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Review: Samsung’s Galaxy A54 is a great advertisement for the Pixel 7a

Samsung’s Galaxy A line has long been the company’s true bread and butter, with the A50 series long offering flagship-tier features at half the cost. The latest Galaxy A54 is another great example of that, but with stiffer competition from Google’s Pixel line, Samsung’s flaws are easier to see.

The core of the Galaxy A54 follows the same formula Samsung’s best-selling mid-range phone has delivered for years. It has a big, vibrant OLED display that measures 6.4-inches and is 1080p. The display is sharp and a pleasure to use, and at 120Hz, it has the capability to feel quite smooth – more on that later.

The overall design of the phone is pretty basic and similar to Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S23 series. There are individual camera bumps for each of the three rear cameras with a rounded body along the sides.

The back of the phone is a glossy glass (which feels remarkably like plastic), which I don’t totally love – especially in the black model, which is a fingerprint magnet – but realistically, this is a phone that’s going to sit in a case for most of its life. As such, the reasonably thin profile is certainly appreciated. Like Samsung’s other recent devices, this one also uses an in-display fingerprint sensor, which I found reliable, but placed a little too low for comfort.

Going around the hardware, you’ll find USB-C for charging, a single speaker cutout (flanked by the earpiece, which creates sufficient yet unimpressive stereo sound), the volume and power buttons, and a SIM card slot. There’s no headphone jack, unfortunately; par for the course in 2023, but there is a microSD card slot.

The cameras on the back of the phone include a 50MP primary sensor, 12MP ultrawide, and 5MP macro.

The macro camera was capable in good lighting, but was rather useless in lower light. The 50MP main sensor wasn’t anything too impressive either. Samsung’s processing is particularly aggressive on this device, often leading to a very unrealistic, oversaturated final shot. In perfect lighting, it can get the job done, but this camera is far too easy to trip up. The ultrawide is fine, with nothing particularly good or bad about it.

Frustratingly, the performance kept being the reason I didn’t want to pick up the Galaxy A54. This phone, quite simply, is not fast. It’s not as slow as some other budget Android phones I’ve used recently, but at just shy of $500, this phone shouldn’t succumb to lag and stutters so quickly and so often, especially given that Samsung’s One UI skin isn’t nearly as heavy as it used to be.

Not a day goes by on the A54 without seeing apps being slow to load, animations stuttering across the finish line, and performance making the phone frustrating to use. In general use, I almost never saw the full 120Hz the display is capable of, which makes paying for that more expensive panel a waste. The Exynos 1380 chip under the hood isn’t exactly low-end, making this all the more confusing and frankly annoying.

A big part of that might just boil down to RAM, which is just 6GB as opposed to the 8GB found in the Pixel 7a. That’s surely not the only problem – Android can run just fine on 6GB – but there’s also no 8GB RAM configuration being sold in the US, so there’s no easy way to avoid memory stuggles.

But, at least to Samsung’s credit, the battery life was solid. I was able to pull around 4 hours of screen time over two days of use in one stretch and was generally able to finish any day with 30-40% left with 4-5 hours of screen time. Charging is perfectly acceptable at 25W, though I do wish this had wireless charging.

This device also does ship with Android 13 and is promised four years of major updates, and five years of security updates, which is stellar at this price.

Samsung’s Exynos chip didn’t overheat or struggle with network performance either – I used the Galaxy A54 on AT&T in North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York during my time with the phone without running into any notable network issues throughout that time.

The biggest problem I have with this phone is that, really, it should and can be better.

Once again coming to the direct comparison with Google’s Pixel 7a, that’s a phone that sells for $50 more but has a better processor, much better performance, a better camera system across the board, and support for wireless charging.

Top comment by Jason

Liked by 10 people

I am impressed with the A54 so far. We had to replace a Pixel 6a that got dropped and broke the phone. I like the Pixel better but didn't want to pay $500 for it since it is for one of my kids. I got the A54 for $375. We haven't had any lagging and it plays games just fine. The screen is much brighter than the Pixel. I still done like the Samsung one UI compared to googles cleaner Android look with no bloat but the A54 has been great and has many years of updates to come.

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Plus, the remaining package isn’t all that different from the Galaxy A54. Despite the Pixel being a better overall value, Samsung’s phone will sell many times more than the 7a. So, to me, it stands to reason that, with that economy of scale in Samsung’s favor, this phone could either be better equipped at this price or retail for cheaper.

At $450 in the state the Galaxy A54 is in today, and with the Pixel 7a being so close in price, it’s hard to recommend that anyone pick up the Samsung device. If you can score a discount with your carrier or even just over time, it’ll be a better buy. Just don’t pay the full price, it’s on sale quite often.

Where to buy Samsung Galaxy A54:

Update: Fixed erroneous mention of SD card slot and rear material.

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