The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE made a fan out of me — and I think you should buy it over the Galaxy S24

It’s hard to make a great Android flagship but even harder to make a great mid-range Android phone. With a flagship, you can let your mind run wild, combining a powerful chipset with high-end cameras and setting a price that bumps right up against the $1,000 mark without anyone batting an eye. As soon as you limit yourself to a cost of, say, $600 or $650, you realize just how many sacrifices you have to make. For a while, that’s where Samsung struggled — its Fan Edition launches always made cuts, but we were never sure if they were the right ones.

Now, though, Samsung might be turning a corner. It’s packed more power into the Galaxy S24 FE, seemingly with fewer omissions, and it’s put me in a tight spot. As much as I want to continue to beat the drum for the pocket-friendly Galaxy S24 that I carried in early 2024, I’m coming around to the idea that Samsung’s latest upper-mid-ranger might be one of the best values on the market. Here’s why I might stick with it for a bit longer.

You know what they say about imitation and flattery

At a glance, the Galaxy S24 FE looks almost identical to its namesake sibling. That shouldn’t be a surprise since all of Samsung’s 2024 launches look nearly the same, but the Galaxy S24 FE takes its imitation further than most. It’s almost the same height, width, and thickness as Samsung’s premium Galaxy S24 Plus, relying on a weight difference of about 15 grams to set the two apart. In other words, it’s close enough to fool just about anyone except for the boulder that protects the golden idol at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And you know what? I’m glad that Samsung treated its Galaxy S24 FE more like a flagship this year. In an age when Google is still using plastic for the back of its Pixel 8a, the Galaxy S24 FE’s mix of an aluminum frame and Gorilla Glass Victus Plus on both front and back makes it feel premium. And, like the previous Galaxy S23 FE, Samsung’s upper-mid-ranger still has a durable IP68 rating for water and dust. I even like the pale Blue and Mint color options that the phone comes in. Granted, I could do without the glossy, fingerprint-loving finish on the glass, but it’s easy enough to avoid by adding a case.

Perhaps an even better reason to add a case to your Galaxy S24 FE would be to soften the relatively sharp edges of the aluminum frame. Thankfully, the frame has a matte finish that ignores fingerprints, but the design is something like the iPhone 12 or iPhone 13, which isn’t a good thing. If you used either of those phones, you’ll remember that Apple cut a pretty sharp edge where the rear glass met the aluminum frame, which made even its smaller 6.1-inch iPhones uncomfortable to hold after a while. Samsung’s Galaxy S24 FE is the same way — just much, much bigger. While you could reasonably hold either of those older iPhones by the sides of its frame, the Galaxy S24 FE is a bit too large and hefty. I sometimes find myself either supporting the device on one pinky or using two hands to hold it, neither of which is all that comfortable after a while.

If you find a comfortable way to hold the Galaxy S24 FE, it’s an easy phone to enjoy. Samsung’s 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED panel offers plenty of real estate for everything from doom-scrolling to trying to catch ’em all in the early stages of Pokémon TCG Pocket, and it packs a 120Hz refresh rate that just about matches that of the flagship Galaxy S24 lineup. There’s a slight difference in brightness — 1,900 nits vs 2,600 nits — but I haven’t had any trouble opening booster packs in bright sunlight. It’s been a few days since I’ve added anything meaningful to my Pokedex, but I can’t blame Samsung for that.

If you want to get nitpicky, you could point out that the Galaxy S24 FE’s bezels are thicker than those of Samsung’s proper flagships. Technically, you’d be right. However, I don’t mind the extra space, as I’m already tired of how easy it is to activate gestures on certain other phones. Take Type to Siri, for example — I was excited when Apple launched it, as I thought I could keep my dumber questions locked up inside. However, after a few days of using it, I had to turn it off because I was triggering the double-tap activation far too often on Apple’s tiny bezels. The Galaxy S24 FE’s bottom bar might be thick in comparison, but I’ll take that over the constant headache of unwanted gestures.

Ultimately, though, I think the biggest problem with Samsung’s self-imitation is this — I want a Galaxy device with some personality again. In recent years, Samsung has stripped away the things that made phones such as its Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S22 memorable, ditching the Contour Cut camera bump and rounded frame in favor of something that looked and felt more like an iPhone. If I thought the Galaxy S24 FE was meant to compete with an iPhone, I guess I wouldn’t mind that, but when it’s more interested in the personality-rich Google Pixel, Samsung has some serious catching up to do.

Even the Exynos 2400e is a pleasant surprise

While I’m not entirely convinced by Samsung copying its own design ad infinitum, I’ll admit I’m impressed by what the Galaxy S24 FE does under the hood. Once again, it draws heavily from its flagship family members, but this time, it takes after the international versions of the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus, which came with Exynos 2400 chipsets. Samsung’s affordable flagship starts with the same base RAM and storage as its smallest flagship (8GB and 128GB, respectively), but it’s the in-house Exynos 2400e chipset that bears the closest resemblance.

It has almost the same name, so of course, it should perform similarly, right? Well, as we learned with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, sometimes adding a letter makes a big difference. However, in the case of the Exynos 2400 vs Exynos 2400e, the difference is fairly small. The two share the same 10-core structure, but the flagship Exynos 2400 has a slightly higher clock speed on its largest core, topping out at 3.2GHz to the Exynos 2400e’s 3.1GHz. As you might imagine, the small change spells good news for the Galaxy S24 FE in terms of performance. It’s very nearly flagship-grade, just not quite, and nowhere near the gap we feared when we first heard about the FE series’ shift from the Snapdragon-powered S23 FE to an Exynos processor for its latest model.

I, of course, didn’t expect a perfect flagship performance from a phone that costs $150 less than Samsung’s smallest Galaxy S24, but I wasn’t sure it would come this close, either. No matter which test I picked, from the CPU-heavy Geekbench 6 to the graphically intensive 3DMark Wild Life stress test, the Galaxy S24 FE kept almost perfect pace with its siblings. It beat the Exynos 2400-toting Galaxy S24 that my colleague Rob Triggs used earlier in the year despite having the weaker chipset on paper. If I had to guess, that difference came down to the Galaxy S24 FE having more room for its cooling setup, but it was impressive either way. Check out our Galaxy S24 FE benchmarks deep dive for even more detail on our synthetic performance tests.

That performance is just about as consistent in day-to-day life, too, which is the best thing you can say for an upper-mid-range phone. As mentioned, I’ve been playing the life out of Pokémon TCG Pocket, and I’ve yet to notice the Galaxy S24 FE struggling under the weight of my massive Pokédex. Granted, the battles in TCG Pocket aren’t the most demanding, but the phone has been smooth as I’ve swiped around, debating which pack of cards to open.

Anyway, the Galaxy S24 FE was also my backup device for my recent trip abroad to Amsterdam. As such, it was resigned to a support role, offering emergency coverage should the iPhone 16 Pro I was also testing at the time not make it through a long day of usage (which was a genuine fear). I turned out not to need Samsung’s affordable flagship while there, but it did give me a chance to watch for idle battery drain any time I pulled the phone out of my backpack. There was some drain — no doubt — but not as much as I might have expected for a US-based device with a Samsung-provided Verizon SIM that I forgot to turn off.

Thankfully, when I could give it a proper test run, the rest of the Galaxy S24 FE’s battery performance turned out to be pretty good, too — or at least good enough. The S24 FE landed perfectly in the middle of the road when put up against Samsung’s other devices from the year, including both versions of the Galaxy S24 and the Snapdragon-equipped Galaxy S24 Plus. It handled a simulated Zoom meeting better than both Galaxy S24 models and only came up shy of the power-sipping Galaxy A35 5G when snapping photos. Admittedly, I might have expected more out of the 4,700mAh battery — especially compared to just 4,000mAh on the Galaxy S24 — but I still made it comfortably from one day to the next before needing a charger.

As if to crib one more feature from its premium family members, the Galaxy S24 FE offers the same charging setup as Samsung’s top-end devices. It supports 25W wired charging with a compatible USB-PD PPS charger, or you can use 15W wireless charging from a Qi-certified pad. From my testing, it looks like the Galaxy S24 FE maintains that top 25W speed better than Samsung’s flagships, too, as the phone reached a full charge in the same 75 minutes that it took the Exynos-equipped Galaxy S24 — not bad when you’re saving $150.

These are Samsung cameras, through and through

When Samsung is piping this many of its own features from the flagship market to its other offerings, it’s enough to make you nervous. So far, I haven’t really hit on any significant cost-saving omissions from the Galaxy S24 FE, and we’re running out of things to talk about. By process of elimination, that might make you think the Galaxy S24 FE’s cameras stink. Well, the good news is they don’t — at least not if you like how Samsung typically handles its image processing or expect performance on the level of the very best camera phones out there.

For starters, the three cameras on the Galaxy S24 FE look exactly like those on the Galaxy S24 or Galaxy S24 Plus — stop me if you’ve heard this before. The standard, ultrawide, and telephoto sensors sit in their own aluminum-guarded ring, accompanied only by a flash that sits off to the side. Of the three, the 50MP primary camera is the closest to what you’d find on one of Samsung’s flagships, shrinking by just a fraction of an inch. From there, the peripheral cameras start to tail off a little bit, with the 3x optical telephoto sensor dropping to 8MP from 10MP and the ultrawide sensor shrinking from 1/2.55 inches to 1/3.0 inches, resulting in smaller individual megapixels that can’t capture quite as much light.

But before you start to spell doom and gloom about some downgrades, it’s time to mention Samsung’s not-so-secret weapon: Galaxy AI. I’ve largely avoided talking about Samsung’s AI rollout so far, but the addition of the ProVisual Engine gives the Galaxy S24 FE’s cameras a boost that generally overcomes the shrinking sensors. Samsung’s upgraded engine somewhat acts like the image processing wing of Google’s Tensor chip, breaking down and enhancing your images while maintaining as much accuracy as possible. It’s not always perfect, but I appreciate the jump from when you press the shutter to when you get your final result. Anyway, let’s get to some sample shots.

Right off the bat, you can tell these shots came from a Samsung phone. Although Samsung’s overall color science has shifted to become a bit more natural over the last few cycles, it’s not all the way there yet — most noticeably with the reds and greens. And, because it’s fall here in Maryland, all I’ve got are reds and greens. That means that bright colors like the neon green of the blow-up spider are even brighter than reality, and the vibrant leaves still clinging to the tree look almost like they’re on fire. However, there are a few spots where the color science doesn’t work for Samsung, like the shot of the wetland in the first row, where all the colors seem to bleed together.

On the bright side, the Galaxy S24 FE seems to nail details across the board. Sure, there’s a bit of distortion around the edges of the tree to the left, but the edge detection around the skeletal flamingo is spot-on, and you can easily make out every wrinkle and ridge on the Boygenius sculpture to the right.

Moving on to zoom capabilities, I’ve probably never been so happy to have an 8MP telephoto sensor. It’s not perfect, sitting as the smallest sensor of Samsung’s trio, but it shows its worth when you compare the Galaxy S24 FE to other upper-mid-range options like the Motorola Edge (2024) or Pixel 8a. The telephoto sensor adds a little more flexibility with its 3x optical focal length, allowing me to punch in on the flag over Fort McHenry and capture solid detail. Results are still decent at 10x zoom, though the field of blue stars is a little harder to make out as I was shooting towards the sun. Also, while I’m impressed by the creases that the Galaxy S24 FE captured in the flag at 20x zoom, the image suffers some ghosting around the flagpole itself.

Although I can live with the fact that even affordable flagships probably won’t take great 30x zoom photos for a while, I have a more important bone to pick with Samsung — it simply can’t handle motion in photos. I was trying to capture a few new profile photos for the shelter dog above, but I could never catch her entirely in focus. If her head came out sharp, her paw was blurry. If I got her body in focus, her face blurred. You can also see the blurring on my friend’s hand where she’s scratching the dog. As someone who typically shoots with automatic settings, I’d love for Samsung to bump up its default shutter speed.

Also, if you’re after an upper-mid-range phone with impressive video specs, the Galaxy S24 FE might fit the bill. It supports 4K resolution at 30 and 60fps and 8K video at 30fps. You’ll probably burn through your 128GB of base storage if you shoot much in 8K, and you won’t be able to view the clips in full resolution on the Full HD Plus display, but the stabilization is impressive — even if you can only zoom up to 5x in the highest resolution.

Somehow, I’m glad Galaxy AI is here

Now that I’ve opened the Galaxy AI door, let’s stay awhile. After all, the Galaxy S24 FE is the first non-flagship Samsung phone to come with this many AI-powered features right out of the box. And, if nothing else, that makes it the most interesting sub-flagship launch from Samsung since it revived the Fan Edition lineup in 2020. Granted, it’s competing with a Galaxy S21 FE that launched a few months too late and a Galaxy S23 FE that only offered Circle to Search, so that might not be a high bar.

Either way, I’m more receptive to the Galaxy S24 FE’s flavor of on-device AI than I might have expected. It doesn’t punch you in the face with features like Browsing Assist or Interpreter mode with a pushy tips app, instead letting you stumble upon them when they might fit your needs. As such, I’ve avoided the tools I don’t need (like Live Translate and Portrait Studio) while using the ones I like, like Instant Slow-Mo when I took a shelter dog for an afternoon walk.

I’ve also avoided the more generative Galaxy AI features — the ones that I’m still convinced need the most work. See the shot of the painted pumpkin above? Cute, right? Well, it’s not wearing a hat in the original image. I used Sketch to Image to draw a pointy witch hat on top of its orange head, only for Samsung to generate a cowboy hat instead. It’s still Halloween-appropriate, but not what I expected as a result. Maybe I can blame my fingers for not drawing very well, but I’d say a witch hat and a cowboy hat look different enough for Samsung to know the difference.

Anyway, some of Samsung’s other Galaxy AI features more than make up for what I dislike about its generative abilities. Specifically, I’m thinking of how the Galaxy S24 FE interacts with the health-tracking features of the Galaxy Watch 7. While reviewing Samsung’s latest smartwatch, I found myself appreciating metrics like the Energy Score, which took into account my level of activity and how well I’d slept the previous night to forecast how I’d feel each day. It was an easier-to-understand version of Garmin’s Body Battery, and I generally agreed with its assessments. It might not have been perfect, but at least it felt like a practical use of AI.

Better yet, I won’t be surprised if the Galaxy S24 FE’s Galaxy AI experience continues to grow and change as Samsung rolls out new features to its flagship lineup. After all, the Exynos 2400e chipset should be just as capable as the full-strength Exynos 2400 when it comes to handling on-device requests, and Samsung’s seven years of software updates shouldn’t hurt either. It’s yet another upgrade over the four years that the previous Galaxy S23 FE offered, and just enough to keep the Galaxy S24 FE in line with the latest from Google and Apple, too.

Just keep in mind that some of Samsung’s Galaxy AI features are restricted to its in-house apps. Browsing Assist, for example, can generate a summary of an entire website in a few seconds, but it only works on the Samsung Internet browser, even though Chrome is the default browser on the Galaxy S24 FE. Some of those health tracking features will disappear if you switch away from a Samsung phone or wearable, too, so you have to be ready to spend some time in the Galaxy to make it worth your while.

So, is the Samsung Galaxy S24 worth it, and who is it really for?

We questioned in our initial hands-on (video at the top of this review) if the Galaxy S24 FE was truly a phone for the fans based on some of Samsung’s choices; it turns out the definitive answer was a resounding yes.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE looks like a flagship, benchmarks almost like a flagship, charges like a flagship, and is $150 cheaper than the most affordable Galaxy S24. So, who could ever possibly reach for Samsung’s flagship over its affordable flagship that offers almost the same value on all fronts? Well, I would — but I don’t think most people should. I wouldn’t expect most people to benefit massively from the small camera changes, overall material upgrades, or the slightly faster updates that Samsung’s flagships get — the S24 FE does enough to hold its ground for most would-be buyers.

The only reason I’d personally choose the base Galaxy S24 ($859.99 at Amazon) over the Galaxy S24 FE is that I really like small phones. It’s well-documented that I’m not a large guy, which makes wrangling a 6.7-inch device (or larger) a headache I don’t want to deal with. Add a case that makes the sharp aluminum frame even larger, and I may as well carry an iPad Mini around for my day-to-day tasks.

But, if you’re not like me, I would tell you to grab the Galaxy S24 FE over almost any other phone in Samsung’s lineup if you are cost-conscious but still want a great experience. It’s far more capable than the cheaper Galaxy A35 5G ($359.99 at Amazon), sporting better build quality, longer update support, and sharper, more flexible cameras. The Galaxy S24 FE makes more sense for most people than the Galaxy S24 Plus ($1119.99 at Amazon), too, but for different reasons. It doesn’t beat Samsung’s $1,000 flagship in any one of the categories above, but it’s much closer than the $350 price difference would suggest. Even if you prefer the finer boxes that the Galaxy S24 Plus checks, I’m not sure you’ll find a deal that makes the price truly competitive, especially if carriers offer the Galaxy S24 FE for free or when the latter’s price also starts to drop in sales. In fact, it’s on sale at the time of this writing for ~$550, which is an incredible value.

There is, however, one deal in town that might make the Galaxy S24 FE sweat — Google’s Pixel 8a ($499 at Amazon). It’s after essentially the same group of Android fans that Samsung’s Fan Edition hopes to court, but Google can offer its services at a slightly cheaper price point thanks to a deeper set of cuts. You have to live with two cameras rather than three, a smaller display, a plastic back panel, and slower charging, but on the flip side, you’ll get Google’s light, smooth Pixel UI, an ever-growing list of Gemini AI features, and the image processing we’ve praised ever since the earliest days of the Pixel — all while saving $150 over the Galaxy S24 FE. The only question is which you’d rather keep in your pocket for the next seven years, as both are supported for Android updates for the same amount of time.

If I were picking between those two, I’d still grab the Galaxy S24 FE and tell you to do the same.