Hi everyone Aaron here for zollotech and the iphone se
and the pixel 4a are the latest least expensive offerings from both
iphone or apple and google with their pixel lineup
and so i wanted to help you decide which one would be best for you
and this will be based on everything from price to specs
and a comparison of cameras and much more now at this point you've probably
already determined that using ios or android is fine with you but you're
looking for the best value and what will work best for you
and so if you want to jump to any specific section of this video
check the time codes in the description below now the first thing is the price
and the colors so with the iphone se you can see this
is the red version or the product red version
and the iphone se is a little bit more expensive for 2020.
it comes in at 399 dollars and goes up to 549 dollars
it comes in 64 128 or 256 gigabytes and the storage is not upgradable
you also have three different color options so you have the red one that i'm
showing you here as well as white and black as far as your options go there
now when it comes to the pixel 4a it's much simpler you have
one simple option you have a 349 dollar price tag which gives you 128 gigabytes
of non-upgradeable storage and you get one
color just black and so the just black color
is a black plastic on the back and then you've got a bluish green
power button on the side now when it comes to the overall size and build well
you can see the size comparison next to each other
the pixel 4a is slightly taller and is very similar in width but is a little
bit wider just a little bit but the actual weight of them is very
similar so with the iphone se it comes in at 5.22 ounces or 148 grams
with the pixel 4a it's 5.04 ounces or 143 grams
and so they are very similar in weight the pixel 4 8 does feel a little bit
lighter because it is but it's very very similar now the iphone se does
feel built a little bit better in that it's glass
front and back as well as an aluminum frame around the outside
edge just like every other iphone you have your power sleep wake button on the
right side and then on the iphone se you have your
sim card tray below that and then on the bottom of the phone you
have your speakers and microphone as well as your lightning adapter
and then on the other side you have your volume buttons along with your
silent switch or vibrate switch on the top there's nothing else
and then we've got our cameras front and back we'll talk more about the cameras
in a moment but with the pixel 4a you get a little
extra with a headphone jack on the top so on
the top you've got a headphone jack and your microphone
then on the right hand side you've got your power sleep wake button along with
the volume rocker on the bottom you have usbc along with a speaker and microphone
and then on the other side again you have a sim card tray slot now these sim
card trays hold one sim card on each device you do have
an e sim option so you can have dual sims that
way but it doesn't hold two physical sims together so you've got
that as far as an option so you can use a physical sim
and an esim when it comes to unlocking the phones they both have fingerprint
sensors so the iphone se for example has touch id which is really fast and
the pixel 4a has pixel imprint which is also very fast
so i just press my finger on the back of the phone it's already unlocked i'll do
that again so you can see and it unlocks it nice and quick you can
also use the fingerprint sensor to pull down notifications which you probably
have already seen me doing by accident now with the pixel 4a it is not glass
it's plastic but it feels very premium so you've got glass on the front of
course and then a premium feeling back that's
plastic which will help with drops compared to say the iphone se
and the iphone se is the only one with an ip rating so
the iphone se has an ip67 rating so water resistance for
up to 30 minutes at 1 meter the pixel 4a does not have that at all
but the pixel 4a does have some great specs
as far as its display with the iphone se we have a 4.7 inch lcd
it's 1334 by 750 pixels for its resolution and then it's
326 pixels per inch it includes true tone has wide color p3
and can go up to 625 nits of brightness it's a pretty
bright display but technically it's not as bright as
the pixel 4a it also has haptic touch so you can
press and hold on an icon and it'll pop up just like you had 3d
touch in the past with the pixel 4a it has a little bit
better display as far as resolution it's a 5.8 inch oled display that's 1080
by 2340 and has 443 pixels per inch it supports
hdr has an always on display and depending
on the actual test you find it can go up to 653 nits of brightness
that's according to tom's guide who actually measured it
so you'll see we're at about three quarter brightness if i turn it all the
way up it's going to be a little bit blown out
on the camera but you get the idea so it's pretty good that way now one thing
to keep in mind is that the iphone is an lcd display and
the pixel is an oled display and that means this pixel has pwm or
pulse width modulation that actually controls brightness of the display by
blinking it faster or slower you can't see this with your eyes but it
can cause headaches so as you can see here
as you adjust the brightness on the pixel 4a the screen
will flash faster or slower where it won't do that at all on an iphone se
so if you're sensitive to this sort of flashing lights or anything like that
i would go with the iphone se as that may cause you headaches it seems to be
about 1 in 10 people have this issue now when it comes to viewing
angles they're both pretty good as you can see here
they look good from any angle basically like i said they're nice and bright
now when it comes to the actual ability of each display to play higher
resolution video well the iphone se could technically
play 4k once ios 14 is out or it may be out by the time you're watching this
video because it includes the vp9 codec that
allows for 4k video however youtube and apple have to allow
this so you probably won't see that resolution
and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a display like this
because it technically isn't up to 4k so you may get a better bitrate
but it's not up to 4k so you have a 1080p option here
and this is my iphone or my apple watch series 4 review
and it's in 4k hdr so i can show you if it has hdr content
so on the pixel 4a for example it's not a 4k display either
but it is an hdr display and so when you go to this video you'll see that we have
up to 1080p but in hdr so you'll see the more
vibrant content and also deeper blacks when
you're watching this type of video now when it comes to the speakers both
of them are very loud they have a very good stereo sound to them in fact at
first i didn't think the pixel 4a had stereo sound but first take a listen to
the iphone se and then you can hear the
pixel 4a and let me know which one you think is best in the comments below
so in that situation i would say the iphone se sounds a little bit better
it's a little bit more crisp and clear but both of them are equally good as far
as its stereo sound they both project well
out of both the top speakers and the bottom speakers at the same time so i
think anyone using these phones would be pretty happy with that
it'll just be a little bit better with the iphone se in my experience
now when it comes to the specs of the phone this is where they're technically
very different because the iphone se from 2020 has the latest apple cpu unit
with the a13 bionic cpu and the third generation
neural engine along with three gigabytes of ram
and you may think three gigabytes of ram isn't enough but in an iphone it seems
to handle that without a problem and i'll show you some of that a little
bit later with different games and things
now with the pixel 4a it has the qualcomm snapdragon
730g cpu in it with six gigabytes of ram so it definitely has more ram maybe for
multitasking but the cpu is technically a little bit
slower than what we have with the iphone sc so that's where it's a little bit of
a step back but it is quite a bit less expensive for
what you're getting so when it comes to the actual performance of these devices
that's where they may be a little bit different so i've installed some games
as well as some other tests that we'll do but let's go ahead and open
asphalt 9 and see how it handles the frame rates
so i haven't opened it on the iphone se before
but you'll see it loaded a little bit slower than it did on the pixel 4a but
they're both still loading at about the same rate
so i have the game loaded up on both phones let's go ahead and hit resume
just so you can see the different frame rates what it looks like
we can boost here a little bit see what it looks like
and this is just the early tutorial i don't normally play this game on this
phone but this gives you an idea of what it's like as far as playing games so it
seems to be okay as far as that goes so let's go go ahead
and go home now as i load the next game one thing to
know is the iphone did get a little bit warm on the back
so far the pixel 4a is not warm at all and
it's okay for the iphone to get warm when it's actually doing
heavy processing other phones will do the same but so far the pixel 4a isn't
really warm at all now with the pixel 4a it seems to have decent frame rates as
well it's handling the game without any
problem and as you can see i'm just sort of breezing through it
and one nice thing is it's not really heating up at all i do feel it getting a
little bit warm but it's not hot to the touch or anything like that
the iphone se seems to be much warmer when i'm actually holding it and playing
an intensive game so as you can see here it's again smooth frame rates but it is
getting a little bit warmer than the pixel 4a
now one final test that will really push the cpus and the memory in these devices
is exporting a 4k video now i've set that up using powerdirector
so let's go ahead and go into that it's the same app on both
with the same video loaded in both so i have projects here
that i've worked on they're identical so if i edit the project on both
you'll see in the timeline it's the same clip and what i've done is put a title
on it it's a little title up there i've split
the clip and then added another one to itself so let's go ahead
and try and export this and see what kind of speed they get when
doing that now i've got both videos ready to export in 4k
let's go ahead and hit produce so it exports and see which one's quicker
so that was a little bit surprising to me the pixel 4a was a little bit faster
there and if i hit play now bring it up in photos
and you'll see it's very similar video so
we've got the same thing going on it's a 4k video and those
those results actually surprised me a bit and so the back of the phones
they're not really warm at all and they both did a great job now let's talk
about the cameras now when it comes to the forward-facing cameras
both of them have decent cameras the iphone se has a 7 megapixel f 2.2
aperture lens and can record up to 1080p 30. when it comes to the pixel 4a it's
got an 8 megapixel f 2.0 aperture lens with 1080p video capability as well
so let's take a look at a video sample so you can see which one's better and
also you can hear the microphones here's the forward-facing cameras of the
iphone se and the pixel 4a and so both of them look okay but in the
display that i'm seeing the iphone se looks a lot more blown out in the
background as compared to the pixel 4a it seems to
be doing a better job as far as dynamic range
but let me know what you think in the comments below and hopefully you can
hear the difference in audio as well over all the cicadas or whatever's going
on in the background now when it comes to the back of the
phones both of them only have one camera lens but they're both decent
cameras the iphone se has a 12 megapixel camera
with an f 1.8 aperture and can record up to 4k 60 when it comes to video
so if i switch over to video here you'll see that we have 4k
60 for a video recording option when it comes to the
pixel 4a it's a 12.2 megapixel camera with an f 1.7 aperture
and it can record in 4k 30. so you've only got one 4k
option when you switch over to video you'll see here if we bring in the
options it just says 4k ultra high resolution and i confirmed it
it's 29.97 p or basically 30p so you've got those
capabilities let's take a look at what the cameras
can do as far as their picture capability
as well as some of the video samples as
well
now in my opinion the pixel 4a does take the better photos but the iphone se
takes better video in my experience so just depends what you're using them for
and which thing is more important to you now when it comes to battery life the
iphone se is actually lacking a little bit as compared to the
pixel 4a so it has a 1 821 milliamp hour battery
and it can fast charge but it's not included in the box
you've got the simple 5 watt charger that comes with iphones of the past
and you don't have that capability however what you do have
is wireless charging because it has a glass back you can set it on a wireless
charger and charge it that way now you will get about five hours or so
of screen on time depending on what your normal usage is
and the battery will last you throughout the day if you're not a heavy user
otherwise you'll find yourself charging it throughout the day so just
in general expect it to get about five hours based on
many different people online as well as my own experience
most people are seeing that with a fast charger you can charge it about fifty
percent in 30 minutes when it comes to the pixel 4a it has a
much larger 3140 milliamp hour battery it also can charge at 18 watts and the
fast charger is included you'll get the same 50 percent charge or
so in thirty minutes but it gets six to seven hours of screen
on time as compared to the five hours that you get with the iphone se so if
battery is of most importance the pixel 4a is probably going to get you a little
bit better battery life overall based on what you're doing so just keep
that in mind but you don't have wireless charging even though it has a plastic
back you don't have wireless charging as an
option now finally when it comes to ios updates well the iphone se will probably
be supported for about five years given apple's track record expect about
five years of usage with the pixel 4a you're guaranteed three years of updates
from google so it depends on how often you update your
phone if you update your phone every couple of years then the 4a is fine that
way if you want to keep your phone very long term well you may want to opt
for the iphone se you'll have consistent updates for many
many years both operating systems work really well
both of them have great cameras for the price
and i think offer a very convincing package for most people that love
either android or ios and want something that doesn't cost
a thousand dollars in fact for an iphone 11 pro max
you could get three iphone ses so this is a very
value priced device that has the cpu of the higher end phones
with the pixel 4a you've got a very high-end camera that you get basically
the same photos as you do with the pixel 4 xl
and maybe future pixel 5 devices but you don't have some of the other
features with it so it just depends on what you want as far as that goes so if
you're picking which one is best for you when it comes down to it i would pick
which operating system works best for you
if you're in an iphone environment maybe you have a mac maybe you have an ipad
the iphone may work best for you especially if you're tied into imessage
however if you're not tied into that give the pixel 4a a try as it will work
really well with any other device windows or or mac or whatever you have
as well both are great i can highly recommend
both but it really just boils down to which one works best for you
so hopefully that helped you determine which one will work best for you
let me know which one you would choose in the comments below and of course i'll
link this wallpaper in the description like i normally do
if you haven't subscribed already though please subscribe and if you enjoyed the
video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is
Aaron i'll see you next time
you