Google Pixel 7a Review: A Pixel 7, for Less

Price When Reviewed

$499

Best Prices Today: Google Pixel 7a

Few phone brands make mid-rangers like Google does these days. Its Pixel A-series phones are direct descendants of the company’s flagships, with so much shared DNA that at times they feel like flagships in their own right.  

That’s never been truer than with the Pixel 7a, which once again shares the chipset of the flagships it follows, but now throws in the same display tech and wireless charging to complete the illusion that this is a Pixel 7 in all but name. 

A slight price hike isn’t enough to disrupt the value on offer here – if nothing else, it’s within the bounds of the last year’s inflation – and the Pixel 7a does enough to put every other mid-range phone out there on notice. 

Design & build 

• Relatively compact by modern standards 
• Metal frame with glass & plastic body 
• IP67 rating 

At a glance, the Pixel 7a looks an awful lot like the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro – and not by accident. 

There are differences though. A smaller screen means the phone as a whole here is a little more compact than even the standard Pixel 7. This isn’t as small as the likes of the Asus Zenfone 9 or iPhone 13 Mini, but it’s about the same size as last year’s 6a and still smaller than most modern handsets. 

The 7a runs very slightly thicker than the 7, one of the few visual clues to its price point, though this has the knock-on effect that the camera bar doesn’t protrude from the body quite as much. 

Despite being about the same size, the phone is a full 15g heavier than the 6a. At 193g it’s still a touch lighter than the Pixel 7, but it’s no longer an especially lightweight handset. 

With that weight at least comes some durability. Gorilla Glass coats the glass display, plastic coats the back, and metal frame coats an updated design that Google says is tougher than ever. The phone has an IP67 rating, giving it exceptional dust and water protection for the price. 

Finally, it comes in a range of bright colours. I’ve been testing the relatively dull Charcoal, but you can also grab it in Snow (white) or Sea (blue) from most stores, with a Coral (red/orange) option available exclusively from Google. 

Screen & speakers 

• ‘Small’ 6.1in OLED display 
• 90Hz refresh rate 
• Stereo speakers 

The Pixel 7a’s display is finally a match for the flagship Pixel 7 – which, perversely, means it’s still lagging behind most of the competition. 

The 6.1in panel is relatively small but surrounded by a chunky black bezel – Google has never put much effort into borderless screens. 

It’s an OLED panel and, for the first time in the A-series, it supports the same 90Hz refresh rate as the Pixel 7. That means smoother animations and higher potential frame rates while gaming, making the phone as a whole feel faster. 

The Pixel 7a’s display is finally a match for the flagship Pixel 7 – which means it’s still lagging behind the competition

The bad news is that these days almost every rival mid-range phone packs a 120Hz panel, often also OLED, so the 7a still feels a little behind in comparison. The good news is that the practical gap between 90Hz and 120Hz is small, and so there’s not too much to complain about here. Google’s done the important bit, and a 90Hz panel is fast enough to no longer feel like an egregious weak spot.

The screen looks good too, with punchy colours and great viewing angles. It’s not the brightest around, so may feel a little limited outside in direct sunlight, but otherwise I don’t have much cause for complaint. 

Punchy stereo speakers help, with respectable volume. Sound gets a little muddied, with less clarity and separation to the sound than I’d like, but for a phone this gets the job done. 

Specs & performance 

• Google Tensor G2 chipset 
• 8GB RAM and 128GB storage 
• No physical dual-SIM 

It’s become tradition for Pixel A phones to re-use the chipset found in that generation’s flagships, and the same is true here. The 7a is powered by the Tensor G2, Google’s second-generation in-house chip, found not only in the Pixel 7 phones but also in the newly announced Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet. 

With a focus on machine learning, the Tensor chips sometimes feel a little under-powered in Google’s flagship phones, but the G2 is just right here, with comparable performance to mid-range rivals including the Samsung Galaxy A54. 

What’s odd looking at the phone’s benchmark results is that it’s hardly faster than the 6a, and markedly under-performs the Pixel 7 – despite running on the same hardware. That could be down to unfinished optimisation, inferior cooling, or even a conscious effort to underclock the G2 in this phone, but either way know that right now you’re not quite getting the full flagship performance. 

Still, the long and short of it is that the G2 is powerful enough to keep the Pixel 7a feeling snappy no matter what you throw at it, but it might begin to struggle if you ramp up the graphics settings on some of the more demanding Android games out there. 

Google has kept things simple by only offering the 7a in a single spec, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. That isn’t expandable either, with Google clearly hoping that you’ll instead invest in its Google One cloud storage options. 

As for networking, all the latest stuff is here – 5G (including mmWave), Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6E – but like all Pixel phones the 7a won’t support two physical SIM cards. Instead, you can pair one physical SIM with a second eSIM, but depending on your carrier that might not be an option, so you may need to look elsewhere for a dual-SIM phone. 

There’s also a welcome upgrade to biometrics. In addition to the reliable fingerprint sensor under the display, Google has also finally added support for Face Unlock for the A-series Pixel using the single selfie camera. It’s quick, seamless, and just works. 

Camera & video 

• Excellent 64Mp main camera 
• Fantastic low-light performance 
• 4K video from every camera 

Google has rebuilt the Pixel 7a’s camera from the ground up with all-new sensors that you won’t find in either the 6a or the flagship 7. 

At the heart of this is the 64Mp main camera, which uses both the highest resolution and largest sensor in a Pixel A-series phone yet. 

Photos from this camera really are excellent. Almost any mid-range phone will shoot well in good light these days, but the 7a is equally comfortable in challenging backlit scenes, dim restaurants, and night-time streets with competing light sources. 

The 64Mp main camera uses both the highest resolution and largest sensor in a Pixel A-series phone yet 

Shots are crisp and detailed, with rich but natural colours and great dynamic range. The only real times I ran into trouble were occasional focus problems when shooting up close, not helped by the lack of any dedicated macro mode. 

The main shooter is joined by a 13Mp ultrawide lens. In straightforward lighting there’s little to tell this apart from the main camera, but they pull apart a little at night. The ultrawide isn’t bad per se, but detail does drop with the light, and it has more of a tendency to blow out streetlights and similar bright points. 

There’s no dedicated telephoto lens here – no surprise, since the standard Pixel 7 doesn’t have one either. The camera app does offer a 2x zoom option by default though, and in total you can zoom to up to 8x, all using Google’s digital trickery off the main lens. Results are acceptable but unimpressive, and even at 2x some photos – like my canalside graffiti shot – come out painterly and soft.

Here are a couple photo sets comparing all three default zoom options, followed by some low-light comparisons between the ultrawide and main cameras:

Flip to the front and you find another 13Mp camera for selfies. This is a wide lens, so can serve for both group shots or solo selfies, and in daylight shots are great, with a portrait mode that’s among the best around. Quality noticeably drops at night, but even most flagships struggle with low-light selfies, so I wouldn’t hold it against Google too much. 

All of your photos also benefit from some of Google’s Pixel-exclusive software tricks via the Google Photos app, like Magic Eraser to remove distracting objects or Unblur to, well, unblur. 

In a welcome twist, Google has also delivered 4K video at 30fps across each of the three lenses, with the main camera able to go up to 60fps. I’ve reviewed phones twice this price (or more) that won’t record 4K video from the front-facing camera, so it’s safe to say that the 7a is more TikTok-ready than most. 

Battery & charging 

• All-day battery life 
• Wired and wireless charging – but slow 
• No charger in box 

Equipped with a 4385mAh battery, the 7a has enough juice to last a full day of fairly typical usage, though don’t expect much more than that. 

Battery is well below the halfway line when I head to bed most nights, and if the phone starts from a full charge at 8am then it will die mid-morning the next day. 

In short: there’s enough battery life that you don’t really have to worry about it, but you will need a regular daily charging schedule. 

In theory this should improve over time thanks to the phone’s ‘Adaptive Battery’ tech, which tries to learn from your usage to optimise power consumption, but in a week with the phone I can’t really assess that. 

Charging itself is a mixed bag. Google has given the 7a a serious upgrade in the form of 7.5W wireless charging to go along with the 18W wired speeds, a welcome oddity for a phone at this price. 

Those speeds are slow though, and remember that Google doesn’t ship the phone with any charger at all – wired or wireless.  

Using a third-party USB-C charger I managed to top the phone up to 20% in 15 minutes, and 38% in half an hour, meaning you’ll need to set aside an hour or two to get a full charge. Fast charging this ain’t. 

My wireless experience was worse, with the 7a topping itself up happily on one of my Qi charging pads, but refusing to engage with two others, and charging agonisingly slowly on a third. Perhaps a firmware patch could fix this, but for now I wouldn’t entirely trust it. 

Software & updates 

• Ships with Android 13 
• Pixel software remains Android’s best 
• Three OS updates promised 

Unsurprisingly, the Pixel 7a ships running Android 13, the latest version of Google’s operating system. 

This is the best-looking phone software around – yes, even compared to iOS

As a Pixel phone, it will likely be among the first to get the upgrade to Android 14 later this year, and Google has promised that it will then also be upgraded to at least Android 15 and 16. Security patches will run for at least five years, carrying you through to 2028 – a pretty good run for any phone. 

These days the software on Google’s Pixel phones – which is not quite stock Android, as it includes a few exclusives – is comfortably the best on any Android phone, having seen off challenges from the likes of Samsung and OnePlus. 

Bolstered by the Material You design overhaul from Android 12, this is the best-looking phone software around – yes, even compared to iOS – and in use it’s simple and straightforward.  

You’ll have to put up with a few Google-isms – the branded search bar is locked to your home screen whether you like it or not – but if you’re buying a Google phone anyway then odds are you won’t mind. 

As a Pixel phone, it also enjoys a few exclusive features not found on other Android devices. I’ve already detailed a few of the extra camera options, but you also get access to Google’s excellent Recorder app, smart automatic call screening, Google Assistant dictation typing, and more, with additional…