The Pixel 9a is so good, I constantly forget it’s a budget phone

In what I would consider the highest of compliments, I can easily say that after using the Pixel 9a for a couple weeks now, I’ve basically forgotten most days that I’m carrying around anything lesser-than when compared with the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro. Where that simply wouldn’t have been the case with older A-series Pixels, this one is impressive in all the places it needs to be for my use cases.

Nothing is perfect

Now, I don’t want to paint a picture of perfection, here. There are things about this phone that feel and look budget without doubt. First, the plastic back gives this phone away a bit when used without a case. I assume our Google-made review sample case was lost in shipping or something, so the first few days I used this phone naked, and I felt the plastic-ness every time I picked up the device. It’s also quite slippery in the hand.

Additionally, the bezels around the screen take a bit of getting used to if you’ve been on flagship phones before. There’s no getting around the fact that the bezels on the Pixel 9a are sizeable, and when I first started using the phone, I noticed them every time I unlocked the screen.

So much is right about this phone

Yet, getting a simple case solved the feel issues 100% and after a little while, I’ve completely stopped noticing the bezels. And as those couple little issues stopped being noticeable, something pretty amazing happened: I completely stopped noticing this was a “budget” phone altogether.

Don’t get me wrong: the smaller size keeps me very aware that I’m not holding a Pixel 9 Pro XL, but that’s just a size preference thing. For many users, the 6.3-inch screen is preferable, and if that is the case for you, everything else about this display absolutely shines. There’s nothing here from the brightness to the colors to the viewing angles that would give away the fact that this is a low-cost phone.

And that continues to the hardware inside the phone, too. From solid speakers to great cameras to the Tensor G4 being a beast inside this device, I quite literally have not once felt like I was being shortchanged from a performance perspective with the Pixel 9a. Yeah, it has a bit less RAM than the big boys (8GB) and a bit less storage (128GB), but with my current usage patterns, those things just don’t matter much for me; and the battery is the biggest yet on any Pixel, so battery life is pretty amazing.

The non-ultrasonic, optical fingerprint scanner has been solid, face unlock works just like it does on newer Pixels in the series, and my day-to-day interactions simply are not inhibited in the slightest by carrying around this phone. I can play the games I want, watch the content I want, and get everything done I need with buttery smooth animations, no lag, and no real evidence whatsoever that I’m not using a much more expensive phone.

I’ve said it before, but I’m not really a phone reviewer and this isn’t my review of this phone. If you are looking for tech specs and breakdowns, this isn’t the right place to get them. Instead, I simply wanted to point out that as a general user of smartphones (like basically everyone on the planet at this point), there’s a lot to like with the Pixel 9a and very little to critique.

I think a finishing thought about the cameras will drive home this point. With how good cameras have become on smartphones, we can get lost in megapixel counts and different sensor sizes and types. But at the end of the day, all that really matters is the fact that I can pick up this phone, point it at a subject, and expect a great photo as a result. Just like I’m no smartphone snob these days, I’m also not a camera buff. As long as it performs well at the core stuff, I’m happy.

And that is the basic story of the Pixel 9a. Sure, on paper, if you lay out all the specs you can see where Google cut the corners to get the price down. But in daily use, I’m telling you that other than size, there is no discernible difference in actually carrying around this phone and using it for all the smartphone things we all tend to gravitate towards. If you’re a fan of Pixel phones and prefer the smaller sizes (like the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro), I’d have a hard time telling you why you should buy those phones over this one. It’s just that good at all the stuff you actually use, and I’m pretty delighted to be able to say that about a $499 device, for sure.