Great battery life and a handy size - Google Pixel 9a review

Fans of slim and compact smartphones will surely find joy in the Pixel 9a, as its camera sits almost flush with the back of the device and although it has grown in size, it's still one of the most compact Android smartphones on the market.

Its display gets super bright, but it doesn't use high-frequency PWM dimming, and our test device's illumination isn't completely even. Although the Tensor G4 offers high peak performance within its price class, it's throttled severely in the long run. Furthermore, the small storage configuration is a little tight.

Even so, the Pixel 9a is a good mid-range smartphone with great battery life, an IP68 certification, wireless charging, eSIM support, and a long update delivery period. Its cameras on the back deliver good results, too.

You can order the Pixel 9a directly via Google's online store.

The Google Pixel 9a follows in the Pixel 8a's footsteps and brings with it changes to its design as well as a larger display. Its battery has grown massively too, and the phone's SoC has been given an upgrade. Moreover, its protection against water has been improved.

Although it features new AI functions, these have been slimmed down a bit in comparison to the flagship models. The Google smartphone's prices have remained the same, with an MRSP of $499 (128 GB) and $599 (256 GB).

The Google Pixel 9a is available in four colors: Iris (lilac), Poeny (coral), Porcelain (white) and Obsidian (black). Visually, it has gotten more angular, making it appear a little thicker despite its identical build height compared to the Pixel 8a. Its camera module is now smaller and flatter, protruding by only 0.55 millimeters from the case.

Its build quality is great thanks to all gaps being tight-fitting and even. There are only some slight irregularities between the back cover and the frame. The matte aluminum frame is resistant to fingerprints and feels nice to touch. When attempting to be twisted, the Pixel 9a appears solid, but it does creak slightly.

The Google phone is IP68-certified, so it's both dust-tight and waterproof. It uses Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front—Google could have gone for a more modern and, as a result, more durable type of glass.

Google has provided a sustainability report for the Pixel 9a on its website. The outer packaging is completely plastic-free. In addition to recycled aluminum, the back of the phone also uses 81% recycled plastic. Based on its weight, the smartphone consists of 23% recycled materials.

Repair instructions and spare parts are provided and distributed via iFixit.

The good news is that the Pixel 9a supports Wi-Fi 6E, which includes the 6 GHz frequency band. Unfortunately, however, it's only with 2x2 MIMO, so its transfer rates are no higher than when using conventional Wi-Fi 6.

The Pixel 9a features broad frequency support for cellular communications, so long-distance travel shouldn't be a problem. We noted no reception issues in a city environment.

The Google Pixel 9a has space for a Nano SIM card as well as support for an eSIM, which can be used together in dual SIM operation. It also supports WLAN calls and VoLTE.

When held up to your ear, the Pixel 9a shows good call quality for voices as long as the ambient noise isn't too loud. A busy main road might be enough to stop the Pixel user from being intelligible. The hands-free mode is fine in quiet surroundings and even at a distance of 2 meters from the phone, we could be understood well during our test.

In controlled lighting conditions, the Google Pixel 9a showed good color depiction without any major outliers. Light skin tones were shown with a bit of a red tint, and only when depicting cyan was its DeltaE value above 10. Our test chart remained rich in detail and sharp right into the edges.

The Google Pixel 9a comes with a USB-C cable and a SIM tool. Google has removed the OTG adapter, but you can still purchase it separately if needed. Google also offers cases and a matching power adapter via its website.

In the USA, the phone is covered by a standard 12-month warranty and cannot be extended or expanded.

The Pixel 9a shares the same chipset as the other smartphones in Google's 9-series, namely the Tensor G4. However, at 8 GB, the 9a has less RAM available. As a result, it was on par with its siblings, such as the Pixel 9, during our CPU test.

That being said, it performed weaker in the system benchmarks. For example, the Pixel 9 was 22% faster during PCMark and even 34% faster during Basemark OS II. The RAM in particular seemed to play a role here, as did the GPU. Even so, the Pixel 9a works smoothly during everyday use.

The integrated ARM Mali-G715 MP7 is responsible for graphics calculations. It doesn't support ray tracing and appears to work somewhat slower than the nominally identical variants in the Pixel 9 Pro and co, but this can also be attributed to poorer cooling.

In comparison, it still offers high performance and was only surpassed by the iPhone 16e during our test.

The browser benchmarks showed a mixed picture. While the Pixel 9a took second place in Octane 2.0 or Speedometer 3.0 as expected, it was surprisingly weak in other benchmarks.

The Google Pixel 9a's UFS 3.1 storage boasted high speeds during our test, but it could have been a little faster when it came to sequential writing.

The phone's surface temperatures are completely harmless in idle mode and don't rise to a critical value at any time, even under constant load.

During the stress tests with 3DMark, the Pixel 9a was revealed to have rather weak cooling performance, as the nominally fast SoC was slowed down considerably by the heat and was even slower or just as fast as an Exynos 1580 in the Galaxy A56 in the long term.

The smartphone's two speakers deliver a good sound, but seem a little weak at high volumes. The high tones are then too present and lack clarity.

Alternatively, you can output sound via USB. Bluetooth is available wirelessly but unfortunately, Google hasn't provided any information on which codecs are supported and prevents users from reading it out in the developer options. Though it will likely look similar to its predecessor. Auracast is not yet supported.

The Google Pixel 9a has a particularly high power consumption when the display brightness is high, but this is due to its high luminosity without the ambient light sensor activated (1,188 cd/m²).

You can charge the Pixel 9a at a maximum of 23 watts via a cable and 7.5 watts wirelessly. Using a 125-watt power supply from Motorola (PD 2/3), it took 96 minutes to fully charge it during our test (50%: 31 mins, 80%: 54 mins, 90%: 69 mins).