The $499 Google Pixel 8a might be the most reliable phone of the year

The smartphone landscape is constantly evolving. Not only has the high end gotten more powerful and more flexible, but the midrange sector has also seen its fair share of new competitors pop up that are anything but bystanders. These phones — devices like the Samsung Galaxy A35 5G or OnePlus 12R — offer incredibly solid experiences that are next to flagship-level at more than half the price.

But there’s no phone on the market I’ve tested that’s quite as reliable as the Pixel 8a. It’s Google’s latest midrange smartphone that delivers meaningful upgrades from the Pixel 7a, and it has a great balance of specs and features, all for less than $500.

Are there areas where it could improve? Sure. Is Google following a somewhat-tired formula with its A-series? I suppose. But there’s no denying that the Pixel 8a is the best smartphone to buy if you’re on a budget. Here’s why.

What I liked about it

Looking good, feeling good

Google is a master at acing the design of its cheaper phones. The Pixel 8a uses aluminum and plastic on the back for its construction, along with Gorilla Glass 3 to protect the display. Despite the use of plastic, it’s every bit as well built as its flagship brethren. It feels like you’re holding a phone that’s twice the price, which is one of my favorite aspects.

The Pixel 8a sports a matte finish on the back that’s quite soft, although it does make the phone a tad bit slippery. To accommodate, the company threw in one of its silicone cases for my review, which is as good as you’d expect a silicone case to be: clicky buttons, a grippy texture and an absolute lint magnet.

Google sent me the Aloe color, which is a very vibrant seafoam green, and it’s far more saturated than the Mint finish it introduced on the Pixel 8. I’m actually a fan of the look, but if it’s too polarizing for you, it’s also available in Obsidian, Porcelain and Bay (aka blue).

Looks aside, the Pixel 8a is wildly comfortable to hold. Google gave it more aggressive curves on the sides than previous Pixel models, and that goes for the corners too (which heavily remind me of the “Normal SpongeBob” meme). At 6.63 ounces, it’s light enough so that it doesn’t get uncomfortable over time, and it’s a great size, thanks to its 6.1-inch screen. You can easily use this phone with one hand, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of midrange phones nowadays.

One last note on design: It comes with IP67 certification, so it’s safe against dirt and if you drop it in the pool this summer.

A gorgeous screen that’s even brighter and faster

Google took the Pixel 8a’s display up a few notches from the 7a. The 6.1-inch panel now uses the company’s “Actua” branding, which means you get a flagship-level screen at an affordable price.

For the 8a, Google kept the same Full HD+ resolution as the 7a, but it doubled the maximum brightness from 1,000 nits to 2,000 nits. This makes the screen much easier to see in bright conditions like direct sunlight, and the difference is immediately noticeable. The refresh rate has also increased from 90Hz to 120Hz, which helps things like animations and scrolling look way smoother. You have to turn the feature on yourself in settings (it’s called “Smooth Display”), but trust me, it’s totally worth it.

Everything from long articles to movies and games looks great on the Pixel 8a’s display, as it should: It’s basically the same screen as the more expensive Pixel 8. Combined with its comfortable size and increased brightness, this is the best display ever on a Pixel A-series phone.

Cameras that punch above their weight class

You’ve heard us talk about how good the cameras are on Pixel phones in the past, and that’s not changing with the 8a. I’ve been capturing some pictures with its 64-megapixel main camera and 13-megapixel ultrawide camera, and they’re exactly what you’d expect: photos with excellent color, exposure and white balance that still maintain Google’s classic contrast-leaning aesthetic.

Technically, the Pixel 8a’s camera hardware is a few steps behind what’s on the Pixel 8, but I’ve taken some photos with both phones side by side and it’s impossible to tell the difference. Unless you’re going to load the photos on a computer and zoom way in, you’d be hard-pressed to tell that the 8 is any better than the 8a. Google’s algorithms manage to keep up the same quality as its flagship cameras, even at night.

In fact, the only time I ever noticed a difference was when taking pictures with the ultrawide camera at night. The details aren’t quite as sharp, and there seems to be a bit more noise than what you’d get from the Pixel 8. The ultrawide camera on the 8a also isn’t as wide as what you’ll find on the 8, but it’s not a big deal.

Video quality is really solid, especially for a $500 phone. Obviously, the 4K clips you’ll capture won’t quite match the quality of flagship phones, but it gets the job done.

Because it’s a Pixel phone, Google throws in its usual mix of capturing and editing tools that rely on computational photography algorithms, advanced processing and — you guessed it — AI. From Magic Editor to Magic Eraser, Audio Magic Eraser to Photo Unblur, Super Res Zoom to Night Sight, there’s a lot of functionality at your disposal to help your pictures and videos turn out exactly the way you want them.

Overall, these cameras punch well above their weight class. It’s next to impossible to find a comparably priced smartphone that has cameras like the Pixel 8a. Google continues to flex on the competition with its latest midranger, and at this point, it’s getting brutal for everyone else.

The same performance as the regular Pixel 8

Inside the Pixel 8a, Google includes its Tensor G3 processor that debuted on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro last year. Nothing has changed about the chipset; it’s the exact same one you’ll find in the more expensive phones.

This means you get to enjoy the same level of performance with this $500 phone as its pricier siblings, which is super sweet. Using this phone feels like you’re using one that’s twice the price: Apps open quickly, multitasking is a breeze and even gaming isn’t a hassle for this phone. The chip is just a few steps behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in terms of raw performance, and in a midrange phone, that’s perfectly acceptable. The only phone in this price range that comes close is the OnePlus 12R, which actually ships with the 8 Gen 2 on deck.

I ran some tests with Geekbench 6 and compared the results to the OnePlus 12R and Galaxy A35 5G, and the Pixel 8a holds its own well. While the 12R beats it out, you’ll still get excellent performance on the 8a.

Paired with the Tensor G3 is 8GB of RAM, which is adequate for most users. You also get a choice between 128GB or 256GB of storage, a first for Pixel A-series phones and life-changing for those who always run out of storage.

Intelligent software that’s ready for the AI revolution

Google’s signature Pixel experience can be found throughout Android 14 on the Pixel 8a. From the clean, minimal home screen to the simplistic Settings app and lock-screen controls, there’s a solid list of customizable features and easy navigation that makes it one of the best versions of Android on the market.

Of course, it’s 2024, which means that all phones must come with some level of AI built in. Luckily, Google’s been at this for years with features like Call Screening, Direct My Call, Assisted Voice Typing, Live Transcriptions in Voice Memo, Live Translate, Now Playing and more. With the Pixel 8a, you also get access to Circle to Search, a feature that lets you press and hold on the navigation bar on the bottom of the screen and circle what you want to search for. It’s perfect for those occasions where you see a cool shirt your favorite country music artist is wearing and you wonder, “Gee, where can I get those fresh threads?”

Another new feature — and this one’s a doozy — is Gemini, Google’s ChatGPT competitor. It’s built right into the Pixel 8a as a standalone app, so you can ask it to generate emails, text messages and other blocks of text you don’t feel like writing yourself. You can even replace the Google Assistant with it and use it to ask questions, plan events, check the weather and more.

Gemini Nano, the company’s localized version of AI for smartphones, will come to the Pixel 8a later on and power features like Magic Compose in Messages. For now, you have to rely on the Gemini app for all your AI requests, and it works quite well. Sure, there’s some stuff that’s still messy (I’ve asked plenty of times who certain journalists I know work for, and it usually gets confused and references some place they worked years ago), but it’s generally a helpful tool to have at your disposal.

What’s more, the Pixel 8a is promised seven years of software updates, just like the more expensive Pixel 8 series. This means the phone will be supported all the way until 2031, which is wild for a $500 Android smartphone. It guarantees that you’ll have access to all the latest features down the line, plus you’ll already be set up for whatever this AI future shapes up to be.

All-day battery life

The Pixel 8a comes with a 4,492mAh battery, a 15% increase over the Pixel 7a’s battery. In real-world usage, that translates to similar all-day battery life we got from that phone last year. It can comfortably get me through a full 16-hour day of moderate to heavy use, and by the time I go to bed, it’s dropped to about 35%. That’s not too shabby.

What’s more, in our smartphone battery test where we loop a 4K video at 50% brightness with Airplane Mode on, the phone took 16 hours and 13 minutes to die. Mind you, that’s by no means a record setter in our testing, but it signals that the phone can last a full day without conking out too early.

You get 18W wired charging with the phone, as well as 7.5W wireless charging. I’ll always praise a phone for including wireless charging even when it’s slow; the convenience of placing your phone down on a pad and having it juice up is simply wonderful.

What I didn’t like about it

Google needs to step up its charging speeds

It is the Year of Our Lord 2024. Our children are using artificial intelligence to do their homework. Elon Musk somehow owns Twitter. The aurora borealis was visible in places where it’s never been visible in history. Robots are getting scary good. Yet Google can’t ship a phone with fast charging.

For what seems like forever, Google has included 18W to 30W wired charging on its phones. Nowadays, most Samsung phones ship with 25W to 45W charging, and almost every OnePlus phone has charging above 80W. We’re past the point of phones having heat problems or speed-management issues when it comes to fast charging over USB-C, so it doesn’t make any sense to me why Google insists on keeping its speeds so slow.

Yes, this is a $500 phone, so fast charging speeds aren’t required. But, like, aren’t they, though? We’re well into the 2020s and we still have smartphones from big brands with slower than 20W charging. It takes over an hour to charge from zero to 100% because of it, which is straight-up annoying.

The TL;DR? It’d be great to see Google upgrade its charging speeds sooner than later, because this is getting kind of old.

It gets warmer than other phones

Like most Pixel phones, the Pixel 8a isn’t immune to heating issues. During heavy usage, the 8a tends to get warmer than most phones I’ve tried. Whether I’m gaming, taking a lot of pictures on a sunny day or simply scrolling through TikTok for an hour, the device gets noticeably warmer than my iPhone, or even my Pixel Fold that I have lying around.

Admittedly, the issue isn’t as bad as previous Pixel phones, which used to have worse problems with heat dissipation. But the 8a continues the tradition that Pixel phones are warmer than their competitors, which only becomes an issue when the weather gets warmer and you risk overheating.

You might find it kind of small

This isn’t necessarily a downside but something to keep in mind: The Pixel 8a is only available in one size at 6.1 inches. Most budget and midrange phones come with displays that are much larger than this, oftentimes reaching 6.4 or 6.7 inches. If you’re a fan of larger-size smartphones, the 8a isn’t going to be for you.

Sure, there’s still enough room to multitask or watch a movie, but those who value extra screen real estate will feel cramped pretty quickly. I, for one, enjoy a smaller phone, but I know plenty of people who like to go big. If you’re one of those folks, you may want to consider something else, like the OnePlus 12R.

Bottom line

The Pixel 8a continues Google’s tradition of offering an excellent smartphone experience for half the price. At $499, it’s perhaps one of the best values on the entire market, especially since it’s built to last, thanks to seven years of software updates.

While it’s not the biggest phone in town, the 8a is one of the safest bets for anyone on a budget. If you want to spend $500 on a phone that’s guaranteed to last for years down the road, it should be at the top of your shopping list. There will always be a faster, bigger or more eye-catching smartphone in the midrange price category, but nothing can come close to the reliability of the Pixel 8a.