
Neither image looks great (despite Google Night Sight's best efforts), but neither is dramatically worse than the other either.

I took the above selfies in almost complete darkness, with just a small amount of light coming through the curtain. In theory, the Pixel 6 Pro's images should look sharper based on its higher-resolution sensor, but it's more important to examine real-world results than to just look at the numbers. We took several pairs of photos in various lighting environments with each phone's primary camera. That means you get Real Tone, Magic Eraser, Night Shot, Top Shot, and all the other software-based goodies. In terms of software, Google includes just about everything in the more expensive Pixel 6 and 6 Pro in the 6a.

We explore how the two handle zooming in on subjects in the tests below. If you want to capture tight frames without compromising quality, the Pixel 6 Pro is the clear winner on paper. The Pixel 6 Pro has an extra lens that the Pixel 6a doesn't-a 48MP telephoto camera with a 104mm focal length (4x optical zoom ratio compared with the standard lens). Images from these lenses look almost identical, and the only difference stems from how the two devices process photos. 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.īoth phones use the same wide-angle hardware: a 12 MP, f/2.2 camera with a 17mm focal length. The Pixel 6a's lens offers an f/1.7 aperture and captures photos at a 27mm focal length. Outside of resolution, the Pixel 6 Pro's 26mm lens has an f/1.85 aperture. 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. 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. 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. How Do the Pixel 6a and Pixel 6 Pro Cameras Differ?īefore 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.

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