5 Reasons The Pixel 9a Is The Android Phone To Buy Right Now
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It might have taken a slight delay to get here, but the Pixel 9a is finally available to order starting today. I’m still testing out the phone myself — look for AP’s review early next week — but so far, I’m pretty impressed with what is obviously Google’s best A-series entry to date. No matter how you feel about the camera bar-less design or some of its missing features, the Pixel 9a has left me pretty excited about Google’s latest value proposition here. In fact, I think it might be the Android phone to buy right now — here’s why.
5 This design is much nicer in person than it appears online
Take it from me, a person who didn’t like the design online
Look, I get it. From the moment I first laid eyes on this thing — both in leaked renders and in our team’s hands-on images — I was unsold on the design. The decision to drop the camera bar in favor of a flat (or mostly flat) back rubbed a lot of people in this industry the wrong way, as they saw the Pixel team leaving behind an iconic look for no particular reason. Combined with the larger bezels and the flat frame, I just wasn’t sure how I’d feel when the Pixel 9a eventually landed in my hand.
The answer, of course, is “totally fine,” as I actually really like the design Google’s decided to go with here. It’s strange to celebrate something as simple as sliding a phone in your pocket, but the lack of a camera bar makes a real difference here — it never got caught on the lip of a jeans pocket, for example, and felt much slimmer in my pants as a result. The larger bezels appeared accentuated by the flat frame in our hands-on photos, but in person, I stopped noticing the bezels almost as soon as the device was turned on.
Obviously, something like the look and feel of any given phone is going to come down to personal preference. But if you, like myself, never quite clicked with the Pixel 9a no matter how many times it appeared in various leaks and renders, I’d advise you to check out the phone in person before fully writing it off. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the colors — I’m a big fan of the Iris color on my unit, and the Peony looks great too.
4 The basics — and then some — are absolutely nailed here
Everything you need, very little you don’t
This is, bar none, the most stacked A-series Pixel we’ve seen yet. It’s a little wild to consider the Pixel 7a — a device that felt cheaper to hold than its price tag implied — was just two years ago. No one is going to mistake the Pixel 9a for a flagship smartphone, but the device that is here feels great in the hand. The matte polycarbonate back is a step above the already-excellent Pixel 8a’s build quality, and the flat frame feels as good as it did on the regular Pixel 9.
But, in my opinion, what really matters is the display. While it’s still laid under Gorilla Glass 3 — and yes, when you use as many different smartphones in a year as I do, you can absolutely feel the difference in newer glass applications from Corning — it’s as good as the panel found on the regular Pixel 9. Hell, it might be the same panel used on the Pixel 9, since practically every spec from dimensions to brightness ratings are identical. Either way, it’s one of the best screens I’ve seen on a $500 smartphone.
But the rest of the phone is great, too. Speakers are solid, haptics are good, buttons are satisfyingly clicky — it all adds up to a surprisingly robust smartphone. Sure, it’s missing some of the more advanced specs of Google’s flagships, including the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor and that additional 4-8GB of memory, but man, for $500, this is as complete a package as we’ve ever seen from this company.
3 You just don’t know how lovely a camera bump-less phone is until you use one
Even at the cost of the Pixel’s identity
Look, this is a small one, but my request from late last year totally paid off. I didn’t realize how much I missed using a bump-less smartphone until I started using this one. While it does rattle ever-so-slightly on a table thanks to the raised camera lip — ironically, it’s probably the most a Tensor-powered Pixel has ever rocked on a table, not including the Pixel 9 Pro Fold — it helps to make the phone feel so much more comfortable in everyday use.
It’s not just a pocket thing, although that helps. The lack of a camera bump means this nearly-9mm smartphone feels much thinner than most of its contemporaries, despite Google being at the far end of what constitutes a thick modern release. More importantly, though, is how balanced it all feels in your hand. The Pixel 9 series is particularly top-heavy, and I’m not sure reusing the design on the Pixel 10 will lead to any changes. But the Pixel 9a just feels downright comfortable, despite only weighing in less than 15 grams lighter than its namesake.
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2 Those missing AI features don’t leave much of an impact
You’ll probably forget that they were ever there
Thanks to its relatively-constrained 8GB of RAM, the Pixel 9a ships without a handful of AI-powered features seen on the mainline Pixel 9 series. Apps like Pixel Screenshots are completely missing, while Call Notes has been stripped out of the Phone app altogether. While Google’s 2024 flagships shipped running its on-device Gemini Nano XS LLM, the Pixel 9a is utilizing a modified “XXS” variant, which strips out multimodal support in favor of text-only inputs. The result is a downgraded experience, but one that I don’t think most people will notice.
Pixel Screenshots is certainly a useful app, and I’m hoping Google continues to elevate the experience on the Pixel 10 and beyond. But I’d be lying if I found myself using it or Call Notes on the regular Pixel 9 over the last eight months. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I don’t think the absence of these apps can particularly be felt in day-to-day use. For most people, their AI experience will come primarily from using apps like Gemini or ChatGPT, and those run perfectly fine on the Pixel 9a.
1 My early impressions of the camera are pretty solid
But I’d still like to see Google make some processing changes
The camera is the big reason I’m holding off on final Pixel 9a thoughts through next week — a particularly un-fun cold snap has rolled back into Buffalo this week, making photo-taking excursions miserable at best — but my current impressions are totally fine! This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, both considering Google’s track record and the fact that this appears to be either an identical camera sensor to the one in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, or something very, very similar.
That said, if I had to complain about my early samples, I’d end up just echoing my recent piece surrounding the current state of Pixel photography. None of these look bad, but they’re all a little washed out or unsaturated, and leaning towards a touch too cool. Please, Google, give me the ability to tweak how your photo processing is handled — these can all look so much better, but I hate putting the work in manually.
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The Pixel 9a is here, and I’m pretty excited
It’s easy to roll your eyes at a $500 smartphone being good, but in my eyes, this is something to be celebrated. Google’s efforts with the Pixel 9a feel like the culmination of multiple years to bring the A-series up from “surprisingly good for the price” to just outright good.
Obviously, there are reasons to pick up the Pixel 9 over this device — and if the prices get close enough, opting for the older, more powerful smartphone feels like the right move — but at its core, this is a great smartphone that’s only going to get better if and when (tariff madness pending) it sees deals throughout the rest of 2025. And for me, that’s good enough.
Google Pixel 9a
Google’s Pixel 9a takes everything that was great about the Pixel 8a and looks to modernize it. With an all-new Pixel 9-inspired look and no camera bump, this might be the best $500 smartphone we’ve seen yet.
