Pixel 9 vs 8 vs 8a: The Ultimate Pixel Showdown!
in this video we're going to pick Google's pixel 8A against the pixel 8 and pixel 9 and see which phone comes out on top I used the pixel 8 for over 6 months before switching to the pixel 8 a for 3 months and now I've been using the pixel 9 for over 2 months so I've had a good amount of experience with all of these phones we're going to use a point system in this comparison so the winning phone in each category gets two points the second phone gets one points and the losing phone gets no points stick around until the end of the video to see which phone w up the most points we're going to dive deep on this one so buckle up and let's crack on we're going to start with design and build quality and from a visual perspective I personally prefer the pixel 9 followed by the pixel 8A and then the pixel 8 all the phones have matte aluminium sides and Camera sections which I love because they avoid a load of fingerprints and the 9 and 8 both have glossy glass backs whereas the 8A has a matte plastic composite back making it the best for avoiding fingerprints if you're not using a case with the phone the pixel 8 in the dark obsidian color is shocking for attracting fingerprints so my advice would be to go for the lighter color of pixel if you're getting either the 9 or 8 as the porcelain pixel 9 hides fingerprints far better than the pixel 8 around the front of the phones the pixel 8A has some brutally large bezels whereas the pixel 8 has much smaller bezels but with an ever so slightly larger bottom bezel if large or un even bezels is something that bothers you though the pixel 9 has a very satisfying uniform bezel around the screen which just makes it look more premium the pixel 9 also feels more premium in the hand than the other two phones with it feeling solid and with a good weight and balance to it the pixel 8 is also clearly built from premium materials whereas the pixel 8A is noticeably lighter and less premium feeling from my experience from a color perspective I think the 8A has the brightest most interesting colors followed closely by the pixel 9 and I think the eights colors are pretty muted and on the whole a bit boring however this isn't really going to impact my score that much as I always slap a case on my phone to protect it so I'm personally more interested in the Practical aspects of the design based on all these observations for design and build quality I'm going to give the win to the pixel 9 followed by the 8 leaving the 8A in last place here simply because I think the bezels will immediately put a lot of people off even though in real use they've never been an issue for me build quality plays into the next category to which is durability with the back being made of plastic you'd think the pixel 8A would win this one outright but we've also got to consider the screen glass and each phone's IP dust and water resistance ratings the pixel 8A has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 whereas the 8 has Gorilla Glass victus and the nine has victus 2 so what does this mean well Gilla Glass 3 was introduced in 2013 with victus being released in 2020 and victus 2 released in 2022 so there is N9 years of Glass Technology advances between the three and victus 2 variants and Corning suggests that victus 2 should be able to withstand a 2 m drop onto concrete without shattering which is better protection than the glass on the 8A in real use I do have a tiny but still visible scratch on my 8A screen and similar on the pixel 8 screen whereas the pixel 9 doesn't have any scratches on it and this is despite me putting it face down on rocks to take thumbnails for videos and also dropping it so hard on its glass side at one point that it's got some scratches on the aluminium sides but still not on the glass which is genuinely impressive this doesn't mean I won't get a scratch on the screen but it seems to be stronger from my experience with it so far both the pixel 9 and pixel 8 have an ip68 rating for dust and waterproofing which means they could be under up to 1.5 M of water for up to 30 minutes the pixel 8A on the other hand has an IP67 rating which means it can be under up to 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes for most people this difference won't impact you at all as if you accidentally drop any of these phones in the water before fishing it out within a few seconds they should all be fine but if you are someone who works near water frequently they you may want the extra piece of mind that the higher IP rating of the 8 or 9 will bring you in this case I think the phones draw with one point each for durability as the back of the 8A is much less likely to scratch or break than the 9 or 8 but the extra IP rating and harder glass of the 9 and 8 will likely make a difference in the long run as well next there is not a huge amount of difference between the displays on these phones with all three phones having 1080p resolution screens with a variable refresh rate between 60 and 120 HZ the differences between the displays are in the size and the brightness the pixel 9 gives us a 6.3 in screen with a peak brightness of 2,700 nits and a 2 million to1 contrast ratio whereas the pixel 8 and 8A both have a peak brightness of 2,000 nits and a contrast ratio of 1 million to1 with screen sizes of 6.2 and 6.1 in respectively in real world use
there isn't a huge difference between the screens with all of them getting bright enough to use on a bright sunny day and all of them being nice and smooth with that 120 HZ refresh rate however if you need that extra brightness or the slightly larger screen then the pixel 9 is going to be the phone you should go for which is why it edges out the victory in this category with the pixel 8 and 8A drawing in second place because there is so little difference between their displays under the screens of all of these phones is a fingerprint sensor which alongside Face Unlock makes up the two biometric Security Options built into these phones Face Unlock is equally Snappy on all these phones which is good when you have enough light but when it's dark it doesn't work at all the fingerprint sensor is where there is a huge difference between these phones the pixel 8 and 8A have a fairly slow and sometimes inaccurate Optical fingerprint sensor whereas the pixel 9 has a very fast and accurate ultrasonic fingerprint sensor this makes the pixel 9 much easier to unlock regardless of the level of light in the room however bear in mind that all these phones still tend to struggle with the fingerprint sensor if your hands are wet for this category it's an easy win for the pixel 9 with the pixel 8 and 8A once again drawing for a single point moving down to the bottom of the the phone let's talk about the speakers on these phones I use my phone all the time for listening to podcasts watching videos or listening to music when I'm doing tasks around the house so I've had extensive experience using all three of these phones for this the pixel 9 for me has a good level of balanced clear audio while also being able to get pretty loud the pixel 8 also provides good audio quality but lacks some of the volume of the pixel 9 finally the pixel 8A Is Not Great especially at max volume where it introduces some nasty frequencies and just doesn't sound very good at all with regards to call Quality calls sound crisp and clear on all of these phones through the speaker at the top of the phone one other thing to mention here is that the pixel 8 and 9 both offer spatial audio with supported headphones which is basically virtual surround sound whereas this is not included in the 8A I've honestly never used spatial audio so it's not really important for me but definitely worth mentioning in case it matters to you in this category the pixel 9 wins the pixel 8 comes second and the pixel 8 a misses out on points a closer call between these phones is connectivity they all have a USB 3.2 type-c connector which offers transfer speeds of up to 10 GB per second and they all have the same Bluetooth 5.3 the only place they differ is in Wi-Fi support where the pixel 8A supports Wi-Fi 6E but the 8 and 9 both support the faster Wi-Fi 7 due to this I'm going to have to give the joint win to the pixel 8 and 9 with the pixel 8A coming in with one point before we move on to the cameras if you are enjoying this video so far then please drop a like I appreciate you the camera performance on these phones might be the make or break for a lot of people about which phone you decide to buy fortunately in my experience the cameras across all the phones are very good the pixel 8 and 9 both sport the same 50 megapixel main camera but the 9 has an upgraded 48 megap Ultra wide over the 12 megap Ultra wide of the 8 the 9 actually shares two of the three camera sensors that are on the more expensive 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL which is great the higher megapixel count in the ultrawide sensor does make a difference with the images from the pixel 9 being slightly sharper and more detailed than the 8 both phones have the same 10.5 megap front-facing
camera however the camera on the pixel 9 includes autofocus whereas the 8 only has fixed focus in my experience this doesn't make that much of a difference as the photos out of the front-facing camera aren't super detailed anywhere the pixel 8A has a 13 megapix front-facing camera which is obviously higher resolution than the 8 and9 but the results from all three phones are honestly very similar in this regard the pixel 8A actually has a higher megapixel main camera at 64 megapixels however this is the same sensor that was used in the 7A so it's fairly old now by smartphone standards the 8A also has the same Ultra wide sensor from the 7A which provides 13 megapixel images in wellet scenarios all the cameras on each of these phones perform really well even the AA with its older sensors produces excellent contrasty and well balanced images however when you stick them in low light situations the larger main sensors on the 8 and N really stand out by by maintaining their image quality even without using Google's night sight mode although it has the same main sensor as the 8 the 9 has a new image processing Pipeline and this seems to make a difference in how clean and detailed the low light shots look the nine also takes this one step further with its upgraded Ultra wide which seems to be significantly better in low light when compared to the 8 and far better than the 8 A's Ultra wide which is significantly worse in low light even when using night sight the eight and N also offer macro mode where this is missing on the 8A so if you're someone who values getting close-up shots then the 8A is going to be a no-o for you there are also other camera software features which are exclusive to the pixel 9 and 8 these phones both have the action pan mode which allows you to shoot a moving subject and create a motion blur behind that subject and night sight time lapse both features which are absent from the pixel 8A on the pixel 9 you get the add me feature which allows you to add someone into an existing photo by taking a second photo with them in it and intelligently stitching them together and get the new panorama mode which should make it easier to take panoramas with better results I need to mention that this pixel 8 has an issue where it doesn't focus when you initially open the camera until you shake the phone however I'm not going to count this as a negative for the eight as I've determined that this is a hardware issue and from the comments on my previous videos no one else has had the same issue I think it must have been caused by me dropping the phone at some point as I don't remember it being an issue when I first got the phone in terms of video all the cameras can shoot up to 4K at 60 frames per second but for for some reason only the pixel 8 and 99 can shoot 24 frames per second with the 8A being limited to 30 and 60 frames per second the stabilization is fairly similar on all the cameras which is to say it's good in all but the most difficult of situations such as filming handheld while walking over uneven ground where you may see some stabilization Jitters another feature that is emitted from the 8A is the ability to shoot 10bit HDR video which doesn't really bother me but it can give you super bright highlights and more realistic darker blacks if you care about that and finally the 8 and N can shoot with the Cinematic blur video mode which is also missing on the 8A this puts an artificial blur behind the subject that you're shooting but it looks pretty fake in my opinion because the quality of the subject cutout isn't very good plus the quality is limited to 1080p in this mode rather than 4K the lack of the various software features doesn't really bother me that much between the different phones I think the quality of the pixel 99's images is just overall consistently slightly higher than the 8 and 8A and the ma macro mode could be important for certain users based on this the N9 gets the win in the camera category for me and the pixel 8 comes second with the 8A coming in last next is a really important category for me and that's battery life the pixel 8 and 8A had an underwhelming battery life in my use with the pixel 8 being slightly better than the 8A but still being fairly average with me ending the day with about 10 to 20% battery left after about 3 to 4 hours of screen on time and mixed use this is mainly due to the pretty rubbish modem in the 8 and 88a meaning that my battery performance on mobile data was substantially worse than when I was connected to Wi-Fi in contrast in the first two months of use I've been very pleased with the pixel 9's battery performance while it's not exceptional it sits firmly in the good category rather than average which is a huge improvement over the pixel 8 and 8A I can comfortably use the phone for mixed normal use and even hit four to 5 hours of screen on time and not be worried about making it to the end of the day I very rarely got to the end of the day with a 9 and had less than 15% battery left which is class so the pixel 9 wins this category with the eight getting the single point and the 8A getting zero charging goes hand inhand with battery life as often you may need to top up your phone after a long day at work to get ready for a night out the pixel 8 and 9 offer similar charging speeds with both hitting 27 wats of wi charging and both hitting 12 wats of wireless charging with a chi certified charger however if you have Google's pixel stand the pixel 8 can hit 8 18 W for wireless charging whereas the pixel 9 can only hit 15 WS which is weird considering the pixel 9 is the newer phone and the fact it has a larger battery the pixel 8A Falls far behind in this category and is one of the worst parts of this phone in my opinion as it only charges at 18 wat wired and a measly 7.5 wats wirelessly another thing to note here is that the 8 and N botht support battery share which allows you to wirelessly charge another phone or device with your pixel but the 8A doesn't support this in my experience charging speed hasn't been a huge issue as I tend to put my phone on charge before I go to bed and wake up with it fully charged plus all the pixels here support Google's adaptive charging which only fast charges your phone up to 80% when you put it on charge when you go to bed and then trickle charges it to 100% in time for you waking up which should boost the longevity of the battery however if you don't charge your phone overnight like me then charging will be very important so the pixel 8 actually takes the win here followed by the pixel 9 and the 8A falls into last place again in terms of performance both the 8 and 8A have the same tensor G3 chip both with 8 GB of RAM whereas the pixel 9 offers the newer tensor G4 chip with 12 GB of RAM the performance on all these phones is very similar across the board to be honest in everyday use of swiping around Android 15 scrolling social media messaging and watching or listening to content there honestly really isn't any notable difference between how these phones run they all run really smoothly in my experience the only times the phones get warm in my use of them is is when I'm gaming for an extended period or downloading large files from the internet I can play Call of Duty war zone mobile with the graphics and frame rate settings set to the highest that the game allows for over an hour and all the phones get hot but I don't get any noticeable lag or slowdown which is good however I'm in Scotland and it never really gets past about 25° C here so if you're in a hotter environment then I think it would be possible for these phones to overheat as they do get hot to the touch when you're doing some heavy gaming at least in Call of Duty you could reduce some of the gra Graphics settings and you'd probably be fine however it's safe to say that if you're looking for a powerful phone for doing heavy gaming sessions or for photo and video editing regularly then I think there are definitely better phones out there for those use cases for the average user who does some gaming every now and then and mainly uses the phone for everyday things then I think you'd be happy with the performance of any of these phones so in terms of performance because of the slightly faster chip and the 50% extra Ram over the 8 and 8A I'm going to give the pixel 9 the win here with the eight and 8A getting a point each because they are evenly matched we also have to consider future proofing and Longevity though and all these phones have good prospects in that regard from a software perspective at least Google has promised 7 years of os and security updates for each of these phones it's also clear that Google is going to be developing many different AI software features going forward I've already noticed features that were released as features exclusive to the pixel 9 trickling down to the 8 and 8A only a few months after the N9 was released such as Gemini live and the pixel weather app However the fact that the pixel 9 has a slightly more powerful chip and 12 GB of RAM is going to ensure that it can keep up with any new features for longer than the older 8 series of phones because of this I'm going to give the win here to the pixel 9 and give the 8 and 8A both a point each for our penultimate category we have the software features and there aren't many differences between these phones beyond the camera features that we've already discussed there aren't any software differences between the pixel 8 and 8A beyond the features in the camera and things like spatial audio audio support and Battery share that I've already mentioned however the pixel 9 has some exclusive software features firstly in the photos app the pixel 9 allows you to reimagine photos which basically uses generative AI to add new elements to any photo you just need to draw over a section of the photo and describe what you want to be added and it'll give you a few different options to choose from I've honestly used this infrequently on my pixel 9 and I've only really used it to create fun edits of my rabbits the pixel 9 also has autof frame in the photos app which allows you to use generative AI to expand an image this will generate new pixels around the outside of the image and give you a few different aspect ratios to choose from I've not use this apart from when I've been testing it so I wouldn't miss it if I didn't have it next the nine has pixel screenshots which allows you to use normal language to search for specific screenshots to make them easier to find so if you're the type of person who takes a screenshot of important information to remember it then this is going to make those screenshots a lot easier to find after the fact pixel 9 users also get pixel Studio which allows you to generate IM with AI on your device using a text prompt which is quite cool but doesn't really provide much value in day-to-day use we also get an AI generated weather summary in the pixel weather app which uses AI to summarize the weather forecast for you this definitely isn't something you'll miss on the pixel 8 or 8A as you can just you know look at the weather forecast for reimagine autof frame and the AI weather summary I can see these being brought to the pixel 8 and 8A and possibly older pixels in the not too distant future as these are features that could be processed on Google servers pixel Studio can basically be replicated on any device that has access to Gemini as you can now generate images using Google's image 3 image generation model so I don't see this as a reason to get the pixel 9 as far as I'm aware the pixel screenshots app uses the on device Gemini Nano model more heavily than the other features here so may require the extra Ram of the pixel 9 however I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Google gets rid of the screenshots app in the future and integrates this as a feature in Google photos it'll be accessible by all devices the XEL 9 still wins this category because it does have these extra features I'm giving the 8 and 8A a point each because I don't think the missing features are going to be deal breakers for the vast majority of people and there's a good chance that we will see these on the older phones in some form in the future and this brings us on to our final and possibly most important category price and value the price can be the decider at the end of the day because it's really based on what you can afford and what gives you the most features for your money because of this I'm going to give the first place in this category 10 points second place Five Points and the last place zero the pixel 9 is naturally the most expensive phone here being the newest and most feature packed and comes in at $799 or £ 799 but can already be had for $100 off when the sales come around the pixel 8A is the cheapest coming in at $499 or £499 but has already been down to under $400 on sale finally the pixel 8 is now being sold at an RRP of $599 or $59 £99 but can regularly be picked up for under $500 when it's on sale the key thing between all of these phones is that I would never recommend you buy them at full price wait a month or so for a sale and you'll be able to save a lot of money on them in my opinion the pixel 8 is the best value for money especially if you can pick it up for $500 or less so I'm giving it the 10 points here followed by the pixel 8A for five points and inevitably the pixel 9 comes in last in this category as it's just a lot more expensive than the 8 and the 8A so as you can see the pi pix 8 came in with a Sprint finish at the very last which means it's pipped the pixel 9 to the win in our pixel battle based on these scores which one of these phones should you buy well if you have a budget of $400 or less then go for the pixel 8A when it's next on sale and I'm sure you'll be happy with it if you're okay with the large bezels the slow charging speed and the average battery life if you want the best value for money then for me the pixel 8 is the one to go for because if you can get it for less than $500 then it's a lot of foam for that price finally if you just want the most inine phone with the most features and the best experience out of these three and the price isn't really a factor for you then the pixel 9 is definitely the one you should get as it fixes a lot of the aspects I wasn't so keen on with the pixel 8 and 8A if you've decided you want to pick up one of these phones then I've dropped some links down in the description for you but do you agree with the points that I awarded to each of these phones let me know down in the comments below otherwise as always it's been an absolute pleasure and I'll catch you all in the next video cheers
2024-12-28 01:41
