Google Pixel 9a review: Engaging AI features and mighty battery life give Apple's 'budget' iPhone a run for its money

Apple released its latest ‘budget’ phone, the £599 iPhone 16e, back in February after months of feverish anticipation.

But not to be outdone, rival tech giant Google has released its own handset at an ‘unbeatable’ price.

At £499, the Pixel 9a is £100 cheaper than Apple’s equivalent. 

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It’s also described as a more accessible alternative to the firm’s flagship Pixel 9 (£799), which was released last year.  

Pixel 9a has a 6.3-inch display, two rear cameras and more than 30 hours of battery life on a single charge.

It’s packed with ‘helpful’ AI tools such as Gemini – Google’s chatbot which was built to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT, now on Apple phones.

It comes in four colours and has a ‘sleek design’ made with recycled materials, inclduing aluminium, glass and plastic.  

Google kindly sent MailOnline’s Assistant Science and Technology Editor, Jonathan Chadwick, the device to test this week. 

Rating:

Our verdict 

It’s difficult to think what Google could have done better with Pixel 9a, which packs pretty much everything you’d want from a budget device into a neat package. 

Although I’m cautious about AI generally, Pixel 9a has some fun and engaging generative tools that give Apple Intelligence a run for its money. 

Pixel 9a’s mighty battery delays the most tedious part of owning a smartphone (charging it), it uses recycled materials, it has a top AI chip, plus the whole phone looks fabulous.  

But it also makes me feel like we’re entering an era where we don’t have to pay the best part of a grand for a really good smartphone.

Of course, £499 is a lot of money, but it’s economical in comparison with Apple’s iPhone 16 and Samsung’s Galaxy S25 (both starting from £799), although it’s not quite as cheap as the Phone 3a Pro from British firm Nothing, which is £449.

Whether you’re an Samsung lover or an iPhone diehard, Pixel 9a makes a good case to make the switch to Google phones – budget or otherwise. 

How we test smartphones

When testing smartphones, we try them across multiple real-world settings, including the office, our homes, and out and about. 

We evaluate the devices based on the quality of their hardware and software, testing everything from the camera to the battery life, design, and display. 

Each smartphone goes through several days of hands-on testing, allowing us to provide an in-depth review to help consumers make informed decisions. 

Why trust us 

Jonathan Chadwick is the Assistant Science and Technology Editor at MailOnline and has been testing products and writing reviews for a decade. He studied at the universities of Reading and Sydney before completing his journalism training in Brighton. He’s previously written for Laboratory News, Tech Monitor and ZDNet.

Google Pixel 9a review 

Appearance  

Pixel 9a is available in four colours – pink, purple, white and black, or if you speak Google’s language, ‘peony’, ‘iris’, ‘porcelain’ and ‘obsidian’.

I inadvertently opt for peony, which is a striking pink – enough to make me look like MailOnline’s biggest Barbie fan.

To cut the cost, Google has used plastic instead of glass for the back of Pixel 9a (but life in plastic is, as they say, fantastic).

However, so as not to make it look too chintzy, there’s pink recycled aluminum going around the frame. 

Display 

Pixel 9a has a nice crisp, 6.3-inch display with 2,424 by 1,080 pixels (that’s the tiny, light-emitting dots in the screen), which is the same as the more expensive Pixel 9.

It also has the brightest display on an A-series ever – 35 per cent brighter than Pixel 8a released a year ago. 

Noticeably, Pixel 9a has a pretty thick bezel – the space going around the edge of the display – and a front-facing punch hole camera for selfies.

I’m switching from a Samsung Galaxy phone, which means it takes me a good few hours to get used to the Pixel’s different gesture-based navigation system (with no controllable icons at the bottom). 

But this adds an extra little bit of space to the display – although not being able to move the Google search bar from the bottom to the top is annoying. 

Cameras 

Noticeably, the biggest change compared with the Pixel 9 – which was released last August – is the absence of the distinctive rectangular camera bar on the back.

Instead, Pixel 9a has a glass pill-shaped camera module that is almost flat – which is great because it sits flush with whatever surface I’m resting it on. 

Removal of the camera bar is reportedly to give Pixel 9a its own distinctive ‘minimalist design’ but it may also be related to cutting costs. 

Regardless, it houses a dual rear camera system – a 48MP main camera and a 13MP ultrawide camera – as well as the 13MP selfie camera on the front. 

The sharpness and colour accuracy of my photos are seriously good, even in low light – surprising from such a (relatively) cheap handset – but for me the best thing about the camera experience is the AI software. 

AI tools 

Pixel 9a has the same AI chip as the Pixel 9, Google Tensor 4, which means it’s equipped for Google’s AI photo editing tools such as Magic Eraser and Magic Editor. 

I’m generally not a fan of Google’s AI-powered image-editing – I think it undermines photography as a concept and can contribute to misinformation online. 

However, Magic Editor – which makes more drastic changes to photos compared with Magic Eraser – is undeniably powerful technology. 

With a few taps of the screen I can make entire buildings disappear, to be replaced by an AI-imagining of the surrounding environment. 

And with Magic Eraser, my son has a great time watching me circle photobombers from our trip to the beach and seeing them vanish in a few seconds.

Pixel 9a also has a feature called Add Me, which combines two group photos into one, so everyone makes it into the photo – even the photographer.

As this is a Google phone, the tech giant’s Gemini AI helper has a prominent place – accessible when I hold down the power button on the righthand side and verbally ask questions. 

Gemini – which is already my chatbot of choice over ChatGPT – has a convincing, non-robotic AI voice with a southern English accent and gives me helpful news and weather updates. 

But the Gemini experience on the Pixel 9a is different and less powerful than the one on the Pixel 9, due to the former’s RAM limitations. 

Battery 

By far my favourite thing about the Pixel 9a is the beefy battery – 5,100 milliampere-hour (mAh) which is an above-average amount of electrical capacity.

This means it has more than 30 hours of running time with normal use, meaning I can go three days without having to plug it in. 

For someone who’s switching from an old Samsung which quickly bled power just from being on, this is a massive novelty.

Like any other lithium iron smartphone battery, Pixel 9a’s battery will degrade over time, although Google is introducing a software feature that should prolong its overall lifespan.

Known as ‘battery health assistance’, it will adjust the battery’s maximum voltage in stages to ‘manage battery performance to help maintain battery health’.

This will result in ‘small decreases in your battery’s runtime as your battery ages’ as well as a ‘slight change in battery charging performance’.