Google Pixel 3a XL Review: Full-Featured, Affordable Pure Android
Performance is definitely not the Google Pixel 3a XL's strong suit. That is to say, compared to the current crop of Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 and Snapdragon 855 powered Android phones, the Snapdragon 670-powered Pixel 3a XL is going to be at a disadvantage. We will say, however, that in real world everyday use, the phone certainly did not "feel" under-powered. In fact, mainstream users will probably find general performance of the device to be completely serviceable and only gamers and power users will be left wanting a bit more punch. That said, let's take a look at the actual numbers...
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Futuremark's PCMark for Android is an excellent suite of tests that we recommend for benchmarking performance of a handset in a wide range of tasks, for things like image and video editing, as well as lighter-duty workloads like email and web browsing. When you see the test running live it's clear the scripted application tests are carefully selected and tuned to make use of the platforms involved in a very controlled way.
In the GeekBench test, we're stressing only CPU cores in a handset (not graphics), with both single and multi-threaded workloads. The test is comprised of encryption processing, image compression, HTML5 parsing, physics calculations, and other general purpose compute processing.
Finally we put the Pixel 3a XL through GFXBench, which has been one of our standard mobile graphics performance benchmarks for quite a while now. In order to ensure display refresh (v-sync) and resolution are not limiting factors, we are comparing off-screen test results here. GFXBench tests OpenGL ES graphics workloads and we're specifically testing GLES 2.0 and 3.0 rendering performance in the following two benchmark modules.
There isn't much more to say here, frankly, that the numbers don't already illustrate. When it comes to the general purpose compute tasks and workloads like video streaming and web browsing per PCMark's Android workload, the Pixel 3a XL offers middling performance. However, its overall CPU and Graphics throughput, as seen in the Geekbench (CPU) and GFXBench (GPU) tests, is just not in the same class as any other higher-end Android smartphone on the market currently. However, though the performance variance is stark in spots for the Pixel 3a XL, we would offer that again, the average mainstream consumer likely won't detect much of a difference. With the exception of more strenuous gaming requirements, the Pixel 3a XL still feels plenty responsive in day-to-day use.
In fact, we fired up Asphalt 9 from the Google Play store and it ran plenty smooth and without so much as a hiccup between load screens. Bottom line, you're not going to win any benchmark bragging rights with the Pixel 3a XL, but the benchmark numbers definitely look bleaker than reality.
In fact, we fired up Asphalt 9 from the Google Play store and it ran plenty smooth and without so much as a hiccup between load screens. Bottom line, you're not going to win any benchmark bragging rights with the Pixel 3a XL, but the benchmark numbers definitely look bleaker than reality.
