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Google Pixel 6 Pro vs Google Pixel 4a // Is it better for photography in 2022?
Is the new Google Pixel 6 Pro better than the Google Pixel 4a for photography and video? We will look at many examples to determine who in the winner in this Google Pixel 6 Pro vs Google Pixel 4a comparison video! You will probably be surprised by the results!
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- Real-World Video Test of the Google Pixel 6 Pro https://youtu.be/edLqPY_wnLg
- How & why I print my images https://youtu.be/EcGnW1_J8Jo
- How does portrait mode work https://youtu.be/NKTL3aElKwg
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📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - Introduction
00:44 - What photos to expect?
01:18 - Camera system comparison
01:41 - Dynamic range comparison
02:45 - Computational Photography comparison
04:33 - Video update
05:13 - 2x & 4x Telephoto comparison
05:57 - Ultra-Wide comparison
07:06 - Sharpness & Resolution comparison
08:07 - Depth of field comparison
08:56 - Portrait Mode comparison
09:54 - 4k Video comparison
10:53 - Front Facing Video comparison
12:08 - Camera app updates
13:09 - Night Sight and Astrophotography comparison
15:14 - Final thoughts and conclusion!
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- 0:00 Introduction
- 0:44 What photos to expect?
- 1:18 Camera system comparison
- 1:41 Dynamic range comparison
- 2:45 Computational Photography comparison
- 4:33 Video update
- 5:13 2x & 4x Telephoto comparison
- 5:57 Ultra-Wide comparison
- 7:06 Sharpness & Resolution comparison
- 8:07 Depth of field comparison
- 8:56 Portrait Mode comparison
- 9:54 4k Video comparison
- 10:53 Front Facing Video comparison
- 12:08 Camera app updates
- 13:09 Night Sight and Astrophotography comparison
- 15:14 Final thoughts and conclusion!
hello everyone today i'm answering one of the questions that intrigues me the most and is does the google pixel 6 pro take any better pictures than the google pixel 4a let's get started by rolling the intro for those of you who are new to this channel i'm rugby mahalford a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at their start now let's go take some few pictures with both of these phones to really test this out if you're scared that i'm gonna be only taking some pictures in snowy conditions don't worry i've been taking plenty of pictures in the last few weeks inside outside with snow without snow to really get a good idea of how both of these cameras perform in all kinds of conditions [Music] let's talk about the biggest difference between both of these phones and this is the completely different camera system on the google pixel 4 you have a single magnet sensor and also primary lens which is a 12 megapixel sensor and f 1.7 aperture on the ghost expo you have three lenses and three sensors in the back which are a 15 megapixel f 1.85 as the main camera then there's an 80 photo four times telephoto lens at f 3.5 and finally there's a 12 megapixel ultra wide at f 2.2 on the front we also have different lenses so on the google pixel 4e you have a front facing camera at 8 megapixel and f 2.0 and on the google six pro you have a little bit wider lens at 11 megapixels and f 2.2 on paper these are very very different cameras but you can see that in the results the images actually look quite similar in the end for the first test let's see how the dynamic range works on both phones in theory the bigger sensor on the ghost expo should allow to get more light inside other brighter and darker parts of the image so you should get more informations in both of these parts but let's take a picture with each phone to really test this out what i observed inside of most of my test shots is actually the results are very similar the google six pro does actually have a lot more dynamic range so it keeps more details inside the bright parts and the dark parts of the image but in a lot of the cases you cannot really see a difference between the pictures coming from the google six pro and also google pixel 4a in terms of dynamic range where there is a really big difference is actually inside of the front-facing camera here the results are not indeed between both cameras the google pixel 4 actually has a hard time retaining some details inside of the background if your subject is a little bit darker or brighter depending on the scene where the google six pro actually can take a lot more details inside the background without overexposing everything or underexposing depending on the scene so this is a really welcome upgrade especially if you use a front-facing camera a lot okay wow it was so cold outside i completely froze my hand so i came inside made myself a little hot chocolate here and i think it's a good time to talk about the image processing and why the images look pretty similar on both of these phones and then i'm going to wait for it to become a little bit darker outside to go and talk about night sight using these phones you might be surprised to realize just like i was that the pictures look a lot alike between both of these phones but this is not a bad thing google is really well known for its competition photography on its pixel line knot not the harder they're using actually most of the camera lenses and sensors on their pixel phones haven't been the best ones out there on any of their phones but they always compensate by having incredible computational photography if you don't know what is computational photography it's basically a set of techniques that allows to get the final shot without having to do any editing and things like that and they do all the hard work for you automatically so that's why you get great pictures using your phone because you don't have to do any work by yourself afterwards to get some better results but it actually probably worked a lot to get the same processing on the go 6 pro even if you have different hardware because the people including myself really like the look coming from the google pixel 40 so they probably wanted to replicate that on their new phone the google pixel 6 pro the only very noticeable difference between both image processing is actually the go 6 pro tends to be a bit more on the cold side if you don't know what cole means it basically just means that inside of the picture there's more blue instead of yellow this is not a big deal for taking pictures of this landscape in a sunny day but it might be a little bit more problem if you're taking some portraits or things like that overall it's not a big deal because actually there's a new slider inside of the go 6 pro that allows you to decide if you want it to be a bit colder or warmer but you have to do this before taking the shot not afterwards [Music] we are now the next morning and i got a few shots last night we're using night sight and also the astrophotography moon so definitely stay tuned until the end of this video but it's even colder than yesterday so i'm gonna try and wrap up this video as quickly as possible to not completely freeze my hands in the process [Music] while talking about the camera app let's talk about the new zoom options because we now have an option to take some ultra ride and also to the photo zoom photos using google six pro without losing any of the image quality if we take a picture at two time zoom on both of these cameras we're actually gonna realize that the results are not great in both cases and this is because in both cases google uses a technology it calls super resume but it's basically just cropping inside the image and using some ai to make it look a little bit better but in both cases they're not using any of the new lenses to take some better pictures when you're zooming at two times now if we take a picture using the four times zoom we're going to see that the results are way better on the go 6 pro and this is because we have a dedicated lens at four times so we get much better results more detailed pictures more information inside of the shot and just overall way way better pictures where the ghost pixel 4a actually really struggles when you're using a four-time zoom having a telephoto lens is so useful in all kinds of use cases so for landscapes i really love using a four times zoom but also when you're taking pictures of your pets or all kinds of reasons like that where four times zoom can be very useful another lens the idea is the ultra wide lens and i wasn't super excited at the beginning when i saw they were adding this lens but i've been using it more and more and realize it's actually very useful in all kinds of use cases so again if i'm taking some landscape photos i love having a ultra wide lens but then also if you're inside and you're taking pictures of your family or things like that in this type of space it's very useful to be using an ultra wide lens to get more inside of your shot in general both the telephoto and the ultrawide lens produce some very similar results to the main sensor on the google six pro but they also both have some downsides so first of all the ultra wide lens tends to produce some over processed parts of the images so the shadows and highlights sometimes become a little bit gray which doesn't always look good on the telephoto lens the problem is that it over sharpens sometimes and it's kind of random because on some shots it's perfectly fine but on earlier shots it's completely over sharpening to a point that it makes almost the image unusable but i will say that with all of this said the more choices of lenses on this camera is a great thing and probably one of the best reasons to upgrade from the good pixel 40 because you get a lot more possibilities where you can get some great images without sacrificing the quality of your images with google talking so much about the 50 megapixel sensor for the main and telephoto lens a lot of people expected a jump in resolution and sharpness in the final images but this is not the case like i predicted they instead decided to do pixel binding and this basically means that they're taking four physical pixels merging them together for one final pixel and this creates about a 12 megapixel image in the end this cannot be changed by using other app or things like that because it's done on the sensor level not with software the reason i think google decided to do this is actually because processing a 50 megapixel image would just be too much for the very intense image processing theories are still very sharp and detailed just like they were on the google pixel 4a but there's not a huge increase in resolution or sharpness on the google six pro but i still think 12 megapixel is good enough for most use cases and i even printed one of the images from my google pixel 4a in large format on one of my wall i made a video about it so definitely go check that one out if you want to learn more about printing your images and see how it ended up on the wall spoiler alert it turned out pretty well in my opinion one of the biggest difference between both of these camera systems is actually the presence of natural depth of field on the google pixel 6 pro or more pronounced depth of field if you don't know what is the but feel it's basically the background blur you get in the background like here when using a more professional camera the reason why dslrs and mirrorless can get some natural motion blur without having to use any ai at all is actually they have a bigger sensor and bigger lens so by increasing the size of the sensor on google pixel 6 pro you can get more natural depth of field inside of your images so if you're taking us close up with the ghost expro you're going to see right away you get a lot more background blur inside of the image which is a good thing for me because i really like taking some close-up images and if you can get the results using a physical lens and a physical sensor the results are always going to be much better than trying to do the same using ai with the added depth of field i was expecting the portrait mode to become much better if you're not sure to understand why this would be a case you should go check out my video where i explain how project mode works on the pixel phones the google pixel 4a portrait mode is not worse than the one on the google pixel 4a but it's also not much better which is kind of disappointing especially considering that they have a new ai tensor chip that should really help getting better results in this department if we look at the results we can see that google pixel 6 pro still struggles with edge detection especially with hairs or kinds of small details like that which is still pretty disappointing because this really makes it look like a fake default feel not a real one from a natural sensor on the bright side i still think that the depth of field on the pixel phones and the portrait mode in general is one of the best out there i also really really like that on the google pixel phones you can actually take all kinds of subjects not just humans using the portrait mode up to now i only talked about the photo side of this camera system the google six pro has much much improved video performances i didn't use the google pixel 4 too much to film videos because i was lacking some dynamic range inside of the video the stabilization wasn't great and also the image was way away over sharpen the google six pro fixes almost all of that so first of all it uses almost the same algorithm for its dynamic range than it does on the photos so now you get a lot of details inside of the highlights and the shadows of your video it's also much better at stabilizing the images you have four modes to choose between which stabilization you want inside of video it may not be as good as the iphone but it's much better than it was on the google pixel 4a and the most important part for me is now is that the image is still very sharp but it's not completely over sharpened to a point that it makes it almost unusable i filmed a complete travel video using all new mega06 pro so you should definitely go check that one out if you want to see how this phone performs in real world when taking some video using it if this wasn't enough there's actually a huge upgrade on the front-facing camera for the video modes also if we look at the image that i'm filming right now using my google pixel 4 you can actually see that has a really hard time with the background here making a lot of them completely overexposed and it isn't looking that good but now let's switch to the google six pro to see how that one look in the comments in my video that i filmed using only the google 6 pro somebody asked me which camera i was using on the back of the go 6 pro to get these great results for my talking shots and the answer is actually i'm only using the front facing camera and using only the little settings so this really shows how good this new front-facing camera has become and if you look at it here we don't have any problems anymore we have a lot of dynamic range in the image so it's not a problem at all using this one anymore for filming some video the google also says that they fixed their issue with the overheating issues when you were filming in 4k and i've been filming my 4k a lot using this phone and never felt the phone become hot i wasn't in very hot environments so i cannot tell if it's really true or not but it doesn't to be finally fixed i'm really happy to say that i can finally recommend a google pixel phone for somebody that's looking to do some video work using it so this is really a nice upgrade to have my hands are starting to completely freeze so let's talk about the last point i have to record and this is about the camera app the camera app hasn't changed much between both the google pixel 4 and the goal 6 pro but there's a few new options that are kind of nice so the first of all is the night side that automatically appears when you're inside of the main camera when it becomes dark instead of trying to use the flash to get some images and in most cases nice side gets much better images than the flash then we have the temperature slider that was added allowing you to decide if you want to have a cooler or warmer shot when taking the shot you also have a new voice focus mode inside a video when you're using the front-facing camera and finally you have the addition of the new motion modes the motion modes allows you to create some long exposure effects without actually having to have the equipment or learning how to do some long exposures it's all using ai and only works by taking a picture with a few seconds i don't think these effects are good enough to upgrade just to get these effects but they're pretty cool and i'm going to be using them from time to time to get some pretty cool photos out of them when announcing the new google 6 pro google stated that the main camera sensor is going to be able to capture 150 more light that's a pretty bold statement and definitely something we have to test out so for this we're going to go inside of the camera because there's no better time to test this out than at night to see if it's able to capture more light so i'm going to come here entire side of the camera swipe completely to the left here to the night sight option and then i'm going to take a picture using the night sight mode so if you don't know what is night sight it basically allows to take some pictures in really low light conditions and it works by taking multiple shots and combining them automatically afterwards for you so super easy to use all you have to do is press one button and it does all the hard work afterwards for you i got someone to ask me if you need to be perfectly steady when doing this so if you have to use a tripod and the answer is no you can simply leave their phone and even if you move a little bit it's going to be able to do it automatically this mode exists on both the google 6 pro and also the google pixel 4 so i'm gonna have to compare the results to see if they're good or not it's hard to tell when looking at the pictures only on the screen of your phones but i can tell the pictures of the google six pro are much better when using night sight so first of all you get a lot more details inside of the image it's just overall way much sharper than it was on the goal 6 pro then you also have less noise in the dark parts of the image so that's a nice improvement and also on the parts with your have a light source you get better details instead of that and it's not completely overblown when there's a light source inside of your image so that's all nice improvements from knight's side the pixel phones also have a nicer photography mode but i couldn't test it out because i never really had this night that had perfect sky to be able to see the stars but once i get that i'm definitely going to make a video where i'm going to compare the ester photographer mode from the google pixel 4e and the ghost expo because i really want to test it out as quickly as possible overall i cannot really say if the claims from google that they have 150 percent more light instead of sensor are true or not but i can say the pictures using the nice light mode are definitely better on the v6 pro is it enough to upgrade a phone i don't really think so because the google pixels 4a actually has some really good results already using the nightsight mode here are my final thoughts does the google 6 pro offer a better camera system yes does it take some better photos yes does it take some better videos definitely should you upgrade from the google pixel 4a to the google six pro well that one is a little bit harder to answer if you're gonna be using a four-time zoom taking a lot of videos or using a lot different facing camera then in these cases upgrading to go 6 pro might be a good idea but if you just want to overall great camera at a third of the price the google pixel 4 actually has a lot of value for the price so i'm going to be recommending this to more people in the end just because it offers a lot more for the price if you enjoyed this video please let me know by hitting like button below and definitely subscribe to the channel my next video is going to be a comparison between the google 6 pro and my new sony mirrorless camera see in the next one you
Video Links
- 🔗 FULL-RESOLUTION IMAGES
- Real-World Video Test of the Google Pixel 6 Pro
- How & why I print my images
- How does portrait mode work
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What is this video about?
When Google released the Pixel 6 Pro, I had to answer the question that kept coming up: does it actually take better pictures than the Pixel 4a? I spent weeks testing both phones in real-world conditions—snowy landscapes, indoor portraits, video work, night scenes, and everything in between—to find out.
On paper, these are very different cameras. The Pixel 4a has a single 12MP sensor, while the 6 Pro brings three lenses: a 50MP main camera, a 4x telephoto, and an ultrawide. But here's what surprised me: the images look remarkably similar. This comes down to Google's strength—computational photography. Both phones use incredible AI-powered processing that makes up for sensor differences, which is why the Pixel 4a still holds up so well.
Where the 6 Pro really pulls ahead is in specialized situations. The dedicated 4x telephoto lens produces noticeably sharper zoom shots compared to the 4a's digital zoom. The ultrawide gives you new creative options for landscapes and tight spaces. For video, the difference is substantial—better dynamic range, improved stabilization, and sharper footage without the over-processing that plagued the 4a. The front-facing camera is also a huge upgrade, especially for video calls and vlogging.
I was disappointed by the portrait mode, though. Despite the larger sensor and new AI chip, edge detection still struggles with hair and fine details. The depth of field is better thanks to the bigger sensor, but the computational portrait still can't match what a truly optical blur would deliver.
Night Sight mode shows real improvement—more detail, less noise, and better handling of light sources. The 6 Pro does capture more in low light, though whether it's a full 150% more (Google's claim) is hard to verify. The new motion modes and temperature slider are nice additions, but they're not upgrade-worthy on their own.
Here's my bottom line: the Pixel 6 Pro is the better camera system, and if you zoom frequently, shoot a lot of video, or rely on the front camera, it's worth considering. But the Pixel 4a offers tremendous value for the price and still produces excellent photos thanks to Google's software. For most people, it's hard to justify the cost jump.
I've included full-resolution samples from both phones so you can judge for yourself. Check the link in the description.