Samsung Galaxy M14 5G review: Heavy-hitter

From big batteries to impressive displays, Samsung’s M series has been a bit of a game-changer. Their new M14 5G carries on the legacy. Design-wise, the phone gets a plastic body which doesn’t feel flimsy, and on the back, there’s a shiny tint which doesn’t attract many fingerprints. The phone comes in three distinct shades: Blue, teal and silver. Remarkably, you get Corning Gorilla Glass 5, not something you would find in this range. On the bottom, you get a speaker, a charging port, a microphone and a 3.5mm jack. The top also sports an additional microphone. The power button also doubles up as a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and you can also use face recognition, which, I’ve to say, works quite well. As is the norm in this price range, don’t expect this phone to be waterproof.

In terms of the display, at the top is a waterdrop notch. The screen itself is better than the competitors. You get a 6.6-inch FHD 90hz PLS LCD, which offers good colour quality with better viewing angles. The phone runs on One UI core edition, which is Samsung’s native OS, based on the latest Android 13. With this phone, Samsung provides two years of Android and four years of security updates. Connectivity won't be an issue, as you get 13 5G bands and 4G VoLTE support. Dual-band Wi-Fi is on offer with Bluetooth 5.2.

The back gets a triple camera setup with a 50MP main sensor and 2MP depth and macro sensors. The front gets a 13MP camera which on the previous model (M13) used to be 9MP. You get several standard camera modes like portrait, pro, and night. Photos and videos come out quite crisp, and the colours are more vibrant than the competition.

But the biggest USP of this phone has to be the 6000mAh battery. The phone will easily last you more than a day despite regular usage with intervals of heavy gaming. If you’re somebody who doesn’t use their phone for gaming, you might even last two full days. And speaking of gaming, you won’t have an issue with this phone as it comes with an Exynos 1330 processor, which allows medium to high-quality gaming with a stable FPS range of 50-60. The overall usage with this phone is seamless and won’t cause you any issues such as lagging.

You get a Type-C to Type-C charging cable in the box, but one issue you might face is the missing charging adaptor. Another downside is that the phone is a bit longer and, with a thickness of 9.4mm, it doesn’t fit naturally in your hand. Tipping the scales at 206gms, it can also feel a bit heavy. The phone supports 25W charging, and with a battery that big, charging also takes time. We recommend getting the official Samsung charger which will cost you around the Rs 1000 mark. Samsung Galaxy M14 5G comes in two variants, one with 4GB and another with 6GB of RAM, both supporting 128GB of storage. Prices can vary, and at the time of posting, you can get the 4GB variant on Amazon for just under Rs 14,000 and the 6GB variant for Rs 15,000.