Samsung Galaxy A14 5G Review: A Phenomenal $200 Phone

I do not wish to oversell it—it is not a flagship telephone. Yes, you’ll nonetheless see stutters right here and there while you swap between apps. Maybe you will should power shut an app occasionally. But for essentially the most half, I’ve had a totally good expertise utilizing the A14 5G not just for catching up on Reddit and Twitter, but in addition to answer emails on the fly, monitor work duties, and even make calls. 

That brings me to the battery. My sister lives in India, so we do not get an opportunity to catch up typically. The different day, I spent 4 hours on a video name and the battery dropped solely to 50 p.c—I used to be anticipating it to be decrease! On that very same day, I used the telephone’s GPS as I drove to a canine park in Manhattan, and snapped plenty of photographs of my scrumptious fried hen sandwich at an area Irish eatery referred to as Bua. By bedtime (which is, er, previous midnight for me), the telephone was at 11 p.c with a implausible 9 hours of screen-on time. This was an unnaturally busy day. On days after I do not spend hours on video calls, I had 30 p.c left after two full days on a single cost. It’s pretty not having to recharge each evening. 

That brings me to the 50-megapixel major digicam. It snaps photographs fairly rapidly, and there is even a Night mode you should use to take decently vivid and sharp pictures in low mild (not like the Moto G Play). Naturally, your nighttime photographs can be a little bit blurry at times. There’s a little bit an excessive amount of processing at instances, smoothening out sure options on faces and different particulars, plus some colours might be exaggerated. Still, I’ve nonetheless been fairly proud of a lot of the outcomes for a $200 telephone. That consists of selfies I snapped with the 13-megapixel entrance digicam (which additionally helps Night mode). There’s a macro digicam if that is your fancy, and it really works OK for excessive close-up photographs, however solely when you have a superb quantity of sunshine. 

A Star Is Born

The solely main gripe I’ve with this telephone in day-to-day use is the mono speaker. It simply would not get too loud, would not sound nice, and it is easy to dam in panorama mode while you’re enjoying video video games. The simple answer is to only use headphones—wi-fi or wired as a result of, sure, there’s a headphone jack. 

There’s even a microSD card slot to broaden on the 64 GB of inside storage (which is greater than what you will discover on equally priced friends), plus the flexibility to make contactless funds with the near-field communication (NFC) sensor so you may go away the pockets at house. I nearly completely pay with my telephone as of late when I’m out and about, so it is a enormous win for me. 

The Galaxy A14 5G additionally helps … 5G, because the identify implies, which is one more rarity at this value as most sub-$200 telephones depend on 4G LTE. It’s supported by each main US service, from AT&T and T-Mobile to Verizon. Best of all, Samsung is promising two Android OS updates, which signifies that because it’s already operating the newest Android 13, it will nonetheless obtain Android 15 in 2024. It may also get 4 years of safety updates, which is virtually remarkable for a telephone so low cost. 

It’s near-impossible to not marvel on the worth of the Galaxy A14. It does nearly every part so effectively for thus little, and that is exactly what we must be asking extra of from our devices.