Pixel 6a: A Budget Phone Still Worth Getting In 2023?
I recently reviewed one of the best budget phones on the market — the Pixel 6a.
I took a look at four of the available budget smartphones on the market: The Galaxy A53 5G, the OnePlus Nord N20 5G, the Motorola Edge, and the Google Pixel 6A.
I decided to test out the Pixel because I needed a phone to test out Android features and software. For me, I’d like to have stock Android and the knowledge that I’ll get the best available software support, so I went with Google’s own Pixel 6A.
The Pixel 6A came out in late July last year as a budget alternative to the Pixel 6. I reviewed the Pixel 6 a year or so ago and I really liked it. Well of course since then we’ve seen the release of the Pixel 7. The current prices on the Canadian Google store show that you can get the Pixel 6A for $499, while the Pixel 7 is on sale for $699. So where does the Pixel 6A fit in exactly? Is it a value phone under $500, or should one find the extra $200 and get the 7?
Let’s dig in!
Display
So what do you get from a Pixel 6A? Let’s start with a 6.1-inch Full HD OLED display at 429 pixels per inch. It’s an always-on display and it’s capable of HDR as well. It’s just a touch smaller of a display than the Pixel 7. But it’s the same size screen as the phone I use daily, my iPhone 13. The Pixel’s display can achieve a maximum brightness of 505 nits with the manual brightness slider but gets up above 800 with the use of adaptive brightness. That’s about the same brightness as the iPhone 13, but less than the 1400 nits peak brightness of the Pixel 7. I find it’s plenty bright for normal daily use though.
It also has a 60Hz refresh rate on the display, which was the standard until a couple of years ago when we started seeing high refresh rates from flagship phones, providing 90Hz like on the Pixel 7, or 120Hz like on the latest Samsung Galaxy S23. Essentially a higher refresh rate means a smoother experience when it comes to the software, as well as with gaming. 60Hz is certainly what you would expect on a budget phone and in fact, that’s what you still get on the iPhone 14 unless you spring for the 14 Pro or Pro Max. My iPhone 13 might feel a little smoother overall when compared side by side, but generally, I don’t see it as a huge issue when you’re just looking at the Pixel 6A display on its own. Just don’t sit down and compare it to a more expensive flagship phone with a higher refresh rate and you generally won’t notice an issue here.
The display isn’t anything special, but it does the job.
Performance
One advantage you get when choosing the Pixel 6A as your budget phone is the processor and the general performance of the device. That’s because it comes with the Google Tensor system on a chip, Google’s own custom-designed chip, and on Geekbench scores, it blows the other budget processors away in both single and dual-core tests. Not only that but it includes a TPU or Tensor Processing Unit that is specially designed to do machine learning tasks, which are indeed impressive.
Google shipped the Tensor in the Pixel 6 and touted its ability to do specialized tasks like live text translation in messages, motion mode which allows you to blur moving objects in the background while keeping the subject in focus, and Magic Eraser which allows you to literally delete background people and objects from your photos.
When you compare the Pixel 6a against flagships it looks a lot slower on paper. The fastest phone on the Geekbench rankings is the OnePlus 11, with a single processor score of 1340 and a multi-core score of 4765, which is and you have to scroll down quite a way to find the 6a at 1019 and 2725 on single and multi-core respectively. That said the average user won’t notice a ton of lag or slowness from the Pixel in their everyday use. As I say it’s still faster than the other budget alternatives.
The Pixel also has 6GB of RAM and ships with 128GB of storage which is pretty decent all things considered.
Software
Now hardware is only part of the story, right? Software is at least 50% of our experience with a phone, if not more. So what’s the software like?
Android 13, which now comes preloaded on the Pixel 6a is essentially a refinement of the major overhaul that was Android 12.
The biggest thing you’ll notice about Android 13 if you’re coming from an earlier version is the aesthetic experience. Google touted its Material You experience when Android 12 came out initially. I quite like it. Basically, you can set your system colors to be complimentary to your wallpaper. Google will recommend colors from your wallpaper and you can select which color palette you want. Then, the system font, widgets, notification dots, and even your app icons will match that color style. It makes for a pretty clean and uniform look. Not all apps are compatible with “Material You” however, which kind of messes with the look. So you can remove them from the home screen and just go get them later in the app drawer if you want to use them.
Navigating Android is a bit of a change for me, but generally, I like it. Swipe up from the home screen to get the app drawer and then scroll from there. Swipe down from the home screen, or any place, and you can get your notifications.
This is cool. Android groups notifications by app, but if you slide down on one of the notification groupings, they expand downward so you can see each one.
On top of the notifications, you get a few quick actions. Things like the Wifi and Bluetooth settings, as well as the flashlight and Do Not Disturb. But if you swipe down on those controls, you get the full control panel, which is a completely customizable set of controls, similar to the control center on the iPhone. It’s got everything from home controls, Airplane mode, wallet, auto-rotate, battery saver, google cast, camera, and even a Scan QR code button.
If you are playing music or a podcast or something, you also get this nice-looking audio control interface with album art, and your play/pause/skip controls, which I think is a nice touch.
The Pixel 6a has an always-on display, so you can always see basic information like the time, weather, notification icons by app, or even now playing. I really like this, especially since my iPhone 13 doesn’t have this feature. You can quickly get the time or see what’s playing without touching your phone — which honestly will save a lot of distraction.
Fingerprint Scanner
But if you are going to pick up the phone, you can use the in-display fingerprint scanner. I did complain extensively about the slowness of the fingerprint scanner in the Pixel 6 when I reviewed it last year but I’m not seeing any issues with the Pixel 6a. Maybe I’m just having good luck or maybe they made a few tweaks after the issues with the 6 but I’m pleasantly surprised here with the speed and the reliability improvement here.
Battery Life
In terms of battery life, the Pixel 6a has a battery capacity of 4410 mAh, which is about the same as the Pixel 7, but less than other budget phones like the Motorola Edge which has 5,000 mAh and claims to last for two days. I haven’t really put it through its paces but GSM Arena actually rates the 6a better than the Pixel 6. According to them, you can expect to get almost 24 hours of 3G talk time, 15 hours of web browsing, and up to 20 hours of video playback.
I used it lightly around my house without plugging it in for 2 full days and it still had a 40% charge remaining, however, I was on wifi the whole time so take that with a grain of salt.
One thing lacking on the Pixel 6a is wireless charging. This wouldn’t have been a big deal a few years ago, but in 2023 it’s a standard feature on many phones. Like most phones, it also doesn’t include a charge in the box either. You simply get an included USB-C cable.
That said if you do get Google’s official 30W charger separately, the 6a does support fast charging and can get up to 42% charge in 30 minutes if it’s completely dead.
Photography
Now finally let’s talk about the camera system. The 6a features a 12 MP wide-angle camera, a 12 MP ultrawide camera, and an 8 MP selfie camera on the front.
The 12 MP wide-angle camera is a very different sensor than the 50 MP sensor on the Pixel 7. The Pixel 7 doesn’t actually produce 50 MP photos but instead uses a process called pixel binning to pack a lot more information and detail into a 12 MP photo. Because the 6a can’t do that, you are losing out on image detail to some extent. That doesn’t mean your photos will turn out poorly by any means, but you won’t be able to zoom in much without losing image quality.
Generally speaking, the main camera is really solid, especially for this price range. When I compare the camera to my iPhone 13 camera and I look at the photos side by side, it’s about 50% of the photos I like better come from the Pixel. The photos it puts out are just a touch cooler than the iPhone. In some photos, the Pixel is a bit more contrasty, which is a bit of an aesthetic difference.
Low-light shooting is going to be ok but not great with this phone. Of course, the Pixel has the Google trademarked feature, Night Sight, which uses long exposure, and computational photography to bring accurate and vivid colors out of extremely low light situations. This is where you’d really want the 50 MP sensor that’s in the Pixel 7 because with Pixel binning you’re able to capture a lot more detail from a dark environment. I took several photos with the 6a, and you get fairly mixed results. I will say the Pixel does a good job of bringing through the detail of the subjects of the photos but the background seems to lose a ton of detail, with a lot of digital artifacts where the camera just can’t see what’s there.
I compared some of the shots to the iPhone 13 and I found the iPhone did a much better job of bringing out the colors and detail of the environment. Still, low-light photography is usable on the Pixel 6a and it’s certainly still going to get the point across.
The ultrawide lens performs just as well as the main sensor. Shots look about the same in terms of quality, color, and contrast between the two cameras.
The selfie camera is pretty good too. It’s an 8 MP camera with an 84-degree field of view. I find the photos to have great contrast and even exposure. The selfie-portrait mode looks pretty good as well.
The Pixel 6a can also capture Full HD or 4K footage at either 30 or 60 fps. And the results look great overall though I certainly didn’t put it through its paces.
Worth It?
And that’s pretty much my review of the Pixel 6a. I think it’s a great budget phone at its current price of $499 Canadian. I love the always-on display, along with the fairly reliable in-display fingerprint scanner. Google’s customer Tensor chip makes the phone feels pretty snappy overall, and I like the aesthetics and some of the conveniences of Android 13. On top of that, you get pretty solid battery life and a camera system that is quite good for a budget phone.
Now is it worth it to pay an extra $200 and upgrade to the Pixel 7? That depends. You’re going to get a slight speed bump because the 7 has the Tensor G2 chip. You’ll get slightly better photos from the main camera with the 50 MP sensor. Plus you get wireless charging and face unlock. None of those features are total game changes in my opinion so I’d say if you’re looking to save money, you won’t be totally missing out if you just stick with the 6a.
