Review: Google Pixel 8A

A personal gadget needs to feel, well, personal. I have what I call the table test. If I'm out at a restaurant or coffee shop, do I leave the phone with its screen facing up? Or flip it around and admire the design?

Well, it might be functional—placing a Pixel face down toggles on Do Not Disturb mode and keeps me away from attention-grabbing notifications—but the Google Pixel 8A is also too pretty to hide its looks away, especially in the new Aloe color.

This is often a rarity on a smartphone that costs less than $500. Flagships get the star treatment and cheaper phones look bland. This year, I've noticed a change, with smartphones like the Motorola Moto G Power 5G and Nothing Phone (2a) making things more aesthetically interesting at the low end. Google's Pixel 8A continues that trend with its elegant, matte, colorful design.

Say Aloe

Minty! Smartphones are getting more aesthetically interesting at the low end.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Google's A-series phones take elements from the flagship Pixels while cutting costs elsewhere to make the package more accessible. The Pixel 8A employs 76 percent recycled plastic in the back cover versus glass, uses the older and less protective Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for the display, and has an OLED panel that doesn't get as bright, not to mention lesser camera specs. There are other small changes, but this helps bring this phone down to $499, which is $200 less than the Pixel 8.

And yet, this phone doesn't feel too out of the ordinary compared to its pricier siblings. The metal frame and camera bar give it that luxe look; the lovely curved edges and its 6.1-inch screen size make it a comfy phone to hold and use one-handed. This is the most refined A-series Pixel to date, and the Aloe color steals the show.

My mom noticed it in my hand immediately and asked about it, admiring the translucent green hues. (Google's official case also color-matches the phone perfectly and makes the camera bar flush with the back so it's still thin.)

The 6.1-inch screen doesn't feel too small—it's quite refreshing considering most of the phones I test these days have screen sizes 6.5 inches or more—and the OLED display is sharp. I stared at this screen on a near-perfect sunny day in New York City this past weekend, and the Pixel 8A ratcheted up its brightness accordingly so I didn't have to squint. This used to be a common flaw with Pixels of old, but screen brightness is no longer a problem. Google also has brought a 120-Hz screen refresh rate here, so everything is wonderfully fluid (make sure you turn this on in the phone's settings).

Like the Pixel 8 series, you have two methods of biometric authentication: face unlock or fingerprint. I haven't had too many issues with the latter, and while face unlock doesn't work well in low light, I'm still happy to have it as a secondary option—it even works with apps that require authentication, such as banking apps.

Pixel Smarts

What's special here are the software features, like Call Screen, which aren't on most smartphones this price.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The Pixel 8A is powered by Google's Tensor G3 chipset with 8 GB of RAM. You're getting a flagship-grade processor for just $499, but that alone isn't too special these days—the OnePlus 12R has 2023's top-end Qualcomm chipset and retails for the same price.

Cheaper phones, like the Nothing Phone (2a), offer fairly smooth performance for the money. That said, the Pixel 8A never stuttered or showed a sign of a slowdown, whether I was playing a game or using it for a few hours with nonstop GPS navigation and music streaming.

No, what makes the Pixel 8A special are the smart software features, which aren't things you'll find on most sub-$500 smartphones. Call Screen remains one of the greatest inventions of the modern smartphone era—I sometimes watch with glee as Google's software screens a phone call, recognizes that it's a telemarketer, and then declines it on my behalf. The Recorder app, which does a great job auto-transcribing interviews and adding speaker labels, is my go-to whenever I have a meeting. Assistant Voice Typing in Gboard is now my preferred way of typing anything on my phone, and I sincerely miss it when I'm on another device. There are so many of these hidden tricks I've come to rely on.

Dare I say, I've even started using Google's new Circle to Search function? Press and hold the bottom nav bar and circle anything on the screen to run a visual search. The only thing Google needs to work on is its messaging around Gemini and Google Assistant. Like on most other Android phones, you'll be asked whether you want to switch to its new Gemini assistant when you trigger Google Assistant, all but confirming that Google's well-known voice assistant may soon be headed to the Google Graveyard.

The Pixel 8A might also be the only sub-$500 Android phone—maybe even the only smartphone at this price—to receive 7 years of software support. That means you can hold onto this phone for that length of time and still expect new features via Android OS upgrades and quarterly feature drops, not to mention security patches. There is no other smartphone at this price that will get that level of support, save perhaps the iPhone SE from 2022 and 2020.

Unfortunately, Pixel phones continue to have lackluster battery performance. The Pixel 8A, like its predecessors, requires daily charging despite its larger 4,492-mAh cell. With average use, it can last a day without a problem, but my testing period saw a lot of navigation with Google Maps and music streaming with YouTube Music, and the device had to be recharged around 7 pm as it hit 19 percent. (My screen-on time was roughly five hours and 20 minutes.) It won't recharge as quickly as a phone like the OnePlus 12R, but there is wireless charging support.

As someone who routinely has access to a charging outlet, battery life isn't my biggest priority. But if it is, this may not be the phone for you unless you don't mind carrying around a portable charger.

Real Tone Woes

Nice color-coordinated accessories make the most of the Pixel 8A's fun design.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Google Pixel phones are known for their cameras, and the Pixel 8A continues this legacy by shining bright. It has a 64-MP primary camera joined by a 13-MP ultrawide, and a 13-MP selfie camera on the front.

It generally snapped up nicer photos than the rest of the sub-$500 category, besting the likes of the Nothing Phone (2a) and the Samsung Galaxy A35 5G, though these phones aren't too behind in some areas (like the selfie camera). I did not notice a huge change from last year's Pixel 7A though, except improvements in mitigating lens flare. The Pixel's strength is in handling high-contrast scenes, low light, and capturing subjects that tend to move a lot (like my dog).

It's the software smarts that are the trump card here again. Magic Editor, just like on the Pixel 8 series, lets you move around subjects in your photos and the software will generate a background to fill it in and match the scene. Best Take will let you switch your face to one from a similar photo when you capture a few group selfies, just in case you blinked. Audio Magic Eraser lets you remove annoying sounds from the background of your videos, like birds cawing.

However, there's one feature that's been a bit of a letdown this time around: Real Tone. This is Google's image processing algorithm that's supposed to capture more accurate skin tones for people of color. I lauded it when it first landed on the Pixel 6, but I've noticed on the Pixel 8A—where it's supposed to now work in videos—my brown skin tone is a little lighter.

I captured footage of my brother with the Pixel 8A and the Galaxy A35, and both my brother and mom say the A35's video clips rendered a more accurate skin tone, even if it was still a bit aggressive in saturation. This was not the case when I snapped some pics of my wife though, who is Chinese—her skin tones on the Pixel 8A were much more accurate than those from the A35.

Despite this, it's hard to not be happy with the camera results of the Pixel 8A. Heck, the whole package remains the best value in a smartphone. That said, it's worth keeping an eye on sales. The flagship Pixel 8 has dipped as low as $499 before, and if that's the case again, it's worth snagging it instead.

However, Google's phones frequently go on sale, and if the Pixel 7A is any indicator, expect the Pixel 8A to periodically drop to around $450, then around $375 in a few months. It's a killer deal at those prices—if you can wait.