Pixel 9a review: Google's cut-price Android winner

The Guardian

15-04-2025

Google's latest cut-price Pixel offers the best bang for your buck in Android phones and is arguably better in many areas than some models costing twice the price.
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The Pixel 9a starts at the same £499 (€549/$499/A$849) as last year's equally good value model. That makes it £300 or so less than Google's regular Pixel 9 and places it up against mid-rangers such as Nothing's Phone 3a Pro and Samsung's Galaxy A56.
Google has stuck with its tried and tested A-series formula, packing the 9a with top-level specs, chips and cameras, cutting a few corners to bring the price down. The result is an extremely compelling package for the money.
The 6.3in OLED screen is crisp, smooth and bright, looking better than many rivals costing far more. It has slightly thicker bezels around the edge than the Pixel 9, but keeps the premium-feeling aluminium band around the outside. The back is high-quality plastic rather than glass, but it's difficult to tell unless you know. The 9a has full IP68 water resistance, too, matching the best in the business.
The big change is that the standout camera bar on the back is gone. Instead, the twin cameras sit almost flush poking through a small black oval. It means the phone sits flat on a desk and is a little sleeker, but it has also lost some of its charm looking far more generic than the rest of Google's phone designs.
Screen: 6.3in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (422ppi)
Processor: Google Tensor G4
RAM: 8GB
Storage: 128 or 256GB
Operating system: Android 15
Camera: 48MP + 13MP ultrawide, 13MP selfie
Connectivity: 5G, Sim/eSim, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSS
Water resistance: IP68 (1m for 30 minutes)
Dimensions: 157.7 x 73.3 x 8.9mm
Weight: 185.9g
Inside, the 9a has the same top-tier Google Tensor G4 chip as the rest of the Pixel 9 line but with only 8GB of RAM rather than 12GB on the more expensive models. The chip is fast and performance is snappy. It won't win any raw performance awards but is markedly faster than most mid-range chips and played games just fine.
The battery also lasts a long time: up to 57 hours between charges with general light use, including actively using the screen for nine hours and spending five hours on 5G. That is the longest of all the Google Pixels and means it should see out two days, rivalling some of the longest-lasting handsets on the market.
You likely won't notice the smaller amount of RAM compared with the Pixel 9 in daily use, but it limits some of the potential for running Google's AI systems locally on the phone. The 9a has to make do with a smaller version of Google's Gemini AI tools that can only process text on-device, precluding some of the fancy audio or image-based tools such as the popular Pixel Screenshots and Call Notes apps from the Pixel 9.
All the Gemini features that use the web to process things, such as Gemini Live, work great. As do the various photo editing and image generation tools. The 9a can also produce summaries of voice recordings, but only those under about 15 minutes as there is a maximum number of words it can process in one go.
The rest of the Android 15 experience matches the other Pixel phones, which makes it one of the best in the business. Even better at this price is Google's seven years of software support for its Pixels, which means you can safely use the 9a for far longer than most in the mid-range market.
Google's Pixels have some of the very best cameras, which includes the 9a. It has a new main 48-megapixel camera twinned with a 13MP ultrawide, which matches that from last year's model.
The main camera is capable of shooting better photos than many full-price flagship phones, and is only a smidgen behind the regular Pixel 9 in low-light scenarios, taking longer to get the shot. Photos across a range of lighting conditions are full of detail and well balanced, while the ultrawide continues to be one of the better options available. The main camera offers a solid 2x zoom that can stretch up to 8x with more obvious digital artefacts.
New for the 9a is a macrophotography mode that uses the main camera and can produce some great shots, though sometimes it struggles to focus and is only sharp in the centre of the image. The selfie camera is solid on the front, while video capture is equally good.
The 9a has popular Best Take and Add Me AI features from the main Pixel 9, as well as various AI editing tools in Google Photos including Magic Editor, unblur and audio magic eraser.
Google says the battery should last about 1,000 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity. The phone is repairable by Google and third-party shops with genuine replacement parts available direct from iFixit.
The Pixel 9a is made with recycled aluminium, glass, plastic and tin, accounting for at least 23% of the phone by weight. The company publishes an environmental impact report for the phone and will recycle old devices free of charge.
The Google Pixel 9a costs £499 (€549/$499/A$849).
For comparison, the Pixel 9 costs £799, the Samsung Galaxy A56 costs £499, the Nothing Phone 3a Pro costs £449 and the Apple iPhone 16e costs £599.
The Pixel 9a shows Google knows how to make a cut-price flagship phone at a mid-range price better than any other.
The combination of top-tier chip, long battery life, great screen and a class-leading camera beats phones costing a lot more. Google's quality software and long seven years of support only sweeten the deal.
A few corners have been cut to bring the price down, but they aren't noticeable in day-to-day usage. Missing things such as a lack of wifi 7, satellite messaging or spatial audio, or the use of a plastic back can all be forgiven at this price.
While more expensive Pixel phones offer a few more bells and whistles, it's hard to overlook the Pixel 9a. It is the best mid-range phone by a wide margin and is the handset to buy for anyone looking for a quality experience that goes the distance for less.
Pros: seven years of software updates, class-leading camera, great screen, top-tier chip, very long battery life, recycled materials, good AI features, undercuts high-end phones on price.
Cons: design quite generic, no optical zoom for camera, raw performance short of best, plastic back, no built-in spatial audio, no wifi 7 or satellite messaging, older Gorilla Glass 3.