Google Pixel 7a hands-on review

Camera

The Pixel 7a has a dual camera system on the back consisting of a 64MP main camera with f/1.89 aperture and 1/1.73" sensor size and a 13MP ultrawide camera with f/2.2 aperture. Like the Pixel 7, the ultrawide on the Pixel 7a does not have autofocus and as such also lacks the macro mode found on the Pixel 7 Pro.

Both cameras on the back are physically smaller than those on the Pixel 7 despite the higher resolutions. This usually isn't a great combination but we have seen software overcoming these hardware limitations in the past.

Camera app

The camera software is a relatively simple affair, with a long list of camera modes at the bottom and the rest of the options hidden away under a drop-down menu. A simple zoom toggle lets you switch between the lenses and digital zoom modes. There is no pro mode as such but you can enable RAW shooting from the settings and can manually adjust exposure, white balance, and shadows.

Starting with the 64MP main camera, we were impressed with the image quality on offer here. You get great detail, color reproduction, and dynamic range almost regardless of lighting conditions (within reason). The phone almost makes it look easy even though we know it's not and there's a lot of clever engineering going on in the background to make it seem that way.

Main camera samples

Compared to the 50MP main camera on Pixel 7, the Pixel 7a had very similar levels of detail, dynamic range, and color reproduction. In fact, the two cameras were often identical when viewed without zooming in, which meant that the higher resolution of the Pixel 7a camera (16MP vs 12.5MP) gave it a slight advantage when zoomed in. The Pixel 7a also had slightly better image processing at times, with less oversharpening.

Pixel 7a • Pixel 7

The same was true of the ultrawide. The resolution difference here was minimal and with everything else being similar, the images from the ultrawide cameras on the Pixel 7a and the Pixel 7 were often indistinguishable even when looked up close.

Ultrawide camera samples

One inexplicable behavior of the ultrawide camera is that even though the sensor is 13MP (and we confirmed this after looking at the RAW files) and is advertised as such, the JPEG images that come out of the camera are 16MP. We are not sure if this is intentional or a quirk of our review unit.

The difference was also minimal when zooming in digitally. The Pixel 7a actually performed a bit better at times again due to the higher-resolution sensor. Still, the quality of zoomed images was mostly identical on both the Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7a with the Pixel 7 Pro being ahead by having a dedicated 5x telephoto camera.

1x • 2x • 5x • 8x

What this means is that you are essentially getting the same photo quality as the more expensive Pixel phones. Sure, the Pixel 7 Pro has a few extra niceties such as that telephoto camera and a macro mode but it's also vastly more expensive. The Pixel 7, on the other hand, really doesn't bring that much more to the table than the Pixel 7a.

Both cameras can record video in 1080p and 4K at 30fps but only the main camera can do 4K 60fps. Neither supports the 10-bit HDR10 recording offered by the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.

Video quality was okay but unexceptional. The video from the main camera looks soft with a lot of chromatic aberration around high-contrast edges. Image stabilization also could have been better.

The ultrawide camera has better stabilization but the image is even softer with more noise.