The Pixel 9a might easily steal the Pixel 9’s thunder: similar displays, but the larger battery and super-affordable $499 might make the Pixel 9a one of 2025’s best-value phones.
The new Google Pixel 9a is here, and it bolsters the ranks of the Pixel 9 series beautifully.
Google’s new value proposition is easily the most complete one yet, with a friendly new design, the largest battery ever fitted on a Pixel phone, a promising camera setup, a brighter and larger screen, a flagship-grade chip, and most importantly, the same unchanged $499 price tag.
Wow, that’s a pretty impressive list of improvements over the older Pixel 8a, especially considering that the pricing has remained intact.
Should the Pixel 9 start feeling a little uneasy due to the mounting in-house competition? Well, that seems to be the case: the Pixel 9a might just steal all its thunder!
Google has graced the Pixel 9a with a pretty substantial redesign. Gone are the slightly curved design elements of the Pixel 8a, we now get a flat and right-angled Pixel 9a, which employs more or less the same design language as the Pixel 9 series itself. That could potentially hurt the ergonomics of the Pixel 9a a little.
The camera island at the back has also been redesigned, with the side-to-side 3D Visor of old gone. In its place, we get a nearly flush camera, which doesn’t protrude at all––that’s great to see! This brings us back to simpler times, when cameras didn’t stick out weirdly from the back of phones.
Another major change is in the size department: we get a larger 6.3-inch screen (versus a 6.1-inch one on the Pixel 8a). This makes the Pixel 9a just as well-spec’d as the Pixel 9. This screen size upgrade comes along with a size increase as well.
The new Pixel 9a measures 154.7 x 73.2 x 8.9mm in size, so it’s slightly taller, wider, and thicker than the Pixel 9, which stands at 152.8 x 72.0 x 8.5mm. That’s okay: a more premium and compact design is the Pixel 9’s forte. Finally, the Pixel 9a weighs 186gr, slightly less than the Pixel 9’s 198gr.
A pretty significant difference between the premium and affordable Pixels are the materials used: the Pixel 9 employs an aluminum frame with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 glass at the front and back, whereas the Pixel 9a only uses aluminum for the frame, but has a plastic back; at the front, we get Gorilla Glass 3. Another round which the Pixel 9 seemingly wins, but does this even matter?
Both phones are IP68-rated, meaning you can submerge them in 3ft of water for more than half an hour.
The Pixel 9a comes in Obsidian (black), Porcelain (white), Iris (lavender/purple), and Peony (pink), while the Pixel 9 was available in Obsidian (black), Porcelain (white), Wintergreen (green), and Peony (pink). A diverse color selection that blends «serious» hues with more playful vivid ones, that’s what we love to see.
For all intents and purposes, the Pixel 9 has «donated» its display to the Pixel 9a.
We get the same 6.3-inch Actua FHD+ OLED panel with 60/120 refresh rate and familiar 20:9 aspect ratio. Such 60/120Hz displays are not as smooth as more premium ones that go down to 10 or even 1Hz and deliver a smoother viewing experience, but that’s still not a big issue here.
