The Google Pixel 9a Is the Budget Powerhouse the iPhone 16e Wished It Was

Pity the poor, $599 iPhone 16e. All that hype over the past year, and when it was announced exactly one month ago, it landed like a ham dropped out of a third-story window—with a dud. It’s not a bad phone, just too close in features and price to the iPhone 16 to be what a lot of us wanted it to be: the iPhone SE 4.

Enter the Pixel 9a. Google announced it today, it’s a more affordable version of the Pixel 9 that came out last summer. And what a pleasant surprise that it’s priced to start at $499, the same as last year’s Pixel 8a. Everything else has gone up in price lately, from eggs to budget iPhones, but not the Pixel 9a.

good value, good features

Google’s “a” suffix denotes a budget version of an existing device. So the Pixel 9a is a contemporary of the Pixel 9, but with its features and specifications scaled down to account for its $499 starting price.

The Pixel 9 starts at $799. But is the Pixel 9a, at just over half the price, simply half the phone as the Pixel 9? Not from the looks for the specifications sheet. I’ll have to wait to get my hands on a Pixel 9a to give it a true hands-on test, but from what I’m seeing in the specs sheet, it looks impressive for the asking price.

It shares the same Google Tensor G4 chip, but with 8GB RAM instead of the Pixel 9’s 12GB. The 6.3″ OLED display, with a maximum brightness of 2,700 nits, is the same between both devices.

The budget phone’s Wi-Fi 6E is slightly older than the Pixel 9’s Wi-Fi 7, and the Pixel 9’s camera is more advanced. But the difference in specifications isn’t that huge. It’s similar to the gap between the iPhone 16e and iPhone 16, just with the Pixel 9a doing it for $100 less.

Because Google, like Apple, is eager to wedge its AI assistant into practically everything going forward, Gemini takes center stage on the Pixel 9a. You can read more about the ins and outs of using it here, but it’s being heavily integrated into the Pixel 9a.

Two new colors join the existing Obsidian (black) and Porcelain (white). There’s now Peony (pink) and Iris (lavender). There’s also been a redesign of the camera bar to be narrower, and rounded edges on the case itself. Nothing revolutionary; more like evolutionary.

Google says it’ll be available for purchase sometime in April, which is annoyingly vague. But whatever. April isn’t that far off. You can’t preorder it just yet, but you can sign up for notifications from the Google Store so that you get a tap on the shoulder when it’s available.