Google Pixel 9A review: a midrange phone done right

The A-series Pixels have been very good over the past few years. And in the Pixel 9A, Google has taken a good midrange phone and made it great.

It’s $499, which feels just right for what you get in the 9A. Spend a bit more for the Pixel 9, and you’ll get some upgrades like a better ultrawide camera and more RAM, as well as little touches like Wi-Fi 7 rather than Wi-Fi 6E. But every time I wished for something on the 9A that it doesn’t offer, I kept coming back to that price. At $499, it’s easier to let go of some things than it was with, oh, the $599 iPhone 16E. 

More than just a list of specs, the Pixel 9A behaves like a device in a mature product line. When I transfer a Pixel Watch 2 from another Pixel phone to this one, it just works. When I use fast pair to connect some OnePlus earbuds I used with another Android phone, it just works. That hasn’t always been the case with the Google phones I’ve tested, but the company has done a much better job of connecting the dots in its ecosystem for this generation of Pixels. And for $499? That’s a real sweet deal.

Hardware, screen and battery life

Last year, when I reviewed the Pixel 8A at home in Seattle, I thought the …

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