Google Pixel 3a Unboxing

So we got some new Pixel phones in the studio and well you guys already know I've been a fan of Pixel products in the past

Pixel 3, Pixel 2, Original Pixel, I use the Nexus devices. I just have a lot of experience with the Google branded hardware even before they put their badge on it

And of course there's always been advantages to using Google branded Android devices in the sense that you're getting the latest and greatest software alongside with whatever hardware they happen to pair with it

Since they got involved in the hardware business directly, some things have happened that have been really interesting

Primarily, what they're doing in the camera department. Kirk uses his Pixel for all the social content that we post on Instagram, Twitter

Now, it's been boiled and baked into an entry-level Pixel product. The Pixel 3a and 3a XL

Now, I do not like the naming, alright? The A thing, it's not for me

I get it. They probably didn't want to call it light because they don't want to imply that it's not as good

But that would have been a lot easier. So in front of me. I've actually got a lot of pixels here

I got the the 3a in black the 3a in white this color here in the middle is called what purple ish

Purple ish. I'm actually gonna pop open the standard 3a first We're gonna talk about the differences between this product and the pre-existing pixel 3

It's the first time I'm aware of that Google has done a stopover product

We were talking previously in the studio about the fact that, well, now you have Apple with their XR

You have Samsung with their S10E. The budget-minded smartphone is definitely, you know, that's the era we're in now

I should talk about price. It's an important consideration. Kind of amazingly, this 3A is going to retail for $399

Will, I want to be clear. Are we talking $399? $399 USD

now the spec sheet it's not going to blow you away it's not like 800 series Snapdragon

it's only got 4 gigs of RAM it's got a chin and a forehead

on it but when you think about it you're getting the Pixel camera

that's flagship level arguably the best, I mean for me personally the most point and

shoot awesome results smartphone camera out there on planet Earth as of right now

In my experience, I used everything. That's just a golden camera. So to be able to approach that in a 399 product

I think that's the story of this product. And that's also why I think the 3A, not the XL

is probably the go-to. It's probably the one you should be interested in from a cost to performance ratio

Polycarbonate body, that's a fancy way of saying plastic, but it is polished and it has a smooth feel to it

It feels a little lighter maybe than the standard Pixel 3. Maybe that's because it's not metal

I'm not really sure. But this is a cost of performance thing. You make those adjustments to go down to this particular cost

The bottom you notice it looks a bit different. That's because one of the speaker units is firing out of the bottom rather than the front of the device like it is on the standard Pixel 3

USB type C connector and some pretty crazy quick charge stats on this

according to Google, you're looking at like seven hours of battery life in a 15 minute charge

Am I correct on that stat? That's, I mean, that's unbelievable. I want to test that myself and I

will do so. Actually, I should let you know right at this moment, I have a new channel. I don't know

maybe you saw it, maybe you didn't. We shoot it downstairs. It's called Lou Later. It allows me

to take deeper dives in a longer format style content. It's a podcast as well. I'll link it

down in the description. I'll be doing a deep dive, conversational piece of content on this

device all these devices right after this video so you can click that link go check that out

afterwards and we'll dive a little deeper because some people want to do that or you can get the

audio only format if you driving and you can really uh learn about the pixel 3a while you driving on youtube so maybe you want to get the audio formats on itunes it all over the place Anyway fingerprint scanner it still here I mean it kind of like a Pixel It like a Pixel 3 obviously

That's why it's just a Pixel 3a. It's a lot like a Pixel 3

So we'll focus on the differences. You get a headphone jack. Ladies and gentlemen, 2019, it's a headphone jack

I like it. I mean, why not? There's a lot of people that still like this thing. I get emails all the time from people saying

I'm looking for a smartphone with a headphone jack, and I'm running out of recommendations. so it's kind of cool at the $399 price point they kept that around you get this little adapter in

the center here this is for migration over to this device from your old one and then your power brick

is in here as well once again it's a crazy claim does this have wireless charging though will

it does not so they dropped the wireless charging this is a trade-off i love wireless charging

and i don't know if it's worth the extra cost something worth mentioning since this is a stop

gap device. It's kind of an in-between device. The current cost of the Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL

is not what it was when it launched. It's a little lower. On Amazon right now, you can find them for

around 700 bucks. So the distance between the two shrunk a little bit, but I still think at $399

it's like, it becomes a bit harder to justify upgrading or going with the Pixel 3, 3 XL over

the A. Now the first thing you're going to notice now that I have this booted up, you can see

big forehead, big chin, kind of an antiquated design. The other thing you can notice if I just

tip this a little bit like this, you have a single front-facing camera as opposed to the layout on the

Pixel 3 and 3XL where you had an ultra wide and a more typical portrait lens. So if that's a big

deal to you, that's another difference worth considering. The last major difference, of course

the processor 600 series Snapdragon in here as opposed to 800 series in a regular Pixel 3

Could be some battery improvements because of that but you're not getting the top tier top of

the line Snapdragon worth noting. Not that you would expect it at $399 but definitely worth noting

Yes it is an OLED panel. You are looking at FHD plus on both the standard version 3a as well as

the 3A XL, so the pixel density is actually a bit better on a smaller guy

than the bigger one. Interestingly enough, another little personal behind-the-scenes note here

both Kirk, Will, and myself, before I switched to some other device I had to test

all used the little pixel, not the big one. I started out on the XL. I wasn't a

huge fan of the notch. In fact, I blacked out the notch through software

But somehow, everyone ended up on the little guy, almost a throwback to a more one-handed functionality type of smartphone experience

stock Android experience, which is what a lot of people are looking for

In my experience, this is the only device I'll boot up and just use out of the box without a launcher

because I kind of want to see what Google is up to, the way they see the optimal Android experience taking place

I want to use it in that fashion as opposed to some skin from a manufacturer

Now, a lot of skins have gotten better, including what Samsung is doing with One UI

So this is less of an issue than it has been in the past. But still, on pretty much every other smartphone, I'll install Nova Launcher rather than using the stock version

Let's do a real quick comparison of the different color options. So that one is clearly white

I have an XL here in just black. And then I might as well also bring in the old version

It's hard to call it old at this point, but that's the standard Pixel 3 XL

You can see it's a bit different, actually. The new guy's a bit taller, just ever so slightly

Sim card tray moved around as well The G is more pronounced That interesting The G is more pronounced on the Pixel 3 XL when compared to the 3A XL

And then this one also has wireless charging where the 3A does not

This is the interesting color to me. Right over here, they're calling it purple-ish

They did not do the not pink color in the 3A for whatever reason

I think they chose to do purple-ish instead. And you know what? my taste buds can I see you're not pink oh this has more of a tan look to it actually that's kind

of tough look at that it's like three plays this reminds me of attempting to like white balance

for a video this looks like a cool white balance this looks like a warm one and this one looks

bang on now the biggest visual difference comparatively is just the fact that on the

XL model you don't have a notch on a left hand side here that's the pixel 3 XL on the right hand

side it's the pixel 3a xl again the name is driving me nuts anyway obviously you have a bigger forehead

here because there's no notch set up like there is on the 3xl but people hated this notch it's

kind of an ugly notch i mean let's be honest this notch became a meme it looks like a face when you

see the camera cutouts right there right at that angle right there you see but you did get the

benefit of a very wide angle front facing camera on this model. And it actually came in handy for

me a couple of times. But as far as the notches concern, I just blacked it out in software when

I was using this as a daily device. The displays I'd say are comparable. I mean, they're both

OLED panels. I would say the 3A display is a bit cooler to my eyeballs. Now, of course

cameras, that's what everyone's going to care about here. The interesting part when you're

talking about Google's cameras. So much of it has to do with software

compared to hardware. You do have to have a lens. You gotta have a half-decent

lens. Interestingly enough, the 3XL in this case looks a bit cooler

in the whites. Boom. And then we'll take the Lite model. Calling it Lite

And we can show Jack there. I mean, it's incredible. It's a great camera. It's great software

Again, this is on the A model. and it's very comparable. What can I say

Smartphone cameras have gotten great, and they're getting great now at a lower price

at a lower cost than ever before. The front-facing camera, on the other hand

let's give that a quick shot. It's a lot of detail. Once again, I mean, this is your cheapest

this is your entry point into the Google Pixel camera. I'm such a fan of the Pixel camera software effect

that I actually installed it, the APK, onto my previous OnePlus device when I was daily driving the 6T

If you jump into one of these 3As, just expect to take good photos

I expect that that will be the case. All right, now speakers. I'm going to give the edge to the 3XL over the 3AXL

I think, I mean, part of it has to do with the fact that it's firing at me. But it's also just got a little bit more low end in it

A lot of phones have this style of implementation. There's very few that have dual speakers firing at you

But it's not a stereo implementation like you might think. I mean, they call it that

But in reality, each one of these is representing the audio differently

Most of the low end comes from here, some high end comes from there. Even if they separated left-right channel, it's not equivalent force and frequency coming at you

So that's important to note. Alright rounding out the specs the big guy it has a 3 mAh battery The little guy the 3A has a 3 mAh battery four gigs ram so it the same ram that google put into the standard pixel 3 and pixel 3xl some people

complained about that especially since there's a lot of flagships out there with way more ram right

now so what can i really say i mean it's difficult to break it all down there is so much talk in the

marketplace i think google actually came out themselves recently there was a report that the

Pixel 3 and 3 XL were not selling at the rate, at the pace of the original expectation

And there were people like me that actually liked the device. Of course, the device was not perfect

There were problems. I think that notch, for example, turned a lot of people off, especially on the bigger version

But a lot of it could have been price as well. This seems to be the case. We reported recently downstairs on the Lou Later channel in a deep dive video

I was talking about smartphone sales and specifically Apple in the recent earnings that came out, they saw a dip, a decrease around 25% from the same period last year

So maybe the global marketplace, the macro side of things is adjusting

Maybe people don't want to spend as much as smartphones as they have in the past or maybe smartphones themselves have escalated too far, too high in price

And now this is the kind of thing that people are looking for. It's quite possible

So the 3A XL, what's the price point, Will? Just remind me

$479. Okay, so the XL model is going to come in at $479. And the standard model, this guy right here, is going to come in at $399

So it's an $80 difference. For my money, I'm like, if I'm just going cost to performance, they're essentially the same thing

Yeah, the display is bigger here, but the resolution. I mean, the pixel density is actually lower

You have a slightly bigger battery, but you've got to power a bigger screen. I get it

Maybe you want to watch videos bigger, but then you sacrifice some one-handed functionality

And then there's, of course, the $80, which you could do something else with. You could buy yourself some headphones, possibly, that you really like

Especially you could use that headphone jack if you want to spend it on some wired headphones. So I think that 3A is the value point

I think $399 is compelling. I'm happy that this is a portion of the market that's getting serviced properly now

Because I had those experiences with the Pixel camera on the previous model, and I really liked it

But as far as recommending it to people, they had to be in that flagship territory

And then it was like, huh, maybe they should just get a Samsung device. It was tough, or an iPhone for that matter

It was tough to play at that end, that end of the spectrum

But coming down here now, getting a Google-branded device at $399, it's in a totally different territory

What it's up against now in the international marketplace might be tough

Places like India, where you have Pocophone and various other high-value, cost-to-performance type of devices

But in the North American realm, where people are very comfortable and aware of the Google branding, this is a big play

It's a big move. it's a type of move that I think Apple should take note of

it'll be really interesting to see what Apple's take on a $399 device would look like

for the North American market anyway, that's enough for this video it's been an unboxing, all the colors, holy smokes

we got the cases here as well I can't talk about it all here we gotta keep it concise to a certain degree

holy smokes, but as I mentioned earlier I'm gonna be downstairs on the Lulater set

I'll put a link in the description to it if you wanna go comprehensive if you're a deep diver yourself

head over there you can subscribe to that channel we may even do a live

what do you think we could even do a live broadcast maybe take some questions

we can do that down there we're not set up for that up here so anyway

go check that out Pixel 3a 3a XL there's more to learn

there's more to know hopefully there's more to love we'll find out