Samsung delivers great flagship phones every year — including our current top Android pick in the Galaxy S23 —?but not everyone wants to spend $800 or more on their next handset. Fortunately, after a brief hiatus, Samsung’s midrange phone series returns with the Galaxy S23 FE: a device that gets you many of the standard S23’s essential features for a more attainable $600 starting price.
The Galaxy S23 FE launches on October 26, and is part of a new affordable lineup that also includes the Galaxy Tab S9 FE and Galaxy Buds FE. Is this the budget phone for you? Here’s what I think after about an hour of early hands-on time.
Samsung's new budget buds look to offer active noise cancellation and a new wingtip design built to stay extra-secure in your ears.
The Galaxy S23 FE is a pared-down version of Samsung's flagship phone that still promises strong performance and good cameras packed into a similarly sleek design.
It’s basically a Galaxy S23 — with some notable concessions
Like previous FE phones, the Galaxy S23 FE looks almost identical to its premium counterpart from a distance. And while the concessions Samsung made to hit a lower cost become obvious once you pick one up, it’s still one of the nicer-looking phones you can get in this price range.
The S23 FE immediately grabbed my attention with its quartet of attractive color options, with mint, purple, cream and graphite hues that mostly mimic what we saw on the more expensive Galaxy Z Flip 5 earlier this year. I’ve come to expect nice hues from any Samsung device — and have long said that every smartphone should come in purple — so I was happy to see that the S23 FE didn’t skimp out on either front.
However, as soon as I got the phone in my hands, I could instantly tell that this wasn’t a full-on flagship. While the S23 FE has the same seamless rear panel (which ditches the distracting camera bump) as its pricier sibling, its glossy glass panel was far more smudge prone than the nice matte finish you get on the standard S23. And while the latest FE phone features an aluminum frame, it felt less substantial — and a bit plasticky — compared to the OG. Fortunately, the FE has the same IP68 rating as the more expensive S23, meaning you shouldn’t have much to worry about if you quickly drop it in the pool.
While the S23 FE’s design is noticeably scaled down, I certainly didn’t feel like I was using a budget phone once I actually fired up some apps. The phone’s 6.4-inch AMOLED display looked nearly as nice as what I remember of the standard S23, with plenty of detail and rich, borderline oversaturated colors that gave plenty of pop to Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse’s dizzyingly bold visuals. I also love that the S23 FE has the same silky 120Hz refresh rate as its more expensive counterparts — this made scrolling through photos and websites feel extra-fluid, and makes the 60Hz screen on the pricier iPhone 15 seem a bit sluggish by comparison.
Samsung’s latest midranger showed plenty of promising performance, allowing me to boost and drift my way through the graphically rich racing action of Asphalt 9 without any noticeable stutters. That smooth speed is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, which we found to deliver excellent overall performance on last year’s Galaxy S22. It’s not as fast as the shiny new Gen 2 chip you’ll find in this year’s flagships, but it should be plenty capable for everyday tasks.
Samsung phones typically deliver some of the best camera experiences you can get on Android, but what do you give up at this price? Well, not a ton — at least on paper. The S23 FE’s trio of camera lenses include the same 50-megapixel wide lens and 12-megapixel ultrawide lens as the standard model, with a less-advanced 8-megapixel telephoto lens that doesn’t have quite the same detailed optical zoom we loved on the regular S23. The flower photos and selfies I snapped looked nice enough at a quick glance, but we’ll have to spend more time with the phone to get a better idea of how they hold up.
Galaxy Buds FE promise good specs and ANC on the cheap
In addition to a more affordable Galaxy S23 and Tab S9, Samsung is also launching its first-ever Galaxy Buds FE on October 10. These wireless earbuds look to offer some of the Galaxy Buds’ best features — including active noise cancellation and seamless connectivity with your Galaxy phone, tablet or laptop — for an attainable $100.
While I didn’t get to go ears-on, the Galaxy Buds FE look nice up close, combining the sleek squared-off case of recent Galaxy Buds models with a chunkier wingtip design reminiscent of the older Galaxy Buds Plus — and even a bit like the excellent Beats Fit Pro. That new look is designed to keep the Buds FE extra-secure in your ears, which could make them a good pair of low-cost gym buds. The earbuds come in basic graphite and white, the latter of which has a nice two-tone case.
The takeaway
The Galaxy S23 FE is shaping up to be a strong $600 smartphone that gets you a lot of the key perks of the standard model for a relatively attainable price. It looks nearly as nice as its more expensive sibling, has a similarly great screen and its processor and cameras should get the job done for most people. We said similar things about the Galaxy S21 FE when we reviewed it nearly two years ago, and we expect the S23 FE to follow suit.
However, the low-cost competition has only gotten better since then. The Google Pixel 7a, our best smartphone pick for folks on a budget, offers truly excellent performance and cameras for just $500, and the still-great Pixel 6a can be found for a fraction of that price during sales. There’s also Samsung’s own Galaxy A54, which also mimics many of the Galaxy S23’s best features (but with a less advanced processor and camera) for as low as $400. The S23 FE needs to be truly great to stand out in this price range, so we’re eager to see how it stacks up in our full review.
