Nobody should take DxOMark's word as gospel on camera quality, however their testing has ranked Google's popular mid-range Pixel 3a with a camera arguably tied as leading the industry.
Google turned heads when they launched their mid-ranging Pixel 3a and 3a XL offering hardware – in particular camera hardware – nearly on par with their flagship Pixel 3 and 3 XL with only a few cutbacks for half the price; and indeed, the camera was the most hotly anticipated and warmly received aspect of the devices with the tech industry unanimously proclaiming the photographic performance to be on par with the flagship brethren for all but selfies.
Well now the oft-maligned DxOMark, which rates cameras both on and off smartphones, has weighed in with their opinion, and they agree with us reviewers; the Pixel 3a and 3a XL's cameras offer amongst the best, if not most versatile, photographic performance across the entire mobile industry including flagships, with performance only a smidge below that of its flagship Pixel brethren quantified as a single point overall.
Here's a comparison of outdoor photo quality, the only real difference being a slightly more accurate white balance on the 3a:
Pixel 3a Pixel 3
In particular, DxOMark gave the 3a the same ‘photo' rating as the 3 of 103, but a slightly lower video score of 95 vs 98. For reference, the overall DxOMark leader is Huawei's P30 Pro which scores 112 overall and 119 for photo and 97 for video, in large part due to its added versatility of 5x periscope zoom and 0.6x ultrawide sensors.
(It's worth noting that DxOMark's rankings are clearly not out of 100 nor any other number, they're rather some arbitrary amalgamation of each of a camera's arbitrary individual scores for arbitrary traits like colour reproduction and focus.)
Here's a comparison of outdoor video snapshot quality, notice the more detailed results of the 3 versus the blurry grass in the 3a:
Pixel 3a (notice the blurry grass) Pixel 3 (notice the sharp grass)
Overall, I don't really trust DxOMark as an ‘exact' quantifier of camera quality, if there even is such a thing, given they are paid to rate each device that they review by the companies themselves, obviously creating a probable conflict of interest.
However, for rough comparisons of image quality I do think DxOMark can be trusted; especially in situations such as this, where the comparison is being made between devices from the same company with nearly identical hardware and software.
Of course, when DxOMark agrees with the whole industry anyway, there's not any particular need to trust them, but it's still good to know that, to some mildly ‘scientific' and rigorous extent, Google really is putting its all into its mid-range camera-phones.
Source and images: DxOMark
