Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Pixel 8a tested: The MOST POWERFUL budget Android phone?”.
The Google pixel 8A is by far one of the best budget pixels Google has ever made. It also has the same tensor processor as the regular pixel 8 on paper, which made me wonder: is it really as powerful as the pixel 8 and is this the most powerful $ 500 phone that you can get compared to the competition? So I ran some Benchmark tests to find out all right. Look. I know that Benchmark tests don’t really matter in the real world. Most phones today can do everything we want them to do, but we use Ben marks to get a general idea of how well a phone behaves, especially under stress: does it overheat, does it slow down or does it keep running along nicely and we’ve seen that this Kind of stuff matters with previous phones in the pixel a series.
Google says that this is the same tensor G3 as the one on the flagship, pixel 8 and 8 Pro, but that doesn’t really mean much in our experience. The 6A didn’t perform as well as the 6 and the 6 Pro, and the 7A was also a little slower and a little worse than the 7 and the 7 Pro. So is that the case again with the pixel 88? To answer this, I ran geekbench 6 to measure CPU performance pc Mark work 3 to see how well the pixel 8A handles office and productivity tasks and several 3D Mark stress tests to look at GPU performance, and then I compared these against last year’s pixel 7A to See how much the 8A has improved and against the regular pixel a to see if the tensor G3 and the 8A is really just as good, and the results are actually positive. This time around the pixel 8A CPU performs better than the 7A, especially for multicore tasks, and it isn’t really that far off from the pixel 8, all three phones are pretty equal for the productivity tasks, though it’s curious that the older tensor G2 in the 7A handles Those better than the Noir tensor G3 in the 8A and 8 more on that in a little bit, though, the more interesting test results are the GPU stress tests.
Basically, we run the same test over and over again over many cycles and we measure the phone’s temperature to see how much it heats up and how the performance holds up over time. I wasn’t surprised to see that the pixel 8A handles these better than the 7A, but I was surprised to see it do better than the regular pixel 8 in both the wildlife and the wildlife extreme stress tests. It starts at the same level as the regular pixel. 8, but remains a bit more performant over the full 20 Cycles.
It also ends the last cycle, a degree or two cooler than the pixel 8A. Last year’s pixel 7A manages to keep it school too, but the GPU performance is clearly below both the 88 and the 8. What all of these tests tell me is that, unlike last years, Google has managed to eek out the best performance from the tensor G3 inside the pixel 8A.
The Thermals appear to be better and the performance is just as good, if not sometimes better than the more expensive pixel 8. That’S great news! If you buy the pixel 8A because you know you’re not getting a hamstr strong version of the tensor G3 – and I know noticed it in my hands on time with the phone too, it just feels snappier than my pixel 7A and just as good as my pixel 8 next, I wanted to look at how the pixel 8A does compare to the competition. There’S a problem, though, in the US there aren’t that many phones in the $ 500 price range there’s the OnePlus 12r and the OnePlus 12r and the OnePlus 12r.
But you get it. This price range seems to be left a bit empty by all the smartphone Brands, but some more expensive phones are now discounted to $ 500, so they’re worth considering in this comparison. Think of it like this. If you have around $ 500 to spend today, you can either buy a new pixel 8A at its launch price or an older phone uh that has already dropped in price. So what’s the better option? With that in mind, I also looked at the nothing phone 2, which is frequently discounted to 550 and the Samsung Galaxy s23 Fe, which is now down to 500 all three competitors, I’m looking at run, qualcomm’s high-end, Snapdragon, 8 ch among them the s23 Fe has the Oldest chip, the OnePlus 12r has the newest and the nothing phone 2 is in the middle and here’s how the pixel 8A fared in the CPU test. It was pretty much on par with all three phones for single core processing, but a little bit behind for the multi-core test. The OnePlus 12r, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, does much better, but we already knew that everything about that processor is more powerful than Google sensor G3.
The PC Mark test is where thex pixel8 A’s low score gives me pause once again, given how well the phone performs for most other tests, I’m not sure if Google is holding back the phone’s performance to improve battery life or, if there’s a bottleneck with productivity somewhere. I can’t say I’ve noticed such a big difference in real life, but my nothing phone 2 certainly feels a little snappier than the pixel 8A. Moving on to stress tests, things get very interesting.
The pixel 8A starts worse off than all three of its competitors, but remains more a throughout the 20 runs by the end it’s scoring higher than both the nothing phone 2 and the Galaxy s23 Fe and remaining cooler than both of them too, for a phone that Is $ 200 cheaper at the initial official pricing? That’S not bad at all. The pixel 8A will handle long, but casual gaming sessions very well. Only the OnePlus 12r does better thanks to its more modern chip and better Cooling and if you’re, looking for a $ 500 phone that can handle longer and more intense gaming sessions, then by all means just definitely check out the OnePlus 12r. It’S going to be far better than any of the others.
Basically, what I learned here is that the tensor G3 chip isn’t that bad. When it’s in a $ 500 product, I might not like Google’s tensors a lot more for more expensive flagships like the pixel 8 and the 8 Pro, but for the pixel 8A, it’s just more than enough. The phone surprisingly stands its ground to the competition, despite not having the best chip on paper, as the test showed. It’S still not the most powerful phone in this $ 500 price range, that’s the OnePlus 12r, but it offers a different set of advantages.
It’S smaller has better cameras, wireless charging and a stronger IP rating for water resistance, plus it has Google 7-year update, promise and should get Gemini Nano as a beta. With an update to me, this is much much more appealing than just pure power. What do you guys think, did you buy the pixel 8A, or is this a phone that you’re considering buying? Let me know in the comments and don’t foret get to follow Android Authority for all the latest news reviews, tests and more .