This Galaxy is hard to beat for the price
The Samsung Galaxy A14 5G ($199.99) is an affordable way to gain access to speedy 5G networks while enjoying one of the better Android update policies on the market. Though the Moto G Play ($169.99) undercuts the A14 in price, it lacks 5G, while the TCL 40 X 5G ($199.99) goes almost spec for spec with the A14 but has a less dazzling display and a weaker software upgrade commitment. Given these strengths over the competition, the Samsung Galaxy A14 5G earns our Editors’ Choice award for budget-friendly Android phones. Big and Grippy
The first thing you notice about the Galaxy A14 5G is the screen, which has been improved in all the right ways compared with the Galaxy A13. The size has been nudged up slightly from 6.5 inches to 6.6 inches, the 90Hz refresh rate remains the same, and most importantly, the resolution increases from 1,600 by 720 pixels to 2,400 by 1,080 pixels, boosting the pixel density from 270ppi to 399ppi for a huge improvement in sharpness. Both the Moto G Play and the TCL 40 X 5G have lower-resolution 1,600-by-720-pixel screens. The difference in resolution is noticeable and goes a long way toward giving the A14 5G a superior overall experience.
Samsung could have done more by pushing up the brightness, however. The display peaks at just 500 nits, which is half what today’s flagships generate. Reading the phone outside in bright sunlight is sometimes a struggle, though this is fairly common across $200 handsets.
Given the screen size, the Galaxy A14 5G is a fairly big piece of kit. It measures 6.60 by 3.07 by 0.36 inches (HWD) and weighs 7.13 ounces.
Phones in this price range aren’t as rugged as their pricier counterparts. Samsung doesn’t say what type of glass covers the display; the company would likely market it if the screen were protected by Gorilla Glass, so we suspect that isn’t the case. The rest of the chassis is made from plastic. While you don’t have to worry about glass shattering on the rear, we do question how durable the phone will be over the long haul (though it survived a few accidental drops during testing). In addition, the phone doesn’t have an IP rating, so you should keep it away from water and dirt.
The plastic rear panel features a rough texture that lends some grip. Samsung stacks the three rear cameras in a vertical line in the upper corner. It’s a simple, effective design, and black is the only color option, so you get what you see in the pictures here.
You’ll find the typical array of buttons and controls around the phone’s side edges. On the left, there’s a combined SIM card and microSD card slot. On the right, you’ll find the power button, which doubles as a fingerprint scanner, and the volume rocker. The fingerprint scanner worked well in testing. The bottom edge features a 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB-C charging port.Respectable Performance for the Price
Samsung carries over the same 7nm MediaTek Dimensity 700 processor from last year’s A13 5G. This octa-core chip has two 2.4GHz Cortex-A76 cores and six 2.0GHz Cortex-A55 cores. Inexpensive phones often stick to affordable parts to keep their bill of materials down, but we would have preferred to see even a minor upgrade here.
Samsung also carries over the 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage from the previous model. The RAM should be fine for most users, but 64GB of space is a bit on the low side when you consider that only 45GB is available out of the box and that smartphone games are getting larger (titles like Genshin Impact eat upward of 32GB on their own). Fortunately, there’s room for up to 1TB of additional storage via the microSD slot, but the experience of using expandable storage isn’t always smooth.
We ran the Galaxy A14 5G through our usual benchmarks, and it held up pretty well. On the PCMark Work 3.0 test, which examines how a phone performs everyday tasks like working with spreadsheets and editing images, it scored 7,886.
