Samsung Galaxy A54 vs Xiaomi Poco F5

introduction

While it’s always a lot of fun to look at flagship smartphones and admire their technological features, the reality is that most people will end up purchasing a more affordable mid-range device. It’s the mid-range titles that move volumes in today’s market and things can understandably get very competitive.

This is especially true in the hotly contested price range of 300 to 400 euros, where the Samsung Galaxy A54 and the Xiaomi Poco F5 compete with each other. Both are great phones on paper, each with their own strengths. Furthermore, both devices appear to be readily available in most markets around the world.

And while the A54 is the clear winner in terms of popularity, at least according to our specs pages, there’s a lot more to explore in this comparison. Check out how their full spec sheets compare, or check out our editor’s rating below.

Size comparison

The two phones are more or less similar in size, although the Poco F5 clearly has a size advantage over the Galaxy A54. It has a 6.67-inch 20:9 display, compared to the Galaxy’s 6.4-inch 19.5:9 display. Despite this, the Poco F5 isn’t drastically taller than the Galaxy A54, measuring 161.1mm, compared to the Samsung’s 158.2mm.

The Galaxy A54 is, however, slightly wider and thicker than the Poco F5: 76.7mm, compared to 75mm, and 8.2mm thick, compared to 7.9mm, respectively. In addition to the fact that both devices have batteries of the same size, 5,000 mAh.

Despite the larger display, the Poco F5 is noticeably lighter than the Galaxy A54. It weighs 181 grams, compared to 202 grams for the Samsung. Perhaps a substantial difference-in-difference comes from the fact that the Galaxy A54 has a Gorilla Glass 5 back panel, which weighs more than the Poco F5’s plastic back panel.

Speaking of materials and build quality, the Poco F5 also has a Gorilla Glass 5 front glass, and both devices have a plastic central frame.

However, the Galaxy A54 has the coveted IP67 rating, while the Poco is stuck with a much simpler IP53 rating.

View the comparison

As already mentioned, the two phones have a notable difference in display size. The Galaxy A54 is more compact, with a diagonal of 6.4 inches and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. Meanwhile, the Poco F5 clocks in at a solid 6.67 inches with a 20:9 aspect ratio.

Both displays have a FullHD+ resolution and in person they look very comparable in terms of sharpness. Both phones manage to get very close to the 1,000 nit mark in our tests in terms of maximum brightness. This makes them equally great even in bright outdoor conditions.

Maximum brightness is critical for HDR playback; both phones have HDR support on their displays. The Poco F5 slightly edges out the Galaxy A54 in this category as it supports Dolby Vision in addition to the HDR10 and HDR10+ standards that both phones meet.

Samsung has a solid reputation when it comes to color accuracy and reproduction. The A54 doesn’t disappoint in this regard, it does particularly well with the sRGB color space. The Poco F5 isn’t far behind in terms of precision, and has the clear advantage of offering a 12-bit panel over Samsung’s 8-bit one. This means fewer color bands in some challenging images.

Both phones support a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and handle automatic refresh rate switching quite well to balance smoothness and battery life.

Battery life

Both the Galaxy A54 and Poco F5 come with a powerful 5,000 mAh battery. The pair performed very similarly in our proprietary battery endurance test.

There are marginal differences in how the two performed in our tests. For example, the Galaxy A54 did slightly better in the Wi-Fi web browsing portion of the test. But honestly it’s not even worth pointing out. For all intents and purposes, the two phones offer the same battery life.

Charging speed

While battery life might be a difference between the two phones, there’s a clear winner when it comes to charging speed. That would be the Xiaomi Poco F5 with its 67W fast charging solution. Meanwhile, the Galaxy A54 is stuck with just 25W PD+PPS charging.

The difference in charging speed is noticeable. Thirty minutes of charging brings the Samsung to 56%, while the Poco F5 reaches 83%.

A full charge takes just over an hour on the A54 and just under 50 minutes for the Poco F5.

It’s also worth noting that the Poco F5 comes with the 67W fast charger bundled, while the Galaxy A54 is sold without the charger.

Test the speakers

Both the Galaxy A54 and Poco F5 have stereo speakers. The Galaxy uses the earpiece as a front-facing secondary channel for a hybrid setup, while the Poco has a speaker grill to also release sound on the top of the phone, ensuring a more balanced audio output.

The Poco F5 also slightly beats the Galaxy A54 in terms of noise, scoring a VERY GOOD score in our tests compared to Samsung’s GOOD score.

There isn’t a huge difference between the two phones in terms of actual sound quality. Both have little distortion in the highs, lack bass, and have generally clean mids and vocals. Perhaps Xiaomi, once again, has a slight advantage.

The Poco F5 has another advantage with the 3.5mm audio jack, which is absent on the Galaxy A54.

Performance

Samsung has bet on its own Exynos 1380 chipset for the Galaxy A54. This is a 5nm chip with an octa-core CPU configuration consisting of 4×2.4GHz Cortex-A78 and 4×2.0GHz Cortex-A55. The GPU is a Mali-G68 MP5.

The Galaxy A54 starts with a base configuration of 128GB and 6GB of RAM. But it can also be purchased with 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 6GB RAM and 256GB 8GB RAM.

It is important to note here that the Galaxy A54 comes with expandable storage. There’s a hybrid microSD card slot, so you have to choose between a second nano SIM card and more storage, but at least the option is there, which is more than can be said for the Poco F5.

This is the Galaxy A54’s only advantage in this department, as the Poco F5 features a significantly more powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset. This is a 4nm component with an octa-core CPU configuration consisting of 1×2.91GHz Cortex-X2, 3×2.49GHz Cortex-A710, and 4×1.8GHz Cortex-A510. The integrated GPU is an Adreno 725.

The Poco F5 may not have expandable storage, but it comes with 256GB of UFS 3.1 even in its base variant, which also has 8GB of RAM. You can also get a 12GB plus 256GB model for a fee.

Xiaomi
Little F5

AnTuTu
931.174

Geekbench 6
1,639 single cores

Geekbench 6
4,348 multicores

As we have already mentioned, the Poco F5 has significantly more power than the Galaxy A54. This includes both CPU and GPU performance. Even so, we wouldn’t say the Galaxy A54 is short on power. It runs smoothly with no noticeable hiccups.

Camera comparison

The Galaxy A54 and Poco F5 have fairly comparable camera setups in many respects. The Samsung has a 50MP, f/1.8 1/1.56″, 1.0μm main camera with OIS and PDAF. As for the Poco F5, its main camera is a 64MP, f/1.8 unit with 1/2 size “, 0.7μm pixels and also OIS and PDAF.

Both phones also have a dedicated ultrawide with fixed focus: 12MP on the Samsung and 8MP on the Xiaomi. Both phones also have a dedicated macro cam on the back: 5MP on the Samsung and 2MP on the Xiaomi. As we said, these are quite comparable configurations.

The Galaxy A54 offers a superior 32MP selfie, capable of capturing 4K video, compared to the Poco F5’s 16MP, 1080p selfie. Unfortunately, however, none of the selfie cams have autofocus.

Both phones capture beautiful photos in daylight with good details and colors.

Samsung Galaxy A54: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 50MP

Further samples and a detailed analysis can be found in our Galaxy A54 review.

Xiaomi Poco F5: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 64MP

Additional samples and a detailed analysis can be found in our review of the Poco F5.

Both also offer very competent 2x zoom shots as a crop from the main camera. Daytime videos also look great coming from both devices.

Despite the disparity in selfie resolution, both phones also offer competitive selfies.

Both phones manage to shine well even in low light conditions, which is impressive. All in all, neither phone will disappoint in the camera department, as both camera setups are solid.

Here’s a glimpse of how the Galaxy A54’s main camera compares in terms of image quality to that of the Poco F5 in our image comparison tool.

And here’s how the Galaxy A54’s main camera compares in terms of video quality to that of the Poco F5 in our video comparison tool.

Verdict

It is difficult to define either of these two phones as better than the other as they differ greatly in priorities. For example, Samsung has clearly paid much more attention to the build quality and protection of the Galaxy A54. This is not to say that the Poco F5 is a fragile device, far from it. However, if you’re a little more careless about your phone, you might want the extra peace of mind offered by Gorilla Glass 5 on both sides of the phone and the IP67 protection offered by the Galaxy.

The Samsung also has that expandable memory and probably a slightly more refined photography experience. It’s definitely a better selfie cam, capable of capturing 4K video.

On the other hand, Xiaomi seems to have focused more on providing better value for money hardware with the Poco F5. While it’s not much better than the Galaxy’s, its display offers better colors and Dolby Vision support. And it surpasses the Galaxy A54 in performance by a wide margin. Furthermore, although both devices are almost identical in terms of battery life, the extra convenience offered by the much faster Xiaomi charging is undeniable.

Ultimately, the decision between these two excellent value mid-range products has to be a personal one, depending on your priorities and even brand preferences. We can confidently say that neither will disappoint and that they are both highly recommended devices.