Pixel 6a Review

It has been two years hiatus since the last Pixel phone to arrive in India – the 4a. The Pixel 6a arrives in a solitary 6GB/128GB configuration and will cost you Rs 43,999. That’s approaching affordable flagship territory. But as with all Pixels, the 6a has a few tricks up its sleeve.

When it comes to design, the Pixel 6a stands out in a crowd of smartphones. It is smaller than what you’d expect a smartphone in 2022 to be. But it fits perfectly in the palm and there aren’t any huge bezels as well, which means that the Pixel 6a gets a decently sized 6.1-inch 60Hz FHD+ OLED display as well. There is a dual tone finish with a prominent camera bump running across the top.

The OLED panel gets fairly bright which makes it easy to use outside. It also gets HDR and that really helps with streaming content. The lack of a high refresh rate panel is a bit of a bummer but it isn’t a deal breaker in my opinion.

Performance is fairly good. Google’s deep integrations between its Tensor chip and its software come to the fore here and the Pixel 6a does a solid job when it comes to multitasking and even gaming. The Mali-G78 GPU isn’t as good though and it does underperform when compared to the Adreno 730 that you would see on a host of Android smartphones this year.

The Pixel 6a gets a dual-camera setup that includes a 12.2 MP primary sensor with an f/1.7 aperture, dual pixel PDAF plus OIS and a 12 MP ultrawide with an f/2.2 aperture. On the selfie front, there is an 8MP shooter with an f/2.0 aperture. As you’d expect from a Pixel smartphone, the cameras remain strong as ever. There is very little noise and a great amount of detail from the main camera with accurate colour reproduction with images that lean towards more contrast. The ultrawide does a great job as well, but does fall behind a tad when it comes to detail and dynamic range. Portrait mode does splendidly as well, and so do photos taken at night. The selfie camera also produces images with great detail and excellent dynamic range and it is only an 8MP sensor. Google’s image processing definitely shines through.

Even on what is a smaller phone, Google has managed to add a 4410mAh battery and that definitely helps with battery life. We were able to get through a full day with charge to spare on a consistent basis. The charging speeds are on the low-end though and if you are coming from faster charging phone, this could be a little annoying.

With the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, the humble Pixel 6a feels out of place. But it might still have what it takes to carve out a neat niche for itself. And importantly, with the number of deals that you can find on the Pixel 6a, it is definitely a great buy especially with Google’s seriously impressive image processing and a clean Android experience on board.