Samsung Galaxy A34 Review

The biggest smartphone series from the Korean smartphone manufacturer is the Galaxy A Series as it offers a hardware that most Filipinos need for a fraction of the price of the Galaxy S series flagship smartphones but is the Galaxy A34 good enough for most people? Let’s check it out in our review.

Design and hardware

The Samsung Galaxy A series always follow suit to the design of the Samsung Galaxy S series smartphones with its iconic triple lens camera at the back of the smartphone. But of course, the feel and materials that were used in this smartphone is different but nonetheless, it does feel fine in my hand. 

The Samsung Galaxy A34 features a flat back along with the Awesome black color. Honestly, I find it a little bit generic for my taste, nonetheless, the camera module at the back is a lot simpler now and it’s now more minimal.

The smartphone is also ergonomic despite having a flat sides. It might be made up of plastic but the smartphone still does feel pretty good in my hand along with its rounded edges. I still highly suggest that you use a smartphone case with this one if you’re using it as your everyday smartphone.

Below the smartphone is where you can find the USB-C port of the smartphone and it does support 25W of charging which in today’s climate, is a bit disappointing as we’re seeing 33W and up chargers on smartphones at its range. 

But unlike most mid-rangers out there, the Samsung Galaxy A34 actually has IP67 Water and dust resistance. 

Battery life

For the battery, the smartphone comes with a 5000mAh battery which is pretty common these days with smartphone at this size and in our PCMark Work 2.0 battery test, we got a score of 12 hours and 39 minutes on the smartphone. Which is pretty decent considering its hardware.

Display 

The display of the smartphone is one of its highlights. The Samsung Galaxy A34 comes with a 6.6-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It offers a sharp and vivid display thanks  to the AMOLED panel of the smartphone. Scrolling thru the menu and also also on games on the smartphone is a lot smoother thanks to its high refresh rate display.

The smartphone’s display is also pretty bright even when using outside however, one noticeable thing about the smartphone is that it comes with a notch at the top instead of a punch-hole, a rare thing that we see on its price range. However, after weeks of using it, I barely notice that on the smartphone.

Software and performance

For the software, the smartphone comes with a OneUI 5.1 based on Android 13 and as expected, everything was swift, fast and responsive on the smartphone. There are only a few preinstalled applications and not much change has been seen on this one which is good as the software and UI of Samsung is pretty user friendly and easy to use.

As for the performance, the smartphone comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor inside along with 8GB of RAM. The smartphone also supports RAM Plus which is using the phone’s storage to provide virtual memory and honestly, I barely felt it so it’s not really a big deal for me.

In our benchmarks, the Samsung Galaxy A34 performed better than I expected as seen below:

This is why I like the MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor as I was able to play different games on the smartphone including Genshin Impact at low settings at 60fps and despite playing for some time, the smartphone didn’t heat up that much. As expected, other games like Call of Duty Mobile and also Mobile Legends would play just fine on the smartphone.

Camera

Now the camera is one of the biggest thing about the smartphone. Again, it comes with a camera design setup that is similar to the Samsung Galaxy S23 series but the quality is pretty much different, even versus the Galaxy A54.

The Samsung Galaxy A34 comes with a 48MP main camera along with 8MP ultrawide camera and also a 5MP macro camera. For the selfies, it comes with a 13MP selfie camera. And the quality? Well the smartphone was able to produce decent photos at standard lighting conditions. 

Main Camera:

Selfies:

It even got the vivid colors and the dynamic range of the smartphone was a little bit better than I expected. Surprisingly, the camera of the smartphone on both the rear and the front camera of the smartphone were great.

Lastly, for the video, the smartphone does support 4K30 on both rear and front camera of the smartphone which is excellent! And imagine, we’re even getting better photos on the Samsung Galaxy A54 smartphone.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy A34 might be on the more affordable side of Samsung but it doesn’t mean that it will be bad. The smartphone proved that it comes with a decent processing power for those people who just want to play the latest games and doesn’t want to spend that much on a smartphone.For the camera part, I was actually surprised that the smartphone did a pretty good job than expected and honestly, the design of the smartphone might be plastic but it does look like the Galaxy S series smartphones.

The Samsung Galaxy A34 might miss some but it does have a lot to offer for a midrange smartphone.