The Galaxy A54 promises to deliver everything you're looking for from a phone on a budget, including a big 120Hz display, a 50MP camera and big 5,000 mAh battery. Here's our first impressions after our brief hands-on time with the new Samsung Galaxy A54.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 We're here to check out the Galaxy A54
00:04 to see if it's the best cheap phone on the market.
00:06 Let's go take a look.
00:07 (upbeat music)
00:10 Let's talk about specs.
00:11 Here's what you're getting for the money.
00:12 For 449, you're getting an Exynos 1380 processor,
00:15 six gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage,
00:18 although you won't be able to go up to eight gigs
00:20 if you want a little bit more RAM.
00:22 Samsung says that this processor is about 20% better
00:25 in terms of CPU performance versus the last version,
00:28 and about 26% better in terms of graphics performance,
00:31 but we're not gonna know for sure
00:32 until we get it into our labs.
00:34 I do kind of like the rounded edges on this.
00:37 A lot of people complain about the iPhone
00:39 having like two squared off edges,
00:41 but the design on this is pretty nice.
00:43 So what you're getting is Gorilla Glass 5
00:45 on the front and back.
00:47 So it's not the latest Victus 2,
00:48 but it should be enough to ward against drops and scratches,
00:51 at least a little bit.
00:53 And the sides are aluminum, so this is not a plastic phone.
00:58 It's pretty comfortable to hold.
00:59 If I have one nitpick about the design,
01:01 it's just that you are getting slightly thicker bezels
01:04 than you do on more premium flagships,
01:06 but the average user is not going to care about that.
01:09 One of the features that you get with this phone,
01:11 even though it's budget, is that it's 120 Hertz.
01:13 So this is a 6.4 inch display, 120 Hertz refresh rate,
01:17 so you can scroll and get smooth scrolling for less money.
01:21 Not only are you getting 120 Hertz refresh rate,
01:25 this is a pretty vivid 6.4 inch OLED panel.
01:28 So you're getting wide viewing angles,
01:30 perfect blacks, rich colors.
01:32 The only drawback is that you get
01:35 a thousand nits of brightness versus let's say 1700
01:38 for the S23 series.
01:40 So outdoors, you're not gonna have as great an experience,
01:43 so direct sunlight might be a challenge,
01:45 but overall, this is a really good panel.
01:48 On the Galaxy A54, you have your choice
01:52 of a few different cameras here.
01:53 So you have a 50 megapixel main sensor,
01:55 12 megapixel ultra wide, and a five megapixel depth sensor.
01:59 So what you don't get is a telephoto zoom,
02:02 but what you do have is a digital zoom that goes up to 10X,
02:06 and it's not bad.
02:07 So as you can see here, you have the 2X zoom.
02:10 Here's by default.
02:11 Again, that's digital, not optical.
02:13 You go up to 4X, 10X, take a shot there.
02:18 So you can definitely see that there's a lot of noise
02:20 in there, so that's one of the trade-offs that you get
02:23 for the Galaxy A54 versus the S23,
02:26 is just the lack of telephoto zoom.
02:28 One other upgrade that you're getting with the Galaxy A54
02:33 is that the sensor, even though it's less resolution,
02:36 it's 50 megapixels, it's a larger sensor,
02:38 and it's also a wider aperture.
02:40 So you should get better images and brighter images indoors.
02:44 One of the cameras on the Galaxy A54 is a macro mode,
02:48 so you can get really good close-ups.
02:49 So as you can see here, we got close-up on this flower,
02:52 and the details are actually pretty nice,
02:54 especially as you get into the petals there.
02:57 So not perfect, but pretty good, especially for the money.
03:00 You're probably wondering how long is the phone
03:03 going to last?
03:04 The Galaxy A54 comes with a 5,000 milliamp hour battery,
03:08 which is pretty big, and we expect better endurance
03:11 than last time.
03:11 Hopefully the 1380 chip will be more efficient.
03:14 With the A53, we saw a little under 10 hours of battery life.
03:18 We consider anything 11 and a half hours or above
03:21 good enough to make our best phone battery life list.
03:24 So we're hoping that this one lasts
03:26 a little bit longer on a charge.
03:27 And you're not gonna get super fast charging,
03:30 but it's 25 watt out of the box,
03:32 which again is good for a value phone.
03:34 (upbeat music)
03:37 The Galaxy A54 has a very simple mission.
03:40 Be a cheap phone that doesn't look or feel
03:42 like a cheap phone.
03:43 And so far, based on our first impressions,
03:45 we're pretty impressed.
03:46 You're getting a big and fairly bright 6.4 inch display
03:49 with 120 hertz refresh rate,
03:51 a large 5,000 milliamp hour battery,
03:53 and it looks like pretty good performance
03:55 from the Exynos processor.
03:57 But we wanna see if the battery lasts a long time
03:59 on a charge and how good these cameras are for the money.
04:02 Stay tuned for our full review from Tom's Guide.
04:04 This is Mark Spoonhour.
04:05 (upbeat music)