On paper, the Pixel 9a seems like a steady-as-she-goes iterative update for Google’s cheaper phone line. In reality, it’s quite a lot more.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Flagship performance at a sub-$1,000 price point | Google’s affordable Pixel is still kind of pricey |
| 7 Years of OS, Security Updates and Pixel Feature Drops | Less free Gemini Advanced than other Pixel 9 phones |
| Excellent battery life | No included charger, and charge rates aren’t particularly fast |
Score: 4.5/5
 |
Buy The Google Pixel 9a! | Buy On Amazon |
In this review
Google Pixel 9a Specifications
Google Pixel 9a Design
Google Pixel 9a Camera
Google Pixel 9a Performance
Google Pixel 9a Battery
Google Pixel 9a Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The review of the Google Pixel 9a performed here was on a phone sent to me by Google Australia for the purposes of review.
Google doesn’t tend to ask for phones to be returned for the most part, though that hasn’t been explicitly stated to me one way or the other.
Regardless, that gets the Pixel 9a reviewed, and that’s all. All results, review opinions and editorial content is 100% influence free – as it should be.
For more on Alex Reviews Tech’s ethical policy, see here.
Last year’s Google Pixel 8a was a great phone that let me down primarily because Google chose to let its price creep up relative to prior A-series Pixel phones, especially here in Australia.
Also read:
Google Pixel 8a Review
The Pixel 9a sadly doesn’t reverse that trend – and I do really miss the days of genuinely affordable, genuinely excellent Nexus phones – but in the meantime, general phone pricing at the upper mid-range has jumped up.
That’s inflation for you, but it leaves the Pixel 9a as a far more palatable offering, mixing in premium grade performance, decent cameras and the best battery performance of any phone in its price range – and it’s not even close.
I’ll always advocate for the idea that you should shop around to get the best phone for you, your needs and preferences, but right now, if you’re shopping in the upper mid-range (or lower premium) space of around $800-$1,100 AUD, the Pixel 9a should not be overlooked.
Design
The Pixel 9a is built around a 6.3 inch 20:9 1080×2424 pixel pOLED display that, as per Google peaks at up to 2,700 nits, making it one of the very brightest phones out there – and certainly the most bright in its particular price category.
That does make a significant impact to its visibility in direct sunlight; it’s almost like Google’s building phones specifically with Australian summers in mind.
That 6.3 inch size is also a pleasing upgrade from the 6.1 inch display found on the Pixel 8a, though this doesn’t make as much of a size and weight difference as you might think; the Pixel 9a is 2.5mm taller and 0.1mm wider than the Pixel 8a is, though it does so in a frame that’s actually 5.8g lighter, which is some nice engineering, though it’s only of the kind that you’d note if you had both phones in your hand.
Google sells the Pixel 9a in its classic Obsidian (black) and Porcelain (white) finishes, as well as Peony (pink) and Iris (blue), with no colour options skipped for the Australian market which is always pleasing to see. The model sent my way by Google Australia was the Obsidian variant.
In terms of durability, the Pixel 9a is rated at IP68 for water and dust resistance; as a reminder those resistances don’t mean that it’s waterproof, but it should be able to handle accidental immersion without too much stress.
All so far, so fine, but Google has made one major design shift for the Pixel 9a that I’ll address in the next section.
Camera
The iconic part of recent Pixel phone designs has been the camera bar/pill that dominates the rear of phones such as the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro Fold. I can always tell when I’m looking at Pixel phone in a TV show or movie, because they look like Pixel phones from the rear.
The Pixel 9a drops that iconic design element for its cameras, opting instead for a more standard dual lens array in a little bubble at the rear that makes it look rather generic.
At a hardware level, what you’re shooting with is a 48MP f/1.7 primary wide sensor alongside a 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide, while selfies are handled by a front-facing 13MP f/2.2 sensor. That’s a technical step down from the 64MP wide sensor in the Pixel 8a, but I’d happily balance that against the Pixel 9a’s f/1.7 aperture, giving it the potential for considerably better low light shooting.
So how well does it compare? When I first got the Pixel 9a, I took it out for a little low light shootout against the iPhone 16e and Samsung Galaxy S24 FE. Here’s how that test panned out:
While the Pixel 9a might not win the low light wars entirely, it does present photos in a pleasingly naturalistic way where a lot of its competitors tend towards shots with rather garish post-processing done by the phone itself.
Naturally you’re free to post-process for specific looks if you’re that type of photographer, but for folks looking for simple real world shots, the Pixel 9a does well almost no matter what type of shot I throw at it.
You’re still going to need to spend more for pro-level smartphone photography as you’d expect, but for the everyday crowd, you’ve got to work hard to get a shot out of the Pixel 9a that doesn’t look good in most situations.
Plenty of phones struggle with folks that lack hair (like me) but the Pixel 9a handles it nicely for selfie shots.
Digital zoom tops out at 8x and struggles somewhat, but this 2x zoom shot looks great (and hey, when did I start taking photos of dogs?)
Close detail, even on a more complex subject like this is represented well.
A mix of low light, flood light and even some starlight, and the Pixel 9a handles it nicely.
The Pixel 9a did well here; there was less light than might be apparent,
which is why it could also mix in the stars behind the windmill.
Performance
The core appeal for Google’s Pixel A series phones is that they’ve packed in the same processor cores as the previous year’s flagship phones.
While we’ll all but certainly see a Tensor G5 in the Pixel 10 line when it appears later this year, that means you’re getting the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9a, along with 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of fixed storage. As with all Pixel phones, microSD expansion just isn’t a feature. A more cynical journalist than me might even think that Google was trying to sell more cloud storage, but that couldn’t be the reason… could it?
In the actual premium space, the Tensor G4 has always trailled the best that the likes of Qualcomm or Apple offer in straight line performance benchmark terms, but once you set the dial below $1,000 AUD, you do start to see performance trail off – at least for some phone models. Apple’s introduction of the iPhone 16e has slightly muddied those waters, of course.
So how does the Pixel 9a stack up? Let’s start out looking at CPU performance using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:
I’m rather used to the Pixels sitting at dead last in their fields, so the Pixel 9a’s performance here is refreshing, especially when you consider that the phones that beat it out all cost $100+ more than the base level Pixel 9a does.
Also read:
It’s not the best in class for sure, but there’s a decent quantity of processing power here, while also offering a nice boost over the Pixel 8a.
As always though, it’s never worth it upgrading year on year. So how does the Pixel 9a stack up historically if you’re a long-term Pixel user?
Jumping up from an older Pixel would see some decent performance gains. It’s not quite as good a picture for the Pixel 9a jumping back to concurrent phones in a GPU sense. Here’s how the Pixel 9a compares using 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme test:
That will matter more to you if you’re looking to the Pixel 9a as (for example) a high-end gaming phone, which it isn’t. However, having used the Pixel 9a over the past couple of weeks – I could have rushed out a review early but that just isn’t my style, I’d rather do these reviews properly — I can safely say that for most users it’s going to be more than powerful enough.
I’ve long noted that flagship phones are often overpowered for all but the most demanding users, and that’s absolutely the case here. Higher end Android games will run on the Pixel 9a, though you may need to dial down a few settings from their maximums for some of them.
Like other Pixel phones, you get the benefit with the Pixel 9a of seeing Android updates and security updates first, and for a pleasing 7 year span. Google also promises Google Pixel feature drops over that period, though it doesn’t specify what those will be. It’s fair to guess that the Pixel 9a will see some Pixel features that don’t need newer processors or similar, but maybe not all of them over its 7 year lifespan.
The Pixel 9a is also AI-ready with Google’s suite of AI features, though not quite all of the suite found in the Pixel 9 series itself, with Pixel Screenshots for example not making the 9a cut. I’m still waiting for that “killer” AI feature on consumer-grade smartphones that gives me that lightbulb moment where it becomes must-have, but there’s little doubting that Google’s AI is in a more advanced state than Apple’s is right now.
The full Pixel 9 Pro phones offered up a year’s worth of Gemini Advanced, Google’s even more capable AI suite last year, and while I figured (and still figure) that the best part of that is the 1TB of free storage that goes with it, there’s no such largesse on Google’s part when it comes to the Pixel 9a.
That comes with the cheaper territory I guess, but all you could score would be the standard free month of Gemini Advanced if you’ve not used it beforehand.
On the actual phone-as-a-phone side, the Pixel 9a is 5G sub-6Ghz capable. Phone performance always varies by network and localised usage conditions, but testing with the Telstra network mostly in suburban Sydney saw few issues, but also nothing out of the ordinary in terms of achievable speeds. Calls were fine and clear according to callers, but that’s very much table stakes for any phone not found free in a cereal box these days.
Battery
For the longest time, when I was writing up the battery performance of Android phones, I could have practically just had “5,000mAh” stored away to paste endlessly, because so many Android phones ship with that capacity.
Of late, however, there’s been a new wave of phones with slightly more than the standard, and the Pixel 9a is one of them.
Crack it open and you can kiss your warranty goodbye, but you’d be staring at a 5,100mAh battery. Looking at iFixit’s guide, you’d also be up for a tricky job doing so.
5,100mAh isn’t a huge tick upwards in battery capacity, and despite Google’s claims of “30+ hour battery life” I always like to test these things as methodically as possible. Of course, everyone’s battery usage is different, so this isn’t entirely straightforward. For more on how ART conducts battery tests, click here.
Putting the Pixel 9a through my standard YouTube battery rundown test against that same crop of high mid-range phones shows just how well it runs in a comparative sense. Spoiler: The appropriate suffix here is “very”.
That’s just flat out excellent, beating its predecessor by a few percentage points and every other phone in the test group every step of the way. It follows through in anecdotal usage too. Unless you absolutely hammer the Pixel 9a with heavy duty apps in a relentless fashion, it’s going to last out the day for you before you have to reach for a charger.
The Pixel 9a supports both wired USB-C and Wireless Qi charging, though only at a maximum of 23W for wired charging and 7.5W for Qi. No sign of Qi2 here, though it would have been odd for Google to break its Qi2 cherry on its more affordable model.
Google Pixel 9a: Alex’s Verdict
I don’t have to like the fact that the price on Pixel A series phones isn’t what it used to be, because I really do miss the days of great value Google-branded handsets. If anyone at Google’s listening, I’d be happy to consult on ways you could bring back the Nexus line… but I digress.
The Pixel 9a is an overall excellent device and very easy phone to recommend within its price bracket. Its battery life is superb, its cameras are pleasant to use and the promise of 7 years of updates should keep it ticking along nicely for about as long as you’re likely to want to keep a phone going.
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Google Pixel 9a: Pricing and availability
The Google Pixel 9a retails in Australia for $849 with 128GB of RAM or $999 with 256GB of RAM.
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Buy The Google Pixel 9a! | Buy On Amazon |
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