Google Pixel 6a vs. Pixel 6 Pro: Camera Quality Shoot-Out

pcmag.com:

The midrange Google Pixel 6a ($449) earned our Editor's Choice award in no small part because of its imaging prowess. Simply put, it's one of the best midrange camera phones on the market.

At $899, the Pixel 6 Pro costs twice as much as the Pixel 6a, and fittingly includes higher-end camera components as part of the upgrade. But if image quality is your main concern, is the Pixel 6 Pro really worth double the price of the Pixel 6a?

To help you decide, we pit their cameras against each other in several common photography situations so you can see the difference and determine which model is the better buy for your needs.

Before you look at our real-world photo samples from the Pixel 6a and Pixel 6 Pro, here's a quick rundown of the camera specs and features you get with each phone.

To start, the high-end Pixel 6 Pro's main camera uses a 50MP Octa PD Quad Bayer sensor, whereas the Pixel 6a mainly relies on a 12.2MP dual-pixel sensor. The Pro offers four times the resolution of the 6a, but the image output sizes are pretty similar because the former oversamples images; both phones save photos at around 12MP (4,080-by-3,027-pixel) resolution. If you're interested in how oversampling works and why it makes a difference for detail capture, check out our article on CMOS, BSI CMOS, and Stacked CMOS sensors and pay attention to the section on Quad Bayer tech.

Outside of resolution, the Pixel 6 Pro's 26mm lens has an f/1.85 aperture. The Pixel 6a's lens offers an f/1.7 aperture and captures photos at a 27mm focal length. The difference between 26mm and 27mm isn't massive, but the 6 Pro's wider field of view lets in slightly more of a scene.

Both phones use the same wide-angle hardware: a 12 MP, f/2.2 camera with a 17mm focal