today we're reviewing the google pixel 4a 5g and that's coming up right after this.
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the description. so after plenty of uncertainty throughout the year we now have the google pixel
4a 5g to review now this review is for you guys and after a week of use it's time to tell you
the good and the bad before we get started though please like the video if you're a fan of google
let me know in the comments what device you're watching this video on but the pixel 4a 5g is here
and to be honest it's better than i expected it to be it's been a very different strategy
for google this year and i think it is actually for the best they're now using the pixel to try
and cater for the whole of the smartphone budget range from the pixel 4a at the bottom end the 485g
in the middle and then we've got the pixel 5 at the top thanks to the changes though it's now
easier than ever to pick the right pixel for you and today i'm going to try and help you do that
we start off with the unboxing it's the same packaging that we used to and no different to
any of the other recent pixel if we open it up we first get the pixel 4a 5g and i have to say it's
a great looking device although the bezels are slightly thicker than that of the five
next we've got the manual along with the sim tool followed by the power plug usb cable and usb-a
to usb-c adapter the usb-c cable what makes life incredibly easy is you can connect your new pixel
to your old android smartphone and it's going to transfer over all of your apps your data
and your passwords all you need to do on your new pixel 4a 5g is simply put in your google password
if we take a look at the design first you can see we've got a full screen display
and then we've got the punch hole selfie camera in the top left the thing i like here is just how
thin the bezels are although unlike the pixel 5 there is a larger chin at the bottom than the top
so they aren't symmetrical all the way around if that is something that bothers you
we get a 6.2 inch oled display with a full hd plus resolution of 1080 by 2340 and an
aspect ratio of 19 and a half so this gives us 413 pixels per inch it's a 60 hertz always on display
with hdr support and one million to one contrast ratio and is protected by gorilla glass 3 it's a
full 24 bit color depth with 16 million colors so it provides us with a bright vibrant display
experience that we've pretty much grown to expect from any smartphone the punch hole in the top left
is for an 8 megapixel selfie camera it's a fixed focus 1.12 micrometer sensor with an aperture of
f 2.0 it's got an 83 degree field of view and it's actually the same selfie camera you'll find on the
4a and the pixel 5 and actually the whole of the pixel range this year have many specs in common
on the back the most notable change is of course the return of a physical fingerprint scanner i'm
incredibly happy to see this return and it just makes unlocking the phone so much easier i can
press the button the phone unlocks in seconds and there's no hassle at all with the 3d face unlock
and the solid radar chip in the pixel 4 and the 4xl were a good idea in theory in practice they
just didn't work no apps really adopted the new technology and all it really did was took away the
biometric security from many of our favorite apps the fingerprint scanner is indented so we can find
it easily it works every time and it works quickly you'll also notice we're back to a dual camera
setup along with the led flash now the main sensor is a 12.2 megapixel and 1.4 micrometer sensor it's
got dual pixel phase detect autofocus optical and electronic stabilization it's got an aperture of f
1.7 and also a 77 degree field of view now i could praise this camera before i'd even use the phone
as it's actually the same primary camera we had in the pixel 4 the 4xl the 4a and even the pixel 5.
now while many might complain that that's lazy and they did want to see a new camera in actual
fact there's not really any need compare the pixel phones to another camera phone on the market and
they do still do a great job they're consistently praised for good photography so there's no need to
change something that works and something that works very well great news for me however is
that the secondary camera unlike the telephoto we saw in its predecessor is our 16 megapixel
one micrometer ultra wide camera it's got a 107 degree field of view and an aperture of f 2.2
and this allows us to get our 0.6 times zoom while some people do prefer the zoom i much prefer the
wide angle as i think i can zoom in post and to be honest zooming on a smartphone just doesn't
tend to work full stop the camera allows for 4k video at 30 or 60 frames a second and we get 1080p
at 30 60 120 or even 240 for those who care about dimensions it's 144.7 by 70.4 by 8 millimeters and
it weighs 151 grams we get 8 gigabytes of ram with gig storage which while it doesn't seem like much
google do give you the option for unlimited photos in google photos as long as you store them at high
quality and this is free for all pixel users it's all powered by a snapdragon g which is slightly
better than the 4a 730 now the 765g is a fully capable chipset and it's plenty powerful enough
for general use and of course all of your photography and for those casual gamers you're
still able to play all of the latest 3d games and it just helps bring the cost down for google which
makes a cheaper phone for you well it is a little bit faster than the pixel 4a chipset to be honest
there isn't really that much in it apart from of course this chipset has the advantage of 5g
onto the 5g it supports sub 6 gigahertz bands but it doesn't support millimeter wave
and it of course will support the usual lte bands and lower now while i would have loved
to have given you a 5g speed test at this point unfortunately my network doesn't give me 5g
so i cannot do it now battery capacity for this is 3885 milliamp hours and it supports 18 watt
fast charging but there's no wireless charging personally i was hoping for a little bump in fast
charging is this is the same as the predecessor but we've also got extreme battery saver on the
pixel 4a 5g so you've got a normal battery save and then if you need it you've got the
extreme battery save which basically stops most of your apps and it even slows down the processor
now this can supposedly deliver up to 48 hours battery life but i haven't had a chance to fully
test it yet we've got stereo speakers thanks to a cool speaker and a bottom firing speaker here
and i actually prefer the speaker on the 4a5g than i do to the pixel 5. if i listen to them both side
by side then they are very similar but the pixel 4a 5g actually sounds slightly better than the 5.
now there's not much in it and i think what it's actually down to is the pixel 4a 5g has a larger
body than the five and this might be helping with sound production it's gonna be interesting to
see if anyone else shares this opinion but to be honest as i said it's very close and i would say
they're just average mobile speakers they're not bad but they're also nothing special the pixel 4a
5g has dual microphones for video recording and calls so the additional microphone helps to get
better audio and also helps with noise suppression we've of course got bluetooth 5 dual band wi-fi
and the pixel 5 it comes with android 11. when it comes to general use it's great it gives us the
stock android experience we're used to in a much improved body it's fast and responsive although
it is only a 60 hertz display and it's great that we don't get all of the bloatware that you would
find in many other manufacturers firmware for your general use in even gaming it's going to work very
well and because it's google we get at least three years of software updates and that is guaranteed
now most of you watching this video have probably used stock android before
so you know the good experience it brings but the most important thing to most people here is
going to be the camera and as you might expect it's incredible it gives us the beautiful pixel
photography that we're used to and it's no surprise that given the same primary cameras
of course software updates do continue to improve that performance so we will be taking a look on
here we can go from 0.6 times zoom all the way up to seven times zoom using the slider in the camera
app and this works for both picture and video now as we've got an ultra wide instead of a telephoto
this is unfortunately all digital zoom as most of you guys that know that watch a lot of my videos
i hate digital zoom so i won't be using it but if you want to see why this is the reason we zoom in
we lose all detail we get camera shake and it looks more like a painting on the other side of
that i am a huge fan of this 0.6 times ultrawide personally i always need more in the frame while
other phones out there are giving you three four five or even six different cameras i think pixel
have the right idea give us two cameras but make them good now i've only had this phone for about a
week but as you can see the quality of the photos is great and no different to any of the others
we get great dynamic range we've got more natural color tones and incredible sharpness and detail
i've taken loads of photos in daylight and night and you can see the high level of detail and
colors and they're actually true to form as in what i saw in real life and not oversaturated
as i've said i stay away from the zoom and personally if you do want to use some zoom
then i'd suggest doing it in post as it's no different to using the digital zoom
on the pixel 4 a5g we've got the live hdr plus with exposure controls so this means that what
we see in our viewfinder is exactly what the image is gonna look like so we know before taking the
photo i've even tried some close-up shot for those of you that may be missing a macro lens
and as you can see it's even done a great job here we've got great focus all round although there is
a little bit of loss away from the center when it comes to the portrait bokeh shots it's also done
an incredible job here and really found at the edge of the subject we've got all of our in focus
and a nice clean cut blur background the great thing about the pixels is that as well as giving
us this bokeh image we also get the standard unblurred image and can switch between the two
next we move on to the nighttime photography and google's night shot mode is incredible
it really brightens up the images and gives us better qualities than we'd even be seeing with
our eyes the downside is it takes a little bit longer to shoot the photo but only a few seconds
now the light mode really does make it look like you've taken a picture with a huge flash or you're
holding some sort of huge light and it brightens things up without noise this video here shows you
the area i was in and actually the light level that i was seeing and you can see it is very
hard to see you can see from all of the night sight photos though there's a huge difference
between normal and night mode and it brings in so much light in detail and surprisingly there's not
really any noise that you'd expect from adding this much brightness when it comes to video
it also has great performance here it gives us incredible detail natural looking videos and great
stabilization best of all we've now got 4k videos at 60 frames a second even on the 4a 5g
but you can see from the video that everything stays nice and in focus there's no camera shake
even while i'm walking and again while recording videos that we can change between 0.6 to 7 times
zoom and it's great that we can switch between lenses while recording and it does it in a
relatively smooth fashion unfortunately for those that wanted to in the standard camera
while you're recording you can't then switch to the selfie camera you do have to stop the video
first give it away
now when it comes to the 765g chipset many seem to think that you're not going to be able to game
but they're actually wrong phones have become very powerful these days and while you won't see
the same high scores in synthetic benchmarks and you'd get for something like an 865 in real world
use they're great even for gaming i first tested it with pubg mobile went straight into settings
turned up the graphics and the frame rate to high as that's all of the game supports at the moment
and there would no need to make any changes from this as when opening it up it plays perfectly
as you can see it runs perfectly smooth runs great this is expected because i did this on the 5 and
it's the same chipset again i installed call of duty mobile put it on max detail
there was no need to change anything as the game looks great and it runs buttery smooth
i like the punch hole camera being in the top left again because it's not noticeable
my hands actually covering it up most of the time and it just makes it for a pleasant experience
finally we head to asphalt 9 where again it worked perfectly in full detail but i have to
say there was a little bit of frame drop and i had this on the pixel 5 and the 4a as well so i
was expecting this when i drop it down to medium it runs much better this frame rate is higher
but again it was a little bit different as i just come off a 90 hertz display you do notice
that 60 hertz experience now for those of you who do care about synthetic benchmarks i ran it
through geekbench 5 where we got a single core score of 598 and a multi-core score of 1 623
to put that into perspective the 5 scores 585 single and 1563 multi the 4a got 551 single
and 1651 multi and finally the pixel 4 xl gets 706 single 2 354 multi now of course the pixel 4
xl going to top the list because of the snapdragon 855 and some of you may be wondering why this 4a5g
gets a higher score than the 5. well i think the reason is because they're both the same resolution
they both got the same chipset but this is a 60hz display whereas the pixel 5 is 90 so i'm
assuming the pixel 5 is needing more power for those frames and where it's losing its score
now battery life for the phone is great some worry about smaller batteries but it easily lasted me
the day with general use and with 18 watt quick charging it doesn't take long to charge back up
when i go walking as i always tell you guys i use two separate apps one to guide me one
to record my walk and both are using gps on top of that and taking lots of photos
i haven't needed to use battery save or extreme battery save but i'm glad that there is a backup
now overall it's an incredible device and while i do like the pixel 4a 5g i think the pixel 5
is the right choice for me i like the size of the pixel 4a 5g and i actually prefer it to the 5 but
i've just gotten so used to 90 hertz displays and wireless charging that i would be stuck without it
of course it's now great that there really is a pixel for everyone so if that's not the case for
you it doesn't matter we're now at a stage where there are so many pixels and they are all quite
similar so while it may get confusing i'm going to quickly break it down if we look at the pixel
4a the 4a 5g and the pixel 5 they will have the same primary sensor so they're all going to take
very similar photos and the only difference is the 4a has the single camera whereas the 485g and the
pixel 5 have the dual cameras now the 4a is at the bottom pricing at 350 pounds or 350 dollars
but it's incredible value for those who want a cheap phone that still takes good photos
we've then got the pixel 4a 5g at 499 pounds or 499 dollars and then finally you've got the
pixel 5 which is 599 pounds or 699 dollars now between the 485 g and the 5 there are only a
few differences while there are a few creators dismissing the 5 as i said i do quite like it
the 485 g has the 6.2 inch display over the pixel 5 6 inch and that is an advantage for me but
apart from that the pixel 5 you get a 90 hertz display you've got gorilla glass 6 instead of
this gorilla glass 3 you get wireless charging and reverse wireless charging and it's also ip68 water
resistant whereas the 485g is not that being said especially in the usa with 200 cheaper it is a big
saving going for the 4a5g so if those features don't appeal to you then definitely go for this
so that's pretty much it for today's video i mean the links to this are down in the description
below but as always i'd like to know your thoughts in the comments who out there is going to order
a pixel and if not what phone are you waiting for but thanks for watching the video if you liked it
smash the thumbs up if you didn't hit the thumbs down twice and i'll see you guys in the next one
you