Samsung Galaxy A27 review
Display
The display on the Galaxy A27 is a bit of a mixed bag and, frankly, still a bit disappointing, given Samsung's prowess in the display department. We were kind of hoping that a new selfie design would bring about a higher-grade panel, but that is unfortunately not the case.
On paper, everything looks pretty good - a 6.7-inch diagonal with FHD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. However, just like last year, the display of choice in the A27 is surprisingly poor when it comes to max brightness output. Looking at the comparison charts and some other models like the A17 and A07 and how they stack up to the only slightly more premium models like the A36 and A37, it almost feels like Samsung is creating some artificial segmentation here. Either that, or we are vastly underestimating how much of a variance there is between different Samsung display panel bin levels.
Auto brightness mode was able to achieve only around 800 nits on a 75% window - that's frankly not enough to be comfortable outdoors in sunlight. It is almost there, which is the really frustrating bit, but just not quite. The absolute maximum we got out of the panel in a 10% window was 1,090 nits.
The minimum light output we measured at 0% brightness at point white was 2.1 nits, which is actually quite okay.
Max display brightness test
White test pattern (nits)
- Manual (75% fill)
- Auto (75% fill)
- Peak Auto (10% fill)
Pixel 9a
Poco X8 Pro
Infinix Note 50 Pro 4G
Galaxy A27
Galaxy A26
Galaxy A17
Galaxy A07 4G
Disappointing brightness aside, the display actually looks quite good in terms of sharpness. It also has snappy OLED pixel response times that make it a joy to use, and of course perfect blacks and technically infinite contrast.
Of course, it would be silly to even discuss HDR video support - there is none. That said, we did notice that playing HDR content on YouTube resulted in the phone raising its brightness a bit.
The Galaxy A27 has a 120Hz refresh rate, but the way it handles refresh rate switching is frankly quite basic and inconsistent. The phone actually only supports two refresh rates - 120Hz and 60Hz. There is no "middle of the line" 90Hz option and no 30Hz either. You can choose between Adaptive and Standard modes in the Display settings menu. The latter just locks the refresh rate to 60Hz while the former, which is also the default, switches to 120Hz while you are interacting with the display and then back down to 60Hz after a few seconds of not touching the panel.
There appears to be no logic in place beyond that. The A27 doesn't appear to be detecting what is going on on the screen in any meaningful way to say, force 60Hz for video playback. The phone does do a fairly good job of detecting a playing game through the Gaming Hub app. This triggers an optional gaming overlay menu with a few options - nothing too fancy, but you do get all of the basics like real-time performance monitoring, notification and call blocking, accidental touch prevention, that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get any of our test games to push past the 60fps mark. It wasn't a performance limitation either, since some of the titles are lightweight, but just capable of high refresh rates. So, unfortunately, high refresh rate gaming on the Galaxy A27 is pretty much a no-go.
On a more positive note, the Galay A27 does have the Google Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing services like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams. The phone even reports video decoder support for HDR10 and HLG (no HDR10+ or Dolby Vision, though), so most HDR sources should still look and play ok.
Battery life
With its 5,000 mAh battery, the Galaxy A27 managed a decent, though not exactly impressive, Active Use Score of 12:40 hours. Beyond the disappointing web browser runtime, all other battery test numbers look solid.
Charging speed
Samsung says that the Galaxy A27 should be able to charge to 45% in 30 minutes. We found ourselves failing to reach that number - possibly due to some software bug, even though we are reviewing a full retail unit here. After a system reset and fiddling with different combinations of chargers and cables, we were finally able to achieve the advertised charging speed of 45% in 30 minutes and even speedier than that.
However, the 88 minutes it took the battery to charge from 1-100% is the slowest charging time we've had on a Galaxy phone in recent memory.
Charging speed
- in 15 min
- in 30 min
- Time to full charge (from 0%)
Infinix Note 50 Pro 4G
Infinix GT 30 Pro
Infinix GT 50 Pro
Galaxy A27
Galaxy A17 5G
CMF Phone 2 Pro
Galaxy A07 4G
In terms of battery protection features, the A27 has the basics covered. You can tell the charger to top off the battery and then wait for it to drop to 95% before starting to charge again. There is also a charge limit that you can set to a percentage of your choice (95%, 90%, 85% or 80%) and limit top-offs that way. There is also an optional automatic sleep charger that tries its best to halt charging at 80% and only top off as you are waking up in the morning.
Speakers - loudness and quality
The Galaxy A27 has a single bottom-firing speaker. Stereo is another extra that you need to go up to the Galaxy A37 to get. The earpiece does play loudspeaker audio as well, but it is extremely quiet compared to the actual speaker, and we aren't quite sure why Samsung even went through the trouble of enabling that.
This year, Samsung seems to have tuned the speaker a bit better, making it slightly louder than the Galaxy A26. Not a lot, so both phones still only get a "GOOD" grade on our standardized scale.
In terms of actual quality, the A27 does a bit better than its predecessor once again, but the quality is still not great. Music tends to sound a bit dull and tinny. At least speech generally comes through pretty well.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
On a more positive note, Samsung does at least ship a few nice quality-of-life extras in the sound department. Most of these, like Dolby Atmos support and the UHQ upscaler, only work with headphones, but you can still make use of the equalizer for the speaker, as well as Adapt sound, which can be used to tune the sound profile for your particular needs (mostly based on age). And Separate app sound is present - a Samsung feature that allows the sound from a specific, user-selected app to be played on a separate device, while the rest of the media sound is played on a Bluetooth speaker.
Connectivity
The Galaxy A27 is a 5G device with simultaneous support for two concurrent SA/NSA Sub-6 network connections. Now, these can either come in the form of two Nano-Sim cards or a single physical Nano-SIM card and an eSIM. The support seems to be either/or. Our unit has two Nano-SIM slots and lacks eSIM support. Make sure to check with your retailer. The second Nano-Sim slot in our unit is a hybrid one - it can house a microSD expansion card instead of a SIM.
Location services include GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS, BDS and QZSS. Local connectivity includes dual-band Wi-Fi ac. There is a Bluetooth 5.1 radio, which is technically a downgrade compared to the Bluetooth 5.3 on the Galaxy A26, but it does have LE and ASHA support. There is NFC on board but there is no 3.5mm audio jack, FM radio receiver or an IR blaster, though.
The Type-C port is backed up by a simple USB 2.0 data connection, which means a theoretical data throughput of up to 480 Mbps. There is USB OTG/Host support, but nothing beyond that, like video output via USB Alt mode.
There is a pretty full set of onboard sensors. There is a TDK-Invensense ICM536XX accelerometer and gyroscope combo, a Haechitech MXGX300 magnetometer and compass combo, a Sensortek STK61A10 light sensor and what is unfortunately a virtual Ear Hover Proximity Sensor (ProToS) instead of a proper hardware one. It does the job well enough for turning off the screen during calls, but can not be accessed from third-party apps. There is no barometer on board.
Reader comments
- Azeem
- 13 Jul 2026
- CJX
Oppo Reno15 F is similarly priced but is much better choice than Galaxy A27 for countless reasons, including the following: 1. More durable IP68 vs. IP64 water / dust resistance 2. 7000 mAh battery vs. 5000 mAh battery 3. 80W charging vs. 25...
- Anonymous
- 12 Jul 2026
- CcC
Avoid budget or mid rangers from the like of Samsung. They are way overpriced. The sad reality is that some countries simply don't have as many versatile options.
- oo Ruly oo
- 10 Jul 2026
- txp
The possiblity is low. It is when someone does have lack information.