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The Honor 400 Lite gives you iPhone 16 Pro Max features on the cheap, without the Apple performance
11:52 am | April 25, 2025
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Honor Phones Phones | Tags: , , , | Comments: Off

Honor 400 Lite: Two-minute review

Squint, and you could mistake the Honor 400 Lite for an iPhone 16 Pro Max. Honor is clearly enamored with Apple's whole approach to smartphones, or more likely the enduring popularity of the very best iPhones, and it's evidently not afraid to wear that admiration on its sleeve.

The prospect of a £250 phone with a Dynamic Island (or 'Magic Capsule') and Camera Control (or 'AI Camera Button') is an undeniably enticing one. Honor has executed those two elements well, delivering a budget Android phone that feels slightly different from its rivals. That's hard to achieve in a staid smartphone market.

However, in the process of seeking to offer an iPhone-style experience on the cheap, Honor appears to have taken its eye off the ball in some fundamental areas. The Honor 400 Lite doesn't perform as well as many of its peers, while its camera system feels undercooked.

Meanwhile, Honor's MagicOS feels as cluttered and unappealing as ever, emulating the basic look of iOS without achieving the same level of refinement. It's good to see a six-year update promise, though, which is among the very best in its class.

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)

Solid battery life and a good 6.7-inch OLED display also help the Honor 400 Lite's cause, though its 35W charging speeds are nothing to write home about, and that sizeable notch probably won't appeal to those who watch a lot of movies and TV shows on the go.

Ultimately, the Honor 400 Lite is a budget phone designed to appeal to those who equate 'iPhone' with 'smartphone', but who lack either the resources or inclination to spend upwards of £600 on their next handset.

It'll serve such people reasonably well, but those same people should know that they won't be getting the most from their money. There are faster, more robust, and just plain better phones in the sub-£300 bracket.

Honor 400 Lite review: price and availability

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)
  • Released on April 22, 2024
  • On sale in the UK and Europe for £249.99 / €269
  • Only one variant (8GB RAM / 256GB storage)
  • No US or Australia availability

The Honor 400 Lite was announced in April 2025 and is due to go on sale in the UK and Europe on May 22. Honor smartphones aren't sold in the US, while an Australian launch for the Honor 400 Lite is also off the cards at the time of writing.

It'll be available in just one variant in these territories: 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. This sole model will cost £249.99 / €269 (about $330 / AU$520).

At this price, the Honor 400 Lite is competing with a whole host of affordable phones, including the Samsung Galaxy A26, the Poco X7, and the Motorola Moto G75 5G. All of these rivals have superior water resistance, while the Moto G75 5G also has MIL-STD-810H durability.

Samsung's phone has wider availability and that familiar One UI software, while the Poco X7 has a clear performance edge.

  • Value score: 4 / 5

Honor 400 Lite review: specs

Honor 400 Lite review: design

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Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

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Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

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Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

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  • Clearly iPhone-influenced design
  • Magic Capsule notch supplies widgets and selfie light
  • Skinny, lightweight all-plastic build
  • Dedicated camera shutter button

Honor wouldn't be the first company to take a page out of Apple design playbook, but the Honor 400 Lite takes it to the next level. It looks more like an iPhone (specifically the iPhone 16 Pro Max) than pretty much any other phone I've seen.

Yes, you have the flat-edged look with the curved corners, just like the Google Pixel 9a and Samsung Galaxy S25. But the similarity runs to the smaller details, too. The camera module looks extremely similar to that of the iPhone 16 Pro, with only a triangular motif marking it out.

Flip the Honor 400 Lite onto its front, and there's an extended floating notch that looks a lot like Apple's Dynamic Island. Honor calls it the 'Magic Capsule', but it serves a similar function.

Honor's psychedelic-sounding notch facilitates tiny heads-up widgets when doing things like playing music or running a timer. Tap one of those widgets, and it'll expand slightly to a larger, width-spanning version.

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)

One thing the Honor 400 Lite's Magic Capsule doesn't copy from Apple is a truly secure Face ID system, with no 3D Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor to capture the required depth information. That's doubtless a cost issue, as the flagship Honor Magic 7 Pro does include such a feature.

Instead, the Honor 400 Lite's extended notch gives you a dedicated selfie light, though it has fairly limited utility. It'll technically allow you to record videos and take video calls in very low lighting, provided you really want to convey that mid-noughties webcam vibe.

A more consequential addition is the AI Camera Button, situated a little way below the volume and power buttons on the right-hand edge. It's another direct lift from Apple, with a similar look and somewhat unsatisfactory positioning to the iPhone 16's Camera Control.

It too serves as a dedicated camera shutter button, complete with two-stage operation for locking focus and a swipe-to-zoom facility that might actually be better than Apple's. It also serves as a two-tap camera shortcut, while a long press will bring up Google Lens, much as it brings up Visual Intelligence on an iPhone.

Hold the Honor 400 Lite in your hand, and all the iPhone comparisons flake away. This is an all-plastic affair, despite the metal-effect frame. It's well-built, with no creaks and a subtle pearlescent finish to the rear.

It's also very light, given its large 161 x 74.6mm footprint, at just 171g, while it's only 7.3mm thick.

You'll also notice the uneven bezel, which gets thicker at the corners and across the chin. That's a sure sign that we're shopping in the £250 category here, though a 93.7% screen-to-body ratio is still pretty decent for a budget phone.

  • Design score: 3.5 / 5

Honor 400 Lite review: display

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Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

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Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

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  • Solid 6.7-inch FHD+ OLED
  • Gets nice and bright
  • Only a mono speaker

Honor has equipped the 400 Lite with an accomplished 6.7-inch OLED display, with an FHD+ (1080 x 2412) resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz.

These are all specifications that we've come to expect in the £250 category, and they see the Honor 400 Lite matching the likes of the Poco X7 and the Samsung Galaxy A26.

Not many budget phones can boast a 3500-nit peak brightness, however. PWM dimming of 3840Hz, meanwhile, cuts perceptible flickering and potential eye strain.

In general use, I found this to be a really pleasant display to use, at least once I'd switched away from the ramped-up 'Vivid' color mode to the more muted and natural 'Normal'. It's big, sharp, color-accurate, and responsive, while its brightness scales evenly from very dark (great for low-light viewing) to quite bright.

It's a shame the Always On Display function doesn't meet the description, however, requiring a screen tap to activate.

Also a shame is Honor's enduring insistence on packing its affordable phone with a single downward-firing speaker. It doesn't feel like too much to ask for a solid set of stereo speakers, even at this price.

  • Display score: 4 / 5

Honor 400 Lite review: cameras

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)
  • 108MP main camera struggles with HDR and night shots
  • Poor 5MP ultra-wide
  • Only 1080p/30fps video

Honor has simplified the camera setup from last year's Honor 200 Lite, with the pointless 2MP macro camera dropping out altogether.

This leaves you with what appears to be the same pair of cameras, specifically a 108MP 1/1.67" f/1.8 main sensor and a 5MP f/2.2 ultra-wide.

The main camera is a competent shooter under ideal conditions, capturing plenty of detail. It's even good enough to produce fairly convincing 2x and 3x crops in the absence of a dedicated telephoto.

There are issues with this main camera, however. It seems to struggle with HDR scenarios, either failing to lift very dark shady areas or otherwise blowing out background highlights.

I also noticed some odd processing effects, including a strange halo effect around distant birds in front of a blue sky.

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)

Night shots, too, aren't very good, with poor detail and bags of noise. The lack of OIS here is quite evident.

The ultra-wide, meanwhile, is of a pretty substandard quality, lacking in detail and failing to match the tone of the main sensor.

The selfie camera has also changed since the Honor 200 Lite, dropping from a 50MP f/2.1 unit to a 16MP f/2.5. It captures adequate shots with reasonably rich colors, but again struggles with blown-out highlights.

The provision of an LED light is an interesting one. It definitely improved the clarity of my low-light selfie shots and videos when I activated it manually, but is it strictly necessary when most phones simply use a white screen for the job? I'm not so sure.

Talking of video, the main camera maxes out at a weedy 1080p at 30fps. That's a pretty poor effort when rivals such as the Galaxy A26, Moto G75 5G, and Poco X7 can all record at 4K.

  • Camera score: 3 / 5

Honor 400 Lite review: camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite camera samples

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Honor 400 Lite review: performance

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)
  • MediaTek Dimensity 7025 Ultra is merely adequate
  • Solid 8GB of RAM
  • 256GB of storage

The Honor 400 Lite is equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 7025 Ultra chipset, which isn't a very strong performer even within the budget phone category.

I've used a phone with this chip before in the Redmi Note 14 5G (which didn't ship in the UK), and I was left pretty unimpressed. Suffice it to say, the Honor 400 Lite did nothing to change my mind on this component.

Across CPU and GPU benchmark tests, it's outgunned by the Moto G75 5G, the Samsung Galaxy A26, and the Poco X7.

I'd like to say that this doesn't matter in practical terms, but that's not the case. There's a generally wallowy feel to everything from unlocking the phone to app startup and even basic animations.

It would be unfair to call this performance halting or stuttery, but everything seems to take a beat longer than it should. I'd be tempted to let it off the hook given the price, but the Poco X7 (to use one example) feels nice and snappy by comparison.

Indeed, while the Poco X7 is capable of running Genshin Impact quite well on Medium settings, the Honor 400 Lite needs to run it at Low or even Lowest if you're to maintain a decent frame rate.

The solitary model available in the UK gives you a solid 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is most welcome.

  • Performance score: 3 / 5

Honor 400 Lite review: software

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)
  • Android 15 with MagicOS 9
  • Six years of OS updates and security patches

With the Honor 400 Lite, you're getting Android 15 fresh out of the box, coated in Honor's latest MagicOS 9 UI. It's not my favorite Android skin by any stretch of the imagination.

Honor evidently doesn't think much of the flowing, vibrant UI design that Google baked into the latest version of Android, preferring instead the square icons and split notification menu of Apple's iOS.

The two UIs really look uncannily alike in places, right down to the look of the Settings menu and the lock screen. The aforementioned Magic Capsule drives this familiar sensation home with its Dynamic Island-style mini-widgets.

Sadly, such an admiration for Apple's work doesn't extend to the company's no-nonsense approach to bloatware. You'll find Facebook, Booking.com, TikTok, Amazon Shopping, ReelShort, LinkedIn, and the Temu shopping app all sitting on the second home screen straight from first boot-up.

There's also a Top Apps folder with four more third-party apps. It's a little excessive, if far from unusual, on Android.

Elsewhere, there's a whopping great themed 'Essentials' folder on the main home screen containing nine of the company's own apps, and another large folder filled with AI-suggested apps that I never found remotely useful.

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)

Honor also provides its own App Market, which feels completely pointless with the Google Play Store present and accounted for (Honor is no longer part of Huawei, so it isn't hampered by the same sanctions).

There's a smattering of AI features here, including some Google-affiliated ones such as Smart Vision (essentially Google Lens), Google Gemini, and Circle to Search.

Honor has implemented a feature called Magic Portal that somewhat overlaps the latter Google provision, permitting you to draw around text and images before opening up a shortcut menu for sharing the resulting snippets to other apps. It's nowhere near as smart as Circle to Search, but it can actually be quite useful in this more localized on-device application. Or it would be, if the knuckle-based input system wasn't so flaky.

Favourite Space is a folder to quickly stash these hastily scrawled-out snippets. However, given the large number of superfluous preinstalled apps, I'm not sure why there isn't a standard Favourite Space app. I encountered numerous references to it and saved several snippets before it offered to create a shortcut (in the shape of an app icon) on the home screen.

When it comes to image editing, Honor offers a reasonably effective AI Eraser for deleting unwanted objects and people. AI Outpainting is a bizarre but technically impressive feature that essentially turns your regular shots into ultra-wides, using AI to infer what might be just out of frame. It kind of works in terms of creating convincing (though not accurate) images, but I'm not sure why you'd ever want to make use of such fakery beyond a tech demo.

Perhaps the most positive aspect of Honor's software provision on the 400 Lite is the promise of six years of OS and security updates. That's right up there with the Samsung Galaxy A26 in this budget class.

  • Software score: 3 / 5

Honor 400 Lite review: battery life

Review images of the Honor 400 Lite

(Image credit: Future)
  • 5,230mAh battery
  • 35W wired charging
  • No charger in the box

Honor has supplied a larger-than-average 5,230mAh battery with the 400 Lite, which is significantly larger than the 4,500mAh battery of the Honor 200 Lite.

It results in predictably strong stamina. I found that I was able to go through a day of moderate to heavy usage, with 4 hours 40 minutes of screen on time, and be left with 58%.

You could conceivably go through a full two days here, though more intensive applications and mixed network use will, of course, drain that battery much faster.

In an increasingly common move, there's no charger supplied in the box. Honor claims that if you buy the dedicated 35W Honor Wired SuperCharge charger, the phone can power up to 100% in 75 minutes.

In my experience, you don't necessarily need to go out of your way to secure the official brick. While a Xiaomi 120W Hypercharge brick trickled along at a glacial pace, a Samsung 65W Super Fast charger got the job done in just 72 minutes.

As charging rates go, that's not especially quick. The Poco X7, with its 45W charging support, can get its similarly sized battery up to 100% in 50 minutes. The Moto G75 5G only supports 30W charging, but that budget rival also includes wireless charging, which the Honor 400 Lite does not.

  • Battery score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Honor 400 Lite?

Buy it if...

You'd really like a super cheap iPhone
Honor's design and software decisions reflect an admiration for Apple's iPhone and iOS, but the package on offer here is a fraction of the price.

You want manual camera control
The Honor 400 Lite's AI Camera Button offers a handy two-stage camera shutter button, as well as a camera shortcut.

You want a big phone, but not a heavy one
The Honor 400 Lite gives you a big 6.7-inch display, but the phone itself only weighs 171g.

Don't buy it if...

You want to play lots of games
The Honor 400 Lite runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 7025 Ultra processor, which is far from the fastest in this class.

You want a crisp UI
Honor's MagicOS is pretty cluttered and charmless, and a world away from stock Android.

You take a lot of night shots
In the absence of OIS, the Honor 400 Lite is far from the best low-light shooter.

Honor 400 Lite review: also consider

The Honor 400 Lite isn't the only classy affordable phone on the market. Here are some of the better alternatives to consider.

Motorola Moto G75 5G
Motorola's tough little phone is unusually robust, performs better, and has wireless charging, though its LCD screen is inferior.

Read our full Motorola Moto G75 5G review

Poco X7
The Poco X7 leaves the Honor 400 Lite in the dust on performance, has a better camera setup, and gives you stereo sound. We haven't yet reviewed it fully, mind.

How I tested the Honor 400 Lite

  • Review test period = 1 week
  • Testing included = Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, gaming, streaming video, music playback
  • Tools used = Geekbench 6, GFXBench, 3DMark, native Android stats, Samsung 65W power adapter

First reviewed: April 2025

Poco M7 Pro 5G arrives in the UK with a one-week discount
11:01 pm | April 23, 2025
Author: admin | Category: Mobile phones news | Tags: | Comments: Off

Poco originally launched the M7 Pro 5G in some markets back in December, but its rollout has been ongoing since then and today it has finally reached the UK, where it's available straight from Xiaomi's online store. With 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, the normal price is £199, but for the next seven days you can apply a £40 off coupon right on the order page. Thus you'll get the phone for £159. If you want the version with 12GB of RAM, which still has 256GB of storage, that usually goes for £239, but with the aforementioned coupon code applied you'll only pay £199 if you act fast....

The Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 delivers great results with any fruit or veg (though it can’t make me love kale juice)
3:00 pm | April 21, 2025
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Home Juicers & Blenders Small Appliances | Tags: , , | Comments: Off

Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036: one-minute review

The Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 is frankly a joy to use. Easy to assemble, use, and clean, this masticating slow-press juicer provides consistent, excellent results. If you want a juicer with a bunch of bells and whistles, you won't find it here. Instead, this appliance focuses on providing high-performance features, like its auto hopper, non-drip spout, and powerful auger, which reduces the need to pre-cut fruit and veg (though you may need to cut some) and allows for it to be largely automatic – with minimal mess.

You can add large chunks of food to this juicer, which makes prep easy, but the user manual advises removing seeds and peels from foods like oranges, lemons, and melons. After prepping, you simply add your food to the juicer, lock the lid, and turn the knob on the side, ensuring the pulp and juice cups are under their respective spouts. The juicer then uses its power auger to juice your items, pushing the solid fiber and pulp out the side, while its triple filter ensures the juice left is smooth. I found the auger left minimal residue in the feeding cup and it is incredibly satisfying watching the pulp ooze out the side.

Interior of Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

While you can leave the appliance to automatically juice your food, you may need to utilize the pusher accessory to push down some foods – I only needed to do this once, however – or use the knob's Reverse function if any food gets stuck. You also need to watch for when the juicing is completed, as the appliance doesn't automatically turn off when finished and is surprisingly quick due to its 250W motor. In most cases, my juicing was complete in one to two minutes, though tougher foods took up to six.

Control dial on Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 and cleaning brush

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

The overall result every time was smooth juice with minimal pulp, enough to be healthy but not enough to make the juice unpleasant. That powerful auger utilized nearly every element of what it was fed, with the pulp spout churning out mostly solid remains that indicate it squeezed almost every ounce of juice from my foods. Clean-up was equally impressive, with the detachable parts easily hand-washed with only water.

If you're looking for a no-nonsense slow juicer that provides consistently high results, the Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 is a worthy investment.

Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036: price and availability

  • Price: $299.99 / £199.99
  • Available in the UK and US, but not Australia
  • Regular discounts available

The Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 is a premium cold press juicer. Available in the US and UK at $300 / £199.99, respectively, this appliance is pricer than several others on our best juicers list. So, if this is a bit out of your price range, the Amzchef Slow Juicer ZM1501 is a more affordable alternative. However, we regularly see discounts (up to $100) on this product, so it's worth keeping your eyes peeled during sales periods.

While the Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 is pricey, it's worth the investment if you regularly juice, as it offers a high-quality masticating juicer that's easy to use and maintain.

  • Value score: 4.5/5

Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036: specifications

Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036: design

  • Stylish modern design
  • Surprisingly tall, needs unobstructed counter space
  • Powerful auger and auto hopper
  • Triple filter for smooth juice
  • Anti-drip spout

The Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 has a stylish, minimalistic modern design and comes in black or silver. Assembly is straightforward thanks to the handy user manual. You attach the juicing bowl to the power base, followed by the auger, and then the feeding cup, which locks into the bowl with ease. You then add the juice cup under the juice spout on the front and the pulp cup under the pulp spout on the left-hand side. The feeding cup lid has a safety clock, which you can click open and close fairly easily. The juicer won't function if the lock isn't clicked in, as this indicates the top is open, a welcome safety inclusion that should prevent any kitchen disasters.

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Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 auger

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 auger after juicing kale

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

What I like most about this juicer is how seemingly simple its design is and how easy it is to operate. On the right-hand side is just one knob with three options: on, off, and reverse. There's no smart control here, simply turn it on to juice and off when it's done. You need to manually turn it off when the juicing is finished, so an automatic option would be helpful, but this method does give you more control over its operation.

Turning the appliance on is when you see how impressive the design is. The automatic hopper pulls food into the powerful squeezing auger, churning it to extract the juice before using the triple filter to separate the pulp from the juice, satisfyingly spewing the pulp out of its respective spout and holding the remaining juice. The no-drip juice spout means the juice stays put until you've turned the appliance off and you're ready to open it. The juice spews out pretty fast, so I advise opening it slowly to avoid splashback.

Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 brush and pushing tool

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

Cleaning, likewise, is easy. The user manual advises handwashing with (it seems) just water and a cleaning brush is provided for tougher residue. Largely, I only needed the brush for the filter and chutes, with remains in the detachable parts easily washing away under the tap.

It's worth noting, however, that this juicer stands pretty tall when assembled, at 17.2in. Plus, you need to account for opening the lid. So, I had difficulty opening it due to my upper kitchen cabinets and needed to move it to a counter space that wasn't vertically obstructed. This may not be ideal if you have a smaller kitchen.

  • Design score: 5/5

Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036: performance

  • Smooth juice with minimal pulp
  • Discarded pulp is largely solid
  • Only takes a few minutes to juice
  • Consistently good results

The Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036 performs to a high standard and I found it near flawless during my testing. I first tested a green juice, consisting of broccoli florets, ginger, celery, an apple, pear, and parsley. While the apple and pear needed de-seeding as advised in the user manual, and the celery cut into smaller chunks to fit the chute, minimal prep was required and all the ingredients easily fit in the feeding cup.

Green juice and pulp from Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

Within about two minutes of turning the appliance on, 197g of fairly solid pulp had been extracted and I was left with around 375ml of clear juice with minimal foam. Only some small remnants of parsley snuck into the juice, but these weren't overly noticeable or unpleasant. Very little was left in the juicing bowl that wasn't pulped or juiced. I was impressed that – while fairly loud at a max volume of 85.5 decibels – this juicer wasn't

I was particularly impressed with how the appliance juiced 200g of unpeeled carrots. The result, again, was 100ml of crystal clear juice with no foam, which only took one minute. This one minute is fairly loud, with a max decibel reading of 85.5, but wasn't as ear-splitting as some juicers can be.

Carrot juice and pulp from Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

Orange juice, using five large oranges, took a slightly longer six minutes, however. Mainly because I tested whether adding each ingredient one by one results, as Amzchef says in its juicer tips, in a higher yield. I didn't see a noticeable difference, so it's really up to you whether you'd rather juice more efficiently or quickly.

I added the oranges (unadvisedly) with their peels on but cut into wedges. This resulted in a lot of pulp (411g) and roughly 375ml of delicious orange juice, which had some nutritious pulp in it but not enough for it to be an issue.

Pulp and kale juice from Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

Much like with my carrots, my 100g kale test resulted in wonderfully pure kale juice, with just a little foam. Unfortunately, I didn't realize how disgusting kale juice is and this juicer couldn't fix that.

  • Performance score: 5/5

Should you buy the Amzchef Slow Juicer SJ-036?

Buy it if

You want to spend less time on food prep

While some foods need to be cut up for size or their seeds removed, this juicer can handle whole foods with ease, minimizing the need for pre-cutting and prep.

You want a non-nonsense juicer

This appliance may not have the bells and whistles of other juicers, but it does what it's meant to do to a high standard.

You want an easy to maintain and operate juicer

This slow juicer is a breeze to assembly, use, and clean. So, if you want an appliance that's easy to use out of the box, look no further.

Don't buy it if

You've less kitchen space

This is a surprisingly tall juicer and I had trouble opening it when it was placed on a counter under kitchen cabinets. The most optimal space for this is a counter that's unobstructed vertically, so if you're lacking that you may have some difficulty finding a place to use it conveniently.

You're on a budget

This is a premium product, but it also comes with a premium price tag. While regular discounts are available, you can get great slow juicers for less than this. So, if the $300 / £199.99 price tag is out of your budget, there are plenty more options available that provide solid performance.

First reviewed April 2025

The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer turned me into a kitchen BBQ master, but it has some pesky drawbacks
3:00 pm | April 20, 2025
Author: admin | Category: Air Fryers Computers Gadgets Home Small Appliances | Tags: , , | Comments: Off

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: one-minute review

Ninja is a trusted (and arguably the biggest) name in the air fryer market for a reason. Several of the brand's products feature in our best air fryers roundup, thanks to their top-tier performance, but that high quality comes with a premium (sometimes eye-watering) price tag. The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer EG351UK, too, comes with a premium price tag, but one that's somewhat more affordable than its siblings while offering the same top-grade quality we've come to expect from Ninja. If your air fryer budget maxes out at £200 (roughly $250 / AU$450), this just sneaks in there.

It's still not cheap, but for that price you get a top-notch air fryer and indoor grill that offers pretty consistent results across its five cooking functions. The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer makes baking, grilling (even from frozen), air frying, dehydrating, and roasting easy, though you may need to use some trial and error with certain foods and functions to get optimal results.

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer on kitchen counter

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

The included user manual and inspiration booklet are helpful, with notes on nearly any question you may have, but the food guidelines can be a bit optimistic at times. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker but means you should keep a close eye on your food as you get to grips with it, as I had some issues with uneven cooking over overdone foods on the outside with the air fryer function. Thanks to the probe attachment, however, you have several avenues to check when your meat or fish is cooked, giving you some peace of mind.

The issues I had mostly arose with air frying foods and were exacerbated by the 5.7-liter cooking pot's lack of a handle, which made shaking foods like fries and vegetables for even cooking tricky. However, the other cooking functions offered impressive results, delivering perfectly baked muffins, delicious flatbreads and succulent chicken.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer, however, is how much cleaning it requires for maintenance – and how tough it is to keep the appliance and its various attachments (particularly the splatter guard) clean, despite following the included instructions. That's something which could potentially cause further issues with performance over time.

Aside from this, the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer is a solid air fryer for those who regularly grill and air fry their foods, combining the two in one appliance. If you haven't the space for a BBQ, it offers the same delicious results, with considerably less smoke, and is easy to use for seasoned air fryer users and newbies.

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: price and availability

  • Price: £199.99 (roughly $262 / AU$419)
  • This model is available in the UK, but not US or Australia
  • Available from Ninja and third-party retailers

The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer has a premium price tag of £199.99 (roughly $262 / AU$419), meaning it's one of the more affordable options if you have your heart set on a Ninja. It costs slightly less than the Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone Air Fryer and considerably less than the Ninja Double Oven and Ninja Combi Multi-Cooker, so if you're after Ninja quality under the £200 mark, it's a great choice.

While this air fryer is on the pricier side, considering it packs in five cooking functions, including the ability to grill, with solid results, it's worth the price tag for those who plan to utilize its various functions. There's also a two-year guarantee included for those who register with Ninja, giving you extra peace of mind.

You can buy this air fryer from Ninja or third-party retailers like Amazon and Argos, with the latter likely to offer discounts during sales periods like Black Friday. You'll find today's best prices below. Unfortunately, this model isn't currently available in the US or Australia.

  • Value score: 4/5

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: specifications

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: design

  • Modern black and steel-brushed design
  • Thermometer probe for meat
  • High-maintenance cleaning
  • No handle for shaking

The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer comes in a black and steel-brushed finish, with its top opening upward (like most grills) to reveal its 5.7L cooking pot inside. In the box, you get two ceramic-coated plates that slot easily into the cooking pot, a grill plate for grilling foods, and a crisper plate for most other cooking functions. On the front is a digital display, with its cooking functions clearly shown below and sizable buttons to adjust its settings.

Despite its capacity, this air fryer isn't as physically intrusive in my kitchen as others I've reviewed. It still takes up a decent chunk of counter room, making it potentially less suited for smaller kitchens but much easier to home than the Philips 5000 Series Dual Basket Steam Air Fryer, for example.

This air fryer is about the right size for a household of four, depending on what you plan to cook, with plenty of room for veggies and smaller items on the crisper plate and the grill plate easily fitting four chicken breasts or burgers. However, when it comes to larger items, like a whole chicken, for example, you may have some difficulty. While the Ninja website claims the appliance can fit a 1.4kg whole chicken in the cooking pot, the crisping plate is recommended for roasting, but this means the chicken needs to be smaller, about 1kg.

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer with lid open

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

Fortunately, I was able to use the included thermometer probe to check my chicken was definitely cooked. The probe jack connects to the appliance, with the other end inserted into the thickest part of your meat, and allows you to set the meat type you're cooking (and desired doneness for relevant meats).

The appliance then displays your food's internal temperature and desired temperature and tells you when it reaches that temperature. This is usually a few degrees off the actual temperature the meat should be, as the air fryer tells you to rest the meat and counts down the resting time, too. The guidance on this is pretty thorough in the user manual – and on pretty much everything, in fact – and meant my meat always (internally, at least) was cooked to perfection.

Meat probe settings on Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

That thorough user manual also comes with instructions on how to clean the air fryer and its attachments – a pretty high-maintenance affair. Ninja recommends hand washing the plates and splatter guard, understandably, after each use. The company even provides you with a cleaning brush with a scraper to help. While handwashing the cooking pot and crisping plate is pretty painless, I found cleaning the ceramic-coated grill plate and splatter guard a challenge (even with the included brush). Tough residue eventually came off the grill plate's many crevices with some elbow grease and soaking, but despite following the instructions and cleaning the splatter guard after every cook, during my week of testing, more and more grease built up on it.

I thoroughly cleaned it after each cook and even followed the deep cleaning instructions, boiling it in a pot, but that tough grease did not come off, and some had even made its way behind the splatter guard. The instructions mostly focus on cleaning the detachable parts rather than the appliance itself, so I tried wiping it off with a cloth to no avail. The problem is that while the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer is largely smokeless, the tough grease started to cause more smoke, and I could not get it off following the included instructions. Over time, this could become a larger issue. So, for optimal performance, you need to be very thorough in your cleaning of each nook and cranny.

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Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer with new splatter guard

Cleaning the splatter guard is a challenge, and it proved impossible to remove during testing (Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer splatter guard at the end of a week of testing

Despite cleaning after each use, the splatter guard had accumulated a considerable amount of grease after a week of testing (Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Dirt accumulating on splatter guard of Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

Dirt easily builds up in small spaces (Image credit: Vic Hood)

This isn't the only design issue I had with this appliance. In addition to its high-level maintenance, the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer lacks a handle for its cooking pot, making shaking foods more difficult. Many competitors offer a heat-proof handle to grab, so you can easily shake veggies, chips, and other food items, but the Ninja 5-in-1 only has slightly protruding edges on its cooking pot for this, meaning you need to pick up the whole pot and shake it. This is tricky because you need to lift the 5.7L pot and try and shake its contents evenly, but also because those contents are hot. It's an addition that could have made air-frying certain foods much more convenient.

  • Design score: 4/5

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: performance

  • Air frying results are inconsistent
  • Baking, dehydrating, roasting, and grilling are excellent
  • Great recipes in inspiration booklet
  • Quality-of-life features like automatic preheat function

The Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer has five cooking functions: grilling, air frying, baking, dehydrating, and roasting.

The grill feature is by far the highlight, with the included inspiration booklet offering recipes to help you utilize the feature, alongside tips and recipes for marinades, seasonings, and more. To kick off my testing, I tried one of the booklet's kickstarter recipes: barbecue chicken breasts.

The recipe required frozen chicken breasts, with the cooking time set to take about 25 minutes, which I was a bit skeptical about. However, after 25 minutes and several bastings, I had perfectly cooked BBQ chicken fillets that were sticky and smoky on the outside but succulent inside. This doesn't account for the seven-minute preheat time, with the appliance automatically preheating on most functions. If you're in the no-preheat club, have no fear, as there's a button to skip this if you want to.

Chicken cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

Burgers provided the same consistent results, but when the appliance chirped to let me know to flip the burgers halfway through cooking, it didn't give me much time to do so as the time continued to tick on. Frustratingly, this meant the cooking time ended, and the resting timer began, but the burgers weren't done, and I had to reprogram the grill to finish them off as I couldn't easily add on a few extra minutes. To ensure they were cooked, I inserted the probe and set the function to beef and 'medium well', which allowed me to save my food.

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Uncooked burgers in Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Burgers cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

While I usually have a control chicken wing rub I use for tests, I decided to use the Everyday Spice rub laid out in Ninja's booklet. After following the booklet's advice of waiting 30 minutes before grilling and checking the food guidelines, I added my wings to the grill. While I followed the recommended time and temperature Ninja gave for chicken wings, mine came out quite overdone on the outside but perfectly cooked and tasty inside.

Again, when cooking any meats in this appliance, I highly recommend utilizing the probe more than the food time guidelines, as it's a safety net if your food appears to be overdone on the outside, but you don't want to pull it out in case it's not cooked inside.

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Spice mix recipe for Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Cooked chicken inside Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Chicken cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

It's not just meats this grill provides solid results for, either. Following another of Ninja's recipes, I made flatbreads for the first time and cooked them to perfection, each taking only two minutes on the preheated grill.

These high-quality results were pretty consistent across the appliance's functions, as I perfectly dehydrated my leftover flatbread parsley in four hours, baked tasty lemon and blueberry muffins, and roasted my aforementioned harissa chicken with (relative) ease, so it was juicy inside and slightly crispy outside.

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Inside flat bread cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Muffins cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Chicken cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

The only issue I had with the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill & Air Fryer's performance was its air fryer function. I will caveat this by saying a lot of air fryers require some experimentation for optimal results, and food guidelines are helpful but not always 100% accurate. Ninja acknowledges this in a way, noting in its air-frying food guidelines section that its times are a guide, and you need to adjust to your preference, check your food frequently, and shake or toss it. I kept this in mind when testing carrots, courgettes, frozen fries, and fresh fries, and regularly checked on and shook my with some overdone and some underdone. For example, many of my carrots had burnt edges and were almost roasted after roughly 15 minutes, while others were underdone.

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Carrots cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Cooked courgette inside Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Fresh fries cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)
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Frozen fries cooked using Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer

(Image credit: Vic Hood)

Considering this is a premium air fryer, these results were disappointing, especially after the brilliant results of the other functions. Like many air fryers, it may take some trial and error to get optimal results with this function, but if you want an appliance that air fries consistently well off the bat, this may not be the appliance for you.

  • Performance score: 4/5

Should you buy the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer?

Buy it if

You want that BBQ flavor in your kitchen

If you haven't room for a BBQ or simply love indoor grilling, this is a solid option with minimal smoke.

You want an air fryer with various cooking functions

In addition to grilling and air frying, this appliance can bake, roast, and dehydrate to a high standard, allowing you to cook a variety of food types to your liking.

You cook meat and fish regularly

If you regularly cook meat and fish and want to do so in an air fryer, the probe function on this appliance allows you to do so with peace of mind. There's nothing worse than cutting into your food only to find it's underdone inside. The included probe means you can track your food's internal temperature alongside its overall look, ensuring your meat and fish are cooked to perfection inside and out.

You want a Ninja air fryer under £200

Ninja air fryers are premium products, with many of the best costing over £250. With this appliance coming in just shy of £200, you can get that same Ninja quality but for a bit less.

Don't buy it if

You won't keep up with cleaning

This air fryer grill can be tough to clean, but thoroughly cleaning it and its detachable parts after each use is critical. While the included brush makes this a bit easier, the splatter guard and grill plate can prove particularly challenging.

You don't grill (or plan to grill) much

The biggest selling point of this air fryer is its ability to grill, so if you don't plan to utilize that function much, then it's probably not the air fryer for you.

You want an air fryer that works with little hassle

Frustratingly, the air fryer function on this air fryer is where we've had the most issues with uneven cooking. Like most air fryers, the more time you spend cooking food in this appliance, the more you'll get to grips with how to get the most optimal results. However, if you want a simple, consistent air frying function out of the box, this may not be the best choice for you.

Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer: also consider

Not certain that the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer is right for you? Here are two other options you might like to consider.

Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone

If you live outside the UK where the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer isn't available, this is two-drawer air fryer is a great alternative. It looks smart, and produces consistently good results (though we'd appreciate a reminder to shake to food for even cooking).

Read our full Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone review

Ninja Double Stack

If you don't have space for a full-width two-drawer air fryer, the Double Stack is the appliance for you. It's deeper and taller, but much narrower than the Russell Hobbs Satisfry or the Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone, and in our tests it produced evenly browned, crispy fries every time.

Read our full Ninja Double Stack review

How I tested the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer?

I used the Ninja 5-in-1 Grill and Air Fryer for a week, cooking a wide variety of foods including fries, chicken wings, fresh vegetables, and muffins. I tested all the air fryer's various modes and cleaned the air fryer in line with the instructions provided in the manual. For more details, see how we test.

First reviewed March 2025.

I’ve used the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro for over a month, and Apple should be worried about this Android iPad alternative
7:00 pm | April 6, 2025
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Tablets | Tags: , | Comments: Off

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: One-minute review

The new Lenovo Idea Tab Pro could be the best Android alternative to Apple's iPad 10.9 (2022) on the market right now, given its comparable price point

It’s a formidable general use tablet that boasts a number of key upgrades compared to Apple’s slab, namely a larger 12.7” 3K (2944 x 1840) display with a buttery smooth 120Hz refresh rate, which makes everything feel breezy, from scrolling social media feeds to watching videos and movies on the go.

The seriously impressive JBL-tuned speakers can easily go toe to toe with the sound systems of some of the best tablets around. With the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro, you have a formidable media consumption machine that’s a fantastic fit for those times when you just want to kick back with some Netflix or Amazon Prime Video on a convenient tablet screen.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet with stylus showing front screen and back with cameras

(Image credit: Dash Wood / Future)

Equipped with a mid-range MediaTek Dimensity 8300 processor and 8GB of RAM, the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is no slouch when it comes to gaming. Graphically intensive titles like Zenless Zone Zero and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile look great and run smoothly, though the tablet’s heavy weight and large size definitely make it quite an unwieldy choice for those who rely on touch screen controls.

Even considering its larger size, the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is a great pick if you’re looking for a capable tablet to keep yourself or the rest of the family entertained on all fronts.

The Lenovo Tab Pen Plus stylus is included in the box, too, and while it's not quite as accurate as the latest Apple Pencil, it comes pretty close with impressive pressure sensitivity. As a result, this would be a very good tablet for students or beginner artists, though users in the latter category should note that leading drawing apps like Procreate are still exclusive to Apple’s ecosystem.

I had some problems with Android on tablet, including the odd stutter and unoptimized app - though I can't fault Lenovo for a poor Android tablet ecosystem.

That said, Lenovo does have control over its custom Android skin and some decisions may prove divisive. I personally appreciate neat features like the desktop-style PC mode and useful Entertainment Space home screen tab, but an awkward set up process that forced me to fight tooth and nail to avoid installing mountains of pointless bloat makes a poor first impression and is a let down, even at this price.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet with stylus showing front screen and back with cameras

(Image credit: Dash Wood / Future)

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: Price and availability

  • Starts at $349.99 / £379.99
  • Available in the UK, coming soon to the US
  • Lenovo Tab Pen Plus stylus included

The Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is currently available from Lenovo in the UK and starts at £379.99. This price gets you the tablet in its 128GB configuration and the Lenovo Tab Pen Plus, which is included in the box and costs $39.99 / £29.99 as a standalone.

A 256GB model is also available and costs around £400. Outside of Lenovo's direct sales website, the tablet is easy to find at retailers like Amazon, Argos, and Very.

As for the US, the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro isn’t available quite yet. It’s expected to launch in April 2025, with a starting price of $349.99.

  • Value score: 4/5

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: Specs

Here's everything you need to know about what the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is packing under the hood:

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: design and materials

  • Sleek and understated
  • Premium look and feel
  • One color option

The design of the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro isn't the most thrilling, borrowing much of its overall look from its 2023 predecessor the Lenovo Tab P12, but it’s still good on the whole.

Its casing is a smooth metal that is both pleasant to the touch and gives the impression of durability. There are some hefty bezels around the large 12.7in display (about 8mm) but, rather than detracting from the user experience, they serve as a handy place to rest your palms without the risk of accidental inputs.

The back of the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro features an embossed, shiny Lenovo logo in its centre, plus the camera module in the top right hand corner. Next to the camera is a subtle striped pattern that seems purely decorative, and a magnetic area marked with a small stylus symbol. This is where the Lenovo Tab Pen Plus can attach to the tablet thanks to some strong magnets.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet with stylus showing front screen and back with cameras

(Image credit: Dash Wood / Future)

Unfortunately, the stylus is not able to draw power when it’s attached and needs to be charged separately via a USB Type-C cable. Luckily, it has great battery life with more than 150 hours of standby time, so this isn’t something that you’re going to be doing often. I’m not the biggest stylus user, but I still put it through its paces and only needed to charge it once during my testing.

The Lenovo Idea Tab Pro also has a MicroSD card slot (ideal if you want to quickly expand your storage or easily transfer files from a laptop) plus a fingerprint reader on its power key. It’s a very snappy fingerprint reader too, quickly and reliably unlocking the tablet in a single press.

On the bottom of the tablet are three accessory connector pins which allow you to slot it into the aptly named Lenovo keyboard pack for the Idea Tab Pro. This equips it with a tactile IdeaPad style keyboard and touchpad and, thanks to the Luna Grey colorway, wouldn't look at all out of place in an educational or office setting.

At 1.36lbs / 620g this is not the lightest tablet out there, but it definitely feels well built. It’s 6.9mm thick, so still a tiny bit slimmer than the latest iPad, but a little chunkier than the iPad Air.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet with stylus showing front screen and back with cameras

This is the first base model iPad to do away with the Lightning port in favor of USB-C (Image credit: Dash Wood / Future)

Design score: 4/5

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: Display

  • Colorful and smooth display
  • Fantastic for media consumption
  • Not the brightest around

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet with stylus showing front screen and back with cameras

Apple iPad 10.9 (2022) Liquid Retina Display in the Magic Keyboard Folio (Image credit: Dash Wood / Future)

The Lenovo Idea Pad Pro features a 12.7in IPS LCD screen at 2944 x 1840 (3K) resolution. It’s not quite as vibrant as OLED options, but it's still got punchy colors and benefits from a smooth 144Hz refresh rate. This is a huge upgrade compared to the 60Hz panel used on the Lenovo Pad P12 and is instantly noticeable when scrolling websites or social media feeds. The viewing angles are also surprisingly good, making it easy to use the tablet propped up against a stand and even when it’s flat on a table.

I tested the display with a wide range of videos in both 1080p and 2160p and was very happy with the results. The only area where I can fault it is in its brightness. Maxing out at 400 nits, it’s completely fine for indoor use but can start to struggle in bright sunlight. This won’t matter for the vast majority of users, but if you want to read magazines or comic books on a sun lounger then you will probably appreciate something brighter. Given the price and strong performance of the display elsewhere, however, it’s difficult to really complain about this.

The 12.7in size is more than enough for most day-to-day functions and perfect multi-tasking. Lenovo’s OS has some extra buttons specifically for this purpose too, making it easy to split the screen between two separate apps or view an app as a floating window - fantastic if you want to view multiple documents or take notes from a website.

  • Display score: 4/5

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: Software

  • Some handy features
  • Brilliant PC mode
  • Annoying bloat

The software here is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I really enjoy Lenovo’s Android skin. This is, of course, subjective, but I find its user interface approachable and packed with useful features.

The Entertainment Space on the home screen for example, which connects to most of your streaming services to provide an all-encompassing page of recommendations, is something that I actually regularly use and a great way to work out what to watch next.

The PC mode is also brilliant, enhancing multi-tasking with the ability to create multiple distinct windows with your apps on a virtual desktop. The tablet’s USB Type-C port supports DisplayPort too, so you could feasibly hook this up to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor with a compatible dock for an effective workstation in a pinch.

Menus are all snappy and the in-built smart connect app lets you connect the tablet to your PC to quickly share files and even directly control it from your desktop - though your mileage here is going to depend heavily on the strength of your internet connection.

On the other hand, the setup process is, in a word, dire. You have to flip through an entire menu of annoying ‘additional apps’ (that’s a polite way of saying ‘pointless bloat’) and even after thinking that I had managed to dodge every single one, I still somehow ended up with the likes of MyScript Calculator 2, Tide, and Nebo clogging up my home screen.

I don’t even know what ‘Nebo’ is and was in no mood to find out, so I had to spend my first five minutes with the tablet uninstalling everything that I could. It makes for a very poor first impression and feels a little like Lenovo is trying to take advantage of users that don’t know any better.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet with stylus showing front screen and back with cameras

(Image credit: Dash Wood / Future)
  • Software score: 3/5

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: Performance,

  • Really superb speakers
  • Great for media consumption
  • Also a decent choice for gaming

Rather unexpectedly, the absolute highlight of using the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is its unbelievably good speakers.

Seriously, the quad JBL-tuned setup here is genuinely among the best that I have ever heard on a tablet at this price, absolutely obliterating the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE and iPad 10.9 (2022). They can go impressively loud without losing detail and offer a great sound profile that’s punchy without being too heavy on the bass.

Throw in the Dolby Atmos support and you have a sound system that can handle intense action movie moments, catchy TV show theme tunes, or long video podcasts without breaking a sweat. One of my absolute favorite things to do on any tablet is watching music videos and that was a real pleasure here, even without any headphones.

It definitely helps that all types of media look great on the big, bright 3K screen though. The 16:10 aspect ratio also leads to minimal black bars in most scenarios. This is a real streaming powerhouse and, if you’re after a tablet to catch up with your favorite series, it comes highly recommended.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet with stylus showing front screen and back with cameras

(Image credit: Dash Wood / Future)

I put the tablet through its paces with a range of apps, plus plenty of internet browsing, and there was no noticeable slowdown to report. I encountered a few small stutters in the YouTube app when swiping to minimize a video and a handful crashes in the Firefox app, though these seem to be problems with Android itself that I have been able to replicate on other devices, so I won't blame the tablet.

If you’re in the mood for some gaming, then the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is a good choice. Call of Duty: Mobile ran perfectly smoothly, solidly maintaining above 60 fps even after I cranked the settings up to Very High. Paired with a Bluetooth controller, it was a fantastic experience.

The significantly more demanding Zenless Zone Zero ran at a smooth 30 fps on Low. Cranking the frame rate up to 60, the Idea Tab Pro was mostly stable, but the game did cause the tablet to heat up quickly. In more casual games like SimCity BuildIt, performance was flawless throughout.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: Battery

  • Lasts a day and then some
  • Holds charge well between uses
  • Average charging speed

Equipped with a large 10,200 mAh battery, the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro delivers good battery life.

It can easily get through an entire day of use and then some, provided that you’re not running lots of downloads or gaming frequently.

To give you a practical example, I used the tablet to watch an episode of a TV series every evening and I didn't need to charge the tablet the entire week. The Idea Tab Pro also seems to hold its charge well when idle. This is a tablet that you can leave in a bag for a few days and come back to without needing to run for a charger.

On the subject of charging, the tablet supports up to 45W power delivery and took about two hours to get up to full juice from zero. Nothing exceptional in this regard, but fine for the price.

Lenovo Idea Tab Pro: Score card

Should I buy the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro?

Buy it if...

You’re after great sound
I still can’t get over how great the sound is with the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro. The quad JBL-tuned speakers are a delight and a top reason to buy.

You love watching movies
With its lovely 12.7in 3K display, the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is a great fit for movie lovers. Plus the MicroSD card support means you don’t have to worry about running out of space for all your favorite series.

You want a good all-round tablet
This tablet is a great all-rounder. It’s ideal for media consumption thanks to its sound and screen, but also has the specs for productivity and gaming.

Don't buy it if...

You can’t stand the software
Lenovo’s Android skin won’t be for everyone, especially the frustrating set-up process. Consider options from other brands if you don’t think you’ll be a fan.

Also consider

Not sold on the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro? Here are two compelling alternatives to consider.

iPad 10.9 (2022)
Not quite the latest iPad anymore, but widely available for around the same cost as the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro. You get comparable battery life and decent performance, but a smaller, lower resolution screen and worse speakers. The big draw here, however, is the software which is a seamless delight and offers leading apps like Procreate. The camera is much better, too.

Read our full iPad 10.9 (2022) review

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus
If you have a bit of a higher budget, then the superior battery life, not to mention thinner design and wider range of colors, might make the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus a compelling option. The processor here is slightly less powerful than the Mediatek Dimensity 8300, though, so don’t expect better performance.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus review

How I tested the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro

I used the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro tablet as my primary tablet for more than two weeks.

During that time I tried it out with a range of productivity tasks (including the writing of this review!) with apps like Google Docs, Gmail, Slack, and Firefox. I made sure to evaluate the quality of the included stylus using the in-built notes application.

I also relied on it for my entertainment needs, by watching series on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Disney+. On top of this, I watched lots of videos on YouTube and listened to plenty of music in order to really make the most of its excellent speakers.

On top of this, I managed to squeeze in a fair few hours in Call of Duty Mobile, which I played with both touch controls and an Xbox Wireless Controller, plus plenty of time in Zenless Zone Zero.

For battery testing, I ran the tablet from full charge until it ran out of battery over a few sessions - making a note of the length of each session plus the overall start and end time. I also measured the time it took to charge back up to 100% using a 45W charger.

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First reviewed April 2025

I tried Razer’s new $300 / £300 Iskur V2 X gaming chair for over a month and it’s an impressive budget option from the usually pricey brand
3:00 pm |
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Gaming Gaming Accessories | Tags: | Comments: Off

One-minute review

The Razer Iskur V2 X is a lower-cost alternative to the excellent Razer Iskur V2, offering a more limited selection of features at a massively reduced $299.99 / £299.99 price.

It’s easily one of the best gaming chairs and most comfortable gaming chairs under $300 / £300 that I've tested. This costs puts it a little bit above the cost of other budget-friendly seats like the Corsair TC100 Relaxed or AndaSeat Luna, but comfortably below more premium options including the Secretlab Titan Evo and Razer has smartly judged which premium features to lose and which ones to keep.

It’s constructed with robust materials, including a hard-wearing metal base that feels substantially more durable than the usual plastic ones found on cheaper models. It’s well-cushioned too, with a wide, soft seat that feels spacious and gives you plenty of room to shift around and adjust your position.

The backrest features an in-built lumbar support curve that, unlike the adaptive lumbar system of the Razer Iskur V2, is completely static and cannot be adjusted. That said, I wouldn’t actually want to adjust it anyway as I found it offered just the right amount of support out of the box - though your mileage here may vary. The armrests have a more limited 2D motion compared to that more premium seat (that’s vertical plus three rotated positions), which is fair for the price and is topped with a pleasantly squishy foam.

On top of all this, the assembly process is remarkably easy and quick with clear instructions that even a complete newcomer to the world of gaming chairs would be able to follow with ease.

The one area where the Razer Iskur V2 X falls behind is in the lack of upholstery or color options. This chair is only available with a fabric finish, which is going to disappoint those who prefer the look and feel of synthetic leather.

Despite some neon green details, both the black and grey colorways are also quite plain looking - especially compared to the variety of bright colors offered by budget brands like AndaSeat.

The Razer Iskur V2 X in an office.

(Image credit: Future)

Price and availability

  • Costs $299.99 / £299.99
  • Available via Razer
  • Spotty availability in the UK

The Razer Iksur V2 X is available via Razer and costs $299.99 / £299.99. That said, stock seems a little spotty in the UK and, at the time of writing, if you head over to the Razer site in the region you’re greeted with an error message on the Razer Iksur V2 X purchase page.

If you are able to get your hands on it, however, this is a very good price for what you get. It’s less than half the cost of the Razer Iskur V2, which comes in at $649.99 / £599.99. The biggest differences between the two models are the fact that the Iskur V2 X lacks the adjustable lumbar support (with a static curve instead), has 2D armrests rather than 4D ones, and comes in just one upholstery: fabric.

The Razer Iskur V2 also comes bundled with a memory foam headrest, which is sold separately in the case of the Razer Iskur V2 X.

While I do personally slightly prefer using the Razer Iskur V2 X thanks to its enhanced adjustability, these are very reasonable concessions for such a steep price cut. You’re going to struggle to find many chairs more feature-rich than the Razer Iskur V2 X for under $300 / £300.

Specs

Design and aesthetics

  • Simple and effective design
  • Robust materials
  • But only one upholstery option

The Razer Iskur V2 X looks like a slimmed-down version of its more expensive sibling, the Razer Iskur V2. It has that same iconic racing seat silhouette, but a thinner backrest - presumably because it lacks any of the Iskur V2’s complex adjustment mechanisms. The middle portion of the backrest features a subtle hexagonal pattern, which gives it a pleasant tactile feel.

Towards the bottom of the backrest is the integrated lumbar curve, which is designed to follow the natural curvature of your lower back. The curve is very prominent and will likely take a few days to get used to if you haven’t tried an ergonomic chair before, but I found it to be immediately comfortable as someone who’s sat in similar chairs before.

As you look towards the seat’s base, the first thing you will notice is the fact that it's impressively spacious, coming in at 21in / 545mm at its widest point. It’s also a slightly sculpted shape, with a small dip towards the center which helps more effectively distribute your weight.

The seat of the Razer Iskur V2 X.

(Image credit: Future)

The base of the chair is constructed from a durable brushed aluminum, which is reassuringly heavy and a massive upgrade compared to the plastic base found on similarly priced budget options like the AndaSeat Phantom 3.

The Razer Iskur V2 X is available in two colorways, black and light grey. I tested the black model, which features bright green stitching and a rubberized Razer logo just below the point where your head sits. Despite these details, these color choices are very plain, and the one area where some of the competition truly has the Razer Iskur V2 X beat.

In addition to gray and black, the likes of the much cheaper AndaSeat Luna, for example, also come in a more exciting black and blue or black and red. Similarly, the Boulies Master Series, which is just a touch more expensive than the Razer Iskur V2 X, is available in a chill blue or a deep brown. Both of these alternatives could therefore be better choices if you’re looking to color-coordinate your setup.

The headrest of the Razer Iskur V2 X.

(Image credit: Future)

Comfort and adjustability

  • Fabric is layered and high quality
  • Cushions are soft and effective
  • Great lumbar support

There are no areas where I can fault the Razer Iskur V2 X in terms of comfort. This is an extremely comfortable seat, thanks in no small part to its integrated lumbar curve. While most chairs rely on a separate lumbar pillow, which can be fiddly and difficult to position properly, I really appreciate the simplicity of the Razer Iskur V2 X. This is a no-fuss chair that, for me, was great to sit on right out of the box.

The wide base of the seat is also fantastic, with soft foam cushions that are a joy to sink into. Although I usually prefer synthetic leather options, the fabric upholstery here is soft to the touch with multiple breathable layers that effectively stop heat building up even over periods of extended use in an office setting. The backrest reclining mechanism is smooth and reliable, offering up to 152 degrees of positioning for when you just want to kick back and relax.

There are also no problems with the height adjustment, which is controlled by a small lever under the right-hand side of the seat. This lever can also be pulled outwards to enable a seat tilt or pushed back in to lock it flat. The speed of the seat title is adjustable via a large dial on the bottom of the seat.

Finally, the armrests feature a 2D adjustment mechanism. It feels a bit plasticky, but nevertheless appears robust and is very smooth and easy to operate. I also appreciated the slightly soft and rubbery feel of the top of the armrests, which was perfectly comfortable for my elbows.

The armrests of the Razer Iskur V2 X.

(Image credit: Future)

Assembly

I also can’t complain about its simple assembly process. Razer nailed it with the Razer Iskur V2 and has put up a comparably strong showing here.

A large instruction sheet is included in the box with clear diagrams walking you through the entire process, in addition to every tool that you need. This is on top of a pair of gloves (eliminating the chance of picking up small nicks or scratches) plus a large foam sheet to protect your flooring as you build.

The entire process took me about ten minutes and, while I am very experienced in building gaming furniture, I’m confident that even a newcomer would be able to complete it with ease.

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The instructions that come with the Razer Iskur V2 X.

(Image credit: Future)
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Assembling the Razer Iskur V2 X.

(Image credit: Future)

Should I buy the Razer Iskur V2 X?

Buy it if...

You want a quality, cheap chair
The Razer Iskur V2 X is an impressive effort for its price, with a great design and high build quality that puts it far above the competition.

You want minimal adjustments
The static lumbar curve is simple and doesn't require any fiddly adjustments. This makes the Razer Iskur V2 X a good choice for those who just want something they can sit on comfortably out of the box.

Don't buy it if...

You want a more exotic look
With thrilling fabric color options that range from black to… dark grey, you’re better off picking other models if you’re after a specific look or a synthetic leather finish.

You crave more features
What's here is great for the price, but if you pay more you can find chairs with even more features.View Deal

Also consider...

Not completely sold on the Razer Iskur V2 X? These two alternatives might take your fancy instead.

Razer Iskur V2
If you need that added adjustability in the lumbar department, or 4D armrests, then check out the more premium version of this seat. It also boasts both leatherette and fabric options, plus a free head pillow.

For more information, check out our full Razer Iskur V2 review

Corsair TC100 Relaxed
If you want an even more affordable option, the Corsair TC100 Relaxed is a fantastic pick. It’s cheaper than the Razer Iskur V2 X, but still offers top tier comfort.

For more information, check out our full Corsair TC100 Relaxed review

The Razer Iskur V2 X and Razer Iskur V2.

(Image credit: Future)

How I tested the Razer Iskur V2 X

  • Tested for over a month
  • Sat on for hours at a time
  • All adjustments tested

I tested the Razer Iskur V2 X in our London HQ for over a month. During that time I spent hours sitting on the chair, carefully assessing its comfort and trying a range of different seating positions.

I made sure to test all of its adjustment features and often compared my experience with my hands-on testing of other gaming chairs from all across the price spectrum, particularly the Razer Iskur V2. I also compared it directly to various chairs around the office and asked colleagues to try it out for even more opinions on the level of support that it provides.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed March 2025.

After 3 weeks with Samsung’s Galaxy A56, I’m closer than ever to ditching my iPhone for Android
6:55 am | April 3, 2025
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Phones Samsung Galaxy Phones | Tags: , , , | Comments: Off

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: Two-minute review

Mid-range and budget smartphones are growing in popularity as flagship devices increasingly come with heftier price tags. That doesn’t mean the best cheap phones are slower, less durable versions of their high-end counterparts – in fact, they offer unique value to budget-conscious buyers. In this category, the Samsung Galaxy A5X series is perhaps the best example, and the A56 carries on the tradition.

Having launched alongside the A36 and A26, the Galaxy A56 is the most premium of the trio, boasting more RAM and better cameras. That doesn’t mean it’s expensive – far from it as it’s priced at just $499 / £499 / AU$699. The three siblings, however, share key features, like a 120Hz refresh rate, a 5,000mAh battery and an IP67 water- and dust-resistance rating.

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is the ideal smartphone for the average user, offering seriously fantastic showings across its cameras, display, design and battery.

The Galaxy A56 exudes class with its metal and glass design, feeling just as premium in hand and on the eyes, with a finish reminiscent of high-end devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 or the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but at a fraction of the cost.

I received the Awesome Olive model for this review – though I must admit, I had my eyes on the pink variant. Regardless of color choice, the A56’s build quality is undeniable. Improving upon the already impressive Galaxy A55 in every way, Samsung's mid-range marvel is bigger, thinner and lighter.

Featuring a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED panel, its display delivers vibrant colors, deep blacks, and smooth visuals thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate. As someone who values high-quality screens for watching content, I was genuinely impressed.

Samsung Galaxy A56 side buttons, metal frame, and cameras

Every inch of the Galaxy A56 looks and feels premium (Image credit: Future)

This quality continues in its battery life. It sports the same 5,000mAh battery as its predecessor, but that's still an impressive capacity in a budget phone – and my experience backs up Samsung's claim of up to 29 hours of video playback. The Samsung Galaxy A56 has also seen an upgrade from 25W to 45W charging, making top-ups faster and more convenient for most users, with a charging speed now equal to that of the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Both serious and casual photographers will be happy too, as the Galaxy A56 rivals the Motorola Edge 50 Pro for the title of best budget camera phone, though it's still far away from competing with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The setup includes a 50MP main camera, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 5MP macro camera and a 12MP front-facing shooter. Whether you're capturing night shots, macro details or everyday moments, the A56 delivers sharp, well-balanced images with a variety of useful features.

Speaking of useful features, Samsung's famous Galaxy AI isn't present in its budget line of phones. However, the sprinkling of AI features Samsung does provide – like AI photo editing, note-taking, Google Gemini functionality and more – add a tasteful amount of flair without overwhelming users who may not want AI integration.

Fortnite on the Galaxy A56

I played Fortnite on the Galaxy A56 and it struggled (Image credit: Future)

Ironically, the one area in which the A56 isn't up to scratch – even compared to similarly priced phones – is its power. Don't get me wrong: it's still perfectly suited to the average user who wants to call, text, video chat, scroll socials, watch the best streaming services and play games like Clash Royale, but I think it could do with a touch more grunt under the hood. It's simply not the phone to buy if you need power from your handset. When playing Fortnite, for example, gameplay was seriously choppy even at low graphics settings and the minimum 20FPS.

That’s not a deal breaker, though. At its price point, the Samsung Galaxy A56 is a fantastic choice for the cost-conscious user who wants a well-balanced phone that looks and feels premium.

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: price and availability

  • Launch price: $499 / £499 / AU$699
  • Released March 19 in the UK and March 27 in Australia
  • Landing in the US later in 2025

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is one of the best budget phones on the market in terms of value, offering a seriously good experience for a truly wallet-friendly $499 /£499 / AU$699 price, with other phones either performing better at higher price points, or offering lesser experiences at a similar price.

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy A55, which never made it to the US market, Samsung officially confirmed on March 1 that the A56 would debut in the US "later this year", while the A36 and A26 became available on March 28 and 26 respectively.

Australians enjoy the same price on the Samsung Galaxy A56 as they did with its predecessor. However, potential owners in the UK will have to fork out an extra £60 compared to last year, with the A55 releasing for only £439.

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is only available in the 8GB RAM, 256GB storage configuration in the UK, and comes in Awesome Olive, Awesome Graphite, Awesome Lightgrey and Awesome Pink.

Importantly, while Australians only get two color options – olive and graphite – they also get two storage options, with a 128GB model priced at AU$699, and the 256GB model costing AU$799. There is also a 12GB RAM model available in select regions.

The only other comparable phone in terms of price versus performance is the near-flagship Google Pixel 9a, releasing soon at $499 / £499 / AU$849. We haven't reviewed the Pixel 9a yet, but if it continues the success of its predecessor, it makes the A56 harder to recommend in the US and UK given they are the same price.

  • Value score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: specs

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: design

  • 120Hz refresh rate
  • 1,900-nit peak outdoors
  • 6.7-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display

Watching a nature documentary on the Galaxy A56

Watching a nature documentary on the Galaxy A56 is a lovely experience (Image credit: Future)

I already loved the 6.6-inch display on the A55 – it struck a perfect balance between being comfortable to hold and offering an upgraded viewing experience over my 6.1-inch iPhone 15.

Samsung has taken that a step further with the A56, making it even more comfortable in hand while increasing the screen size to 6.7 inches for an even better entertainment experience. Whether I was watching videos, reading, gaming or video calling, the 1080 x 2340 Super AMOLED display provided one of the best viewing experiences I’ve had on a budget smartphone.

Samsung Galaxy A56 home screen outdoors

Peak brightness is fine on the Galaxy A56 home screen, but it could be better (Image credit: Future)

The only noticeable cost-cutting comes in the display’s peak brightness. While I never struggled to see the screen, its 1,200-nit brightness is lower than I’d like to see in 2025 – though it does bump up to 1,900 in direct sunlight. While this improves on the Galaxy A55’s 1,000-nit peak, it falls short of competitors like the Google Pixel 9a (2,700 nits) and the Poco F6 Pro (4,000 nits).

In every other aspect, though, the A56’s display feels truly premium. It’s even protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Invictus, adding durability against scratches and drops. While I didn’t test a full 2m drop onto concrete, a few accidental drops left it completely unscathed.

  • Display score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: design

  • Thinner and lighter than the Galaxy A55
  • Gorilla Glass Invictus
  • IP67 water and dustproof rating

Samsung Galaxy A56 back design

The Samsung Galaxy A56 in the Olive looks quite good even though it's my least favorite color (Image credit: Future)

I loved the Samsung Galaxy A55, particularly its design – a blend of metal and glass that gave it a supremely premium feel at a truly budget price. The A56 improves on that in every way – refining an already impressive formula. I received the Awesome Olive colorway, which was probably my least favorite of the four options, yet I was still thoroughly impressed by how good it looks.

The A56 features a slightly larger 6.7-inch display (up from 6.6 inches) and is about a millimeter taller and wider to accommodate the bigger screen. Bigger may not always be better, but Samsung has offset the increased size with a 1.2mm reduction in thickness and a significant 15g drop in weight – making an exceptional design near perfect.

Or perhaps just perfect. Not only does the metal frame enhance the phone’s premium feel and sturdy build, but Samsung has also added subtle ridges to the frame – something I don’t recall seeing or feeling on the A55 when I reviewed it. The ridges didn’t necessarily improve the grip for me, but they served as a satisfying fidget point when I ran my fingers across them.

Samsung Galaxy A56 back cover and side design ridges

The slightly ridged chassis edges don't necessarily improve grip, but I don't mind it at all (Image credit: Future)

That’s about all the superlatives I can give the A56’s design. It’s everything you want a phone to look and feel like, regardless of its price. It’s also protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, offering excellent resistance against scratches and drops.

As with avoiding the 2m drop test, I didn’t throw the IP67-rated Galaxy A56 in the bath; however, my colleagues and I have spent plenty of time with Gorilla Glass to know how good the durability can be – and I had absolutely no issue the few times I did get the phone wet while doing the dishes and walking in the rain.

Big, beautiful, lightweight, and impressively durable, the A56 is an exceptionally designed piece of technology. The fact that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg makes it all the more impressive.

  • Design score: 5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: software

  • No full Galaxy AI suite, but some “Awesome Intelligence” features are available
  • Six years of software and security support
  • Plenty of UI customizations with new Now Bar feature

Galaxy A56 software

The software package on Samsung's cheaper phones are as good as that on the flagships (Image credit: Future)

From a software perspective, the Samsung Galaxy A56 might be the most impressive budget-focused phone I’ve personally used. And that’s despite my colleagues praising the Google Pixel 8a for bringing Google’s AI tools to a wider audience. That’s not to say the A56 misses out entirely on AI features – it has a smattering of useful ones that won’t overwhelm the average user – but if AI is your top priority, you’ll need to shell out for the Samsung Galaxy S25 or wait for the Pixel 9a.

The AI-powered tools in the A56 aren’t being called Galaxy AI, instead appearing under the branding “Awesome Intelligence”, although similarities abound.

Samsung lays these features out neatly within the Settings menu and includes tools that let you remove objects from photos, capture the perfect group photo and receive AI-powered suggestions for improving images during editing.

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AI image remastering on the Galaxy A56

A screenshot of the Galaxy A56's AI remastering tool (Image credit: Future)
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AI object removal Galaxy A56

Removing objects with the object eraser – see the next image for results (Image credit: Future)
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AI Object removal Galaxy A56

Same image with several objects in the background removed with AI (Image credit: Future)

That's far from it, though. Within the camera app, you can create Custom Filters based on mood and style, quickly edit videos with Auto Trim or even translate real-world text when in foreign lands with Bixby Vision. AI Select provides suggested actions when you highlight something on-screen, Read Aloud will read articles or passages aloud for you, and you even get Google's Circle to Search tool.

That’s about it for AI, but there's plenty more to love about the Galaxy A56's software. For starters, you get an exceptionally clean user experience with minimal pre-installed bloatware.

Customization options are also extensive. On the wallpaper front, there are featured selections, interesting graphic designs and a variety of colors with different personalization options within. You can also set a dynamic lock screen that changes wallpapers every time you unlock the device, with five categories to choose from.

And that’s just the beginning. Once you settle on a wallpaper color, you can customize the system-wide color palette to match – or opt for basic colors instead. If that’s not enough, you can buy a full theme from the Galaxy Themes store to overhaul your device's entire aesthetic.

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Personalisation software within the Galaxy A56

Wallpaper customization options galore! (Image credit: Future)
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Personalisation software within the Galaxy A56

If you don't like the themes on offer, you can spend a little extra cash on purchasing a new one direct from the phone (Image credit: Future)

You can choose between a traditional home screen or one with a separate app drawer, adjust icon sizes, and independently tweak the grid layout for the home screen, app drawer and folders.

One of my favorite additions, though, is the Now Bar. Originally a flagship feature in One UI 7, I was surprised (and delighted) to see it make its way to Samsung’s budget line.

It may seem like a small addition, but it can be an incredibly useful tool. Acting much like Apple’s Dynamic Island, the Now Bar sits at the bottom of the lock screen, working as a media manager that displays your current song or countdown timer, or displaying live notifications for specific apps like Maps, Samsung Health, Clock, Voice Recorder, Samsung Notes and Emergency Sharing.

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Samsung Galaxy A56 Now bar

The new Now Bar feature is nice to have on a budget phone (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 Now bar

Just tap it from the lock screen to open further actions (Image credit: Future)

With flagship-level features and a remarkably clean UI, the Samsung Galaxy A56 delivers an outstanding user experience for a budget phone. It also strikes a perfect balance with AI – offering just enough functionality to be useful for those who want it, while remaining unobtrusive for those who don’t.

And, more than just the cherry on top, especially for penny-pinching buyers, is the fact that the Galaxy A56 will see six years of security support and software updates – letting you enjoy its value for years to come.

  • Software score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: cameras

  • Rear camera trio with 50MP main
  • 12MP front camera
  • Helpful AI tools like Best Face

Unless you have a specific need – like top-tier gaming performance or a battery that can handle marathon sessions – a smartphone’s camera is arguably one of its most important features. From a parent wanting to capture family moments, a hobbyist hiker aiming for the perfect summit selfie, to a serious photographer looking for a reliable backup, any phone worth considering needs to nail its camera. And the Samsung Galaxy A56 does just that.

Simply put, the Galaxy A56 takes some seriously good photos – at any distance.

Its rear camera array includes a 50MP main sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, and a 5MP macro lens. While a higher megapixel count is great, it’s the phone’s image processing that determines the results.

The Galaxy A55 struggled with this: while it produced crisp, well-defined shots, many mid-range and budget phones tend to over-process images, making colors look too saturated and unnatural. The A56 avoids both extremes. While photos come out slightly cooler than I’d prefer, they’re impressively natural, detailed and well balanced.

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Camera samples

Skyscraper with the 50MP main camera (Image credit: Future)
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Camera samples

Capturing the beautiful blue sky (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

A kookaburra sitting with the 12MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

The same kookaburra, captured with 10x zoom (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

Sunny mornings with 1x zoom (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

Same trees in 2x zoom (Image credit: Future)

The camera app includes several modes: Fun (which applies Snapchat-like filters), Portrait, Photo, and Video. It also allows easy toggling between the 12MP and 50MP lenses, quick filter application, aspect-ratio adjustments, and motion-photo settings.

For video, you can enable Super Steady mode to counteract shaky hands or turn it off to adjust frame rates: Space-saving HD at 30fps, Full HD at up to 60p, and Ultra HD at 30fps. Auto Framing keeps subjects centered automatically.

That’s not all – Samsung delivers a feature-rich camera experience on a budget here. Tapping ‘More’ unlocks additional modes, including Pro, Pro Video, Night, Food, Panorama, Macro, Slow Motion, Hyperlapse, Dual Rec, and Single Take.

When it comes to macro and night photography, the A56 is one of the more impressive budget phones I’ve used. Macro shots are often incredibly difficult to get right, especially if your subject isn't still, but I had no issue with the A56. And while taking photos in the middle of the night might not be common practice, the A56 performed impressively in low-light environments – taking clear snaps even with almost zero light present.

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Photos taken using the Galaxy A56's macro lens

The Galaxy A56's macro lens gets good results even when the subject is swaying in the wind or slowly crawling (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

Bluey and Bingo captured in night mode (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

The same photo with night mode turned off (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

The same photo with the (weak) light turned on (Image credit: Future)

The Samsung Galaxy A56 isn’t the best camera phone I’ve ever used, nor is it necessarily the camera phone I've used in this price range – that battle is fought between the Pixel 8a and Motorola Edge 50 Pro – but it continues the A56’s overarching theme: consistent, excellent performance across the board.

  • Camera score: 4/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: performance

  • Performs well under long periods of stress
  • Not built for gaming

Fortnite home page on the Galaxy A56

While Fortnite looks good on the Galaxy A56, the phone struggles with high-intensity tasks (Image credit: Future)

The Samsung Galaxy A56's weakest feature is without a doubt its performance. That’s not to say it’s bad – as I’ve previously mentioned, it’s more than enough for the average user. But to keep prices down, concessions have to be made. For some cheap phones, it's a lower-quality display or increased fragility. In the case of the Galaxy A56 and its Exynos 1580 chipset, it was how it performed under heavier loads – like mobile gaming.

In our Geekbench benchmark tests – which measure the phone's CPU performance in everyday tasks and GPU performance in real-world applications, the A56 performed well – beating the gaming-powered Poco F6 Pro, and only falling a few hundred points short of the Pixel 9.

However, in our two 3DMark benchmarks – Wild Life and Wild Life Extreme – that test the overall graphics performance and how the phone deals with both high performance in short bursts, it didn't look so good.

Its numbers aren't necessarily bad. In fact, it showed a massive improvement over the A55 in both. However, its single and multi-core scores of 1,330 and 3,759 weren't too far ahead of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro (1,132 / 3,076) – which isn't known for its gaming power. The A56 was also thoroughly beaten by the Poco F6 Pro (1,375 / 4733), and both phones can easily be found for around the same price or less.

In terms of sustained performance though, the A56 was impressive. In the Wild Life Extreme Stress Test – a 20-minute benchmark that assesses stability under heavy loads – it scored a top loop of 4,907, a low of 4,649, an impressive 94.9% stability and remained cool temperature-wise. For reference, I've seen the S25 Ultra score higher peaks, but also show less stability in this test, dropping to a loop score of less than 3,000.

As good as some of those numbers look on paper, it was a different experience during real-world use, with the A56 struggling when I played games like Fortnite Mobile – it failed to maintain even 20FPS, frequently stuttering on the lowest graphics settings. For comparison, the similarly priced Poco F6 Pro easily sustains 60FPS at high settings for hours.

Fortnite frames per second on the Galaxy A56

11FPS while playing Fortnite on the Galaxy A56 was the best I could do (Image credit: Future)

That said, these results still mark a significant improvement over the A55, a phone I loved when I tested it last year. The benchmark numbers may not impress, but they don’t take away from the A56’s status as an excellent budget phone for the average user, and I can attest that it holds up really well for the daily duties you’d want from a smartphone.

  • Performance score: 3.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: battery

  • 5,000 mAh battery that easily sees you through the day
  • 45W wired charging

Samsung Galaxy A56 charging

It's not groundbreaking, but the battery life is quite impressive (Image credit: Future)

Keeping in line with its display, design, performance and cameras, the battery of the Samsung Galaxy A56 is perfectly suited to the average user.

My daily testing routine started at 5:30am, with an hour-long podcast while I walked the dog, followed by a quick music-fuelled workout accompanied by music before getting ready for work. Then there was about an hour of scrolling and listening during my commute, before I arrived at the office, where I’d use it for background music via a set of Bluetooth headphones.

Naturally, I needed a phone that could keep up, and the A56’s 5,000mAh battery delivered. Samsung claims the device offers up to 29 hours of video playback, so I put it to the test. Watching a YouTube video at 50% brightness, I picked up the phone 18 hours later to find it still had 39% battery remaining.

As another test, I played The Dark Knight Rises twice back-to-back (totaling 5 hours, 30 minutes) at 50% brightness, and the phone lost just 27% battery. Though these tests were conducted in different environments and with varying starting percentages, the results reinforced one thing: the A56 can go the distance.

For everyday use – texting, calling, video chatting, scrolling social media, checking emails and some light gaming – the A56 is more than up to the task, easily lasting a full day.

As for charging, you won’t get ultra-fast speeds like 120W or even 67W, but the A56 does offer 45W fast charging – an upgrade from the middling 25W speed of the Galaxy A55. That puts the new budget phone on par with itsGalaxy S25 Ultra cousin.

Using a 67W wall charger, the A56 gained:

• 8% in 5 minutes
• Just under 30% in 15 minutes
• A little over 55% in 30 minutes
• A full charge in around 85 minutes

A 5,000mAh battery is far from an astounding inclusion in a specs list in 2025, but it’s still a notable positive. Paired with moderately fast charging, the A56’s battery – like the rest of the phone – is great.

And while 120W or even 67W charging is a helpful addition when you have it, it's far from necessary – and 55% battery in a quick 30-minute charge is plenty if you forget to plug it in overnight on the rare occasion.

  • Battery score: 4/5

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A56?

Buy it if...

You want a large display without spending top dollar

The Samsung Galaxy A56's 6.7-inch display is an expansive screen that improves upon its predecessor, rivals the S25 series, and produces a vibrant and immersive experience.

You want a jack-of-all-trades handset
The A56 excels as an all-around performer, balancing design, display, camera and battery life in a way that caters to a wide range of needs. It handles daily tasks like texting, social media and video calls seamlessly, making it a great choice for anyone looking for a reliable, versatile phone.

You're shopping for value on a budget
If you’re after a phone that offers impressive features without breaking the bank, the A56 is a standout option. With a solid camera, long-lasting battery and smooth performance, it provides excellent value for those seeking a capable device without spending a fortune.

Don't buy it if...

You're a serious mobile gamer
While the A56 can handle light gaming, it’s not built for heavy gaming sessions or more intense games. If you're looking for a phone that can deliver high frame rates and smooth performance in graphically intense games, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

You want the best AI tools
 The A56 offers basic AI features, but if you’re after the cutting-edge AI tools, you’ll need to shell out more for the likes of the Galaxy S25 or the Pixel 9 flagships.

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: also consider

Google Pixel 9a
We loved the Google Pixel 8a, and we're expecting five big upgrades from the Pixel 9a – namely a wealth of AI features alongside possibly the best camera on the market at its price and a 5,100mAh battery. Easily the biggest competitor to the Galaxy A56, if you want AI and cameras, it might be the better choice.

Xiaomi Poco F6 Pro
If you have more of a mobile gaming focus, but still want a phone that offers solid all-round performance and 120W charging, consider the Poco F6 Pro. Its bloatware will be confronting for first-time users, but once you get past that, it's a very good smartphone at this price range.
Read our full Poco F6 Pro review

Apple iPhone 16e
Android devices offer a greater amount of value compared to iPhones, with even older Apple devices still asking for a considerable price. However, the iPhone 16e offers Apple Intelligence, smooth performance and seamless Apple integration at a much more affordable price than the mainline iPhone 16 family.
Read our full Apple iPhone 16e review

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy A56

  • Review test period: 3 weeks
  • Testing included: Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
  • Tools used: Geekbench 6, 3DMark, native Android stats

The Samsung Galaxy A56 was my sole mobile device for the three weeks I spent with it, and I frankly wish I didn't have to return it after my testing period. As my regular daily device, I used it to listen to podcasts, check social media, watch YouTube and text, with some light reading thrown in. Oh, and a whole heap of dog photos.

Of course, I also put the Galaxy A56 through its paces with Geekbench 6 and 3DMark benchmark tests to see how the phone would handle activities that I may not use in my regular daily use, but someone else might. I did these tests several times, in different environments and different battery stages to ensure accurate results.

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This leads me to my gaming tests. It's always nice when you can make playing games part of your job, but I'm far from a mobile gamer. I love Marvel Snap, enjoy a few rounds of Clash Royale and dabble in some Wordle and Connections every now and then, but that's it. As part of my testing, I did play – or attempt to play – more serious mobile games like Fortnite on my Galaxy A56 to see how it would handle the life of a mobile gamer.

Given my experience testing other budget phones, including the Samsung Galaxy A55, I was equipped with the knowledge to make good comparisons with the A56.

Read more about how we test

[First reviewed April 2025]

After 3 weeks with Samsung’s Galaxy A56, I’m closer than ever to ditching my iPhone for Android
6:55 am |
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Phones Samsung Galaxy Phones | Tags: , , , | Comments: Off

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: Two-minute review

Mid-range and budget smartphones are growing in popularity as flagship devices increasingly come with heftier price tags. That doesn’t mean the best cheap phones are slower, less durable versions of their high-end counterparts – in fact, they offer unique value to budget-conscious buyers. In this category, the Samsung Galaxy A5X series is perhaps the best example, and the A56 carries on the tradition.

Having launched alongside the A36 and A26, the Galaxy A56 is the most premium of the trio, boasting more RAM and better cameras. That doesn’t mean it’s expensive – far from it as it’s priced at just $499 / £499 / AU$699. The three siblings, however, share key features, like a 120Hz refresh rate, a 5,000mAh battery and an IP67 water- and dust-resistance rating.

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is the ideal smartphone for the average user, offering seriously fantastic showings across its cameras, display, design and battery.

The Galaxy A56 exudes class with its metal and glass design, feeling just as premium in hand and on the eyes, with a finish reminiscent of high-end devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 or the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but at a fraction of the cost.

I received the Awesome Olive model for this review – though I must admit, I had my eyes on the pink variant. Regardless of color choice, the A56’s build quality is undeniable. Improving upon the already impressive Galaxy A55 in every way, Samsung's mid-range marvel is bigger, thinner and lighter.

Featuring a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED panel, its display delivers vibrant colors, deep blacks, and smooth visuals thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate. As someone who values high-quality screens for watching content, I was genuinely impressed.

Samsung Galaxy A56 side buttons, metal frame, and cameras

Every inch of the Galaxy A56 looks and feels premium (Image credit: Future)

This quality continues in its battery life. It sports the same 5,000mAh battery as its predecessor, but that's still an impressive capacity in a budget phone – and my experience backs up Samsung's claim of up to 29 hours of video playback. The Samsung Galaxy A56 has also seen an upgrade from 25W to 45W charging, making top-ups faster and more convenient for most users, with a charging speed now equal to that of the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Both serious and casual photographers will be happy too, as the Galaxy A56 rivals the Motorola Edge 50 Pro for the title of best budget camera phone, though it's still far away from competing with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The setup includes a 50MP main camera, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 5MP macro camera and a 12MP front-facing shooter. Whether you're capturing night shots, macro details or everyday moments, the A56 delivers sharp, well-balanced images with a variety of useful features.

Speaking of useful features, Samsung's famous Galaxy AI isn't present in its budget line of phones. However, the sprinkling of AI features Samsung does provide – like AI photo editing, note-taking, Google Gemini functionality and more – add a tasteful amount of flair without overwhelming users who may not want AI integration.

Fortnite on the Galaxy A56

I played Fortnite on the Galaxy A56 and it struggled (Image credit: Future)

Ironically, the one area in which the A56 isn't up to scratch – even compared to similarly priced phones – is its power. Don't get me wrong: it's still perfectly suited to the average user who wants to call, text, video chat, scroll socials, watch the best streaming services and play games like Clash Royale, but I think it could do with a touch more grunt under the hood. It's simply not the phone to buy if you need power from your handset. When playing Fortnite, for example, gameplay was seriously choppy even at low graphics settings and the minimum 20FPS.

That’s not a deal breaker, though. At its price point, the Samsung Galaxy A56 is a fantastic choice for the cost-conscious user who wants a well-balanced phone that looks and feels premium.

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: price and availability

  • Launch price: $499 / £499 / AU$699
  • Released March 19 in the UK and March 27 in Australia
  • Landing in the US later in 2025

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is one of the best budget phones on the market in terms of value, offering a seriously good experience for a truly wallet-friendly $499 /£499 / AU$699 price, with other phones either performing better at higher price points, or offering lesser experiences at a similar price.

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy A55, which never made it to the US market, Samsung officially confirmed on March 1 that the A56 would debut in the US "later this year", while the A36 and A26 became available on March 28 and 26 respectively.

Australians enjoy the same price on the Samsung Galaxy A56 as they did with its predecessor. However, potential owners in the UK will have to fork out an extra £60 compared to last year, with the A55 releasing for only £439.

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is only available in the 8GB RAM, 256GB storage configuration in the UK, and comes in Awesome Olive, Awesome Graphite, Awesome Lightgrey and Awesome Pink.

Importantly, while Australians only get two color options – olive and graphite – they also get two storage options, with a 128GB model priced at AU$699, and the 256GB model costing AU$799. There is also a 12GB RAM model available in select regions.

The only other comparable phone in terms of price versus performance is the near-flagship Google Pixel 9a, releasing soon at $499 / £499 / AU$849. We haven't reviewed the Pixel 9a yet, but if it continues the success of its predecessor, it makes the A56 harder to recommend in the US and UK given they are the same price.

  • Value score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: specs

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: design

  • 120Hz refresh rate
  • 1,900-nit peak outdoors
  • 6.7-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display

Watching a nature documentary on the Galaxy A56

Watching a nature documentary on the Galaxy A56 is a lovely experience (Image credit: Future)

I already loved the 6.6-inch display on the A55 – it struck a perfect balance between being comfortable to hold and offering an upgraded viewing experience over my 6.1-inch iPhone 15.

Samsung has taken that a step further with the A56, making it even more comfortable in hand while increasing the screen size to 6.7 inches for an even better entertainment experience. Whether I was watching videos, reading, gaming or video calling, the 1080 x 2340 Super AMOLED display provided one of the best viewing experiences I’ve had on a budget smartphone.

Samsung Galaxy A56 home screen outdoors

Peak brightness is fine on the Galaxy A56 home screen, but it could be better (Image credit: Future)

The only noticeable cost-cutting comes in the display’s peak brightness. While I never struggled to see the screen, its 1,200-nit brightness is lower than I’d like to see in 2025 – though it does bump up to 1,900 in direct sunlight. While this improves on the Galaxy A55’s 1,000-nit peak, it falls short of competitors like the Google Pixel 9a (2,700 nits) and the Poco F6 Pro (4,000 nits).

In every other aspect, though, the A56’s display feels truly premium. It’s even protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Invictus, adding durability against scratches and drops. While I didn’t test a full 2m drop onto concrete, a few accidental drops left it completely unscathed.

  • Display score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: design

  • Thinner and lighter than the Galaxy A55
  • Gorilla Glass Invictus
  • IP67 water and dustproof rating

Samsung Galaxy A56 back design

The Samsung Galaxy A56 in the Olive looks quite good even though it's my least favorite color (Image credit: Future)

I loved the Samsung Galaxy A55, particularly its design – a blend of metal and glass that gave it a supremely premium feel at a truly budget price. The A56 improves on that in every way – refining an already impressive formula. I received the Awesome Olive colorway, which was probably my least favorite of the four options, yet I was still thoroughly impressed by how good it looks.

The A56 features a slightly larger 6.7-inch display (up from 6.6 inches) and is about a millimeter taller and wider to accommodate the bigger screen. Bigger may not always be better, but Samsung has offset the increased size with a 1.2mm reduction in thickness and a significant 15g drop in weight – making an exceptional design near perfect.

Or perhaps just perfect. Not only does the metal frame enhance the phone’s premium feel and sturdy build, but Samsung has also added subtle ridges to the frame – something I don’t recall seeing or feeling on the A55 when I reviewed it. The ridges didn’t necessarily improve the grip for me, but they served as a satisfying fidget point when I ran my fingers across them.

Samsung Galaxy A56 back cover and side design ridges

The slightly ridged chassis edges don't necessarily improve grip, but I don't mind it at all (Image credit: Future)

That’s about all the superlatives I can give the A56’s design. It’s everything you want a phone to look and feel like, regardless of its price. It’s also protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, offering excellent resistance against scratches and drops.

As with avoiding the 2m drop test, I didn’t throw the IP67-rated Galaxy A56 in the bath; however, my colleagues and I have spent plenty of time with Gorilla Glass to know how good the durability can be – and I had absolutely no issue the few times I did get the phone wet while doing the dishes and walking in the rain.

Big, beautiful, lightweight, and impressively durable, the A56 is an exceptionally designed piece of technology. The fact that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg makes it all the more impressive.

  • Design score: 5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: software

  • No full Galaxy AI suite, but some “Awesome Intelligence” features are available
  • Six years of software and security support
  • Plenty of UI customizations with new Now Bar feature

Galaxy A56 software

The software package on Samsung's cheaper phones are as good as that on the flagships (Image credit: Future)

From a software perspective, the Samsung Galaxy A56 might be the most impressive budget-focused phone I’ve personally used. And that’s despite my colleagues praising the Google Pixel 8a for bringing Google’s AI tools to a wider audience. That’s not to say the A56 misses out entirely on AI features – it has a smattering of useful ones that won’t overwhelm the average user – but if AI is your top priority, you’ll need to shell out for the Samsung Galaxy S25 or wait for the Pixel 9a.

The AI-powered tools in the A56 aren’t being called Galaxy AI, instead appearing under the branding “Awesome Intelligence”, although similarities abound.

Samsung lays these features out neatly within the Settings menu and includes tools that let you remove objects from photos, capture the perfect group photo and receive AI-powered suggestions for improving images during editing.

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AI image remastering on the Galaxy A56

A screenshot of the Galaxy A56's AI remastering tool (Image credit: Future)
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AI object removal Galaxy A56

Removing objects with the object eraser – see the next image for results (Image credit: Future)
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AI Object removal Galaxy A56

Same image with several objects in the background removed with AI (Image credit: Future)

That's far from it, though. Within the camera app, you can create Custom Filters based on mood and style, quickly edit videos with Auto Trim or even translate real-world text when in foreign lands with Bixby Vision. AI Select provides suggested actions when you highlight something on-screen, Read Aloud will read articles or passages aloud for you, and you even get Google's Circle to Search tool.

That’s about it for AI, but there's plenty more to love about the Galaxy A56's software. For starters, you get an exceptionally clean user experience with minimal pre-installed bloatware.

Customization options are also extensive. On the wallpaper front, there are featured selections, interesting graphic designs and a variety of colors with different personalization options within. You can also set a dynamic lock screen that changes wallpapers every time you unlock the device, with five categories to choose from.

And that’s just the beginning. Once you settle on a wallpaper color, you can customize the system-wide color palette to match – or opt for basic colors instead. If that’s not enough, you can buy a full theme from the Galaxy Themes store to overhaul your device's entire aesthetic.

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Personalisation software within the Galaxy A56

Wallpaper customization options galore! (Image credit: Future)
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Personalisation software within the Galaxy A56

If you don't like the themes on offer, you can spend a little extra cash on purchasing a new one direct from the phone (Image credit: Future)

You can choose between a traditional home screen or one with a separate app drawer, adjust icon sizes, and independently tweak the grid layout for the home screen, app drawer and folders.

One of my favorite additions, though, is the Now Bar. Originally a flagship feature in One UI 7, I was surprised (and delighted) to see it make its way to Samsung’s budget line.

It may seem like a small addition, but it can be an incredibly useful tool. Acting much like Apple’s Dynamic Island, the Now Bar sits at the bottom of the lock screen, working as a media manager that displays your current song or countdown timer, or displaying live notifications for specific apps like Maps, Samsung Health, Clock, Voice Recorder, Samsung Notes and Emergency Sharing.

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Samsung Galaxy A56 Now bar

The new Now Bar feature is nice to have on a budget phone (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 Now bar

Just tap it from the lock screen to open further actions (Image credit: Future)

With flagship-level features and a remarkably clean UI, the Samsung Galaxy A56 delivers an outstanding user experience for a budget phone. It also strikes a perfect balance with AI – offering just enough functionality to be useful for those who want it, while remaining unobtrusive for those who don’t.

And, more than just the cherry on top, especially for penny-pinching buyers, is the fact that the Galaxy A56 will see six years of security support and software updates – letting you enjoy its value for years to come.

  • Software score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: cameras

  • Rear camera trio with 50MP main
  • 12MP front camera
  • Helpful AI tools like Best Face

Unless you have a specific need – like top-tier gaming performance or a battery that can handle marathon sessions – a smartphone’s camera is arguably one of its most important features. From a parent wanting to capture family moments, a hobbyist hiker aiming for the perfect summit selfie, to a serious photographer looking for a reliable backup, any phone worth considering needs to nail its camera. And the Samsung Galaxy A56 does just that.

Simply put, the Galaxy A56 takes some seriously good photos – at any distance.

Its rear camera array includes a 50MP main sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, and a 5MP macro lens. While a higher megapixel count is great, it’s the phone’s image processing that determines the results.

The Galaxy A55 struggled with this: while it produced crisp, well-defined shots, many mid-range and budget phones tend to over-process images, making colors look too saturated and unnatural. The A56 avoids both extremes. While photos come out slightly cooler than I’d prefer, they’re impressively natural, detailed and well balanced.

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Camera samples

Skyscraper with the 50MP main camera (Image credit: Future)
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Camera samples

Capturing the beautiful blue sky (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

A kookaburra sitting with the 12MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

The same kookaburra, captured with 10x zoom (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

Sunny mornings with 1x zoom (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

Same trees in 2x zoom (Image credit: Future)

The camera app includes several modes: Fun (which applies Snapchat-like filters), Portrait, Photo, and Video. It also allows easy toggling between the 12MP and 50MP lenses, quick filter application, aspect-ratio adjustments, and motion-photo settings.

For video, you can enable Super Steady mode to counteract shaky hands or turn it off to adjust frame rates: Space-saving HD at 30fps, Full HD at up to 60p, and Ultra HD at 30fps. Auto Framing keeps subjects centered automatically.

That’s not all – Samsung delivers a feature-rich camera experience on a budget here. Tapping ‘More’ unlocks additional modes, including Pro, Pro Video, Night, Food, Panorama, Macro, Slow Motion, Hyperlapse, Dual Rec, and Single Take.

When it comes to macro and night photography, the A56 is one of the more impressive budget phones I’ve used. Macro shots are often incredibly difficult to get right, especially if your subject isn't still, but I had no issue with the A56. And while taking photos in the middle of the night might not be common practice, the A56 performed impressively in low-light environments – taking clear snaps even with almost zero light present.

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Photos taken using the Galaxy A56's macro lens

The Galaxy A56's macro lens gets good results even when the subject is swaying in the wind or slowly crawling (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

Bluey and Bingo captured in night mode (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

The same photo with night mode turned off (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

The same photo with the (weak) light turned on (Image credit: Future)

The Samsung Galaxy A56 isn’t the best camera phone I’ve ever used, nor is it necessarily the camera phone I've used in this price range – that battle is fought between the Pixel 8a and Motorola Edge 50 Pro – but it continues the A56’s overarching theme: consistent, excellent performance across the board.

  • Camera score: 4/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: performance

  • Performs well under long periods of stress
  • Not built for gaming

Fortnite home page on the Galaxy A56

While Fortnite looks good on the Galaxy A56, the phone struggles with high-intensity tasks (Image credit: Future)

The Samsung Galaxy A56's weakest feature is without a doubt its performance. That’s not to say it’s bad – as I’ve previously mentioned, it’s more than enough for the average user. But to keep prices down, concessions have to be made. For some cheap phones, it's a lower-quality display or increased fragility. In the case of the Galaxy A56 and its Exynos 1580 chipset, it was how it performed under heavier loads – like mobile gaming.

In our Geekbench benchmark tests – which measure the phone's CPU performance in everyday tasks and GPU performance in real-world applications, the A56 performed well – beating the gaming-powered Poco F6 Pro, and only falling a few hundred points short of the Pixel 9.

However, in our two 3DMark benchmarks – Wild Life and Wild Life Extreme – that test the overall graphics performance and how the phone deals with both high performance in short bursts, it didn't look so good.

Its numbers aren't necessarily bad. In fact, it showed a massive improvement over the A55 in both. However, its single and multi-core scores of 1,330 and 3,759 weren't too far ahead of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro (1,132 / 3,076) – which isn't known for its gaming power. The A56 was also thoroughly beaten by the Poco F6 Pro (1,375 / 4733), and both phones can easily be found for around the same price or less.

In terms of sustained performance though, the A56 was impressive. In the Wild Life Extreme Stress Test – a 20-minute benchmark that assesses stability under heavy loads – it scored a top loop of 4,907, a low of 4,649, an impressive 94.9% stability and remained cool temperature-wise. For reference, I've seen the S25 Ultra score higher peaks, but also show less stability in this test, dropping to a loop score of less than 3,000.

As good as some of those numbers look on paper, it was a different experience during real-world use, with the A56 struggling when I played games like Fortnite Mobile – it failed to maintain even 20FPS, frequently stuttering on the lowest graphics settings. For comparison, the similarly priced Poco F6 Pro easily sustains 60FPS at high settings for hours.

Fortnite frames per second on the Galaxy A56

11FPS while playing Fortnite on the Galaxy A56 was the best I could do (Image credit: Future)

That said, these results still mark a significant improvement over the A55, a phone I loved when I tested it last year. The benchmark numbers may not impress, but they don’t take away from the A56’s status as an excellent budget phone for the average user, and I can attest that it holds up really well for the daily duties you’d want from a smartphone.

  • Performance score: 3.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: battery

  • 5,000 mAh battery that easily sees you through the day
  • 45W wired charging

Samsung Galaxy A56 charging

It's not groundbreaking, but the battery life is quite impressive (Image credit: Future)

Keeping in line with its display, design, performance and cameras, the battery of the Samsung Galaxy A56 is perfectly suited to the average user.

My daily testing routine started at 5:30am, with an hour-long podcast while I walked the dog, followed by a quick music-fuelled workout accompanied by music before getting ready for work. Then there was about an hour of scrolling and listening during my commute, before I arrived at the office, where I’d use it for background music via a set of Bluetooth headphones.

Naturally, I needed a phone that could keep up, and the A56’s 5,000mAh battery delivered. Samsung claims the device offers up to 29 hours of video playback, so I put it to the test. Watching a YouTube video at 50% brightness, I picked up the phone 18 hours later to find it still had 39% battery remaining.

As another test, I played The Dark Knight Rises twice back-to-back (totaling 5 hours, 30 minutes) at 50% brightness, and the phone lost just 27% battery. Though these tests were conducted in different environments and with varying starting percentages, the results reinforced one thing: the A56 can go the distance.

For everyday use – texting, calling, video chatting, scrolling social media, checking emails and some light gaming – the A56 is more than up to the task, easily lasting a full day.

As for charging, you won’t get ultra-fast speeds like 120W or even 67W, but the A56 does offer 45W fast charging – an upgrade from the middling 25W speed of the Galaxy A55. That puts the new budget phone on par with itsGalaxy S25 Ultra cousin.

Using a 67W wall charger, the A56 gained:

• 8% in 5 minutes
• Just under 30% in 15 minutes
• A little over 55% in 30 minutes
• A full charge in around 85 minutes

A 5,000mAh battery is far from an astounding inclusion in a specs list in 2025, but it’s still a notable positive. Paired with moderately fast charging, the A56’s battery – like the rest of the phone – is great.

And while 120W or even 67W charging is a helpful addition when you have it, it's far from necessary – and 55% battery in a quick 30-minute charge is plenty if you forget to plug it in overnight on the rare occasion.

  • Battery score: 4/5

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A56?

Buy it if...

You want a large display without spending top dollar

The Samsung Galaxy A56's 6.7-inch display is an expansive screen that improves upon its predecessor, rivals the S25 series, and produces a vibrant and immersive experience.

You want a jack-of-all-trades handset
The A56 excels as an all-around performer, balancing design, display, camera and battery life in a way that caters to a wide range of needs. It handles daily tasks like texting, social media and video calls seamlessly, making it a great choice for anyone looking for a reliable, versatile phone.

You're shopping for value on a budget
If you’re after a phone that offers impressive features without breaking the bank, the A56 is a standout option. With a solid camera, long-lasting battery and smooth performance, it provides excellent value for those seeking a capable device without spending a fortune.

Don't buy it if...

You're a serious mobile gamer
While the A56 can handle light gaming, it’s not built for heavy gaming sessions or more intense games. If you're looking for a phone that can deliver high frame rates and smooth performance in graphically intense games, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

You want the best AI tools
 The A56 offers basic AI features, but if you’re after the cutting-edge AI tools, you’ll need to shell out more for the likes of the Galaxy S25 or the Pixel 9 flagships.

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: also consider

Google Pixel 9a
We loved the Google Pixel 8a, and we're expecting five big upgrades from the Pixel 9a – namely a wealth of AI features alongside possibly the best camera on the market at its price and a 5,100mAh battery. Easily the biggest competitor to the Galaxy A56, if you want AI and cameras, it might be the better choice.

Xiaomi Poco F6 Pro
If you have more of a mobile gaming focus, but still want a phone that offers solid all-round performance and 120W charging, consider the Poco F6 Pro. Its bloatware will be confronting for first-time users, but once you get past that, it's a very good smartphone at this price range.
Read our full Poco F6 Pro review

Apple iPhone 16e
Android devices offer a greater amount of value compared to iPhones, with even older Apple devices still asking for a considerable price. However, the iPhone 16e offers Apple Intelligence, smooth performance and seamless Apple integration at a much more affordable price than the mainline iPhone 16 family.
Read our full Apple iPhone 16e review

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy A56

  • Review test period: 3 weeks
  • Testing included: Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
  • Tools used: Geekbench 6, 3DMark, native Android stats

The Samsung Galaxy A56 was my sole mobile device for the three weeks I spent with it, and I frankly wish I didn't have to return it after my testing period. As my regular daily device, I used it to listen to podcasts, check social media, watch YouTube and text, with some light reading thrown in. Oh, and a whole heap of dog photos.

Of course, I also put the Galaxy A56 through its paces with Geekbench 6 and 3DMark benchmark tests to see how the phone would handle activities that I may not use in my regular daily use, but someone else might. I did these tests several times, in different environments and different battery stages to ensure accurate results.

Why you can trust TechRadar

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This leads me to my gaming tests. It's always nice when you can make playing games part of your job, but I'm far from a mobile gamer. I love Marvel Snap, enjoy a few rounds of Clash Royale and dabble in some Wordle and Connections every now and then, but that's it. As part of my testing, I did play – or attempt to play – more serious mobile games like Fortnite on my Galaxy A56 to see how it would handle the life of a mobile gamer.

Given my experience testing other budget phones, including the Samsung Galaxy A55, I was equipped with the knowledge to make good comparisons with the A56.

Read more about how we test

[First reviewed April 2025]

After 3 weeks with Samsung’s Galaxy A56, I’m closer than ever to ditching my iPhone for Android
6:55 am |
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Phones Samsung Galaxy Phones | Tags: , , , | Comments: Off

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: Two-minute review

Mid-range and budget smartphones are growing in popularity as flagship devices increasingly come with heftier price tags. That doesn’t mean the best cheap phones are slower, less durable versions of their high-end counterparts – in fact, they offer unique value to budget-conscious buyers. In this category, the Samsung Galaxy A series is perhaps the best example, and the A56 carries on the tradition.

Having launched alongside the A36 and A26, the Galaxy A56 is the most premium of the trio, boasting more RAM and better cameras. That doesn’t mean it’s expensive – far from it as it’s priced at just $499 / £499 / AU$699. The three siblings, however, share key features, like a 120Hz refresh rate, a 5,000mAh battery and an IP67 water- and dust-resistance rating.

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is the ideal smartphone for the average user, offering seriously fantastic showings across its cameras, display, design and battery.

The Galaxy A56 exudes class with its metal and glass design, feeling just as premium in hand and on the eyes, with a finish reminiscent of high-end devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 or the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but at a fraction of the cost.

I received the Awesome Olive model for this review – though I must admit, I had my eyes on the pink variant. Regardless of color choice, the A56’s build quality is undeniable. Improving upon the already impressive Galaxy A55 in every way, Samsung's mid-range marvel is bigger, thinner and lighter.

Featuring a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED panel, its display delivers vibrant colors, deep blacks, and smooth visuals thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate. As someone who values high-quality screens for watching content, I was genuinely impressed.

Samsung Galaxy A56 side buttons, metal frame, and cameras

Every inch of the Galaxy A56 looks and feels premium (Image credit: Future)

This quality continues in its battery life. It sports the same 5,000mAh battery as its predecessor, but that's still an impressive capacity in a budget phone – and my experience backs up Samsung's claim of up to 29 hours of video playback. The Samsung Galaxy A56 has also seen an upgrade from 25W to 45W charging, making top-ups faster and more convenient for most users, with a charging speed now equal to that of the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Both serious and casual photographers will be happy too, as the Galaxy A56 rivals the Motorola Edge 50 Pro for the title of best budget camera phone, though it's still far away from competing with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The setup includes a 50MP main camera, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 5MP macro camera and a 12MP front-facing shooter. Whether you're capturing night shots, macro details or everyday moments, the A56 delivers sharp, well-balanced images with a variety of useful features.

Speaking of useful features, Samsung's famous Galaxy AI isn't present in its budget line of phones. However, the sprinkling of AI features Samsung does provide – like AI photo editing, note-taking, Google Gemini functionality and more – add a tasteful amount of flair without overwhelming users who may not want AI integration.

Fortnite on the Galaxy A56

I played Fortnite on the Galaxy A56 and it struggled (Image credit: Future)

Ironically, the one area in which the A56 isn't up to scratch – even compared to similarly priced phones – is its power. Don't get me wrong: it's still perfectly suited to the average user who wants to call, text, video chat, scroll socials, watch the best streaming services and play games like Clash Royale, but I think it could do with a touch more grunt under the hood. It's simply not the phone to buy if you need power from your handset. When playing Fortnite, for example, gameplay was seriously choppy even at low graphics settings and the minimum 20FPS.

That’s not a deal breaker, though. At its price point, the Samsung Galaxy A56 is a fantastic choice for the cost-conscious user who wants a well-balanced phone that looks and feels premium.

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: price and availability

  • Launch price: $499 / £499 / AU$699
  • Released March 19 in the UK and March 27 in Australia
  • Landing in the US later in 2025

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is one of the best budget phones on the market in terms of value, offering a seriously good experience for a truly wallet-friendly $499 /£499 / AU$699 price, with other phones either performing better at higher price points, or offering lesser experiences at a similar price.

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy A55, which never made it to the US market, Samsung officially confirmed on March 1 that the A56 would debut in the US "later this year", while the A36 and A26 became available on March 28 and 26 respectively.

Australians enjoy the same price on the Samsung Galaxy A56 as they did with its predecessor. However, potential owners in the UK will have to fork out an extra £60 compared to last year, with the A55 releasing for only £439.

The Samsung Galaxy A56 is only available in the 8GB RAM, 256GB storage configuration in the UK, and comes in Awesome Olive, Awesome Graphite, Awesome Lightgrey and Awesome Pink.

Importantly, while Australians only get two color options – olive and graphite – they also get two storage options, with a 128GB model priced at AU$699, and the 256GB model costing AU$799. There is also a 12GB RAM model available in select regions.

The only other comparable phone in terms of price versus performance is the near-flagship Google Pixel 9a, releasing soon at $499 / £499 / AU$849. We haven't reviewed the Pixel 9a yet, but if it continues the success of its predecessor, it makes the A56 harder to recommend in the US and UK given they are the same price.

  • Value score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: specs

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: display

  • 120Hz refresh rate
  • 1,900-nit peak outdoors
  • 6.7-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display

Watching a nature documentary on the Galaxy A56

Watching a nature documentary on the Galaxy A56 is a lovely experience (Image credit: Future)

I already loved the 6.6-inch display on the A55 – it struck a perfect balance between being comfortable to hold and offering an upgraded viewing experience over my 6.1-inch iPhone 15.

Samsung has taken that a step further with the A56, making it even more comfortable in hand while increasing the screen size to 6.7 inches for an even better entertainment experience. Whether I was watching videos, reading, gaming or video calling, the 1080 x 2340 Super AMOLED display provided one of the best viewing experiences I’ve had on a budget smartphone.

Samsung Galaxy A56 home screen outdoors

Peak brightness is fine on the Galaxy A56 home screen, but it could be better (Image credit: Future)

The only noticeable cost-cutting comes in the display’s peak brightness. While I never struggled to see the screen, its 1,200-nit brightness is lower than I’d like to see in 2025 – though it does bump up to 1,900 in direct sunlight. While this improves on the Galaxy A55’s 1,000-nit peak, it falls short of competitors like the Google Pixel 9a (2,700 nits) and the Poco F6 Pro (4,000 nits).

In every other aspect, though, the A56’s display feels truly premium. It’s even protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, adding durability against scratches and drops. While I didn’t test a full 2m drop onto concrete, a few accidental drops left it completely unscathed.

  • Display score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: design

  • Thinner and lighter than the Galaxy A55
  • Gorilla Glass Victus
  • IP67 water and dustproof rating

Samsung Galaxy A56 back design

The Samsung Galaxy A56 in the Olive looks quite good even though it's my least favorite color (Image credit: Future)

I loved the Samsung Galaxy A55, particularly its design – a blend of metal and glass that gave it a supremely premium feel at a truly budget price. The A56 improves on that in every way – refining an already impressive formula. I received the Awesome Olive colorway, which was probably my least favorite of the four options, yet I was still thoroughly impressed by how good it looks.

The A56 features a slightly larger 6.7-inch display (up from 6.6 inches) and is about a millimeter taller and wider to accommodate the bigger screen. Bigger may not always be better, but Samsung has offset the increased size with a 0.8mm reduction in thickness and a significant 15g drop in weight – making an exceptional design near perfect.

Or perhaps just perfect. Not only does the metal frame enhance the phone’s premium feel and sturdy build, but Samsung has also added subtle ridges to the frame – something I don’t recall seeing or feeling on the A55 when I reviewed it. The ridges didn’t necessarily improve the grip for me, but they served as a satisfying fidget point when I ran my fingers across them.

Samsung Galaxy A56 back cover and side design ridges

The slightly ridged chassis edges don't necessarily improve grip, but I don't mind it at all (Image credit: Future)

That’s about all the superlatives I can give the A56’s design. It’s everything you want a phone to look and feel like, regardless of its price. It’s also protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, offering excellent resistance against scratches and drops.

As with avoiding the 2m drop test, I didn’t throw the IP67-rated Galaxy A56 in the bath; however, my colleagues and I have spent plenty of time with Gorilla Glass to know how good the durability can be – and I had absolutely no issue the few times I did get the phone wet while doing the dishes and walking in the rain.

Big, beautiful, lightweight, and impressively durable, the A56 is an exceptionally designed piece of technology. The fact that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg makes it all the more impressive.

  • Design score: 5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: software

  • No full Galaxy AI suite, but some “Awesome Intelligence” features are available
  • Six years of software and security support
  • Plenty of UI customizations with new Now Bar feature

Galaxy A56 software

The software package on Samsung's cheaper phones are as good as that on the flagships (Image credit: Future)

From a software perspective, the Samsung Galaxy A56 might be the most impressive budget-focused phone I’ve personally used. And that’s despite my colleagues praising the Google Pixel 8a for bringing Google’s AI tools to a wider audience. That’s not to say the A56 misses out entirely on AI features – it has a smattering of useful ones that won’t overwhelm the average user – but if AI is your top priority, you’ll need to shell out for the Samsung Galaxy S25 or wait for the Pixel 9a.

The AI-powered tools in the A56 aren’t being called Galaxy AI, instead appearing under the branding “Awesome Intelligence”, although similarities abound.

Samsung lays these features out neatly within the Settings menu and includes tools that let you remove objects from photos, capture the perfect group photo and receive AI-powered suggestions for improving images during editing.

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AI image remastering on the Galaxy A56

A screenshot of the Galaxy A56's AI remastering tool (Image credit: Future)
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AI object removal Galaxy A56

Removing objects with the object eraser – see the next image for results (Image credit: Future)
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AI Object removal Galaxy A56

Same image with several objects in the background removed with AI (Image credit: Future)

That's far from it, though. Within the camera app, you can create Custom Filters based on mood and style, quickly edit videos with Auto Trim or even translate real-world text when in foreign lands with Bixby Vision. AI Select provides suggested actions when you highlight something on-screen, Read Aloud will read articles or passages aloud for you, and you even get Google's Circle to Search tool.

That’s about it for AI, but there's plenty more to love about the Galaxy A56's software. For starters, you get an exceptionally clean user experience with minimal pre-installed bloatware.

Customization options are also extensive. On the wallpaper front, there are featured selections, interesting graphic designs and a variety of colors with different personalization options within. You can also set a dynamic lock screen that changes wallpapers every time you unlock the device, with five categories to choose from.

And that’s just the beginning. Once you settle on a wallpaper color, you can customize the system-wide color palette to match – or opt for basic colors instead. If that’s not enough, you can buy a full theme from the Galaxy Themes store to overhaul your device's entire aesthetic.

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Personalisation software within the Galaxy A56

Wallpaper customization options galore! (Image credit: Future)
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Personalisation software within the Galaxy A56

If you don't like the themes on offer, you can spend a little extra cash on purchasing a new one direct from the phone (Image credit: Future)

You can choose between a traditional home screen or one with a separate app drawer, adjust icon sizes, and independently tweak the grid layout for the home screen, app drawer and folders.

One of my favorite additions, though, is the Now Bar. Originally a flagship feature in One UI 7, I was surprised (and delighted) to see it make its way to Samsung’s budget line.

It may seem like a small addition, but it can be an incredibly useful tool. Acting much like Apple’s Dynamic Island, the Now Bar sits at the bottom of the lock screen, working as a media manager that displays your current song or countdown timer, or displaying live notifications for specific apps like Maps, Samsung Health, Clock, Voice Recorder, Samsung Notes and Emergency Sharing.

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Samsung Galaxy A56 Now bar

The new Now Bar feature is nice to have on a budget phone (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 Now bar

Just tap it from the lock screen to open further actions (Image credit: Future)

With flagship-level features and a remarkably clean UI, the Samsung Galaxy A56 delivers an outstanding user experience for a budget phone. It also strikes a perfect balance with AI – offering just enough functionality to be useful for those who want it, while remaining unobtrusive for those who don’t.

And, more than just the cherry on top, especially for penny-pinching buyers, is the fact that the Galaxy A56 will see six years of security support and software updates – letting you enjoy its value for years to come.

  • Software score: 4.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: cameras

  • Rear camera trio with 50MP main
  • 12MP front camera
  • Helpful AI tools like Best Face

Unless you have a specific need – like top-tier gaming performance or a battery that can handle marathon sessions – a smartphone’s camera is arguably one of its most important features. From a parent wanting to capture family moments, a hobbyist hiker aiming for the perfect summit selfie, to a serious photographer looking for a reliable backup, any phone worth considering needs to nail its camera. And the Samsung Galaxy A56 does just that.

Simply put, the Galaxy A56 takes some seriously good photos – at any distance.

Its rear camera array includes a 50MP main sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, and a 5MP macro lens. While a higher megapixel count is great, it’s the phone’s image processing that determines the results.

The Galaxy A55 struggled with this: while it produced crisp, well-defined shots, many mid-range and budget phones tend to over-process images, making colors look too saturated and unnatural. The A56 avoids both extremes. While photos come out slightly cooler than I’d prefer, they’re impressively natural, detailed and well balanced.

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Camera samples

Skyscraper with the 50MP main camera (Image credit: Future)
Image 2 of 9

Camera samples

Capturing the beautiful blue sky (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

A kookaburra sitting with the 12MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

The same kookaburra, captured with 10x zoom (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

(Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

Sunny mornings with 1x zoom (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 camera samples

Same trees in 2x zoom (Image credit: Future)

The camera app includes several modes: Fun (which applies Snapchat-like filters), Portrait, Photo, and Video. It also allows easy toggling between the 12MP and 50MP lenses, quick filter application, aspect-ratio adjustments, and motion-photo settings.

For video, you can enable Super Steady mode to counteract shaky hands or turn it off to adjust frame rates: Space-saving HD at 30fps, Full HD at up to 60p, and Ultra HD at 30fps. Auto Framing keeps subjects centered automatically.

That’s not all – Samsung delivers a feature-rich camera experience on a budget here. Tapping ‘More’ unlocks additional modes, including Pro, Pro Video, Night, Food, Panorama, Macro, Slow Motion, Hyperlapse, Dual Rec, and Single Take.

When it comes to macro and night photography, the A56 is one of the more impressive budget phones I’ve used. Macro shots are often incredibly difficult to get right, especially if your subject isn't still, but I had no issue with the A56. And while taking photos in the middle of the night might not be common practice, the A56 performed impressively in low-light environments – taking clear snaps even with almost zero light present.

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Photos taken using the Galaxy A56's macro lens

The Galaxy A56's macro lens gets good results even when the subject is swaying in the wind or slowly crawling (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

Bluey and Bingo captured in night mode (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

The same photo with night mode turned off (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy A56 low-light photography

The same photo with the (weak) light turned on (Image credit: Future)

The Samsung Galaxy A56 isn’t the best camera phone I’ve ever used, nor is it necessarily the best camera phone I've used in this price range – that battle is fought between the Pixel 8a and Motorola Edge 50 Pro – but it continues the A56’s overarching theme: consistent, excellent performance across the board.

  • Camera score: 4/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: performance

  • Performs well under long periods of stress
  • Not built for gaming

Fortnite home page on the Galaxy A56

While Fortnite looks good on the Galaxy A56, the phone struggles with high-intensity tasks (Image credit: Future)

The Samsung Galaxy A56's weakest feature is without a doubt its performance. That’s not to say it’s bad – as I’ve previously mentioned, it’s more than enough for the average user. But to keep prices down, concessions have to be made. For some cheap phones, it's a lower-quality display or increased fragility. In the case of the Galaxy A56 and its Exynos 1580 chipset, it was how it performed under heavier loads – like mobile gaming.

In our Geekbench benchmark tests – which measure the phone's CPU performance in everyday tasks and GPU performance in real-world applications, the A56 performed well – beating the gaming-powered Poco F6 Pro, and only falling a few hundred points short of the Pixel 9.

However, in our two 3DMark benchmarks – Wild Life and Wild Life Extreme – that test the overall graphics performance and how the phone deals with both high performance in short bursts, it didn't look so good.

Its numbers aren't necessarily bad. In fact, it showed a massive improvement over the A55 in both. However, its single and multi-core scores of 1,330 and 3,759 weren't too far ahead of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro (1,132 / 3,076) – which isn't known for its gaming power. The A56 was also thoroughly beaten by the Poco F6 Pro (1,375 / 4,733), and both phones can easily be found for around the same price or less.

In terms of sustained performance though, the A56 was impressive. In the Wild Life Extreme Stress Test – a 20-minute benchmark that assesses stability under heavy loads – it scored a top loop of 4,907, a low of 4,649, an impressive 94.9% stability and remained cool temperature-wise. For reference, I've seen the S25 Ultra score higher peaks, but also show less stability in this test, dropping to a loop score of less than 3,000.

As good as some of those numbers look on paper, it was a different experience during real-world use, with the A56 struggling when I played games like Fortnite Mobile – it failed to maintain even 20FPS, frequently stuttering on the lowest graphics settings. For comparison, the similarly priced Poco F6 Pro easily sustains 60fps at high settings for hours.

Fortnite frames per second on the Galaxy A56

11FPS while playing Fortnite on the Galaxy A56 was the best I could do (Image credit: Future)

That said, these results still mark a significant improvement over the A55, a phone I loved when I tested it last year. The benchmark numbers may not impress, but they don’t take away from the A56’s status as an excellent budget phone for the average user, and I can attest that it holds up really well for the daily duties you’d want from a smartphone.

  • Performance score: 3.5/5

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: battery

  • 5,000 mAh battery that easily sees you through the day
  • 45W wired charging

Samsung Galaxy A56 charging

It's not groundbreaking, but the battery life is quite impressive (Image credit: Future)

Keeping in line with its display, design, performance and cameras, the battery of the Samsung Galaxy A56 is perfectly suited to the average user.

My daily testing routine started at 5:30am, with an hour-long podcast while I walked the dog, followed by a quick music-fueled workout accompanied by music before getting ready for work. Then there was about an hour of scrolling and listening during my commute, before I arrived at the office, where I’d use it for background music via a set of Bluetooth headphones.

Naturally, I needed a phone that could keep up, and the A56’s 5,000mAh battery delivered. Samsung claims the device offers up to 29 hours of video playback, so I put it to the test. Watching a YouTube video at 50% brightness, I picked up the phone 18 hours later to find it still had 39% battery remaining.

As another test, I played The Dark Knight Rises twice back-to-back (totaling 5 hours, 30 minutes) at 50% brightness, and the phone lost just 27% battery. Though these tests were conducted in different environments and with varying starting percentages, the results reinforced one thing: the A56 can go the distance.

For everyday use – texting, calling, video chatting, scrolling social media, checking emails and some light gaming – the A56 is more than up to the task, easily lasting a full day.

As for charging, you won’t get ultra-fast speeds like 120W or even 67W, but the A56 does offer 45W fast charging – an upgrade from the middling 25W speed of the Galaxy A55. That puts the new budget phone on par with its Galaxy S25 Ultra cousin.

Using a 67W wall charger, the A56 gained:

• 8% in 5 minutes
• Just under 30% in 15 minutes
• A little over 55% in 30 minutes
• A full charge in around 85 minutes

A 5,000mAh battery is far from an astounding inclusion in a specs list in 2025, but it’s still a notable positive. Paired with moderately fast charging, the A56’s battery – like the rest of the phone – is great.

And while 120W or even 67W charging is a helpful addition when you have it, it's far from necessary – and 55% battery in a quick 30-minute charge is plenty if you forget to plug it in overnight on the rare occasion.

  • Battery score: 4/5

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A56?

Buy it if...

You want a large display without spending top dollar

The Samsung Galaxy A56's 6.7-inch display is an expansive screen that improves upon its predecessor, rivals the S25 series, and produces a vibrant and immersive experience.

You want a jack-of-all-trades handset
The A56 excels as an all-around performer, balancing design, display, camera and battery life in a way that caters to a wide range of needs. It handles daily tasks like texting, social media and video calls seamlessly, making it a great choice for anyone looking for a reliable, versatile phone.

You're shopping for value on a budget
If you’re after a phone that offers impressive features without breaking the bank, the A56 is a standout option. With a solid camera, long-lasting battery and smooth performance, it provides excellent value for those seeking a capable device without spending a fortune.

Don't buy it if...

You're a serious mobile gamer
While the A56 can handle light gaming, it’s not built for heavy gaming sessions or more intense games. If you're looking for a phone that can deliver high frame rates and smooth performance in graphically intense games, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

You want the best AI tools
 The A56 offers basic AI features, but if you’re after the cutting-edge AI tools, you’ll need to shell out more for the likes of the Galaxy S25 or the Pixel 9 flagships.

Samsung Galaxy A56 review: also consider

Google Pixel 9a
We loved the Google Pixel 8a, and we're expecting five big upgrades from the Pixel 9a – namely a wealth of AI features alongside possibly the best camera on the market at its price and a 5,100mAh battery. Easily the biggest competitor to the Galaxy A56, if you want AI and cameras, it might be the better choice.

Xiaomi Poco F6 Pro
If you have more of a mobile gaming focus, but still want a phone that offers solid all-round performance and 120W charging, consider the Poco F6 Pro. Its bloatware will be confronting for first-time users, but once you get past that, it's a very good smartphone at this price range.
Read our full Poco F6 Pro review

Apple iPhone 16e
Android devices offer a greater amount of value compared to iPhones, with even older Apple devices still asking for a considerable price. However, the iPhone 16e offers Apple Intelligence, smooth performance and seamless Apple integration at a much more affordable price than the mainline iPhone 16 family.
Read our full Apple iPhone 16e review

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy A56

  • Review test period: 3 weeks
  • Testing included: Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
  • Tools used: Geekbench 6, 3DMark, native Android stats

The Samsung Galaxy A56 was my sole mobile device for the three weeks I spent with it, and I frankly wish I didn't have to return it after my testing period. As my regular daily device, I used it to listen to podcasts, check social media, watch YouTube and text, with some light reading thrown in. Oh, and a whole heap of dog photos.

Of course, I also put the Galaxy A56 through its paces with Geekbench 6 and 3DMark benchmark tests to see how the phone would handle activities that I may not use in my regular daily use, but someone else might. I did these tests several times, in different environments and different battery stages to ensure accurate results.

Why you can trust TechRadar

☑️ 100s of smartphones reviewed
☑️ 15 years of product testing
☑️ Over 16,000 products reviewed in total
☑️ Nearly 200,000 hours testing tech

This leads me to my gaming tests. It's always nice when you can make playing games part of your job, but I'm far from a mobile gamer. I love Marvel Snap, enjoy a few rounds of Clash Royale and dabble in some Wordle and Connections every now and then, but that's it. As part of my testing, I did play – or attempt to play – more serious mobile games like Fortnite on my Galaxy A56 to see how it would handle the life of a mobile gamer.

Given my experience testing other budget phones, including the Samsung Galaxy A55, I was equipped with the knowledge to make good comparisons with the A56.

Read more about how we test

[First reviewed April 2025]

I usually hate cleaning, but the Roborock F25 Ace wet-dry vacuum made it kind of satisfying
7:35 am | March 31, 2025
Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Home Small Appliances Vacuums | Tags: , , , | Comments: Off

Roborock F25 Ace: Two-minute review

If you’re someone like me whose home features predominantly hard floors, then investing in a wet-dry vacuum cleaner can be a godsend as it drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to clean, while also delivering excellent results.

The Roborock F25 Ace is the second wet-dry vacuum cleaner I’ve personally tested and after using it twice a week for four weeks straight, I’ve retired the previous one I had into storage.

Not only is the F25 Ace ludicrously simple to set up for first-time use, it’s left my floors looking cleaner, and I can’t feel any dust or grit underfoot after a session, something I’ve previously experienced with other such floor washers. It feels especially well built too, and I have every confidence in its reliability for years to come.

The F25 Ace is the range-topping model in Roborock’s latest F25 series of wet-dry vacuums. How many models it sits above depends on where you live. In the US, for example, there are four other models below it and a separate F25 Ace Combo that adds a vacuum cleaner attachment for soft flooring – much like the Tineco Floor One Switch S6 that I’d been using before this. Australia gets just two F25 models, with the Ace sitting just above the standard F25. At the time of writing, this series isn’t available in the UK but I’ve had confirmation it’s “coming soon”.

Roborock F25 Ace vacuum cleaner

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

What does this range-topping model offer over its lower-specced siblings? A more informative display (in comparison to other models, anyway), app connectivity and a few other notable cleaning features, including power-assisted wheels and an automatic detergent dispenser, both of which ultimately provide a more convenient and thorough cleaning experience.

What made my time using the F25 Ace particularly joyful was the fact it can maneuver around corners and furniture with ease thanks to a pivoting cleaning head, and the ability to lie completely flat to help get to hard-to-reach places, like under furniture. This maneuvrability, combined with its excellent cleaning results, make it a strong contender to be one of the best wet-dry vacuum cleaners.

The self-clean cycle is especially effective and, with the right settings activated, quiet too. It was a good job the hot self-clean cycle was effective, as the F25 Ace returned plenty of dirty water following each cleaning run around my home. The amount of dust and debris on my wooden floors was invisible to my eyes, but the Roborock machine was able to pick it all up and then some! Both the clean and dirty water tanks are simple to remove, clean out and refill, and depending on how large your home is you may not need to refill the clean tank after every use. In my case, it held enough water to complete two full cleans and two self-clean cycles.

There is plenty of customization on tap via the app, and you’re able to make just as many adjustments – the amount of water used during cleaning, the amount of detergent released, how thorough of a self-clean you want the machine to perform and more. There’s quite a lot to get your head around and certainly more than I’ve been used to from a vacuum cleaner, but they’re features I certainly appreciated.

At $549.99 / AU$999.99 it’s competitively priced compared to its closest rivals. It is still a decent chunk of cash, however, so I would say only people whose homes are virtually all hard floors should consider buying it. If you have a mixture of hard and soft flooring, then the aforementioned Tineco machine may be better suited to your needs, or two separate, more affordable vacuum cleaners.

Roborock F25 Ace review: Price & availability

  • Available since mid-February in US and late March in Australia; currently not sold in the UK
  • List price $549.99 / AU$999
  • Available directly from Roborock and authorized retailers, including Amazon

The Roborock F25 Ace made its official debut at CES 2025 in January and was available to buy in the US by mid-February. It’s currently enjoying a staggered launch around the world, with Australians able to purchase the appliance since late March 2025. At the time of writing, it’s been confirmed for launch in the UK, but pricing is still to be announced.

The F25 Ace is listed on Roborock’s US store with a list price of $549.99, while in Australia it’s available for AU$999.99. This puts it in the upper mid-range price bracket based on our experience and in direct competition with other wet-dry vacuum cleaners such as the Dyson G1, which costs $699.99 / £599.99 / AU$999, and the Tineco Floor One S7 Pro, which tops our list of the best wet-dry vacuum cleaners and costs $799 / £599 / AU$1,299.99. The latter can regularly be picked up at a discount however, especially during major sales events.

There are several other models within the F25 series depending on where you live. The US store also lists the F25 Alt, which misses out on smart dirt detection, the extra-informative LED display and app connectivity. There is also an F25 Ace Combo for $749.99, which adds a separate stick vacuum cleaner for cleaning carpets and other areas in handheld mode.

Roborock says the filter and roller head should be replaced every 12 months at the latest. A spare filter is supplied, but not a roller. The company has listed pricing for official replacement parts, but third-party options are available, the cost of which depends on where you live. You’ll also need to factor in the cost of replacement bottles of the floor cleaning solution, which you can get from the official Roborock store. The company says you should only use its own solution with the F25 Ace.

  • Value score: 4.5/5

Roborock F25 Ace review: specs

Roborock F25 Ace review: Design

Roborock F25 Ace roller head

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)
  • Lightweight and easy to maneuvre
  • Lie-flat design for hard-to-reach areas
  • LED display is good, but not great

There’s minimal effort required to get the F25 Ace up and running. Once you remove the pieces from the box, all you need to do is clip the handle into the main unit, then snap on the roller head. There are various pieces of protective packaging to remove but, otherwise, that’s all there is to it.

You’ll want to plug the charging dock in and place the machine onto it immediately for two reasons: to make sure there’s power before you use it for the first time, and connect it to the app via your home Wi-Fi network. There aren’t any other attachments included with the F25 Ace, aside from a small brush to help clean the filter and dirty-water tank, a small bottle of cleaning detergent and a spare filter.

Roborock F25 Ace clean-water tank removed

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

The Roborock F25 Ace follows a similar design language to floor washers from other brands, such as our current favorite wet-dry vacuum cleaner, the Tineco Floor One S7 Pro. Both are sleek grey-and-white units with the dirty-water tank on the front and a long, non-adjustable handle with a few control buttons for power, cleaning mode selection and self-cleaning. The S7 Pro does, however, come with a spare roller head, something not included with the F25 Ace.

Where the design of these two machines differs, and what is one of the F25 Ace’s key selling points, is that its clean-water tank is at the base of the machine, placed over the roller head beneath. On the Tineco Switch S7 Pro, the clean water tank is at the rear, which prevents it from tilting too far back.

Having the clean-water tank positioned towards the base of the machine, says Roborock, allows it to have a lower center of gravity, making it easier to move around your home and lay it flat to push under furniture. It also provides added weight to ensure the roller head remains in constant contact with hard floors to help improve its cleaning efficiency.

The dirty-water tank is on the front of the machine, as is the case with similar models from other brands. The capacity remains the same across all models within the F25 series at 720ml (the same as with the Tineco S7 Pro). The clean-water tank maxes out at 740ml, which is less than the S7 Pro’s 850ml capacity. It’s also smaller than other models in the F25 series, which get a larger 870ml water tank. Despite that, I was able to regularly get two full mopping runs from a single fill across a cleaning area of approximately 120 sqm / 1,300 sqft in my apartment.

Where Roborock says the F25 Ace differs from other floor washers is the design of the roller head. It features what the company calls JawScapers – 141 3mm-long comb teeth – positioned behind the roller. Not only is this said to prevent hairs getting tangled, but it also claims to squeeze dirty water out of the roller and into the tank, to prevent water marks appearing on the floor during cleaning sessions.

Roborock F25 Ace LED display

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

The F25 Ace has an LED display that shows you its battery life, the current cleaning mode and a small colored bar to indicate its dynamic performance facilitated by a proprietary DirTect Smart Sensor on the rear of the machine. This sensor detects the amount of dirt in the water it’s mopping to automatically adjust water-flow rate and suction power, while the roller head remains spinning at the same speed. For the majority of my testing, the bar (thankfully) remained blue, indicating my floor was a ‘normal’ level of dirty, although there were the occasional bits that pushed it into the red and nothing was needed on my part – the F25 Ace did what was needed by itself.

The LED display is clear to see, but compared to models from other brands, I found it to be a little uninspiring. It conveys information via icons only, which took me a few uses to wrap my head around. If voice prompts are on, it will tell you what mode you’re in, but there’s no extra information to tell you what each mode means and the user manual isn’t much help. This doesn’t affect the machine’s cleaning prowess, but it does mean the user experience isn’t as good as I’d expected.

The display on the Tineco S7 Pro on the other hand is a lot better at imparting information, using images, words and more colors to tell the user what’s going on. You’re also able to adjust settings better on the S7 Pro thanks to buttons on the handle – something the Roborock doesn’t have and requires you to use the app, which isn’t ideal if you need to tweak a setting on the fly and your phone is in another room.

The Roborock F25 Ace (along with the F25 Alt in the US) benefits from a few proprietary technologies that sets it apart from other models in the F25 series. These include SlideTech 2.0 Automated Wheels to add motorized assistance to reduce the effort it takes to push the F25 Ace around your home.

Roborock F25 Ace detergent dispenser lid

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

You can adjust the level of motorization in the app between Mild, Moderate and Intense. I left this setting on the default Moderate mode and appreciated how the vacuum didn’t want to take me for a walk around my home, as was the case with the Tineco Floor One Switch S6 that I’ve previously reviewed. The Intense setting, however, will pull you along for a ride.

The added motorization makes the machine feel lighter than its 4.7kg weight would suggest. Robrock does say the wheels “intelligently detect the user’s push and pull strength and adjust the power assistance in real time,” but I couldn’t tell if that was actually happening during my testing.

Another feature found on the F25 Ace is an automatic detergent dispenser. The 100ml compartment is next to the clean-water tank, both of which sit within a removable clear plastic unit on the roller head. You’re able to set the ratio of detergent to water to one of three settings within the app, and the appropriate amount of detergent gets automatically sprayed directly onto the roller during a cleaning run. I stuck to the default setting of Daily for the majority of my testing and that was enough to occasionally leave some soap suds on the floor. Another swipe over these areas took care of the remaining suds.

And, a small niggle, but the previous Tineco machine had an auto-stop feature when the handle is returned to its starting position. The Roborock machine doesn’t have this feature, and I found I missed it as it made pausing, cleaning and moving the machine to another room a bit easier.

  • Design score: 4.5/5

Roborock F25 Ace review: Performance

  • Powerful performance leaves floors clean
  • Exclusive features work well
  • Some setting tweaks may be required for best results

The F25 Ace is my first Roborock review, but I have tested similar wet-dry vacuums before. I was already quite impressed by the Tineco Floor One Switch S6’s mopping, cleaning and drying capabilities, and our reviewers have always rated other Roborock machines, like the Roborock Dyad Pro, very well. So my expectations from the F25 Ace were high going into testing and it didn’t disappoint.

Thanks to the aforementioned SlideTech wheels, I found it incredibly easy to move the machine around my home. The cleaning head has a 70º angle of pivot (35º left and right), making tight turns possible.

Roborock F25 Ace lying flat

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

I also found that thanks to its ability to tilt backwards by 180º, cleaning the floor under my dining table, for example, was easier than with other vacuum cleaners and I barely had to move the chairs. Instead I was able to weave the F25 Ace around the chair and table legs with ease with a light push with one hand. Do note that when the machine is totally flat, the cleaning head loses the ability to pivot, but any angle smaller than 180º allows it to remain agile.

Where I found the lay-flat ability most useful was getting underneath my bathroom vanity unit, an area that’s been ignored because no other vacuum or floor washer I’ve tried could get under it.

Similar to when I tested the Tineco Switch S6, I was surprised by just how much dirty water was collected after one run throughout my home. I was also impressed with how much debris was collected, especially as much of it wasn’t clearly visible to my eyes before the cleaning run. The F25 Ace has 20,000Pa suction power, so was evidently able to vacuum even the smallest of particles. Combined with a roller that rotates at up to 450rpm, and gets cleaned by scrapers within its housing unit on each turn, my floors felt much cleaner underfoot once I’d finished a session.

The design of the roller head on the F25 Ace ensures it can get closer to edges. To test this, I poured some milk along the edges of my kitchen cabinets to see how much would be cleaned up. It performed exceptionally well, mopping up the entire spillage in just one run. It wasn’t quite the same story with dry debris, as it did miss a few grains of rice I poured on the floor.

But, for dry spills in the center of the floor, I have zero complaints. I poured generous helpings of rice and coffee beans onto my floor and with one push over either spill with the F25 Ace cleared it up entirely.

Compared to the Tineco machine I’ve previously tested, the Roborock F25 Ace’s default water-rate flow is higher, meaning it uses more water for mopping. This really isn’t an issue as the roller is very effective at mopping, leaving no puddles behind. If the floors remain too wet for your liking, you can reduce the water-flow rate via the app.

That said, if you are going to use the detergent – and Roborock strongly suggests you use only the one it provides or recommends – you might see soap suds not fully disappearing with each swipe. This happened to me on occasion and I had to run the roller head over those areas a couple of times more to ensure no soap scum accumulated on my floors.

Roborock promises that the F25 Ace will leave floors streak-free, but I don’t completely agree with that claim. While my floors were certainly clean after going over them, when I viewed them in the right light, I could see some noticeable streaks where the roller head and wheels had passed over. They’re not so noticeable that it bothered me too much, but it’s not exactly fulfilling the promise.

  • Performance score: 4.5/5

Roborock F25 Ace review: Maintenance

  • Self-clean cycle is effective
  • Time and temperature settings can be adjusted
  • Dirty-water tank will need extra cleaning

Once placed back in the dock after a cleaning session, a voice prompt will instruct you to perform the self-clean cycle, which you activate by pressing a button on the handle or within the app.

Roborock says the whole cycle – cleaning and drying – should take approximately five minutes using a combination of hot water and 90ºC / 194ºF hot air. While that’s more or less true, I found it can be closer to 10 minutes in the Quiet Drying mode.

During self-cleaning, the roller head spins in both directions while it’s blasted with hot water to help remove as much dirt and bacteria as possible, with all dirty water being collected in the tank. You’re able to choose between ‘High’ and ‘Room Temperature’ water settings in the app – naturally, hotter water will be more effective for cleaning. Roborock doesn’t say how hot this water is, but does claim it uses 90ºC / 194ºF hot air as it hits the roller head, which is quite good as many robot vacuums with self-cleaning cycles use 75ºC air for drying.

Roborock F25 Ace JawScrapers

The JawScrapers help remove debris from the roller head during cleaning. (Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

Considering how much dirty water was collected after each run around my home – indicating how dirty the floor was – the roller head looked surprisingly clean. The quality of the roller itself also seems to be very good because, even after several uses. It does have a limited lifespan, though, and you will need to replace it at some point – Roborock recommends changing it once every six to 12 months, depending on your use case.

The washing part of the self-clean cycle is quite noisy. I used a decibel meter app on my phone and recorded a maximum reading of around 75dB. The drying, however, registered a pleasant 55dB that Roborock calls “Quiet Drying”.

Using this drying mode will lengthen the time it takes to complete the self-clean cycle, so you can choose a quicker option. You can track the progress of the self-clean cycle in the app – it was how I realized the drying process took longer when quiet.

Roborock F25 Ace dirty-water tank

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

A voice prompt will inform you once the self-cleaning cycle has finished and instruct you to empty the water tank. Of course, this is only if you can hear the prompt. I had the F25 Ace stored in my laundry room towards the back of my apartment, and with the door closed, I could barely hear them. I would have liked a phone notification too, giving me a greater chance to ensure the dirty-water tank is cleaned out promptly. You can empty the dirty-water tank while the roller head is drying to save on time.

Once the tank had been emptied and debris collected in the filters washed away, I left all the pieces to air dry before returning them to the machine. The majority of debris came off under a tap, but Roborock supplies a long brush to help agitate any particularly stubborn pieces.

I did notice when cleaning the day after mopping up the milk spillage that milky water was being collected in the dirty-water tank, suggesting that the roller head wasn’t completely cleaned during the previous self-clean cycle. It didn’t have any effect on the cleanliness of the floor.

  • Maintenance score: 4.5/5

Roborock F25 Ace review: Software

  • Plenty of customization
  • Remote access when away from home
  • Pop-up notifications would be a nice feature

As I’ve already alluded to, the F25 Ace can connect to an app to open up a good selection of customization options. App connectivity is only possible on the F25 Ace and F25 Alt models, which I think is a shame as I think the other models in this range would also benefit from that extra control.

I was pleasantly surprised that the app gives me remote control over the F25 Ace’s settings when away from home. Not only can you make adjustments, you can also start a self-clean or drying cycle. While I don’t think it will see much use, I think this feature is handy if you’ve had to do an emergency quick clean before running out the door in the morning, letting you start a self-clean cycle while you’re on the road or in the office.

Screenshots of the Roborock app showing cleaning mode and self-clean cycle of the F25 Ace.

(Image credit: Future / Max Langridge)

One feature I found utterly superfluous was the remote control mode. It asks you to lay the F25 Ace flat on the floor (there’s a small wheel in the handle to ensure it remains level), after which you can move it around your home using the remote control buttons on your phone. It doesn’t work well at all during my testing, where the machine either had a significant lag between command and action or didn’t register the button presses at all. While the roller turns when being remote controlled, I didn’t see it doing any cleaning at all.

Then there are the voice prompts that let you know what the machine is doing – when you switch cleaning modes, instructing you to perform a cleaning cycle or to tell you it’s finished. You can change the language of the voice prompts within the app or adjust the volume level. If you want to switch them off, as I did after testing them for this review, you just mute them by moving the volume slider all the way down.

I didn’t find the voice prompts too useful as they were unclear most of the time and, as I mentioned earlier, I would have appreciated additional pop-up notifications on my phone, particularly when the dirty-water tank needed emptying.

  • Software score: 4.5/5

Roborock F25 Ace review: Battery life

  • Good battery life, but may not suffice for larger homes
  • Up to 60 minutes in Eco mode; 40 minutes in Auto
  • Recharge time can take a while

The Roborock F25 Ace has a 4,000mAh battery that the company says is good for up to 60 minutes of use in Eco mode or 40 minutes in Auto mode. However, this is only really relevant for anyone with a particularly large surface area to clean as the machine recharges whenever it’s on the charging dock.

I never had any battery issues when cleaning my apartment with the F25 Ace, which has an approximate total cleaning area of 120 sqm / 1,300 sqft, as I was able to complete a full clean in roughly 10 minutes wherein I used just 15% of battery. For context, Roborock says the 60-minute runtime in Eco mode should be enough to cover a 410 sqm / 4,413 sqft space.

However, when I returned the F25 Ace to the charging dock to self-clean, I noticed the battery level continued to drop by as much as another 10%. I assume the power required to complete the clean uses up more battery than it receives from the dock.

  • Battery life score: 5/5

Should you buy the Roborock F25 Ace review?

Buy it if...

You want an easy, thorough clean

The F25 Ace can be moved around with little effort and its cleaning performance is stellar, leaving you with clean floors in no time at all.

Your home has hard-to-reach areas

Thanks to its ability to lie flat, the Roborock F25 Ace can get into more places than a large number of similar machines, meaning more of your floors will be cleaned.

You like to take control of your appliances

There are numerous customization options with the F25 Ace via the app, covering cleaning and maintenance. You may find the default settings don’t work for you, so you can easily change them.View Deal

Don't buy it if...

Your floors are carpeted

It may seem obvious, but the Roborock F25 Ace only works on hard floors. If your home is predominantly carpet, you’ll want to look at other vacuum cleaner models. View Deal

You have a limited budget

I think the F25 Ace is worth the money, but the fact remains there are cheaper alternatives available, like the Shark HydroVac Cordless, which can also work on low-pile soft floors.View Deal

Roborock F25 Ace review: Also consider

Tineco Floor One Switch Pro 7

Our favorite wet-dry vacuum for a reason, this powerful machine cleans incredibly well, can get up close to edges and has a gorgeous, interactive LED display. It costs more at full price, but can now regularly be picked up at a discount.

Read our full Tineco Floor One Switch Pro 7 reviewView Deal

Shark HyrdoVac Cordless

If your budget is tight, this Shark machine is a great option, especially as it can also be used on low-pile carpets, making it a more versatile proposition.

Read our full Shark HydroVac Cordless reviewView Deal

How I tested the Roborock F25 Ace

I tested this wet-dry vacuum over a period of about a month in my apartment, using it to clean at least twice a week. I experimented with the various settings adjustments within the app to see what effect they had on the overall cleanliness of my floors.

To really test its mopping and vacuuming credentials, I spilled milk and scattered grains such as rice on the floor to see how much was vacuumed up.

I made a note of how well the brush roller head was washed and dried after each cleaning run around my home and assessed how much clean water was left in the tank (and how much dirty water was collected).

This is the first Roborock vacuum cleaner I’ve tested, but I have previously tested the Tineco Floor One Switch S6, which is a similar wet-dry vacuum cleaner, but which also has extra attachments for cleaning carpets and other soft floorings.

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