The A-series Pixels have been very good over the past few years. And in the Pixel 9A, Google has taken a good midrange phone and made it great.

With affordable phones like this, who needs flagships? The Pixel 9a is all the essentials (and AI) packed into a friendlier price point.

Google took a page from Apple when it debuted its custom Tensor mobile processors with the Pixel 6. Now, Google uses Tensor processors in all its phones, giving a nice boost to budget devices like the Pixel 9a. The Pixel 9a has a Tensor G4, which is identical to the chip in the Pixel 9 series, save for a slightly different modem.

Google's $499 phone has a lot in common with the pricier baseline Pixel 9. Here's our guide for what you'll get -- and what you won't -- for that lower price.

The Pixel 6a took things further, pairing its excellent Pixel camera with better performance. The Tensor chipsets might not rival the raw power of their Snapdragon equivalents, but it was still fantastic value to get a Tensor powering the Pixel 6a for its $449 price tag.

Compared to past years, the 2025 A-Series doesn’t feel like a variant of the main line. Rather, the Google Pixel 9a is its own thing that most people will be quite happy with. Since August, I’ve been using the Pixel 9 Pro as my daily driver.