Google Pixel 6a

Poor battery life and a relatively high price mean this attractive little phone is tough to recommend

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Another Google phone? Well, sort of. Arriving nine months after the rest of the Pixel 6 family, Google is positioning the Pixel 6a as an affordable alternative to the original handset, rather than a real update.

It's not much cheaper, however.

The £399 that Google demands is certainly less than the £599 launch price of the original Pixel 6 (see issue 328, p70), but today that phone can be bought for as little as £440, so there's very little saving to be made.

Still, the 6a has attractions besides price. The original Pixel 6 was a sizeable thing, measuring 75mm wide and 159mm tall; with a smaller 72 x 152mm frame and weighing only 178g, the 6a is more comfortable to use in one hand. The smaller camera bar on the back also doesn't gather as much dust as its sibling does, and I found the in-display fingerprint scanner snappier and more reliable than that of the original Pixel 6.

There are compromises too, however. The 6a's plastic rear feels cheaper than the glass finish of its siblings, even if it's less likely to shatter when dropped. The phone also lacks a headphone jack socket - a shame, since that was a big selling point of last year's 5a. And while the screen has the same 1,080 x 2,400 resolution as the Pixel 6, it has a bog-standard 60Hz refresh rate rather than 90Hz.

It's a similar story round the back.