- Who's in the market for a Pixel 5a?
A 31 year old with braces. Just joking, I run a Pixel 4,
and it's a retainer, 'cause I forgot to put it in last night, and I got to get my straighten on.
5a, it's pretty interesting, except that it's not, because it's the same as the 4a,
let's take a look at it. It's kind of a weird place for Google to be in,
because with the Pixel 5, the flagship started sucking,
and then the A-Series was kind of better. But now, the flagship 6 is supposed to be wicked,
except that I hate the way it looks. And now you've got the 5a,
which is almost literally the exact same as last year's 4a,
you hear that lisp? Jesus. But it's like Apple has the SE,
and they probably would have just not made a refresh every year,
but Google was like, "Hey, why not just refresh it?" It's mostly the exact same, it's slightly larger
and I think it's metal now. The cameras are the same, the SoC is the same,
the battery is bigger, though, and that might just be all you need to know.
Because I've had a Pixel 3 and a Pixel 4, and in both cases, I've had battery issues.
The 3 I had to RMA because the battery was so bad, it couldn't get through, like, one game of Catan.
And then this one, which I've had for maybe a year,
just in the last couple of days, I've noticed, I'm plugging this thing in like twice a day.
It's hard for me to measure 'cause I'm already a grazer, not like a plug-in-over-nighter.
"Welcome to your new Pixel. Tap for tips." Hmm, we love tips around here.
"Learn the essentials." Okay, look at this tutorial, it's great. I think I should know everything in here, right?
That's my job. Let's compare it to this flagship. One of the things I like about the Pixels here is
that they're very small. They're one of the smallest phones you can get,
especially if you don't get the XL. This is actually way bigger than this Pixel 4
and slightly bigger than the 4a. And it's quite a bit heavier,
even though this is like more metal and glass.
Scale, scale please. There he is, there's my boy.
Pounds? What use is that? Only 164 grams.
Only 175 grams. So it's only 10 grams more, I guess,
but I think it's 15 grams more than the last 4a.
Honestly, I think more people should just buy these. I think we don't need to spend $1000, or 1200,
or $2,000 on a phone. I think for most people, you're not gonna notice.
The camera on this thing is great. The screen's only 60 Hertz, but hey,
that's all we had like two years ago. Are iPhones still on 60 Hertz?
It's fine, it's fine for most people. Look, it's snappy, yeah, it's brand new,
but I think people are just, their phones are like their genitals at this point,
instead of having a nice car, you don't have a car cause you live in a city and you're a millennial who can't afford it.
So you just buy a nice phone. Look how cool my phone is. Stop it.
That's right, David, there's a headphone jack on the top. - [David] What? - Again, so stupid.
This phone has a way bigger battery than last time
and a headphone jack, it can be done, and, guess what?
It has greater ingress protection than the last one too.
It has all three, the trilemma has been solved.
Imagine that.
This is exactly like my current Pixel, I mean, that makes sense, it has the same software.
You know, it's a lot nicer to look this way.
This part of the studio is kind of uggo, I mean, you guys are handsome.
The stabilization is great. It's high enough resolution.
This is fine, stop buying iPhones, save your money.
Remember that ING Direct guy? So, display-wise compared to the predecessor,
it's just 0.2 inches more screen.
It's fully wrapped round, it's got the hole punch up here, it's all OLED.
It is 60 Hertz. Also, they dropped the facial recognition from the flagship
and in the A-series, starting from the 4a to now, they have the fingerprint, which is back,
Wish I had had that during the pandemic wearing masks the whole time, this sucked.
I've been using my pattern, like a peasant, for a year.
And you know, the fingerprint's always been faster because you can actually unlock it
while it's still in your pocket on your way to your face. The next one on the 6,
it has like a belt that goes across, which I hate the look of, but maybe that'll prevent rocking.
Also on the 6, they're using their new Tensor silicon, their in-house silicon.
So, this could be the last Pixel phone that has a Qualcomm Snapdragon.
And I don't know if that's gonna be a good or bad thing, but if we're looking at M1s,
it seems like vertical integration in that realm is a positive.
All right, let's listen to the speakers of this baby. But before I do that,
it's time for Jono to throw something at me. Ah, ha ha!
Oh my God.
Oh my God. I'm so glad I'm not Linus.
This is awesome. It's a dbrand grip case with an unflattering screen grab
from WAN Show. Oh, that's rough, man, he just looks like super stoned and pixelated.
At least his beard was trimmed that day, they could have done worse. He's got the dad hat on backwards,
which actually kind of matches those headphones. This is such a light case.
Did they change it? This feels like (phone case smacking loudly)
slaps the roof. This thing will fit so many phones.
Oh, now it feels very safe. Sorry, was this a brand new phone?
That's why you get this case and you can see that it actually comes off a little bit
from the face so if it lands like this, you've got some protection, I mean,
you could still land on a pebble or something like that. Oh, oh, whoa.
The buttons are definitely different. Oh, so tactile, y'all.
All right, dbrand, thanks for the money, thanks for the case. It's kind of annoying to me when you buy the flagship,
because you're an elitist, and then the mid range is better, like it has a headphone jack and also,
look how slim that speaker is at the top there now. See that up there?
It's just very skinny like you see on a Samsung phone. Back in my day, we had a huge forehead
with a little speaker. Whoa, is this the default size?
This keyboard is huge. (electronic music)
You mean you got double the speakerage at the bottom so you can do the handcuff thing and point it at yourself.
The test for me is how annoyed would I be if someone was using this as the speaker at a party,
if I was like playing cards or something like that, and this is all we had, or I'm at the beach,
how awful would that be? Not the worst, not the worst.
You don't want to hang out with those people. You definitely don't want be that guy.
If you're at home and you can't find your headphones, you just want to share a quick video on the couch
with your loved one like on TikTok or some other app that I would never use,
then sure, they're fine. This phone actually did lose a couple of things.
It has 5G, like the predecessor, but it doesn't have the millimeter wave 5G,
but no one really cares because it's not broadly available.
And as Linus showed on the last Tech Tips, if someone stands in front of you, it doesn't work.
But there's also some mid-band that it doesn't have, which is a more of a loss.
How much does this thing cost? 450? The previous one was 50 bucks more than that.
This is awesome. 450? This is gonna be my phone again.
I used to have a Nexus 5X.
Yeah, that one was cool 'cause it had like a nice colored back. But at least this one has a feature button,
like the button is a different color. I like the little, I don't know if you guys can see that,
but it's got like this knurling on it. It's ribbed for my pleasure.
"Wayne's World" guys, have you seen it? If you're the type of person who runs their phone naked,
this isn't so bad 'cause even if you're careful with your phone, one thing that happens,
is it just falls out of your pocket. You put it in your shorts, you sit in the car and then it's so slippery
that it just like works its way out and then suddenly, it's fallen onto the movie theater floor
which was covered in sticky pop. This feels not that slippery, it's not as bad as glass.
It has the kind of a soft touch, you wouldn't actually know that this is metal.
It does have like a rubber kind of soft touch coating on it.
I think it looks really cool and clean the way that it dips for that fingerprint reader
then it comes back up, it looks pretty awesome, seamless.
It only comes in one color, they're calling this, almost black?
Because they have Just Black, last model was Just Black,
I think this is almost black or blackish. It looks actually kind of green to me,
kind of like how in "The Matrix" everything's green even when it's not.
Subscribe to Carpool Critics. Another reason to get a Google Pixel phone
rather than maybe even like a cheaper, or more feature complete Chinese phone,
is that you get the Google features, so you got the Recorder app, which actually is useful.
Basically, it just records audio but while it does it, it types out a transcript.
And maybe that's not the most reliable transcript ever, especially if there's multiple people in the room,
but what it does allow you to do is easily search your audio recording.
And be like, what was the part where we talked about birthday cake? You type it in, oh, that's what they said about the cake.
That's awesome, that's a Google First-Party App. They also have, and this is a lifesaver
in today's spam-filled world, they have the Screen Call button.
If someone calls you, you hit Screen Call, Google Assistant answers the phone and talks to them.
And then when they respond, it types out what they're saying on the screen. Most scammers, as soon as I hit that button,
they just leave and I don't even have to mess with that. And sometimes, when it is a number I don't recognize
that turns out to be the dentist, you get to answer because I don't even have voicemail.
Get rid of voicemail, get a Google phone. You are set, your life is way better.
Let's take some pictures. Oh yeah, the depth.
What the hell is going on here? Is this a bug?
What the hell is happening? Are you seeing this?
I've never had this before. Yeah, I do get some aliasing and lose some detail
when I zoom all the way in. But when I go, even to like times two,
it still looks very sharp. This is still a good camera.
Oh, Linus! That is probably like 12 feet away from me.
(imitates lens zoom) Still decent.
I think this is pretty good, I mean, it's not like a gimmick, like, it's got a periscope on it,
you can zoom into the moon, 50x. It's just very workable, especially considering the price.
And you know, you're gonna get security updates for a long time and you're gonna get updates first.
You don't have to wait for Android to release it to LG, doesn't exist anymore,
and then for them to finally give it to your phone like months later, you're gonna get it right away.
So, I think I might stick with the Pixel family for longer,
especially if they're making the batteries bigger 'cause unfortunately, on this puppy,
this is the one where they introduced a higher refresh rate screen and
they introduced the radar thing where you're approaching your phone and it like lights up and crap,
and they have like swipe gestures. I had to just turn all that stuff off
because it was just draining the battery too much. The A line's where I'm gonna be from now on, guys.
- [David] Heck yeah, join me, brother. - Preach!
Unless that 6 is dope. I want to see that, maybe the 6a is when I'm upgrading.
We didn't actually unbox it. You got a SIM card, pin, you got some literature,
you get the adapter, this is for setting up your phone if you need to, like, ah,
you wanted to take stuff off of your previous phone and put it onto this phone,
you get a USB-C to C, that's a nice presentation,
and you actually do get a charger, I've seen some rumors that the 6 is not gonna come
with a wall wart. I mean, mixed feelings.
On the one hand, I don't like there to be unnecessary e-waste in the world.
But on the other hand, I don't think that these are that common yet. I still see a lot of
USB Micro B chargers around
and even in my house, I think I forgot my charger on vacation
and then now there's like one between me and my wife and it is not enough.
Like, it gets moved from the couch area to the bedroom, like, where's the charger?
So, I do still want one of these. Fortunately, you can get one if you buy this phone.
So cool, thanks for watching, guys. If you liked this video, hit like, hit Subscribe
and watch our other videos about phones.
What's the outro for ShortCircuit, what do you guys do here?