Samsung Galaxy A14 5G review

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy A14 5G is a solid affordable all-rounder with reassuring stamina, a solid screen, a decent main camera and a long-term software promise. However, its performance is somewhat sluggish, as is its charging speed, and you can get more for your money with often older models from rival brands.

Introduction

You might think that there are plenty of cheap phone options on the market. However, when it comes to 5G phones in the £200/$200-ish range, the £219/$199 Samsung Galaxy A14 5G is one of relatively few to be released in 2023.

The Redmi Note 12 and the Poco M5s are perhaps the most obvious rivals that spring to mind, but neither packs 5G connectivity. Motorola offers the Moto G53 5G and G73 5G, but at £190 and £270 respectively, they’re not quite in the same weight class as the A14 5G.

Elsewhere, both the Nokia G60 5G and the Realme 9 5G are getting on a bit now, with no sign (yet) of the Realme 10 5G here in the UK. The Honor 90 Lite seems to pip the Galaxy A14 5G to the post in a couple of ways, and seems to have settled on a similar price, but only after some discounting.

All of which is a somewhat long-winded way of saying that the Samsung Galaxy A14 5G has this particular corner of the market largely to itself for now. Can it capitalise on this unexpected opportunity?

Design and screen

• Plastic design is a little creaky
• Grippy textured rear
• Decent 6.6-inch FHD+ 90Hz display

Samsung has made a rather chunky phone in the Galaxy A14 5G. Its surface area takes up a considerable 167.7 x 78mm of space, with a fairly large 6.6-inch display added to some particularly thick bezels, including a huge chin. 

It’s quite thick too, to the tune of 9.1mm, while a weight of 202g gives it quite a bit of heft. Given that weight, you might assume that some metal was used in the phone’s construction, but this is an all-plastic body.

Typically Samsung’s plastic work is exemplary, but I was a little disappointed by the feel of the A14 5G. In particular, my own test unit developed a creaky section low down on the right-hand edge. 

The rear of the A14 5G  looks and feels a lot better than the rest of it. Samsung has given it a texture of very finely spaced but large concentric circles – or portions of them at least. It gives the phone a unique look, and also proves to be extremely grippy. It helps fend off fingerprint smudges too, which is always a welcome feature. 

My model comes in a light metallic Green tone, but customers can also choose from Silver and Black.

The A14 5G’s 6.6-inch display doesn’t capitalise on Samsung’s OLED expertise, but it is a very credible LCD. This is a so-called PLS panel, which is effectively Samsung’s take on IPS. This means that it gets plenty bright, and viewing angles are good.

You get an ample 1080 x 2408 (FHD+) resolution, so it’s nice and sharp, and a 90Hz peak refresh rate keeps things feeling smooth. With that said, it’s impossible to run the A14 5G’s display flat out, with a binary choice between Standard (60Hz) or Adaptive (up to 90Hz, depending on the situation).

It’s not a hugely colour-accurate screen, with a little of that Samsung vibrancy at play, but the effect isn’t excessive. Everything pops nicely, and as alluded to, it gets to a pretty-bright 526 nits according to my colorimeter.

Camera

• 50MP main sensor, no OIS
• 2MP macro and depth sensors
• No ultrawide

Samsung has made a curious, some may say bold decision with the Galaxy A14 5G camera system. It’s essentially placed all its eggs in a single 50MP wide sensor basket, with no ultra-wide or telephoto backups.

Those two additional lenses that you see in the pictures are a pair of 2MP sensors, one for macros shots and one for depth assistance. They’re barely worth mentioning beyond that, with the 2MP macro camera in particular simply not offering the sharpness needed to take compelling close-ups. Macro shots are a total blurry washout here.

Still, it could be argued that Samsung’s gamble has paid off. The A14 5G’s main sensor takes pretty decent, well-balanced shots, at least in good lighting. Contrast and exposure are largely on point, and detail is good. Skin tones also look nice and natural, while even the portrait mode works pretty well at separating subject from background in a sea of buttery bokeh.

You do get a little of Samsung’s punchy colour science here, which favours social media pop over a naturalistic depiction of a scene. The effect is not egregious, though, and actually makes a good deal of sense given the target audience of young and casual users.

I did initially miss the option of taking ultra-wide shots, but there’s a certain sense of logic to its omission. The truth is, cheap phones tend to have terrible ultra-wide cameras, producing shots that look nowhere near as good as the main sensors.

It’s a similar case with the lack of a telephoto, with the A14 5G cropping in on that 50MP main sensor instead. This does serve to show up the limitations of the hardware, with shots that start to get a little fuzzy even at 2x.

Night mode isn’t so strong here, producing somewhat murky, grainy shots. It can’t help that there’s no OIS to help out, so any stabilisation has to be done algorithmically. That might explain why Samsung has buried Night mode away in the More menu.

The 13MP selfie camera isn’t bad at all. No, you don’t get the rich colours of the main sensor, but everything looks reasonably natural, including skin tones. There isn’t a huge issue with overexposure either, as is often the case with cheaper selfie cameras.

Performance and software

• MediaTek Dimensity 700 chipset
• 4GB RAM
• Android 13 with OneUI Core 5

Samsung has equipped its cheap and cheerful Galaxy A14 5G with a correspondingly cheap and cheerful MediaTek Dimensity 700 processor. This 7nm chip is not a new component, having powered the likes of the Redmi Note 10 5G, the Realme 8 5G, and the Poco M3 Pro 5G way back in mid-2021.

I didn’t find this chip to be a particularly impressive performer back then, and I certainly didn’t find it to be up to much more than two years down the line. Paired with a lowly 4GB of RAM, booting up and switching between apps takes a beat longer than is comfortable, and there’s a general inconsistency to animation speeds while navigating about.

In benchmark terms, it falls behind rival budget efforts from the Poco, Redmi, and Realme brands. The Realme 9 5G is a good point of comparison, because despite being a year old at this point it offers a similar price and spec, but exhibits a clear performance advantage.

The provision of just 64GB of storage feels a little meagre too, by modern cheap phone standards. We’ve come to expect double that, though you do get a microSDXC slot for expansion purposes.

As for software, Samsung’s custom One UI Core 5 sits on top of Android 13. As ever, Samsung’s UI is a love-it-or-tolerate-it affair. For many users, it’s the only smartphone interface they’ve ever known, and offers a high degree of customisation. 

For others, it lacks the crisp clarity of stock Android and its close variants. Samsung’s UI is definitely more visually cohesive than most of its Chinese rivals, but it lacks the leanness of Motorola’s lightweight UI. 

It’s not the worst offender on the bloatware front. You get Netflix and Spotify, a few Microsoft apps, a couple of rubbish games, and LinkedIn preinstalled, plus a few of Samsung’s own apps. I still don’t get why we need another web browser when Chrome comes preinstalled, but that’s far from a Samsung-exclusive complaint. 

On the update side of things, Samsung has said that it will support the A14 5G with two years of baseline Android updates and four years of security updates. That’s pretty darned good for a cheaper phone.

Battery life

• 5000mAh battery
• 15W charging support
• No charger in the box

The A14 5G comes with a large 5000 mAh battery, and despite that somewhat inefficient 7nm processor, it’s easily good for a full day of intensive usage.

I found that I was able to get to the end of a 15-hour day with 5 hours and 40 minutes of screen-on time, and would be left with a little over 20% left to play with. Lighter use could conceivably see you getting through two full days.

In practical terms, an hour of Disney+ streaming sapped 10% of a charge, while 30 minutes of light gaming on Vampire Survivor ate 6%. This isn’t the most efficient phone when it comes to media performance, but then you could say the same about most affordable phones.

Charging speeds aren’t particularly rapid, with a maximum of 15W supported. However, Samsung doesn’t include a charger in the box. We’re used to seeing that in more premium models, but it feels like a bit of an oversight in a cheap phone, which is going to be a candidate for a first smartphone.

Certainly, Samsung’s key cheap phone rivals (including Poco, Redmi, Realme, and Motorola) all tend to bundle their phones with chargers – and often more rapid ones at that.

I used a Samsung 25W brick to test the Galaxy A14 5G’s charging speeds, and found that it would charge to 15% in 15 minutes and 30% in 30 minutes. It largely kept to that ‘1% a minute’ pattern right up until it had about 5% left, at which point it slowed right down, ultimately taking just shy of 2 hours 30 minutes for a full charge.

That’s not too speedy, even for a cheap phone.

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