Google Pixel 8a vs. 8 - Which Should You Buy

I've spent over 6 months with a Pixel 8 and now that the Pixel 8a is out, I'm going to take you through which one of these two phones I think is the better buy and the answer is actually more complicated than just looking at their spec sheets. Let's start with the Pixel 8. The number 3 advantage I'd give to the Pixel 8 is spatial audio, which weirdly the 8a doesn't have according to its spec sheet. I can confirm that when I pair my Pixel Buds Pro to the phone, it doesn't have the head Now weirdly, both of these phones have the exact same Tensor G3 processor, so this isn't a limitation on the processor side. The number 2 advantage of the Pixel 8 is build quality. You get slightly better glass with Gorilla Glass Victus on the front compared to the Gorilla Glass 3 cover on the 8a. Now the 8 also has IP68 dust and water resistance, which means it can survive immersion in water for long periods of time and beyond 1 meter in depth. Now the 8a has IP67 and that means it's dust and water resistant, but it's only water resistant up to 1 meter submerged and for no more than 30 minutes. The Pixel 8's design also includes battery sharing where you can charge things like your Pixel Buds Pro by placing them on the back of the device. You also get slimmer bezels, giving the front of the phone a bit more of a modern feel. And coming in at the number 1 reason why I think you would pick the 8 over the 8a is the 8's screen quality. Now on paper, both of these screens look pretty much identical, but when you look at them in person, the 8's is clearly better. Because it doesn't have the purple and green refractions that you see on the 8a's display panel, which is something that you do see in a lot of cheaper OLED phone panels and what I've experienced with previous A-series Pixels. Alright, so that's the Pixel 8, now let's look at the 8a. And does this thing have anything over the 8 besides a lower retail price? Well, surprisingly yes. The number 3 advantage, and this is a tiny one, it's the matte material on the back of the 8a compared to the glossy material on the 8. To me, it just feels a bit nicer, but if you disagree, if you're team glossy, let me know down in the comments. And the number 2 and more surprising advantage for the Pixel 8a is actually its camera system. While both are pretty good, the 8a's in my testing so far has actually been slightly better in many scenarios. Overall, it produces slightly warmer, brighter photos with slightly less dull colors and better saturation. I thought my selfies looked just slightly better, skin tones looked a bit better too, and there were fewer shadows underneath my eyes. About the only camera feature the 8a doesn't have compared to the 8 is macro focus. Which the 8a can't do, however, if you back up a bit, one weird thing I noticed in a few instances was the 8a actually seemed to do a better job keeping the subject in focus than the 8 did. Now because at first I didn't really trust the results I got with the 8a versus the 8, I went out and I retested these two phones on a different day at dusk in a different location and yep, I mostly still found the 8a performed as good if not slightly better in certain scenarios like night sight. The only downside I found with the 8a's camera hardware is video which in low light looked noticeably worse than the 8's. So why did the 8a perform better than the 8 in certain scenarios? Well I went back and looked at the spec sheets of both of these phones and found a few that might explain the difference. Google bumped the megapixel count for the cameras on the 8a compared to the 8. The 8a has a 13 megapixel front facing camera and it's quad core wide camera also has a higher megapixel count. Now megapixels are not everything. Just because you see a higher megapixel number does not necessarily equate to you're going to get a better image. You gotta take into account other things like the pixel size on the image sensor itself, the image sensor size, and other things like the lens architecture, aperture, etc. That all being said though, it does appear that the Pixel 8a is benefiting from the megapixel spec bump that Google gave it. Now the number one benefit with the 8a is of course price. It retails for $499 US dollars compared to $699 for the Pixel 8 and I've left purchase links in the description if you want to check out the current prices and see if either phone is on sale. So which of these phones would I recommend buying? Well when I came in to write this video I was like, oh this is going to be easy. The 8's obviously going to be the answer especially if you can get it on sale. And that's still true, especially if you care about having a better screen. But what I didn't expect was for the 8a to have such a good camera system. So if you can't find the 8 on sale, if you don't mind a lower quality OLED screen, the 8a is going to be your obvious choice. But if you're more of a stickler for screen quality like I am, your only choice would be to go with the Pixel 8. Now if you end up thinking you want the Pixel 8 but you don't mind a larger screen size, there are actually some benefits of going with the Pixel 8 Pro over the Pixel 8 that I go over in my comparison of these two phones. You can get to that video by clicking here and then for other videos on Pixel products and accessories like the Pixel Watch 2 and the Pixel Tablet, you can get to all of those by clicking here. If you like this video, you found it helpful, make sure you give it a thumbs up button below and don't forget to subscribe for more reviews on Google Pixel phones. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.