Pros | Cons |
+ Charming appearance | - Thick screen bezels |
+ Super AMOLED Display | - Still 25W charging |
+ Large 120Hz Display | - Mediocre performance |
+ IP67 Water & Dust Resistance | |
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G
Price: RM1899
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you speak about the more accessible smartphone from Samsung if you don’t want to spend extra money on certain features that you don’t need? For me, it would be the Samsung Galaxy A series.
Recently, they announced the arrival of the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G & A34 5G which are the best-value smartphone in its midrange category that offers the appearance of a Samsung Galaxy S23, loaded with upper-end features in a more affordable price range. That being said, let’s move on to the Galaxy A54 5G review.
Design
As you can see, the Galaxy A54 5G looks identical to its flagship siblings, Samsung Galaxy S23 where both devices sport a pop-up triple-camera array. The Galaxy A54 5G uses a gleaming surface texture back instead of a matte texture to give the device an appearance boost.
Min min was expecting to leave tons of fingerprints on the back of the Galaxy A54 5G as most of the glossy back devices in the market often are "non-fingerprint proof". Even though I purposely rubbed my hands on the surface, it's hard to leave any evidence at the crime scene which is good news for "caseless" people.
The Galaxy A54 5G comes with four colorways: Awesome Lime, Awesome Violet, Awesome Graphite, and Awesome White. It's clear to see that Samsung mainly focuses on younger consumers in the market with the Galaxy A54 5G by offering a youth design smartphone with respectable performance.
Display
The Galaxy A54 5G comes with a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED Display with a resolution of 1080 x 2340 (FHD+) and a 403 PPI to deliver an enchanting viewing experience as always on Samsung's devices. Besides, the display offers a 120Hz refresh rate display which supports HDR10+ that automatically adjusts the screen refresh rate to save battery.
The punch-hole notch on the Galaxy A54 5G was rather small, taking up less room on the display. However, I felt that the screen bezels were a little bit too thick so it's hard to not notice it every time you look at the screen.
Camera
As mentioned above, the Galaxy A54 5G houses a triple-camera array, featuring a 50MP OIS Main Camera, 12MP Ultra Wide Camera, and a 5MP Macro Camera. The Optical Image Stabilization on the Main Camera means that you will be taking way lesser blurry images in your lifetime with the Galaxy A54 5G on.
Keep in mind that the device will capture 12MP images at default (3:4), so you might need to turn on the 50MP mode if you wanted to capture as many details in the picture while saving it for further use like editing and cropping.
The Galaxy A54 5G also comes with user-friendly camera features called "Shot suggestions" which helps users to take quality pictures according to the guides on the screen. For instance, here are the images that were taken on the Galaxy A54 5G with "Shot suggestions" enabled.
My overall experience with the shot guides is that it helps me a lot with the placement of the camera, where it always suggested a more center-point focus to balanced the ratio between the subject and the background so it doesn't look empty in the image.
The Galaxy A54 5G might underperform when it comes to low-light photography. When you press the camera shutter, it requires some time to process the image so you might need to keep steady after every shot.
Performance
The Galaxy A54 5G is powered by Samsung Exynos 1380 processors, pairing with 8GB RAM to deliver a lag-free experience for Samsung fans. Aside from that, the device also comes with 256GB of storage to fit any apps you're desired.
As usual, we will be running the AnTuTu Benchmark test on the Galaxy A54 5G. The device scores a total of 511739 in the test, the result was close enough to its competitors with a Snapdragon 695 5G.
And now it's time to run Genshin Impact on the Galaxy A54 5G. The game will be running on low settings with a 45 FPS cap. Overall, it is still playable despite the graphics of the game since Genshin Impact often requires stronger hardware in order to get quality images.
In addition, the Galaxy A54 5G heats up after prolonged gaming sessions but not until the unacceptable level. Though it's still better to let it cool down when needed in order to keep your device healthy :)
And for the battery life, the Galaxy A54 5G packs a 5000 mAh massive battery life which can last for days even frequent usage. Unfortunately, the charging capability of the device is still the familiar 25W wired charging, meaning it would take more time to charge up without fast charging.
Buy or no buy?
I would say the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G is still an obtainable device that is visually appealing yet capable of tackling most of the tasks you throw at it. The device delivers a respectable performance in terms of processing power, camera capabilities, with an amazing display.
Although the Galaxy A54 5G is a fancy device ideal for younger generations in terms of performance & appearance-wise, the sudden price hike for the Galaxy A series would refrain youngsters with very limited budgets.
