The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is a good $600 phone, but you can do even better

The Galaxy S23 has already earned a spot on our best smartphones list as our top Android pick, and while its starting price isn’t as high as some other flagship phones out there, it’s certainly not cheap. That’s where the Galaxy S23 FE comes in.

Samsung has been making Fan Edition versions of its flagship phones for a few years now, and the S23 FE marks the lineup’s return after a hiatus in 2022. The idea is to make the experience as similar as possible to the S23 but shave off a couple hundred bucks to make it even more affordable.

At $600, it’s certainly a compelling package with a good blend of specs and design. But is it worth picking up, or should you just wait for the regular S23 to inevitably dip to the same price? Let’s find out.

What we liked about it

Premium design with a good size

Samsung didn’t reinvent the wheel with the Galaxy S23 FE’s design, and that’s perfectly fine. The design is very similar to that of the regular S23, with its Gorilla Glass 5 back, poppy colors and aluminum sides. The aluminum sticks out a bit more on the S23 FE since Samsung didn’t blend it with the back and front for a seamless seal, but it’s no big deal. It still looks great, and most people will be throwing a case on it anyway.

The sides are home to the power and volume buttons, the bottom houses the USB-C port and loudspeaker and the earpiece works for stereo sound (like most phones). For colors, you’re looking at Mint, Cream, Graphite, Indigo, Tangerine and purple. I got the latter color and … it certainly looks like a color Grimace would be proud to rock. It’s not totally my thing, but if you’re a fan of deep purple, you’ll dig it.

Elsewhere, this looks just like any other member of Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup. Soft corners, flat edges and big camera bumps round out the design, as does the handy IP68 dust- and water-resistance rating. There’s nothing about this design that feels cheap or otherwise compromised by the phone’s lower price tag, and that’s really great to see.

I’d also like to add that the size is a good middle ground. Since the S23 FE is only available in one size, a 6.4-inch screen strikes a good balance between “big enough to watch ?‘Oppenheimer’ on” and “small enough that it doesn’t get annoying to text too quickly.”

One of the best screens on a midranger

Speaking of which, the display on the S23 FE is stupendous. Samsung makes some of the best smartphone screens on the market, and this one doesn’t disappoint.

The 6.4-inch display uses a Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with a 2340 x 1080 resolution that keeps things looking sharp, while the 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling feel super smooth. I also appreciated the 1,450 nits of peak brightness, which meant I could see the display in the bright Ocean City sunshine very easily.

I compared the S23 FE’s screen to the one on my iPhone 15 Pro and Pixel 8 Pro, and it was able to keep up perfectly fine. Colors were vibrant and full of contrast, black levels were inky and brightness held steady. You get all the HDR10+ goodness too, so specialty content you find on YouTube or Netflix will pop.

Related: The Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus gives you a nice big screen for a low price

Solid camera quality for the price

For a $600 phone, you’d think Samsung might knock camera quality down a good portion compared to the regular S23. But alas, the company kept the same main 50MP f/1.8 sensor and 12MP ultrawide (while adding a slightly wider lens) as the regular S23 for flagship-level photos in broad daylight and at night.

The primary lens can kick out decent results, much like the S23. I found exposure and contrast to be no problem for this camera, and it was capable of picking up a fair amount of detail at night. Compared to the iPhone 15 and Pixel 8, Samsung’s camera can’t quite match the same level of detail and clarity, and photos generally look more processed than they do on other phones. Still, it’s easier to forgive the S23 FE’s shortcomings since it’s cheaper than the S23.

The same can be said for the 12MP ultrawide camera. It can’t quite capture the same amount of light or detail as the main camera, but it’s not too shabby. You can get some decent photos in well-lit areas, including sunsets on Lakes Bay in west Atlantic City, NJ.

There’s a third camera sensor on the back of the S23 FE: an 8MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom. This sensor also can’t match the quality of the main lens, but that’s generally not an issue since these are hard to come by on midrange smartphones. You get 3x lossless zoom, thanks to the sensor, as well as 30x hybrid zoom for getting up close. Overall, it’s much farther zoom than you’ll find on other midrangers, so if you’re a sucker for getting up close, you’ll appreciate this camera in particular.

Video quality is generally good enough for quick clips to upload to Instagram, although I wouldn’t recommend shooting your next motion picture with the S23 FE. That being said, you can shoot in 8K at 24 frames per second if you want.

The 10MP selfie camera on the front of the phone is perfectly fine for quick snaps, and it’s wide enough to fit all your friends into the frame.

You’ll be getting software updates for a while

Samsung ships the S23 FE with One UI 5.1 based on Android 13. It doesn’t do anything wildly different from what it does on the regular S23, but that’s perfectly fine. A lot of folks are fans of Samsung’s skin, as am I. It’s snappy and comes with all sorts of features like Edge panels and Routines, helping to automate common tasks when connected to certain Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices.

But the real kicker is the extended software support that Samsung is providing. The S23 FE will receive four years’ worth of major OS upgrades (think, up to Android 17 or 18) and five years of security patches, which is more than most other Android devices in this price range. It’s the same level of support that the high-end Galaxy S23 Ultra and Z Fold 5 are getting, which makes it all the more sweet.

The first major update dropped in late March 2024, when One UI 6.1 hit the Galaxy S23 FE and a handful of other phones. It adds AI features seen in the Galaxy S24 series, such as Circle to Search, which lets you search Google with a mere tap and a doodle. It can also rewrite text messages for different tones, and move and resize objects in images. CNN Underscored’s testing revealed that these options to rewrite responses and edit images delivered unreliable (and often unintentionally comical) results.

Is this as long as Google’s commitment to seven years of software updates for the Pixel 8? No, but at $600, it’s hard to find other smartphones that’ll get three years of upgrades, let alone four.

All-day battery life

Need a phone that’ll reliably last a full day on a charge? The Galaxy S23 FE will give you just that.

During my testing, the 4,500mAh battery could easily get through a full 16-hour day with mixed use. I generally listen to a lot of Spotify over Bluetooth, take a few photos and manage my inbox during the day, and this phone was more than enough for that without conking out early. I will admit, the battery drained a bit faster when I started pushing it while gaming or watching a lot of HDR content, but for the average user, this phone can easily last all day with about 20% left at bedtime.

In our lab test where we loop a 4K video at 50% brightness with airplane mode on until it dies, the phone lasted about 15 hours and 30 minutes, which is on the longer side of the spectrum. It doesn’t quite keep up with the Galaxy S23+, which lasted over 20 hours, but it surpasses other flagship smartphones like the Pixel 8, which didn’t last more than 12 hours.

You’ve got 25W wired charging to juice back up when needed, as well as wireless charging. While I would’ve liked to see slightly faster wired charging, it’s fast enough that you can recharge from zero to 50% in about a half hour.

What we didn’t like about it

Performance can be spotty despite a powerful chip

In North America, Samsung includes the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor in the Galaxy S23 FE. This is the same chipset found in the Galaxy S22 from last year, along with dozens of other Android phones from 2022. And while it’s still a speedy chipset by today’s standards, it isn’t very consistent in the S23 FE.

Whether it’s the chip or the S23 FE itself, this may be the slowest phone I’ve used with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. That’s not to say the phone did poorly on benchmark tests, but the real-world performance can be extremely hit-or-miss for no conceivable reason.

Navigating the UI, scrolling social media or playing intense games could be enough to get this phone to start choking. Why? I have no idea. It’s not like I have a billion things running at the same time, nor is the phone particularly limited in terms of RAM or storage capacity (8GB and 128GB, respectively).

I ran some benchmark tests in Geekbench 6 to see how it stacks up against the competition, and it ranks just as well as any other Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-equipped phone, and it remains competitive with this year’s smartphone selection. However, in daily use, there seems to be something stopping this phone from cranking out the same reliable performance we saw in the S22 last year.

The chip also seems to be slowing down the camera experience as well. The telephoto lens is quite slow to react when you switch to it, and sometimes there’s a strange delay when tapping the shutter button that I can’t explain.

I checked for any performance-limiting settings that might’ve been turned on, and I rebooted the phone a few times to see if that would help. My best guess is there’s some software issue with the phone that might be causing these skips in performance. I reached out to Samsung to see what the problem might be, and if I hear anything, we’ll update this review.

The fingerprint sensor isn’t great, and face unlock remains a total joke

Inside the display, Samsung includes an optical fingerprint sensor for security. While it’s nice to have the feature, it’s admittedly much slower than the company’s ultrasonic fingerprint sensors in the regular S23 series. It takes a few extra beats for the phone to register your print, and more often than not, it takes a couple of tries to read it. You’ll find yourself wiping your thumb on your shirt often with this phone.

Also, this phone comes with face unlock that uses the selfie camera to recognize you, and I advise all of you not to use it. You can’t use it to authenticate payments or anything, and for good reason: Get one person that looks like you to try to unlock your phone, and they’ll more than likely get right in. There’s no depth sensor or advanced algorithm for reading the unique features of your face like Apple’s Face ID. The phone literally takes a picture of your face, compares it to the one it recorded during setup and takes a guess as to whether or not it’s the same person.

Granted, this isn’t unique to Samsung phones. Plenty of other manufacturers like Google and OnePlus include the same feature, but in case you’re tempted to use it in place of the spotty fingerprint scanner, I advise you not to.

Not the best value compared to the competition

The $600 Galaxy S23 FE sits next to three phones that, admittedly, are much better values: the $500 Pixel 7a, the $600 Nothing Phone (2) and the $700 Galaxy S23.

Google’s Pixel 7a is one of the best midrange phones of the year with a premium design, all-day battery life, clean software and the best camera on any midrange smartphone. Meanwhile, the Nothing Phone (2) — with its incredibly unique design — gets the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor but does a better job at optimizing it for reliable performance.

Then there’s the Galaxy S23 — yes, that S23. Compared to the S23 FE, it’s a far better value for just $100 more. You get faster performance with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, a brighter screen (that’s also slightly smaller and easier to use with one hand), better photo processing and a nicer design. Plus, you can almost always find it on sale, whether through a trade-in or with a straight-up discount of $100 to $200.

To that point, blindly buying the S23 FE doesn’t seem very wise. The midrange space is crowded with great smartphones, especially nowadays, and it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd. Samsung has a good thing going with this device, but I don’t think it’s enough to ignore other heavy hitters in the space like Pixel 7a, Phone (2) or even the regular S23.

Bottom line

The Galaxy S23 FE is a solid smartphone for $600, but you should be hesitant about pulling the trigger until you’ve done a bit of research. With so many great phones at or around $600 (including Samsung’s own Galaxy S23), it’s hard to recommend the S23 FE right off the bat.

Maybe you want great cameras, a unique design or flagship performance. Maybe you’d like to keep your spending under $500. Maybe you want something smaller than a 6.4-inch phone. In any of those cases, there are plenty of alternatives out there worthy of your dollar.

But if you ultimately land on the S23 FE, I don’t think you’ll regret it. Samsung threw together an interesting package that hits a lot of the marks for a good smartphone. And if that’s all you need, the S23 FE will give you that.