This Prime Day, the new Google Pixel 7a is finally discounted to the price it should have launched at, $450. This is the same price that its predecessor, the Pixel 6a, was released at. The Pixel 7a is an excellent phone, even more so with its $50 rebate. However, a killer deal on the Pixel 6a is changing this equation once more, with Amazon offering last year’s a-series phone for just $250. If you’ve ever wanted to get the Pixel experience on the cheap, now is your chance. Heck, even if you’re shopping for a new phone this Prime Day, this is the one to get.
Google Pixel 6a
The Google Pixel 6a is the phone to get this Prime Day. At $250, it offers all the features you could need and then some in an Android phone, providing almost all the software smarts you know and love from Google and longer-term software support than the competition at this price point.
In my Pixel 7a vs Pixel 6a comparison, I’m making a point that the Pixel 7a offers some serious upgrades over its predecessor, and that’s true. The Pixel 7a offers a nicer screen with a 90Hz refresh rate; it finally adds wireless charging to Google’s low-cost series and has a significantly better camera experience. At the same time, this doesn’t diminish the Pixel 6a’s excellent value. The Pixel 6a has long been one of our favorite budget phones, and it still is on our list. If getting the absolute best experience for the lowest possible price is your goal, the Pixel 6a is very much a great choice to this day, something that’s true even when it’s not discounted beyond its new post-Pixel 7a price of $350.
At $250, the Pixel 6a offers the core Google experience. It’s pretty much the only phone in its price range to come with a proper flagship processor, the Google Tensor, a customized CPU created by Google with Samsung parts. It’s the same hardware you also find in the high-end Pixel 6 Pro. This is coupled with all the software features you know and love from Google. There is no bloatware to speak of on this phone apart from preinstalled Google apps — which you are probably using already anyway.
Google is building on top of Android with features like Call Screen that automatically weeds out potential spam calls for you. You can also use real-time Live Translate, Hold for Me to evade call center music, Adaptive Sound for improved speaker audio in all environments, continuous song detection in the background, and more. You can have all this for half the current price of this year’s mid-range Google flagship, the Pixel 7. No other phone even comes close in the price range.
Of course, there are also some caveats that I need to mention apart from the lacking features compared to the Pixel 7a. The Google Tensor chip is known to run hot and has poorer than average mobile connectivity, something that plagues all phones in the Pixel 6 series. The fingerprint scanner isn’t the best, though it’s subjectively better than what you’d get on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. The Pixel 6a is also only slated to get two more big Android updates, Android 14 later this year and Android 15 next year. After that, you’re still getting two years of security patches, though, which means the phone is safe to use until July 2027. This is still better than what most new phones in this price range offer, and the Google Tensor should have enough life left in it to provide a good experience up until that date.
I think these caveats are compromises you can easily get used to, especially considering the $250 price tag. In that sense, you should hurry and grab this deal before it’s all sold out.