Samsung Galaxy A51 review: Wait for a price drop

I don’t think that's enough to make the A51 a bad smartphone, but it does make it a bad deal.Samsung’s Galaxy A51 packs a great screen, a handful of cameras, and a big battery -- what more could you ask from a mid-range smartphone? While Samsung got a lot right with the Galaxy A51, it never feels as consistently nice to use as some of truly great devices available in its price range.Samsung Galaxy A51ProcessorOcta-core Exynos 9611RAM/storage4GB + 128GBMicroSD card supportYesMain display6.5-inch Infinity-O Super AMOLED displayDisplay resolution1,080 x 2,400 (20:9)Rear cameras48MP f/2.0 wide camera with, 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera (123° field of view), 5MP f/2.4 macro camera, 5MP f/2.2 depth sensorFront-facing camera32MP f/2.2 cameraOSAndroid 10Battery4,000mAhChargingUSB-C, supports 15W fast chargingDimensions158.5 x 73.6 x 7.9mmWeight172gFingerprint sensorYes, in displayWaterproofingNoneNFCYesHeadphone jackYes5G supportNoThe Galaxy A51 I've been testing is a Verizon Wireless model with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. If you're serious about owning an A51, scouting out a good deal is a must: This isn't worth $400.If there's one thing Samsung deserves credit for, it's that the A51 in no way looks like a $400 phone. But if you're a fan of smooth, consistent performance, be prepared for some disappointment -- stuttering animations and delayed app launches are never too far away, and it gets old pretty quickly.Exactly why the A51 runs the way it does isn't wholly clear, but part of the issue probably lies with Samsung's choice of chipset. It falls somewhere between the $250 Moto G Power (with a Snapdragon 665 chipset) and the $470 Pixel 3 XL (with a Snapdragon 670), which is exactly what you'd expect considering how much these phones cost. That's not awful by any stretch, but when other mid-range phones -- like the Moto G Power -- have battery lives measured in days instead of hours, the A51 can't help but feel a little disappointing.At this point, the one thing that could redeem the A51 is truly excellent camera performance. Most of the time you'll wind up using the 48-megapixel standard wide camera which, like most other phones with pixel-rich sensors, produces smaller 12-megapixel stills by default. Since this camera is mainly meant to capture lots of attractive, well-lit space, it's no surprise that it struggles more than the main camera does in low light.Rather than a telephoto camera (which was almost certainly too expensive for a phone like this), the A51's third sensor is a 5-megapixel affair for macro photos. More than anything, what Samsung really got wrong here (in the US, at least) is the phone's price.