“The Pixel 5a continues to live up to its camera expectations, offering smooth performance, punchy photos, and lowlight capabilities on a budget.”
- Excellent camera performance
- Smooth, clean software
- IP67 water and dust resistance
- Affordable price for its capabilities
- Standard, somewhat boring design
- No high-refresh display
Google’s Pixel 5a 5G has been the subject of so many leaks at this point that there are no surprises here — but there never needed to be. The Pixel A-Series has always represented more affordable, pared-down versions of Google’s mainstay phones, while still bringing the same high-quality camera hardware and software performance to the table. None of that has changed with the Google Pixel 5a.
In terms of hardware, it’s a step above the Google Pixel 4a
Design and display
The design of the Pixel 5a
The big change from the previous model isn’t visible, but it’s a significant one. You now have IP67 water and dust resistance, meaning the Pixel 5a can withstand a complete dunking in water, splashes, and rain, along with a day at the beach. That was missing from previous generations and it’s uncommon to find even midrange phones that don’t have waterproofing these days, so it’s nice to see this durability issue rectified.
- 5. Pixel 5a headphone jack
The screen is largely unchanged. It’s a 6.34-inch, 2400 x 1080 resolution OLED screen. That’s a slight change from the 4a
The only thing I missed was the high-refresh screen 90Hz screen the Pixel 5 has, which allows for smoother scrolling, animations, and transitions. After getting used to the higher-refresh 90Hz screen on the Pixel 5 and 120Hz Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, it’s hard to go back to a regular 60Hz refresh rate.
Performance and battery
The Pixel 5a
It also handled demanding games like Asphalt 9 and Genshin Impact without chugging, though the lack of the higher-refresh panel is noticeable. Nonetheless, it will still get the job done without major issues. There isn’t much more to say about it.
Battery life is a big step up over the Pixel 4a
It’ll get the job done without major issues.
Over time, the phone also learns your app usage and habits with its Adaptive Battery feature. That means it’ll figure out what apps you use most frequently and at what times you use them (for me, it’s Twitter and Reddit at all hours), and it’ll make sure apps that you don’t commonly use aren’t wasting power in the background. Over a longer period of time, this feature should be able to learn your habits and better optimize performance to eke out more juice.
A powerhouse camera
Camera capabilities are why you’re here for the Pixel 5a
In good lighting, the main sensor takes excellent shots with plenty of detail, no noise or blur. Despite a brutally bright and sunny day that can often throw off the auto exposure of lesser phones, all the shots I snapped on my walk in the park came out beautifully. Colors were accurate, vivid without being oversaturated, and the greens came across particularly well in the contrast between areas of sunlight and shade.
Shooting with the ultrawide 16MP camera gives you a much wider field of view of 117 degrees. It’s tagged as 0.6x in your camera app and it lets you capture much more of your surroundings and background. It’s useful for landscape shots, and I enjoyed using it to capture the entire scope of the fountain and pond in the park.
But it’s Google’s software chops that really make the sensors shine.
There are some trade-offs with the ultrawide camera. While barrel distortion isn’t significant, some of the finer details get lost in the shot. Zooming in on leaves and branches results in seeing more artifacts and muddiness than you would if you were just shooting with the standard 12.2MP sensor. And it’s also worth noting that there’s no telephoto sensor. So while there is a 2x zoom option in the camera app, it’s digital zoom, not optical, so there’s a corresponding loss of quality there as well.
Unsurprisingly, lowlight photography is another strong suit for the Pixel 5a. In my kitchen on a cloudy day, the phone automatically enabled Night Sight to capture the colors of the slowly ripening banana and the patterns of the granite tabletop behind it wonderfully. You can also enable Night Sight in Portrait mode, giving you access to a wide array of powerful onboard editing options to control things like background blur and color pop, as well as enable black-and-white shots.
Among the other features packed in, you also get astrophotography, letting you capture vivid shots of the night sky just like the Pixel 5. For video recording, the phone can handle 1080p and
Software and connectivity
Out of the box, the Pixel 5a comes running the latest version of Android 11. It’s Google’s clean version of
In terms of unique features, there are various Google Assistant smarts and integrations. You can identify songs, you can have
In terms of connectivity, the Pixel 5a
Price and availability
The Google Pixel 5a
Our take
The Google Pixel 5a doesn’t promise anything it can’t deliver. It’s not a generational leap from the Pixel 4a
Is there a better alternative?
If you already own the Google Pixel 4a
On the higher end, the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE averages about $100 to 150 more, but it gets you a sharp 120Hz screen, triple rear camera array, wireless charging, and much more powerful processor and specs. The U.S. has a paucity of other compelling midrange phone options at the moment aside from the non-
One last thing to keep in mind is that Google has already announced the existence of the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, taking advantage of the new Tensor processor. So if you’re willing to wait for another year, we’d expect a future, unconfirmed
How long will it last?
The Google Pixel 5a
Should you buy one?
Yes. As a midrange phone with a great camera, clean software, long-lasting battery, and waterproofing, it the Pixel 5a doesn’t have many similarly priced competitors. However, if you already own a Pixel 4a
