Google Pixel 4a Battery & Charging Test Complete: nothing to brag about

The Google Pixel 3a was one of the best midrange smartphones released in 2019 but its battery life was often a let-down. Google’s Pixel 4a seems to be no less impressive – some say it’s even better value for money – but has the battery life been improved?

Our PhoneArena battery life test is designed to show off how good battery life really is. The process consists of three components, which you can read about in length here, but in a nutshell, it involves some light browsing use, then slightly more demanding video playback, and lastly a bit of 3D gaming.

The Google Pixel 4a boasts a 3,140mAh battery coupled with a 5.8-inch OLED display and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 chipset. Here’s how well the midrange phone did in our extensive battery life test:

PhoneArena Browsing Battery Test Results

With a run time of almost 9 hours and a half, the Pixel 4a performed decently in our web browsing battery test. It outlasted the iPhone SE (2020) and Nokia 7.2, despite the latter’s bigger battery, but fell just short of the results achieved by the Pixel 3a last year.

Google’s latest phone also falls short of the Galaxy A51 and Moto G 5G Plus, although that was to be expected considering their respective 4,000mAh and 5,000mAh batteries.

PhoneArena YouTube Video Playback Battery Test Results

The new Google phone fared well in our YouTube video streaming test when its tiny battery is taken into account, yet that is admittedly pretty common with Pixel smartphones. The Pixel 4a lasted just under 7 hours on a single charge.

That is almost 20 minutes better than its predecessor and over 2 hours more than the similarly priced iPhone SE (2020). The Galaxy A51 and Moto G 5G Plus lasted longer, but again that is down to their drastically bigger batteries.

PhoneArena 3D Gaming Battery Test Results

3D Gaming is the toughest test of all and the small battery inside the Pixel 4a struggled to keep up with competing smartphones. It only lasted around 4 hours and 50 minutes during our testing, putting it slightly behind the iPhone SE (2020).

Motorola’s Moto G 5G Plus and Samsung’s Galaxy A51 again kept going for longer. But considering the massive difference in battery capacity, we expected the gap between results to be quite a bit larger.

Charging Test Results

One of the upsides about the Pixel 4a’s small battery is that it charges faster than most other phones in this price category. The stock 18W charger included inside the box can fully charge the phone from 0% to 100% in 95 minutes.

Google Pixel 4a Charging Test (18W in-box charger):

• in 15 minutes: 22%
• 30 minutes: 44%
• 45 minutes: 64%
• 60 minutes: 81%
• 1 hour and 15 minutes: 92%
• 1 hour and 30 minutes: 99%
• 1 hour and 35 minutes: FULL CHARGE

Conclusion

You can read more about the Google Pixel 4a here. You can see all the phones we have tested here.

Buy the Google Pixel 4a at BestBuy