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Generally speaking, the Pixel 3a does a good job with a modest amount of pinch zoom.Īt medium range (~4x), detail is noticeably affected, but you’ll get away with it in bright light conditions, especially if you’re just viewing the images on the device’s display. Some dead pixels are visible in low-light zoom shots at close range, as well as color fringing in outdoor conditions, but these are really noticeable only when displaying images at large scale. Results are comparable between the Google Pixel 3a and Pixel 3, and at close range (~2x magnification), both preserve more fine detail than the iPhone XR. This is less problematic in well-balanced lighting conditions, though, and the Pixel 3a generally produces nicely exposed indoor images, too.Įquipped with just a single camera, the Google Pixel 3a can’t quite compete with dual-camera tele-lens devices for close-range zoom shots, but Google’s advanced computational photography processing does a better-than-average job for zoom shots. The Pixel 3a has a tendency to slightly underexpose in challenging high-contrast scenes, however, and although this produces images with good contrast, it ends up recording less detail in the shadows compared to devices such as the iPhone XR, which provides a stronger HDR effect. In our perceptual analysis of exposure when shooting natural scenes, the Pixel 3a generally delivered accurate target exposures further, its HDR processing ensures that detail is reasonably well-preserved in the bright highlight regions, as you can see in the sky in the image below.
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We recorded slight underexposure in low light (5 lux), but images remain acceptable. The Google Pixel 3a is capable of good target exposure in most tested conditions, with accurate measurements in our lab analysis under lighting conditions between lux. The Google Pixel 3a achieves accurate target exposures with good highlight and detail preservation. The Google Pixel 3a’s slightly lower overall score is attributable to its score of 95 points for video, compared to 98 for the Google Pixel 3 and 96 for the iPhone XR. The Google Pixel 3a achieves the same score of 103 points for still photos as the Pixel 3 and iPhone XR, however, and all three devices offer broadly similar image quality, although there are some small differences in the strengths and weaknesses among them. Although positioned behind many of the recent dual- and triple-camera flagship devices we’ve tested, the Google Pixel 3a is only a point behind such other single-camera devices as the more expensive Google Pixel 3, as well as Apple’s budget-oriented iPhone XR (both with 101 points overall). Test summaryĪchieving an overall DxOMark mobile score of 100 points, the Google Pixel 3a lands in the second tier of our database of smartphone image quality. For more information about the DxOMark Mobile test protocol, click here. More details on how we score smartphone cameras are available here. 12.2Mp 1/2.55-inch sensor with 1.4µm pixelsĪbout DxOMark Mobile tests: For scoring and analysis in our smartphone camera reviews, DxOMark engineers capture and evaluate over 1500 test images and more than 2 hours of video both in controlled lab environments and in natural indoor and outdoor scenes, using the camera’s default settings. This article is designed to highlight the most important results of our testing.
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Changes to the chipset and image processing can impact the overall photography performance, though, so let’s see how the Google Pixel 3a fares under the rigors of a full DxOMark test. Google has stuck with broadly the same camera module for all of its Pixel 3 and 3a models, however, which includes a single 12.2Mp sensor coupled to a 28mm-equivalent f/1.8-aperture lens with optical image stabilization (OIS).
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Moreover, the Pixel 3a isn’t IP68 rated for dust and water resistance like its more expensive stablemate. There’s also a slight difference in screen technology, with the Pixel 3a featuring an OLED display, compared to Pixel 3’s newer P-OLED LCD. The key difference is the chipset, with the less expensive Pixel 3a devices running the more mid-range Snapdragon 670 processor, compared to the top-end Snapdragon 845 chip in the Google Pixel 3. Launched in May 2019, the Pixel 3a is the budget-oriented version of Google’s flagship Pixel 3 smartphone, available with a 5.6-inch display on the standard version, or with a larger 6.0-inch screen on the XL model. Google Pixel 3a camera review (originally published July 19, 2019)
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