hello I'm Dom from tech advisor and I'm here with the Google pixel three that
one and the Google pixel 3a which is a new sort of mid-range cheaper version of
the pixel 3 I'm gonna break down the differences between them because there's
a lot that's very similar with a price that's very very different so let's get
into it
so on the left here we have the new pixel 3a and on the right the pixel 3 as
you can see immediately they're pretty similar looking on the front there's
definitely a size difference there's also Excel versions of each but
I'm just gonna focus on the core models for the moment
okay so price wise is a lot and this is like the headline thing like this one is
the pixel 3a is 399 pounds or dollars which is a really great price for what
it is the regular pixel 3 is 739 pounds or 799 dollars
so almost double the price though to be fair it's been out for a six months or
so at the time we're recording this so actually you will probably find it for
less than that online so the price difference maybe isn't quite as stark as
that makes it sound in practice but still there's a big price gap between
them what makes that really interesting is
that the headline feature of both phones is the camera and the cameras are the
same so pixel 3 I mean the pixel line in general culminating in the 3 has always
been about the camera and google has made a big fuss about how good its
cameras ah what's interesting about that is it's always been software driven the
actual sensor is good but nothing really special it's a 12 point two megapixel
sensor single lens there's no wide angle there's no
telefono like you might find in other smartphones it's just one lens it's 12.2
megapixels which isn't that many megapixels but the software stuff
underlying it all is phenomenal and Google has kept those secrets very close
to its chest and yet the 3a has the same camera lens pretty much and it has the
same software so we haven't done the sort of full testing of this yet but in
theory you are going to get the same image quality in the 3a as you do from
the 3 that includes all the various different
modes so you've got the regular camera you've got we've got no one to portrait
in the shop but you've got the portrait mode again using software to sort of
figure it out there's no second depth sensing lens panorama the big one right
here is a night sight Google sort of taking photos in the dark mode so it
takes multiple exposures when lights low and it is phenomenal you can be an
enormous pitch-black space and it will find enough light through multiple
exposures to capture the color and the details of whatever one you want to
photograph and that's in the 3a2 all of that is there all these features there's
also new sort of AR features google lens has had an update there's going to be a
AR for Google Maps which is going to be exclusive to this pixel 3 + 3 a so that
you can sort of get AR directions as you're walking down the street again you
have to be in a street to do it they haven't set it up for real studio savvy
but it means you can sort of have the camera up facing down the street and
you'll see on the screen prompts for where you want to turn using your
camera's view to show you exactly where you are all that stuff is there
basically everything that uses the camera is the same between these funds
now there is one little difference which comes down to the processor so this the
the Google pixel 3 runs a snapdragon 845 which isn't the latest snapdragon
anymore but at the time it was so it was the the big flagship snapdragon at the
time the 3-pin are the 3a is running a snapdragon 670 mid-range processor still
good still fast but it's definitely slower it's not gonna have the same
performance they've got the same ram that both 4 gigabytes so actually by
today's standards that's not that much you can get a 10 gigabyte ram phone but
still they've got the same ram different processor that means you probably won't
notice a performance difference day-to-day like when you're just using a
phone for email Instagram whatever they're both gonna be as fast as one
another if you play a lot of games you might see the pixel 3 would probably
pull ahead but there will be a difference in camera just because so
much of the like camera magic in the pixel is driven by by software and by
processing so I process a slower image processing the output like the end
result should be identical it won't mean that the photos cannot anyway
it just means it's gonna take a bit longer for the three a to take those
photos so you might have a harder time taking very quick photos or taking lots
of photos in quick succession particularly nitesite and Mo's like that
where it's using multiple exposures and a lot of what the pixels magic is is
that it actually even when you think you're only taking one usually it's
taking multiple photos and picking the best one picking elements from each all
of that will just take a little bit longer on the three a not a lot it'll
still feel pretty fast and responsive but that is basically the one area where
they're gonna really sort of there's gonna be a little bit of a difference in
terms of performance storage is also slightly different they both come with
64 gigabytes of internal storage but the regular three has the option of 128 gig
you don't get that option with this one design we can see is similar like you
said the sort of you can see the 3a is big even though the screens are about
the same it is a slightly bigger screen that's five point six inches compared to
5.5 mm 5.5 sorry but they're basically the same size screen you know you you're
gonna struggle to tell them apart you can see the bezel is different
especially over the bottom chin is bigger here and that makes the phone as
a whole sit that little bit taller you'll also see the stereo speakers
moved not entirely sure why because it does still have stereo speakers it's
just now they're down firing rather than two on the front of the device as you
have with the regular three so you still get stereo sound it's just moved around
yeah down firing maybe isn't quite as good so there's some sort of difference
going on they're both OLED screens so the screen should be pretty comparable
both USB see for charging they're both 18 watt fast charging so charging speeds
about same battery capacity is almost identical its 3000 milliamp hours in the
3a 2915 milliamp hours in the regular pixel 3 you're not gonna notice the
difference those it's functionally the same battery there is one battery
difference which is wireless charging the regular three has wireless charging
they dropped that from the 3a which makes sense it's the it's a flagship
feature you wouldn't accept in a 400 pound $400 phone same shoe for
waterproofing the three-eighths waterproof the 3a isn't it just makes
sense no one else is putting waterproofing in at this sort of price
range so why would Google and here we will see one difference where the 3a
pulls out ahead there's a headphone jack we were really sad when Google stop
doing headphone jacks on the pixel line so headphone jack coming back in on the
3a is really nice I guess the fact that you know you can see it's just it's a
little bit thicker body a little bit less of a curve there so there's a
little bit more space maybe it just gave them that little millimeter they needed
to squeeze a headphone jack in I'm not sure either way it's a very welcome
change these are both white as you can see they've worked up the colored accent
that it is a slightly different color we don't know why they've changed but
you've got the green accent button on the three oranges on the 3a the other
colors both models come in blacks and other option it's basically identical
the regular three has not pink as a color option and it's called numb it's
kind of a pink but it's not pink don't worry the 3a doesn't have not pink
instead it has purple ish which is a purple it's a very light very pale kind
of lie lucky color a very subtly purple purplish you can see you know where
they're going with it and the other thing we'll see on the front is the
other big omission from the three a I think most of you won't mind there's
only one selfie lens on the front of the 3a on the regular three will go in we'll
see there's it's bad band and use up pin on the three if we flip around for the
selfies we see we've got this sort of the regular selfie camera and if i zoom
out there we go to a sort of wide-angle selfie camera for group shots you don't
get that in the three eight so it's just the one selfie camera it's just close
cropping I mean I think that's fine I can see why the group selfie shots
that's nice it's a perk but it's certainly if you're gonna I can see why
they drop that when they were looking for features to carve out and bring
bring the price down so three eight so yeah I mean a headline
stuff is the three eight probably looks like the better purchase it's got the
camera and whenever we tell people that they should buy you know if people are
asking for phone recommendations the reason I might ever push them towards a
pixel it's basically gonna be either software like you just want stock
Android you'll love that pure Google experience both phones have that or
camera you want that beautiful you're not worried about if you you know if you
really want an ultra wide or telephoto you've got a look at Samsung Huawei Sony
but if you don't worry if you're not first about them and you just want a
point-and-shoot that's gonna do the best point in shooting you can get pretty
much the pixels are usually my recommendation and it's got the same
camera it's just as good we think but for half the price
yeah there are some compromises you're missing wireless charging you're missing
waterproofing you missing the group selfie camera but those aren't big deals
for me and least and I would suspect for most people they're not big deal so
they're all like nice to have features very much non-essential and when you're
talking about a difference of three or four hundred dollars in price to get the
exact same camera the exact same software but just have a slightly slower
processor and lose out on waterproofing right now for me that's an easy decision
I would absolutely say the 3a is the one to get right now it's a little bit
different if you want the Excel models I don't have them tan right now the big
difference is there is the pixel 3 XL it doesn't have this bezel display it has a
notch so it's that kind of more full screen experience whereas the 3 Axl is
still the bezel design it's not a notch it's still this very sort of chunky big
bars at the top which I mean I'm hoping with a pixel 4 we move past that and
it's a much more in the full screen space where every other handset
manufacturer already is and that if anything is the downside of the 3/8
because you could get like a tiny notched full screen phone for way
cheaper than the 3a Eve and you can buy 200 pound $200 phones that just have a
tiny teardrop notch so the 3/8 does still feel backwards in that design
sense but that camera for $400 400 pounds like that's great so
yeah I'm sold we're gonna be testing this more thoroughly we're gonna be
doing a big review of this and the 3/8 XL as well we've also done on a boxing
of the new 3 and the 3 Axl so there'll be a link to that go check that out if
you want to see a bit more of these phones in action and you want to see the
XL version of it in the flesh and see how it compares that's it for now like
and subscribe let us know in the comments what you
think if you think the the 3a would be enough to tempt you into the pixel line
now that the price is so much lower if you're worried the camera won't really
keep up because of that processor but yeah thanks very much