixel 8A. Maybe it’s a bit disappointing here, but we are still using the cameras from the pixel 7A last year and I’m not saying it’s disappointing in terms of the quality, because we had a 64 megapix Main and a 30 megapixel Ultra wide last year, which we still have Now but maybe I was hoping for just a little bit of an UPG upgrade in how the cameras perform the pictures that we get here on the AA are really nice. You’Ve got great dynamic range, the highlights and low lights are fantastic and the pictures are really accurate to real life, as you expect with any Google pixel phone. This is still a camera Champion, which is what we really want to see, and the video is actually really crisp at 4K and on the face of it. Just comparing videos side by side does seem like the stabilization has got better and just overall, the video does weirdly.
Just look a little bit better for all the good that the pixel 8A does. It has given itself a bit of a problem because it’s the price, the price of the pixel AA, is in this weird Middle Ground. So, for $ 499, it’s incredibly close to the price of the pixel 8 and we’ve seen the regular pixel 8 on sale for just $ 50.
More and overall, that’s just a better deal. If this was maybe $ 399 and not $ 499, then it would be an absolute no-brainer. You could go out and get this and be really happy with what you get.
It would wipe the floor with any other phone at that price point, but $ 499. Just isn’t doing it for me when the pixel 8 is so close in price, but I go back to what I said earlier on that this is a really nice upgrade if you look at it going from a 7A to an 8A and if you want to Upgrade from the 7A, then I would say: do it because you get that 7 years of security updates and OS updates and you get Gemini Nano coming with a future update and so far we don’t know whether the pixel 78 is going to get this. So, as a standalone upgrade, I think the pixel 8A is really good, but as a standalone phone, maybe it’s not as tempting as it should be, because $ 499 is maybe just a little bit too close to that regular pixel 8. But let me know what you think in the comments: what do you think of the pricing and just overall the pixel 8A? I’M really interested to hear your thoughts on this one and, of course, subscribe to the Android authority YouTube channel before you head off, because we would really appreciate it. And if you do that, then we will see you in the next article. .