Samsung launched the Galaxy A51 4G variant in December 2019 and the 5G variant in April 2020. If your budget doesn’t allow you to get the Galaxy S20, the A51 is a great affordable alternative. Of course, a lower price means obvious downgrades. Rather than glass, the back is made of plastic. The cameras are not as good. The chipset isn’t as powerful and extras such as water-resistance aren’t there.

Display

The Samsung Galaxy A51 comes with a 6.5-inch Super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1080x2400. On paper, this is definitely an instant win as many phones in this price range have LCD screens instead.

Colors on OLED screens tend to be much deeper. Moreover, compared to LCDs, OLEDs have better contrast since they make use of light-up pixels instead of a universal backlight. With this price, this isn’t one of the greatest OLED panels of Samsung. And there are some obvious issues.

OLED panels that are less advanced look slightly blue from an angle. This is usually noticeable when you turn your phone left or right.

With the A51, when you hold the phone in a relaxed manner as in tilting it a little bit, you will notice there is a blue tint at the top of the display. This is only obvious when the screen’s significant parts are white, for example in web pages. This instantly proves that the A51 doesn’t have one of the best OLEDs of Samsung.

But the smartphone does come with the usual benefits of an OLED. The Vivid screen mode of the A51 looks very saturated. And the contrast is definitely far better the phones with LCD screens at this price.

Screen brightness is quite good too. And it is even comparable to the Galaxy S20. When used indoors, the phone’s maximum brightness is a bit conservative. But when taken outdoors, especially on a bright day, it looks superior. In tough conditions, it also adjusts contrast and color to increase visibility.

Although the display isn’t bright enough to allow you to comfortably watch movies under direct sunlight, the interface, as well as the web pages, still look fairly clear.

The smartphone also supports HD Netflix but doesn’t support HDR video, very similar to the Motorola Moto G8, Huawei P30 Lite, and Google Pixel 3a.

Chip

The Samsung Galaxy A51 is powered by an Exynos 9611 CPU, instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets that we tend to prefer. Technically, it is somewhat similar to the Motorola Moto G8’s Snapdragon 665.  

The Exynos 9611 chipset has four Cortex A73 cores ticking at 2.3GHz and four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz. In Geekbench 5, the phone scores 1,288.

The GPU of the phone is a Mali G72 with triple cores, offering similar graphical power to the Adreno 612 and 610 graphic chips found in Qualcomm-powered alternatives.

In its gaming test, for games using the Vulkan graphics, the performance of the A51 is fairly poor. Players of Ark: Survival Evolved will have to set the graphics and resolution at low in order to play the game.

Other games tend to be much better. PUBG is perfectly playable with anti-aliasing and HD graphics switched on. Players can also smoothly play Call of Duty: Mobile.

With most games, your experience will be fairly close to that of more costly phones. The screen of the Samsung Galaxy A51 also helps games look great. But at this price, there are more smartphones with Snapdragon chips with more consistent results.

RAM – Internal Storage

Galaxy A51 comes in four variants. One with 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage. One with 4GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage. If you think 4GB of RAM isn’t enough, you can choose the version with 6GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage or 8GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage.

Battery Life

Samsung equips the Galaxy A51 with a 4,000mAh battery. By the late evening, there is not much left in the battery. Battery life is okay. However, it doesn’t quite meet Samsung’s claim to be long-lasting. The phone can last more than a day, better than the iPhone SE. However, with a 1080p screen and a 4,000mAh battery, the results should have been much better.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy A51 is equipped with four rear cameras. You have one 48MP main lens, a 12MP ultra-wide camera, and two 5MP lenses for background-blurred shots and close-up macro images.

Of course, the 5MP macro camera can’t bring you an award for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, but it’s still fun to play with. With the macro lens, you can get really close to capture photos of your subject, which the main camera can’t do. However, the main issue is that a pair of shaky hands will ruin your photos.

Otherwise, the macro camera of the A51 is still one of most acceptable macro cameras of cheaper phones. Samsung doesn’t seem to be proud of it as you have to search in the extended menu to look for the macro mode.

Samsung uses the Sony IMX582 sensor for the main camera. Like many other 48MP phone sensors, the camera uses pixel binning to produce 12MP photos.

Fine texture detail can’t compare to the Google Pixel 3a’s 12.2MP sensor. Like other phones from Samsung, most of the photos of the A51 have to go through HDR processing.

And there are some little issues with this. You can’t have a reliable view of the photo that you shoot in the camera app. The scene that you see is before it goes through HDR processing. But the good news is the final image does look a lot better. For cheaper phones, it is common that you can’t preview images.

Compared to the standard wide shots, the ultra-wide photos of the A51 look way more saturated with grass looking unrealistic. Besides that, the images are solid. The photos have less shadow detail and lower dynamic range than the main lens.

The final sensor is responsible for Live Focus photos, which is essentially a Portrait mode. The blurring effect is actually charming enough.

Night shooting is a highlight of the smartphone. Scenes are brightened up. There is also a dedicated Nigh mode.