There’s a whole lot to love about the Pixel 8a. Google’s newest a-series phone is a smaller and cheaper alternative to last year’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, taking many of the best features of the top-end devices and cramming them into a mid-range phone costing £499.

Arriving six months after the flagship Pixels – and six months before the expected announcement of the Pixel 9 – the Pixel 8a is more than just a mid-generation stepping stone. The phone gets Google’s fastest Tensor G3 processor, as expected, which brings with it access to many of the headline-grabbing AI features previously exclusive to the most expensive Pixels.

That means the Pixel 8a gets clever photo editing tools like ‘best take’, which lets you tap on friends’ faces in group photos to pick a better expression and achieve the perfect shot. You also get the powerful ‘magic editor’ tool – Google’s trademark AI feature – which lets you reposition, delete and resize subjects in photos and have generative AI seamlessly fill in the gaps.

At £499, Google’s newest affordable Android phone occupies an awkward position in the Pixel range. It does pretty much everything the Pixel 8 can, but with the Pixel 8 regularly on sale for as little as £550, the cheaper Pixel 8a looks like less of a bargain.

Setting aside the potential to pick up the original Pixel 8 at a discount, we can still say that the Pixel 8a is remarkably good value for money – here’s our review.

How we tested the Pixel 8a

We’ve been testing the Pixel 8a since it was announced, paying close attention to improvements over the Pixel 7a, as well as differences between the new phone and the flagship Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. We tested software features, new AI-enabled photo editing tricks, build quality and camera capabilities in a range of lighting conditions.

Best Google Pixel 8a deals

We’ll be rounding up the best Google Pixel 8a contract deals as they appear. For now, here are the plans being offered by the major carriers.

Pixel 8a (128GB) with 300GB of data: £35.24 per month with £25 up front, Three.co.uk
Pixel 8a (128GB) with 50GB of data: £25 per month with £20 up front, Vodafone.co.uk
Pixel 8a (128GB) with 30GB of data: £35.24 per month with £10 up front, O2.co.uk
Pixel 8a (128GB) with 5GB of data: £30.97 per month with £20 up front, EE.co.uk

Google Pixel 8a

Display: 6.1in OLED, 120Hz

Resolution: 1,080 x 2,400px (430dpi)

Dimensions: 152mm x 73mm x 10mm

Weight: 192g

IP rating: IP67 dust- and water-resistant

Cameras: 64MP main, 13MP ultrawide, 13MP front

Storage: 128GB / 256GB

RAM: 8GB

Why we love it

Premium AI features in a mid-range phone

Excellent cameras

Seven years of feature updates and security

Green and blue colourways look great

Take note

Not significantly cheaper than the Pixel 8

There’s a good reason Google waits six months before launching the a-series versions of its leading Pixel phones. The Pixel 8a swipes so many of the Pixel 8’s best features that – unless you care deeply about having Google’s best camera and display – you’d struggle to justify buying any other Pixel phone today.

Display

So, besides a host of new AI-enabled tricks, what’s changed since the Pixel 7a? Well, this year’s budget Pixel gets an upgraded screen. The size stays the same at a palm-friendly 6.1in – similar to the Pixel 8 and ideal for smaller hands – but the display can now run at a smoother 120Hz refresh rate. Scrolling feels snappier and the phone generally feels more responsive to your touch.

The Pixel 8a is also brighter than last year’s phone, which is most noticeable when using the phone outdoors on sunny days. Colours don’t appear as washed out when viewed in direct sunlight, and indoors the additional brightness gives the display a little more vibrancy and dynamic range.

Cameras

Google keeps the cost of the Pixel 8a down by sticking with last year’s camera hardware: a 64MP main lens, 13MP ultrawide and 13MP front camera. That setup was a already huge upgrade when it appeared on the Pixel 7a, so it’s no surprise Google has left it untouched in 2024.

Photo quality is still remarkable for a phone at this price point, helped along by Google’s excellent image processing. You miss out on the telephoto zoom of the top-end Pixel 8 Pro, but you do get the Pixel’s brilliant night sight and astrophotography modes.

Design

Things get more interesting when it comes to the newly refreshed design – the Pixel 8a is the prettiest Pixel phone Google has ever made. The new matte back, curved edges and metal frame are available in vibrant shades of green and blue that we can only describe as juicy. The jazzy colouring extends to the metal frame, too, so, it’s party time even when your phone is face up on the desk.

Google offers matching coloured phone cases, which are thoughtfully designed to sit flush around the full-width camera bar, so you don’t have to choose between safety and style.

Software features

The Pixel 8a carries over a bunch of unique software features that aren’t new, but are worth mentioning. ‘Circle to search’ is Google’s latest way of searching the web, letting you trace a circle around anything on screen – a pair of trainers you saw on Instagram, a houseplant you want for the living room – to get shopping and search results for that item.

The recorder app is another unsung hero of the Pixel range, offering full speech-to-text transcriptions of meetings with multiple speakers, which can be archived and searched later. ‘Live translate’ lets two people hold a conversation in different languages, whether in-person or over text messages, translating their responses as they speak.

‘Call assistant’ lets you navigate those annoying “press one for sales” style phone menus using your phone’s keypad, and can even wait on hold for you, sending you an alert when somebody finally picks up. The Google Assistant can screen your calls, too, asking the person on the other end to state the reason for their call. Their response gets transcribed on screen so you can decide if it’s worth answering. In practice, everyone we’ve tried this feature on hangs up rather than speaking to a robot, but hey, it’s a fun way to dodge spam callers.

Pixel phones also come with a built-in VPN, giving you a layer of security and anonymity when using public wifi hotspots.

Battery life

The battery is a smidge larger than last year’s phone, giving the Pixel 8a marginally better battery performance than the Pixel 7a. That means all-day battery life even with intensive use. In our early testing with the device, we’ve only ever had to top up the battery overnight.

Back to top

The verdict: Pixel 8a

The Pixel 8a is essentially the Pixel 8 with some of the premium hardware features dialled back: slightly older camera hardware, a few missing camera features, thicker bezels and slower charging.

Those are marginal compromises worth making to get a Tensor G3 powered Pixel phone down to under £500, and the Pixel 8a benefits massively from getting access to the more expensive Pixel’s growing suite of AI-powered features. Google looks set to one day replace the Google Assistant with its Gemini chatbot too, and the Pixel 8a is built to receive that upgrade when it eventually arrives.

Seven years of support and updates, genuinely useful AI features, secure face unlock and an impressive 120Hz display are a rarity at this price point, making the Pixel 8a one of the best budget phones you can buy in 2024.

It’s worth noting that the stiffest competition this year comes from Google itself however, as the original Pixel 8 can regularly be found on sale for near enough the same price as the Pixel 8a, and remains the better phone.

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