You know how a lot of the best phones out there scored nice pre-holiday discounts (well) ahead of Black Friday a couple of months back and then incredibly retained their handsomely reduced prices through Christmas and some of them even beyond that point?
Well, the Pixel 7a is… not one of those devices, dropping from an already reasonable $499 list price to an absolutely irresistible $374 in November but going back up to “normal” in December to leave last-minute Christmas shoppers without any opportunity whatsoever to save even a few bucks.
Folks who’ve been patient are getting precisely that chance now, although you will need to settle for a slightly humbler markdown this time around. We’re talking about “only” 100 bucks you can currently slash off the aforementioned regular price of an unlocked Pixel 7a with 128 gigs of internal storage space and no strings attached, which is obviously nothing to sneeze at in terms of New Year promotions.
At its substantially discounted new price, the Tensor G2-powered 6.1-incher is without a doubt one of the best budget 5G phones around again, going up against the likes of the Motorola Edge (2023) and ThinkPhone, as well as Samsung’s Galaxy A54 5G mid-ranger.
Considerably cheaper than something like the Galaxy S23 FE right now, this is clearly not Google’s best in-house smartphone money can buy in (early) 2024. But the Pixel 7a is really not that different from the “high-end” Pixel 8, which is a lot more expensive even after its own latest price cut.
That Tensor G2 processor is arguably fast enough for a budget-friendly mid-end handset with flawless software support, while the battery life and camera capabilities are almost too good for the Pixel 7a’s price point. Then you have a respectably sharp and smooth OLED screen with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels and 90Hz refresh rate technology, as well as a premium (ish) design made from a combination of glass, aluminum, and plastic capable of surviving water immersion with relative ease.
