Samsung Galaxy A51 review: Ultimately uneven By Engadget

I'm sure this has come up before, but in case it hasn't. Let me let you in on a little secret. All the flagship stuff is really fun, but I am a sucker for ambitious, competent, cheap smartphones. The iPhone SC is a great example and Google's Pixel 3a XL is by far my favorite Android phone of all time, and I was really hoping that Samsung's $400 Galaxy, a 51 would be just as good as those devices. It's not really now don't get me wrong. I, don't think this is a bad phone.

I just think that Samsung's, balancing act between price and performance isn't quite right here for all the good the company did using the 51 sometimes feels like you're, getting a little less than what you paid for and who likes that feeling. Anyway, let's start with what Samsung got right, the 51 in no way looks like a $400 phone. It's slim. It has this really slick, rear finish that reflects light in some interesting ways. Furthermore, it has a hump filled with cameras around back, and it has a space just 6.5 inch, Super AMOLED display up front which we'll get to in a little beyond that. There is also all the usual stuff, a USB-C port that supports 15 watt fast charging, a combination, NATO sim and micro SD slot.

So you can augment the phone past its stock, 128 gigs of storage and, if you're, a music fan. You'll, also appreciate the fact that there is a headphone jack here, because the 51 single speaker is pretty terrible taken as a whole. I think this is the best-looking mid-range smartphone out there right now, but there are a few things: you're going to have to keep in mind for one thanks to that display, the 51 might not work for people with smaller hands, it's definitely thin and pretty manageable, but it's still a handful. The galaxy a 51 also lacks any kind of IP rating for water or dust resistance, which is not at all uncommon for phones in this price range, but it does mean you have to be at least a little careful with it. What really elevates the 51 s? Design is its screen.

It runs at a perfectly fine, Full, HD Plus, and it's one of Samsung's infinity o displays, which, if you're allergic to marketing, be s basically just means there's a hole, cut out, accommodate that 32 megapixel front camera instead of something like a notch or a teardrop. Now that cutout is tiny, and it's normally the kind of thing I would stop noticing, after a day or two, but for some reason there's a ring of bright metal around it. It's almost like Samsung wants you to know that hole is there at all times. Thankfully, the rest of the screen is pretty typically Samsung. You've got deep blacks, really punchy, colors and pretty good viewing angles, considering the price you're paying.

For this thing, its max brightness feels a little weak, especially in strong daylight. So Abdul use could be a little tricky, but this display is pretty well suited to hanging out at home and watching YouTube. Videos and I know there's a lot of that going on right now, thanks in large part to that screen, the 51 is a stunner visually speaking, but you don't need me to tell you that looks. Aren't everything, and it didn't take long for this thing to get surprisingly frustrating just look at the fingerprint sensor or metaphorically, look at the fingerprint sensor, because it's under the screen, it's not great. When it does work, it usually takes a little while to mash up my thumb to the data stored on the phone itself, but sometimes it just doesn't seem to do anything at all.

Normally you'd see a bit of green splashing around your finger to let you know the sensor was obese, trying to work, but that didn't always appear wiping down the screen didn't seem to help and neither did Than rolling my fingers in the system itself so for your sanity, maybe just set up a pan or an unlock pattern. Instead, a bigger issue became obvious pretty quickly, once I got into the phone. This thing is surprisingly laggy. Sometimes, switching between apps often felt a little too choppy for comfort, as did Fleming through pages of apps or even just popping back to the home screen. You know the stuff that you do countless times a day to be clear.

The a51 is far from unusable when things did move smoothly. I honestly didn't have much to complain about, and you'll be fine if you're, not the kind of person who's just glued to their phone all the time. Anyway. Still these laggy moments will happen and if you're like me, they will get obnoxious. Part of the issue probably lies with Samsung's choice of chipset.

Instead of using a Qualcomm snapdragon like it does, for most of it see, westbound Android phones, Samsung went with one of its house, Enos 96, 11 chipsets, with four gigs of ram from what I can tell there's, not a lot of difference between this sliver of silicon and the Enos 9610 that Samsung started using in late 2018. Some of this newer models, CPU cores, run at a marginally faster clock, speed, and it supports a wider variety of rear cameras. But that's really it the fact that Samsung would splurge on a great screen and use a relatively minor refresh of a chip that was announced a little over two years ago. Tells you a lot about Samsung's priorities here? Still, it's not like this chip is a total slouch. If you're willing to fiddle with the quality settings a bit, you can play through a couple matches of Pusey without too much fuss at all.

The problem is hard to diagnose, but it's there in fairness to Samsung people contemplating a $400 smartphone, probably know not to expect best-in-class performance. The bigger issue is $400 is still a decent chunk of money to drop on a smartphone and devices like the pixel 3 proved that you can get consistently smooth performance for that amount, whether it's because of Samsung's when you wire running on top of Android 10 or poor memory management, or a lack of optimization under the hood, because this is an X and O's chipset, not a Snapdragon or something else entirely. Questionable performance like this makes the a51 hard to recommend for the price. I had honestly hoped that epic battery life would have sweetened the deal here, but it just wasn't meant to be. Despite packing a sizable 4000 William hour battery, the Galaxy, a 51 is only good for about one full day of use, that's not awful by any stretch, but when you consider that other mid-range phones, like the Moto G power, a device that costs a hundred and fifty dollars less, has a battery life measured in days not hours.

The a51 can't help but feel a little disappointing in this department at least the cameras are pretty good. Most of the time you wind up using the 48 megapixel standard wide sensor, which, like most other phones with pixel rich sensors, produces smaller 12 megapixel images by default as usual for Samsung you're, going to see a lot of vivid colors and some pretty decent dynamic range, but I'm sure you pixel peepers will notice a distinct lack of fine details when you zoom in. If you want to think of this another way, these are great photos to post on Instagram, but maybe not for printing and mounting on your wall. Unfortunately, even the decently wide f, 2.0 aperture doesn't help the e 50 ones main camera. Much in low-light colors tend to look a little washed out and details get smeared into oblivion.

Meanwhile, the 12 megapixel ultra-wide camera turned out to be kind of a pleasant surprise. It captures 823 degree fields of view with minimal barrel distortion around the edges and its colors are somehow even Popper and more saturated than what you see from the main camera. If you're walking around outside and taking photos expect those pale blue skies to look a lot more neon than they do in real life. Since this camera is mainly meant to capture lots of attractive well-lit spaces, it's perhaps no surprise that it struggles more than the main camera does in low-light. The colors are maybe a little better, but it's not great overall instead of a telephoto camera.

The 851 third rear camera is a 5 megapixel affair for macro shots, which is great if you're one of those people who like walking here at it, taking pictures of coins and flowers. It's too bad, though, that this sensor never really gave me the kind of crisp super-tight images I had hoped for I think that's partially, because the cameras image processing tends to iron out some of those finer details, but you also have to hold the phone really still to get any macro shots worth keeping and that last lens is basically just a 5 megapixel depth sensor that Samsung uses for help with its bouquet flow portraits and there's not a lot to say it. Does its job pretty well I've, seen more than a few phones struggled to accurately separate the subject from its background and the 8051 handles the tasks without too much fuss at all, no matter which camera you spend the most time with just be prepared for good, not great results. If getting the best all-around photos is your biggest concern, then you're much better off going with something like Google's, pixel, 3a or the iPhone SE. If you don't mind, switching the iOS Samsung's real edge here doesn't lay in the quality of its images.

So much as the flexibility that multiple cameras provide they're, not ideal, but the a51 basically gives you a decent enough tool for most shooting situations. Ultimately, with the galaxy, a 51 Samsung tried to bring some flagship flare to a more affordable, smartphone, but the end result just feels more even than it should now. I said earlier. That I don't think the a51 is a bad phone and I stand by that. Despite everything, we've just talked about I just think it's a bad deal if the galaxy 851 cost closer to $300 as it does in certain markets around the world, I would have a lot less to complain about if you spot a good deal for one and prioritize a good screen and decent cameras over basically everything else sure but check one out.

You probably won't hate it, but if you're not in any kind of rush, do yourself a favor wait for Google to announce its pixel for a and then decide? Oh guys, I really wanted to like this phone I, don't know if you can tell, but I'm bummed that this thing just wasn't a little better. Wasn't a little more consistent with this performance? That's all I would have needed anyway. That was our review of the Samsung Galaxy a 51. Thank you so much for watching. As always.

If you have feedback, please leave some in the comments or email me at V and gadget com. Unless it's about my quarantine haircut, in which case I already know, don't need you to rub it in we're just going to move on thanks again for watching. We really appreciate your support. I'm gonna, keep making videos for my living room and hopefully get better at it. So stay tuned for next time.

Source : Engadget