In the Samsung Galaxy A54 test: a good representative of the middle class

We got the very popular Samsung Galaxy A54 5G series on the test table. But the series is, believe it or not, Samsung's best-selling phone family, especially the lower-ranked A14. We'll take a closer look at what their heavyweight has to offer in this class, and whether the improvements are significant enough compared to last year.

Samsung Galaxy A54 price in Slovenia?

• Samsung Galaxy A54 5G 8GB/128GB: €499

Design copied from the S23 series

The Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy A surprisingly share the same design with minor differences. This can be a double-edged sword for a business. The Galaxy A phones undoubtedly look more premium than they actually are, but in doing so they undermine their flagships, which are supposed to represent Samsung's best selves.

At first glance, it's really hard to tell if we're holding a Samsung Galaxy A54, S23 or S23+. The culprit for this is the cameras, which are arranged vertically in an orderly line of individual protrusions instead of a single frame. This means that the phone is much friendlier on flat surfaces. It still tilts, but less than with a single frame.

Front and back we find glass, which is not often a material of choice in the mid-range. Plastic is a much more popular choice among manufacturers. It is also found here, but only on frames that are gently curved at the edges. But not everything is rosy when it comes to choosing glass. Fingerprints are very prominent on the back, at least on our black color. Since it doesn't come with a cover, you'll either have to deal with it or buy it over the counter. During use, we did not feel that the phone could slip from our hands, but it is a different story on a table or other surfaces where the glass back has a habit of sliding.

The screen is great

Samsung screens are a very desirable edge, especially in the higher end. The Galaxy A54 also has a very pleasing Super AMOLED screen, which delivers very nice blacks, excellent contrasts for an immersive multimedia experience and striking colors over the entire 6.4 inches. Content is displayed at 1080p resolution, which is more than enough for the phone's screen size and price. In fact, even on flagship phones, it's very hard to tell the difference between 1440p and 1080p.

It refreshes at an impressive 120Hz, but can automatically switch to 60Hz for economy.

Compared to last year's Galaxy A53, they specifically improved the brightness (1,000 nits vs. 800 nits). The last week has not been sunny, so we cannot 100 % guarantee that the Galaxy A54 will be easily readable in bright daylight. At least on paper and in our experience, the brightness should be sufficient, except at those angles where the sun will directly bombard the phone with strong rays.

It has a slightly worse screen-to-body ratio (82.9 %), which means that blacks around the screen are quite prominent, but at the same time not too distracting. Samsung Galaxy A54 supports HDR standards HLG, HDR10+ and HDR10.

There is also a very responsive fingerprint reader hidden under the screen. Unexpectedly, it took significantly less time to register the fingerprint than we are usually used to with optical sensors.

Improved performance, but less disappointing on the software side

Learning from mistakes should be a virtue for every manufacturer. There's nothing wrong with missing the point with a particular model. Mistakes happen. It is important that the manufacturer puts his ear to the ground and listens to what the users tell him. In the case of the Galaxy A53, a very big drawback was the lousy Exynos 1280 processor, which made the phone's basic operation (launching applications, switching between them, taking pictures...) very slow.

The Samsung Galaxy A54 is equipped with the newer Exynos 1380, which sacrificed two economical Cortex-A55 cores and added two powerful Cortex-78 processor cores. The result is significantly better numbers on tests and smoother operation in everyday use and photography, where stuttering is rare and not commonplace.

Still, it's not out-of-the-box performance. In the ranking, it is placed somewhere at the level of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, which is also not famous for its endless reservoir of performance. We played Genshin Impact most of the time on low-medium settings, and in populated cities and places with a lot of enemies, only inconvenience and laziness stopped us from lowering the settings a bit further. We also tried Call of Duty: Mobile, PUBG and Ni no Kuni Cross Worlds, where a similar story is written. Until the phone starts heating up, the experience is good, after which we encounter occasional stutters.

The 5,000 mAh battery lasted until the end of the day with mixed use (games, web, YouTube, reading...) without any problems. Samsung still hasn't figured out that there are charging speeds above 25W, and that more than an hour and a half is no longer an acceptable time to charge a phone. Also the fact that the charger is not included in the package. Wireless charging is also missing, which is not a big deal for us personally.

What hurts more is the decision not to have access to the Samsung Dex feature, which for us is the best way to project onto external screens. We don't know why this is the case, but we shouldn't be too surprised as Dex isn't even available on the Galaxy Z Fold4.

What are your photography skills?

• 50 MP (f/1.8) main camera with OIS
• 12 MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera (123°)
• 5 MP (f/2.4) macro camera
• 32 MP (f/2.2) front camera

The Samsung Galaxy A54 5G takes advantage of three rear cameras that provide a good photographic experience. We have a 50 MP main sensor with image stabilization (OIS), a 12 MP ultra-wide-angle lens and a 5 MP macro lens. Although the 5 MP depth sensor no longer keeps the front 32 MP camera company, this is not a reason to worry as it copes well with selfies on its own.

Photos are extremely sharp in good lighting, with vivid colors and deep contrast. The main sensor successfully captures details in images, even in direct sunlight, without overexposing them.

The front camera delivers surprisingly fairly vivid photos that you could easily post on social networks. The weak point of the cameras is poor light or night photography. There's quite a bit of noise, and if you really wanted to share a night photo, you'd have to capture multiple photos and pick out the best one. Or take the reins into your own hands and set all values manually in Pro mode.

Photo gallery

As expected, there is a slight drop in image quality when switching between the 50MP main sensor and the 12MP ultra-wide lens. Still, the ultra-wide-angle lens can be useful for capturing large-scale scenes, but photos will be noticeably paler and darker compared to the main sensor. A macro lens would be best avoided in most cases. The pictures aren't devastating, but you wouldn't point them out or praise them to your friends anyway.

The Galaxy A54 allows you to record videos up to 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. If we wanted to use Great stabilization, we had to let the camera drop the resolution to 1080p 30fps.

Final opinion

The Samsung Galaxy A54 5G is undoubtedly a good phone, but not everything is rosy. The screen is better, brighter, the design is more attractive, the cameras are improved, and so is the processor, which has gained two performance cores, but overall, for a generation newer phone, you might still want more significant improvements compared to the Galaxy A53.

It also has some tough competition: Xiaomi 13 Lite, Pixel 6a and the latest Pixel 7a, Realme GT Neo 3, POCO X4 GT and many others.