Google Pixel 9a Review: Android 16 & Camera Test

We’ve used the Pixel 9a as our daily driver for 2 weeks, took it on a camping tript and played tons of Fortnite. We also took it on a photo shoot and compared the cameras with the Xiaomi 15 and Samsung A36. And we installed the Android 16 Beta to check out what everyone will be getting soon.

Yes, we did a lot, but it’ll likely be a popular phone, so we wanted to check it out in great detail. Well, should you buy it? That’s what you’ll learn in this review.

Design & Build Quality

We start with the design and build quality. The design is not that impressive since it’s lacking the iconic Pixel camera bar. Instead, it’s 8,9mm thick with a flush camera design. The advantage? This might be the first phone in ages that doesn’t wobble at all when you place it on a table without a case. The thicker design also leaves more space for a larger battery, which we’ll get to later.

It features slightly less premium but still excellent build quality compared to its flagship siblings – the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro. The screen is made of Gorilla Glass 3 and the back of the phone is made of a plasticky polymer instead of glass.

The plastic back feels surprisingly high quality and doesn’t gather fingerprints like a glass back would, so we have no complaints here. 

The sides of the phone are flat, but corners are slightly rounded and smooth. However, it feels surprisingly large despite technically only having a 6,3’’ display, putting it on the smaller end for a modern smartphone. And there’s a very obvious reason why: the screen bezels.

They’re much larger than we’re used to from other phones we’ve been reviewing recently. Sure, you’ll forget about it after 5 minutes. The only real shame is that the phone ends up with a larger footprint without the benefit of a bigger screen. 

With that being said, it’s IP 68 water and dust resistant, which is great.

Cameras: How good are they?

Cameras have always been a strength of Google’s Pixel phones, and the 9a is no exception. Google had to make some sacrifices to the main sensor for the zero-camera bump design, but the 48 megapixel, 25mm main camera is still very capable. And with Google’s great software processing, photos and videos look vivid and sharp. This lens also supports an automatic macro photo mode, which takes surprisingly detailed photos up close. 

Although the main lens is 48 MP, photos can only be taken with 12 MP resolution. However, we noticed that the Pixel takes sharper photos in 12MP than the Samsung Galaxy A36’s 50MP mode. That’s quite impressive. In fact, even the 50 MP photos of the Xiaomi 15, which is more expensive, don’t have much more detail. The amount of detail is quite similar.

The ultrawide camera is only 13 megapixels, but photos taken with it are surprisingly crisp despite the lower resolution again. That one only supports video recording in FHD, unfortunately. 

The same 13MP camera is used at the front, which in turn gives it a shockingly large field of view in the selfie mode. Selfies look passable, but not as sharp as on flagships due to the lower resolution. We compared the 9a against the cheaper Galaxy A36 and surprisingly found the Samsung’s selfies to be sharper. It’s a much cheaper phone.

Taking video with the selfie camera crops the frame and offers great image stabilisation and auto focus. Video recording at 4k 30FPS is also supported.

Only the main rear camera lens supports 4k 60FPS recording; Videos look good, and the stabilisation works great. You won’t find any strange video artifacts which often plague lower end smartphone cameras either.

The 9a even has support for taking photos in the RAW format, which allows better editing in apps like Adobe Lightroom. Sadly, when you open its RAW photos in Adobe Lightroom, they have a strange haze. Probably because it doesn’t support the 9a yet. But you can correct that by adding a bit of clarity and texture. Like you see here, we took all these photos in RAW and it’s lot of fun shooting with this phone.

With that being said, they’re not as sharp when compared to a flagship like the iPhone 16 Pro. Especially when shooting it in RAW as well. It’s not a fair comparison, of course, but it’s just something we noticed quickly. The same goes for the S25 Ultra. Both have better main cameras than the Pixel 9a.

Android 16 Beta: A first look

Since we’re running a beta version of Android 16, a couple things might change between now and the official release, but here’s a brief overview of changes we’ve noticed so far.

Android 16 “Material 3 Expressive” adds a lot of UI overhauls like more flush and vibrant icons, sliding bars on the volume and brightness sliders and the option to shrink quick settings menu icons. Dismissing notifications is also more satisfying, with notification bars bouncing away energetically and with haptics. You’ll notice changes like icons in quick settings becoming square when interacted with.

In general, it feels like Google finally abandoned the minimalistic Android aesthetic from the past couple of years and went all-in on a more vibrant and bouncy user interface. 

The lock and home screens also have a couple changes. You can now add live weather effects, auto crops and live animations for your background photo in the lock screen, which disappear when you unlock the phone. Neat. Unfortunately, you still can’t remove the Google search bar and “At a Glance” widgets from the homescreen.

Some Android 16 features like live notifications for deliveries or taxis still aren’t available, but seem very promising from what Google has revealed so far. It really feels like Google borrowed the best parts of iOS and Android skins like OneUI and NothingOS and synthesized them into a huge upgrade for the Pixel experience.

And speaking of things borrowed from OneUI; Stock Android is finally getting a Desktop mode based on Samsung DeX. It’s not available on the beta just yet, but the Pixel 9a should get this feature since it already can display to an external monitor via the USB 3.2 port. 

Maybe this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s absolutely game-changing if more companies adopt a standard inbuilt Desktop mode on Android phones and tablets, allowing you to use your Android device as a laptop alternative. We always review them on tablets and would love a great standard one.

Software Support

One of the biggest selling points is its 7 year support period. Google has always had a very good track record with rolling out updates for their devices, but starting from last year’s Pixel 8 series, they promise a minimum 7 years of Android version updates. That’s great.

Display & Speakers

We think that the Pixel 9a has an excellent display despite the larger bezels. With a peak brightness at 2700 nits, the phone is fully usable under direct sunlight. The screen resolution is almost 2k, and with a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz, navigating the phone feels smooth and everything is super sharp.

For some reason, the display is capped at 60Hz by default. You’ll have to enable the “Smooth Display” setting in order to use the full refresh rate, which we recommend doing.

The inbuilt stereo speakers are pretty decent. They get quite loud, bass is present and there’s very little distortion at high volumes. We did notice that the bass is more audible on lower volumes, but tends to taper off when turning the speakers all the way up.

Combined with the excellent display, the Pixel 9a makes for a great experience in apps like TikTok and in games. 

Hardware & Performance

The 9a comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage by default, which is the bare minimum for any phone these days. You can also get a 256GB version. 8GB of RAM is more than enough for multitasking and gaming right now, but future apps and Android versions might be more RAM hungry and slow the Pixel down. Still, there’s no need to worry for years to come.

Interestingly, some Google Gemini AI features perform worse or just don’t exist on the Pixel 9a compared to the other 9th gen Pixels, since the other phones have a minimum of 12GB of RAM. Call notes and the AI powered screenshots app aren’t available. Users interested in advanced AI features will be better off with a Pixel 9. Unfortunately, there’s also no option for storage expansion in the form of an SD-Card slot. 

There’s been a lot of criticism about the performance of Google’s Tensor chips. And yes, when you’re paying a grand for a flagship smartphone and only getting half the performance as other flagships and worse battery life, you have a right to be disappointed. 

But the competition is very different in the midrange. Since the Pixel 9a uses the Tensor G4 just like the 9 Pro, it enjoys the same performance at a much lower price. Multitasking, light video and photo editing and mobile gaming are a breeze for the chip.

Speaking of heat and thermals, the one distinction between the 9a and other Pixel 9s is the packaging technology for the Tensor chip, where Google uses a cheaper process that conducts heat worse. To compensate, they added a vapour chamber for cooling, making up for the extra heat output. 

In Geekbench 6, the CPU speed of the Pixel 9a is only around 10% slower in single core compared to the similarly priced OnePlus Nord 4, a phone praised for its excellent performance per dollar. And compared to cheaper, more budget friendly phones like the Galaxy A36, the Pixel 9a leaves it in the dust with close to double the CPU multi-core speed.

In the GPU benchmark 3DMark Wildlife Extreme, the Pixel performs about the same as the Oneplus Nord 4, which is great. In 3DMark Steel Nomad light, the Pixel 9a is just 35% slower than the iPhone 16 Pro. Overall, these scores are very remarkable.

Read: CMF Phone 2 Pro Review: Amazing Sub $250 Camera?

Gaming

It should be no surprise that the Pixel is no slouch in modern games, even with higher graphical presets. Fortnite on the Ultra preset with every setting turned all the way up impresses with a 55 FPS average, out of a possible maximum of 60. 

In Genshin Impact, we are able to crank settings all the way up and sit at a comfortable 60FPS average. The phone barely even warms up in this title. 

In Alien: Isolation, the 9a produces a solid 43 FPS average on the “Performance” preset, and 33 FPS in “Graphical”. Although it’s still a ways off the magic 60FPS mark, the game is more than playable and looks excellent.

Overall, we are very happy with how the Pixel 9a performs in games. The inclusion of a vapour chamber seems to really help disperse heat, and the stereo speakers and great display create a very immersive experience. 

Battery Life

23 Watt charging isn’t the best in 2025 anymore. While smartphones from Xiaomi and Oppo can fully charge within half an hour, the Pixel 9a needs over 2 hours to do the same. The good news is that the Pixel at least has a large battery with 5100 mAh capacity. Wireless charging is supported, but only at 7 watts. 

One common criticism about Google’s Pixel series since the Pixel 6 has been their abysmal battery life. And we can attest to that, having used and struggled with the Pixel 6 Pro before. The 9a makes a huge improvement.

In our YouTube HD-video playback test, the Pixel manages a whole 24 hours of continuous playback at peak brightness. That’s only 10% worse than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and on par with the flagship Xiaomi 15. That’s excellent!

One thing we noticed is that the battery drains a bit faster on 5g data and the phone heats up more, thanks to the older Samsung Exynos 5300 modem.

Read: POCO M7 Pro 5G Review: What Is Xiaomi Thinking???

Unlock options

Despite only using a single camera, facial unlock works reliably, and allegedly is secure despite lacking 3d scanning. We can’t comment on the security, but the unlock speed and low light performance is definitely impressive.

If you’re worried about security or privacy, you’ll be a fan of the on-screen fingerprint reader. In our testing, it’s not the most accurate fingerprint reader we’ve used – that would go to any phone with an actual ultrasonic fingerprint sensor – but it’s far better than the one on a Samsung Galaxy A36, for example. 90% of the time, the reader works on the first try.

Summary: A balanced mid range phone

Google’s Pixel 9a is an extraordinarily well balanced midranger. The cameras, display, support period and even performance are at least on par, if not leagues ahead of other competitors in its price range. Android 16 also seems very promising so far, and should be released soon for all supported Pixels.

More storage space, a better selfie camera and smaller display bezels would be things that we hope to see in the Pixel 10a. But right now, it’s hard to find a better smartphone deal on the market, so if you’re looking for a good midrange device, then the Pixel 9a is a great pick.

Transparency: The Pixel 9a was given to us as a loaner by Google for a duration of 4 weeks.