Whether a $499 smartphone can qualify as “budget-friendly” is up for debate. But after extensive testing, what’s not up for debate is that the Google Pixel 4a 5G is the absolute best budget smartphone you can find in the price range. A 3,800mAh battery, a better-than-decent camera, a sleek design, and a powerful processor help catapult the Pixel over most of its competitors.

In fact, it’s got most of the same features as the $699 Pixel 5, though they diverge in several small but meaningful ways. It’s not water-resistant, it doesn’t have wireless charging, the battery is a tad smaller, and its display is 0.2 inches larger. It also sports a polycarbonate body, while the Pixel 5’s is aluminum. Despite the weird official naming, the Google Pixel 4a 5G is a totally different – and much better – phone than the Pixel 4a. The 4a is physically smaller, with a smaller battery, a slower processor, and (obviously) doesn’t have access to 5G.

While Google did release a “flagship” Pixel 5 this year, I think the more budget-friendly Pixel 4a 5G has stolen its thunder. The sleeper-hit is basically a bigger Pixel 5 that’s missing a few features, but $200 cheaper. That means skipping out on an IP rating, 90Hz display, a bit of RAM, and a metal (ish) build, but you get a bigger screen and a headphone jack, paired with with the same camera, internals, and the Pixel software experience. At just $500, this is my favorite phone of 2020.

The Pixel 4a 5G was announced on September 30, 2020, alongside the Pixel 5, the Google Nest Audio, and the latest Chromecast.

The Pixel 4a 5G is, in essence, the 5G-enabled version of the regular Pixel 4a, which came out on August 3. However, there are more upgrades to the Pixel 4a 5G. The phone has a bigger screen, features a faster Snapdragon 765G processor, and comes with a bigger battery.

Pixel 4a 5G is a value-oriented phone made for people who don’t want or need a flashy high-end phone. Like the Pixel 4a, the 4a 5G model’s strong points are its cameras, smooth software, and rock-solid update policy.

Google Pixel 4a 5G – Design and Features

It might sound a bit hyperbolic, but the Pixel 4a 5G is one of the best feeling phones I’ve ever held. The size is perfect for my hands. At 2.9 x 0.3 x 6.1 inches (W x D x H), it’s on the larger side – a full half-inch taller than the iPhone 11 Pro. But the Pixel 4a 5G can hide its size behind a weirdly sleek plastic frame, one that makes it feel sturdy, relatively high-quality, and much grippier than something like the aforementioned iPhone.

The Pixel 4a 5G could be confused with the smaller Pixel 4a at a glance. It has the same matte plastic unibody design, rear capacitive fingerprint sensor, hole-punch front-facing camera, and even identically sized bezels. The cutouts for microphones and speakers on the top and bottom, buttons on the right, SIM tray on the left, and ports on the bottom are all in exactly the same positions as the smaller phone. It’s impressively consistent. However, there are a few key changes, like the wider camera hump, which houses an extra wide-angle camera module, and the overall larger design.

The 4a 5G has a good heft to it, with a similar feeling of density in-hand when compared to the smaller Pixel 4a. The curved edges yeild a comfortable and ergonomic shape to hold, even for extended periods, though it’s a little less easily gripable than the smaller phone. I’d consider this the upper-limit of easy one-handed use.

Mid-range phones always have to strike a balance when they cut corners, and screens usually get the short end of the stick. Even last year’s Pixel 3a and 3a XL had pretty mediocre panels. But this year, Google seriously stepped up the quality of its displays. Like the smaller Pixel 4a, I have no complaints about the screen in the 4a 5G. It gets bright enough outside, dim enough at night, it’s visually quite sharp, and it doesn’t have any issues with uneven backgrounds or “green tint” in dark themes. Google tells us it hits up to 700 nits of brightness at peak and 2 nits at its dimmest, though there are a lot of ways to measure that which makes it hard to compare numbers with other phones. Sure, I’d prefer if it had a higher refresh rate or greater than 1080p resolution, but at this price, it’s hard to get too picky.

Like the Pixel 4a, you don’t have any IP-rated water resistance. While there are gaskets in its design, like around the SIM tray, there’s no way to know how aggressive the ingress protection is throughout the phone without an actual rating, so better to err on the side of caution and refrain from underwater photography or phone calls in downpours.

The stereo speakers work as usual via the top earpiece and bottom-firing speaker, and they sound slightly different compared to the 4a, just a little less shrill/treble-heavy with a more rounded sound and marginally more bass (though these are smartphone speakers and they’ll never thump). Haptics aren’t the best that Google‘s done, and a clear step back compared to the Pixel 4, but they’re marginally better and stronger than the 4a. At least, as a non-“flagship,” you get an actual headphone jack — score one over the more expensive Pixel 5.

Some disagree, but  consider Google‘s vision of Android on the Pixels among the best out there, especially on Android 11. With the number of exclusive features Pixels get, we can’t quite say it’s “stock” anymore, but it’s probably the closest you can get with the deep changes most manufacturers implement now. And while it’s very, very hard to express why I like Pixel software so much, I’ll try.

First: The Google Assistant. I’m not as all-in when it comes to smart home hardware as my fellow Android Police editors — I don’t have any Nest cameras (yet) or thermostats — but I still use the Assistant daily on smart speakers, displays, and my phone to control lighting, play music, remotely harass my roommate, and enjoy a remote-free TV life. While I can do all that regardless of the phone in my pocket, Google‘s extra Pixel-exclusive Assistant features are so useful, I’d probably pay a subscription to get them on other phones.

But outside that “jank” — imaginary or otherwise — the phone was plenty fast. The GPU may not be the most powerful, but it was strong enough for some light Fortnite as well as more casual titles. Day-to-day performance was also generally good, and I didn’t notice any issues with app slowdowns or freezes.

5G remains mostly useless, and I usually get slower speeds on T-Mobile’s 5G here in Boston than I do on LTE. If and when 5G becomes truly relevant, the 4a 5G will support it — though there’s 5G and then there’s 5G. While Verizon will be getting a version of the phone with mmWave, the “standard” unlocked version only supports sub-6Ghz 5G. That’s the 5G that actually matters for most of us, but it’s also the 5G that will make the least difference to things like speeds. Ultimately, there’s really no reason to go out of your way to buy a 5G phone right now unless it happens to come with it, but the 4a 5G does.

The 3,800mAh battery in the 4a 5G may not be the biggest you can get in a phone this size, but Google manages to stretch it out to last all day — and then some. While I look forward to putting it through its paces in more circumstances, the phone managed just over eight hours of screen-on time over two days, and this was in mixed use with a few hours of GPS navigation as a standalone Android Auto screen, browsing, reading, and taking photos across Wi-Fi, LTE, and 5G connections. I even tested this on Google Fi, which is notorious for wrecking battery life. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the 4a 5G may break 10 hours of screen-on time in a single day in certain use cases. In short: this is an even bigger battery champion than the smaller Pixel 4a was.

That’s good, because it’s not the most convenient phone to charge. While it can top up at 18W with the universal Power Delivery standard, and that’s enough for the majority of us that plug a phone in overnight, it lacks wireless charging for convenient topping-up during the day, and it doesn’t have an ultra-fast high-wattage charging mode for emergencies. Personally, I think 18W is still fine at this price, but more powerful specs like OnePlus’ Warp Charging have saved my butt in emergencies, and I’d like to see more phones support faster charging speeds.

Camera

Google‘s Pixels are known for having some of the best smartphone cameras you can get. Even with an older sensor, that remains true today — proof that software matters more than hardware in this era of computational photography. While I still prefer the utility of a telephoto, Google did convince me that the wide-angle camera can actually be useful with the Pixel 4a 5G.

The primary camera’s performance seems about equivalent to the Pixel 4, 4a, and prior Pixel phones. That makes sense, It’s using the same sensor and probably the same lens configuration. But there is one notable difference compared to last year’s Pixel 4: Camera processing takes a little longer. I’m told the Pixel 5 suffers the same behavior. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it is noticeable. Otherwise, you get the same hyper-real photos with great clarity, sharpness, and a tendency to favor slight underexposure (which makes for attractive contrast). Some super detailed, super high-contrast scenes can look a bit muddy on a very close crop (like the photo looking through the branches of a downed tree in the gallery above), but Google generally does an exceptional job preserving detail.

This, in tandem with the Pixel 5, is the first time Google has done a wide-angle camera in a Pixel, and it delivered. My biggest complaint is that its minimum focus distance is too far out, somewhere around two feet. That’s not unexpected, but it does mean I can’t use it for quite as many fun shots as I’d hoped. Though I did notice some very slight chromatic aberration (i.e., “purple fringing”) with leaves against the sky, it wasn’t too noticeable or distracting outside a crop, and I was stunned at the dynamic range.

Usually, the smaller aperture you get on wide-angle cameras means worse performance indoors or in poor lighting, and that isn’t the case here. Google’s wide-angle camera is equally good indoors our outdoors, and it even does okay in low-light. It’s definitely noisier in challenging circumstances than the primary, and even a tiny bit muddy with certain textures, but it does a great job. Although overall results are sharp enough, it’s also a little soft on a crop, and more likely to lose fine detail (like the leaves on the forest floor in some of the photos above). While both the primary and wide-angle suffer some unavoidable lens flare if bright lights like the sun are in scene, the long shape of the flare on the wide-angle camera is less pleasing and unexpected. Color balance between lenses in the same scene changed a little more than I hoped, but it was much more consistent than some manufacturers accomplish. For all I know, Google may actually be doing it intentionally to take a better shot.

The Google camera also has a couple new features like portrait light, that lets you dynamically adjust lighting for a portrait photo after the fact. It’s technically very cool, but I know I’ll never use it.

While I still lament it, the loss of the telephoto isn’t the end of the world. Google’s Super Res Zoom is probably the best software zoom solution out there, and it plugs the gap well enough. Paired with the wide-angle, the camera is now objectively more versatile, even if I know I would use a telephoto more often, myself.

Night Sight and Astrophotography are both still great features, and they both work with the wide-angle camera, though results are noisier and a bit streaky.

In short, Google made another amazing camera here, wide-angle and all. When the day finally comes for Google to switch to a bigger, more modern sensor in Pixels, the results will probably be incredible. But for now, it still takes the Android crown unless you need a sharper telephoto or wider wide-angle.

The more I ruminated on it over the last few days as I sat down to write this review, the harder I struggled to find things to complain about with this phone, and that’s weirdly high praise. When things are great, and nothing is really wrong, that’s a neutral state for a tool; it’s just doing what it should. It’s when things are bad, or something breaks, you can feel bothered or even frustrated. But the Pixel 4a 5G didn’t leave me complaining — and that’s enough to call it great in my mind.

Buy it if:

• You want a Pixel 5 on a budget — it’s basically a bigger, “lite” version.
• Camera performance, battery life, and price are your biggest concerns.
• You’re so deeply integrated into Google’s services that you honestly can’t see a way out please help me.

Don’t buy it if:

• You want The Real Flagship Experience™ and need more power, a smoother screen, and an IP rating.
• Budget constraints are either narrower or looser — there are better values at both ends of the spectrum between the baby Pixel 4a and Samsung Galaxy S20 FE.