The Google Pixel 3’s compact design and AI smarts were a hit with both the tech press and the Instagram set, but in an Alphabet earnings call at the end of April, Google CFO Ruth Porat talked about “lower year-on-year Pixel sales” suggesting that the smartphones underperformed in the face of tough competition.

The Google Pixel 3a and 3a XL, announced at this year’s Google I/O in Mountain View, California, are an attempt to reboot the Pixel series with more affordable devices that share many of the Pixel 3’s specs, features and tricks.

When the Motorola Moto G7 line is as good as it is, though, and OnePlus is selling flagship specs for under £500, the £399 Pixel 3a and £469 Pixel 3a XL aren’t necessarily a shoo-in for substantial sales. That’s not to mention the fact that the Pixel 3 has dropped in price and has been discounted by Google. You can currently buy the Google Pixel 3 for £490 and a Pixel 3 XL for £619.

Pixel 3a Deal: The Pixel 3a and 3a XL are already available to order online and several stores are offering good deals on the phoness. You can get the Pixel 3a and 3a XL from Carphones Warehouse with a free £199 Acer Chromebook. The Chromebook is the Acer CB3-132 11, a basic model with a Celeron processor and 2GB of memory which would be ideal as a backup or as a cheap family laptop.

What’s new?

The single biggest reason to go for a Pixel 3a phones – aside from the price – is the fact that, unlike the Pixel 3 and 3 XL, they both have 3.5mm headphones jacks on the top edge of the device. We’re all for wireless earbuds and Bluetooth headphoness but not everyone has made the leap yet and even those of us who have like to have the option to use wired headphoness.

The new mid-range Pixels come in slightly tweaked screen sizes so the Pixel 3a has a slightly larger 5.6-inch 2220 x 1080 OLED screen to the Pixel 3’s 5.5-inch display, with bigger dimensions for its 147g plastic body to match. As for the XLs, there’s a slight downgrade in resolution as the Pixel 3a XL’s 6-inch 2160 x 1080 screen doesn’t match the large, high-res 6.3-inch 2960 x 1440 display on the Pixel 3 XL.

The new Pixels also have tweaked batteries – it’s a 3,000mAh unit, that Google says is good for 12 hours of video playback, on the 3a (versus the Pixel 3’s 2,915mAh) and a 3,700mAh battery on the 3a XL (versus the 3 XL’s 3,430mAh).

Both of the new phoness come in Just Black, Clearly White and the new option, Purple-ish, whereas the Pixel 3s have Not Pink as the obligatory ‘fun’ colour option.

Read more: These are the best androids phoness you can buy in 2021

What’s missing?

Google has downgraded the specs here, but, like OnePlus, it’s done so in a way that makes sense. So there’s no water resistance here versus the IPX8 rating for the Pixel 3s. There’s no wireless charging but you do get fast 18W wired charging for seven hours from a 15-minute charge.

Again, wireless charging is something most people looking to spend less on their next phones can live without. And there’s no 128GB model, just 64GB available.

It’s a lesser Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 on the Pixel 3a and 3a XL, so the new phoness don’t run Google’s Pixel Visual Core. That said, Sherry Lin, product manager for Pixel, says that Google put a lot of work into making sure its camera software “would run on a mid-tier chipset”.

What that means is that the Pixel 3a series, which features the same 12MP rear camera, can handle features such as Night Sight, Photobooth mode (which now triggers a photo with duck face as well as smiles), AR stickers and Google’s neat, new Geo AR which uses Street View imagery to show walking directions in major cities. Others, such as group selfie cam didn’t make the cut. On the two new devices, a 8MP wide-angle front-facing camera replaces the Pixel 3’s dual-selfie camera setup.

Compared to recent launches such as the Samsung Galaxy A80, the Pixel 3a and 3a XL are pretty respectable mid-range phoness. They run androids 9.0 Pie and arrive with stereo speakers (one front firing), NFC and a fingerprint sensor on the back as per their predecessors. And, as Google has been keen to stress, 3a buyers won’t be left behind with a guaranteed three years of security and OS updates.

The Pixel 3a and 3a XL are now on sale online at the Google Store and Carphones Warehouse and hit brick-and-mortar shelves in the US on 7 May and in the UK on 8 May.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK