Review | Google Pixel 4a beats iPhone SE as the best budget phone with premium features, such as real-time captions for videos
- Google’s latest budget phone has many of the features of the high-end Pixel 4 at less than half the price
- It outperforms the iPhone SE, which is similar in price, in everything but photo management – no Android phone matches Apple’s AirDrop – and battery life
The new Google Pixel 4a, set to debut on August 20, is, I believe, the best budget phone out there, selling for US$349, with a 5.8-inch screen and a generous 128 gigabytes of storage. This phone is so good, it can take on the big US$1,000 guns like the Apple iPhone 11 Pro or Samsung Galaxy S20.
I’ve been playing with the new handset for several days, and it’s fair to say I’m in love with the beautiful screen, the exclusive Pixel features including instant captions of videos and transcripts of audio recordings and the excellent camera.
Design and hardware
The Pixel line was designed to be a state-of-the-art showcase for Google to show off the best of Android in a phone under the Made by Google line, but the company hasn’t been consistent in its marketing.
Consumers will surely be confused if they walk into a store and compare the last Pixel, the 4, released in October, to what is supposed to be the smaller, cheaper cousin, the 4a.
The 4 (US$799) has a 5.7-inch screen and comes with 64 GB of storage, compared to the 5.8-inch 4a (US$349) with 128 GB of storage.