The Google Pixel 3a XL Review: Does Mid-Range Make Sense?
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 27, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon 670
- Pixel 3a
- Pixel 3a XL
GPU Performance
Graphics performance of the Snapdragon 670 is something I admittedly didn’t have too much expectations for. The Adreno 615 of the chipset is a very cut-down version of last year’s Adreno 630 in the Snapdragon 845. In fact you shouldn’t be expecting much of an experience beyond light gaming. However as we’ll see there’s one interesting aspect of mid- to low-end GPUs: Their power consumption and sustained performance.
Starting off with the CPU-bound physics test of 3DMark, we see the Pixel 3a XL again largely fall in the performance category of Snapdragon 835 devices.
Switching over to 3D stressing workloads, we see some pretty mediocre results from the Pixel 3a XL and the Snapdragon 670. Here the phone and SoC is several generations behind even the S835.
Over the rest of the GFXBench benchmarks we continue to see quite lower-end performance. In general the Snapdragon 670’s GPU performance is around ½ to 2/3rd of that of a Snapdragon 835 which puts it about 4 generations behind the top of the line right now.
The interesting aspect of the results is the fact that sustained and peak performance of the phone is essentially identical. There’s a very easy explanation for this: The power consumption of the Snapdragon 670 is so low, that it’s essentially impossible for the device to throttle. In fact, the active system power (load minus idle) of the platform was a meagre 1.5W, a far cry from the 5W+ flagship phones out there. The Pixel 3a merely got luke-warm near the SoC location but otherwise just felt the same as the ambient temperature.
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jjj - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
400$ and up is high end by any standard, not mid range.Megatomic - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
In a world where flagships cost ~$1K USD you believe $400 USD is high?RSAUser - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
Yes, 400 is starting flagship if you look at what's currently in the "mid range" section. Just because Apple made everyone up flagship prices, doesn't mean all our budgets went up.Hrel - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
Couldn't agree more, $400 still stands as my absolute max. Sony offers vastly superior products for the price, granted you gotta wait 3-6 months after release but legit, who cares?I have no idea why Anandtech doesn't review Sony phones, especially when they're so vastly superior to so much else, especially Huwai which they shouldn't even be mentioning on here. Chinese crap.
Huwaii is communist evil crap, get it off this site!
piroroadkill - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
You're thinking relative - that's meaningless - thinking in absolute terms in this case is much more useful. Yes, phones that cost more than 400 USD could easily be considered expensive.The fact flagships cost a grand is irrelevant - the pricing they've decided on is beyond ridiculous - it doesn't mean our window should shift
sonny73n - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
“In a world where flagships cost ~$1K USD you believe $400 USD is high?”In your small world maybe. I still can’t believe that this day and age where we have all the infos on the internet, most people in the West still have their heads stuck in the toilet. Not many of them how much, say an iPhone cost to manufacture. They only instantly believe the phone worth at its retail price. When something only costs about $350 to manufacture, labor and all, but sell to you for more than $1k is nothing but a rip-off. Capitalism at its finest.
Yoi can get a flagship phone for less than &400. You just have to get your head out of the toilet first.
tuxRoller - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
Yes, ONLY in the West=_=AdditionalPylons - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
High end refers to the statistical distribution of prices. For smartphones nowadays, $400 is definitely not the high end.As the prices have gone up over the last years, so does the level which depend on the distribution, such as the terms "high-end", "mid-range" and "low-end".
That said, I agree that $400 and can still be described with the words "expensive", "a lot of money", "not worth it" etc., but then we're more into subjective terminology.
warreo - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
Obvious troll is obvious.PeachNCream - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
Agreed, pricing is way out of line and there are many, many more affordable options out there. Just because the maximum price for a phone is far north of $1k these days does not mean that dividing by two results in mid-range. That is a delusional state of mind the industry would like to promote and only a few people are mindless enough to buy into.