In 2020, Samsung’s Galaxy S20 FE wowed us when it came to value, cutting down its $1,000 flagship into an affordably exciting $700 package ($600 on launch-day sale). But 2022 is a very different year. Up against the Pixel 6 and even Samsung’s own reduced pricing, the Galaxy S21 FE isn’t a value king or flagship-killer like the last model; it’s just another (admittedly good) phone in Samsung’s increasingly crowded lineup.

Design, hardware, what’s in the box?

Just because this is the cheaper “Fan Edition” version of the S21 doesn’t mean it’s a small phone — far from it. It’s actually bigger than the base model Galaxy S21. Paired with a flat display, the shape consumes your hand. It’s about the same size as the Pixel 5a 5G and just a bit smaller than the OnePlus 9 and Pixel 6. In short, it’s right about the goldilocks size that most people seem to like.

Big doesn’t mean heavy, though. Somehow, Samsung managed to trim a few grams compared to the S20 FE (and the smaller S21). You probably won’t be picking this phone up and comparing the weight with every other model released this year, but you will still notice it’s not very dense or heavy, reducing the chances of a phone to the face during those late-night YouTube or TikTok sessions.

The S21 FE inherits the stylings of its earlier, non-fan-edition siblings, with a handful of tweaks. The camera bump retains the same brand-identifiable shape, but it’s plastic and part of the back on this cheaper model, rather than part of the frame — which, I should point out, is still metal. I like Samsung’s “glasstic” matte plastic back, though, and it’s less fragile than glass (though more susceptible to oiliness and scratches). If you really try to twist it, you might hear it flex a little, but the phone is otherwise solidly built and feels like a premium Android device.

That sensibility extends to the screen, too. The S21 FE might be a budget flagship, but Samsung included one of the best displays I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not LTPO, so you don’t get benefits like dynamic refresh rate switching, but the S21 FE doesn’t seem to need it. It gets bright enough for use in any environment (though, given the season, I have yet to test it against the full force of the summer sun), it’s incredibly uniform without any splotchy grays or weird color tinting at night, and it doesn’t seem to crush shadows too badly at dim settings. Color is also good, as is the aesthetic design: Uniform and very thin bezels on three sides, and a bottom bezel that’s just a touch larger. Automatic brightness is even okay, with fewer misses than other phones. I wish the brightness options were more granular at lower levels, but it’s better at figuring out the right level than any Google Pixel is. Touchscreen sensitivity is also fine, with none of the issues the S20 FE had.

In more mundane numbers and details, the Gorilla Glass Victus-topped 6.4” display is “just” 1080p, but I think Samsung must have increased the fill level and size of the subpixels because the display feels sharper than other 1080p panels I’ve used, with less fringing around text. It’s also very smooth, with a 120Hz refresh rate. The new hole-punch camera cutout is larger than the S20 FE’s, and the silver accented ring is gone (which I kind of liked), but these are minor points.

I’m really picky when it comes to phone screens, and I’m satisfied by the display in the S21 FE.

The fingerprint sensor built into it also works very well. It’s an optical sensor, not ultrasonic like Samsung’s higher-end phones, but it’s very reliable and fast (though potentially less secure). I do have one complaint, though: It’s a little too far down the face of the phone, just above the chin, which is a little uncomfortable to hit. 2020’s S20 FE was the same, but I’d prefer the sensor higher up, as it is on the rest of the S21 series.

The S21 FE has stereo speakers via the earpiece and a down-firing unit on the bottom. Balance between the two is okay, both with hands cupped to the side and not, but it’s your usual phone speaker situation: No real bass, treble-heavy, a little shrill at high volumes. Definitely loud enough for some impromptu music if you catch yourself doing a bit of yardwork or need to hear it ring from the other side of the house, though.

Haptics here feel identical to me compared to the S21 series. That is to say: Good (for an Android phone, sadly), and a big upgrade over the weak and mostly buzzing rumble the S20 FE produced.

Just like all the other higher-end phones these days, even though you’re spending more money, you aren’t getting a charger in the box — just a handful of paper cards and manuals you’ll either throw away or save but never read, a three-foot cheap-looking USB Type-C cable, and a SIM-ejector tool.

Software, performance, battery life

Samsung’s Android 12-based One UI 4 may be a brand-new version of Android, but it will seem very familiar if you’re coming from another recent Samsung phone. There are some deeper changes inside, like Android 12’s new privacy-enhancing indicators and a few minor UI changes. But Samsung isn’t rocking the boat between updates, and this isn’t the sort of huge new redesign that Google’s Pixels got with Android 12.

If you haven’t used Samsung’s software in the last few years, you’ll probably get used to the S21 FE pretty quickly. It doesn’t look “stock” or like Google’s Pixels, but it’s not the sort of death-by-menus experience Samsung phones used to be — though the settings menu can still feel awkward at times, like tapping the battery graph to access the more detailed view. But most of the more advanced features live in Good Lock modules. Customization fans can download those and tweak away.

The biggest issues with Samsung’s software now are rooted in the apps and ecosystem. Of course, you’ve got the Play Store, and you can sideload anything else you want (this isn’t iOS, hooray!), but Samsung still insists on installing its own worse versions of basic apps — in some cases, giving them deep integrations they don’t deserve.

That means you have Samsung’s calendar app, Samsung’s voice assistant, Samsung’s keyboard app, and even Samsung’s app store pre-loaded (plus some Microsoft bloatware like LinkedIn and a pre-installed Facebook app — gross). Samsung might make an okay Android skin and great hardware, but its apps aren’t up to snuff. For whatever reason, Samsung keeps trying to make Bixby a thing even though it’s junk next to the Google Assistant, and Samsung’s keyboard will frustratingly interfere with correctly spelled words. Even Samsung’s launcher is probably worth replacing, and most of the rest of the built-in suite are nothing to write home about, outside maybe the Notes app.

You’ll want to replace Bixby and most of Samsung's other apps (in most cases, with Google’s better versions), even if they don’t get the same deep integrations, as in the case of Samsung's voice assistant.

When you replace those apps, we should also warn you that we recently caught Samsung’s Galaxy Store distributing apps that could infect phones with malware. Since Samsung’s just phoning in its app store responsibilities, we urge you to just get your apps from Google.

It’s also worth stressing that OneUI 4.0 is still very new, and I did run into some glitches, like picture-in-picture bugging on the regular — particularly when using the S21 FE for navigation and leaving the full-screen nav view. Samsung’s one of the update kings now, though, so I’m not concerned, and issues like these will undoubtedly be fixed via updates.

Picture-in-picture navigation works not great right now.

On that note, the update situation itself should be great as well. Samsung’s the fastest manufacturer now to deliver security patches, frequently beating Google itself, and Samsung has one of the longest update commitments, with three years of OS upgrades and four years of security patches promised. This phone might get updated all the way to Android 15, depending on how Samsung lines that schedule up.

Unlike some phones, this is ready for the long haul, which extends to performance, too — with one notable drawback I’ll get to in a bit. The S21 FE has last year’s Snapdragon 888 in it. Now that it’s 2022, it might be “old,” but it’s still very capable, especially at this price. The only slips and stutters you should notice are those that are unavoidable, either due to a poorly-made app or simply Android itself. For productivity-oriented workflows, it’s more than you need. Even gaming is no problem, and the 1080p display resolution even helps a little there if you want to play a more demanding title at native resolution. I didn’t notice the S21 FE get particularly hot during use, but the plastic back could be insulating things a little, and it is winter, so ambient temperatures are on the lower side.

There is one notable downside to the S21 FE’s performance, and that’s RAM: The base model ships with just 6GB. When it comes to multitasking, I did notice apps further back in the list had to restart on resume, though the situation wasn’t so strained that things like Spotify would die in the background. Samsung’s Android skin also kills apps more aggressively than some other phones do, so delayed notifications and other more severe app-breaking issues can arise.

This is a very bad showing, anticipate odd behavior from apps in the background.

Bluetooth audio performance was good for me, and the only issues I had were on audio devices I know to have crummy signal strength, like the OnePlus Buds. I don’t think you’ll run into any issues with stuttering playback or connectivity drop-outs on better-performing headphones.

Battery life was good for me. As Google has stupidly nerfed how it shows battery use on Pixels, I’ve started using Accubattery to get a more universal cross-device sense of my battery life. With it to measure, I’m able to easily pull two days of use and around eight hours of screen-on time per charge. More anecdotally, I charged it once every two days and didn’t see it drop into single digits often — though I am spending more time at home these days, as we all probably are. That’s pretty great, and I think even relatively demanding folks that spend half the day playing games or watching short-form videos will be pleased.

That’s good, because it doesn’t charge very fast. Samsung says up to 25W, but the highest I measured was around 20W via PPS (and around 15 on a non-PPS charger). While that’s comparable to recent Pixels, OnePlus blows it away.

Cameras

Sorry in advance. But, because I’m immunocompromised and given current events, taking a good variety of photo samples from different places is becoming more difficult, so there isn’t the usual wider variety of examples. Not that it matters a whole lot here, because the camera isn’t very special, and just about matches the S20 FE and S21 (outside the tele).

While the S21 FE’s triple-camera setup — that's a 12MP primary, 12MP ultra-wide, and an 8MP telephoto — is very flexible, photos will rarely wow you as they might on a Pixel 6. Samsung’s processing improved noticeably a few years ago, but most of the actual hardware itself hasn’t, and Samsung is again falling behind compared to Google and others. In more practical terms, that means competitors take better photos at night, and you might notice some muddier processing and a loss of texture in certain circumstances.

Anecdotally, my biggest frustrations were with how aggressively the camera switches to a crop of the primary sensor rather than using the hardware telephoto camera and how the muddy processing sometimes destroys what little contrast the sensor can eke out in low-light. Colors can still tend to oversaturate with scene optimizer enabled (by default turned on), but Samsung’s auto white balance admirably nailed some difficult shots.

From ultra-wide to tele.

Samsung keeps its highest-end cameras an Ultra exclusive, and even though this phone is priced too low to benefit from a change, I think it’s probably time for the company to rethink its strategy. All its other higher-end phones, covering the range from the S21 FE here up to the $1800 Galaxy Z Fold3 take almost identical, frankly so-so photos. A handful of numbers and specs might vary — Samsung’s swapped out the ultra-wide and telephoto sensors a few times in more expensive models over time — but this is the same IMX 555 primary the S20 shipped with in a setup that dates back over years with some tweaks. Admittedly, it’s a pretty flexible configuration with a primary, ultra-wide, and a telephoto (3x optical and up to 30x digital here), but I’d like to see some real upgrades in Samsung’s phones like bigger sensors in the future.

Still, that’s mostly a quibble for a higher price point. Down here at $700, I think most people will be pleased, though the Pixel 6 takes much better photos for $100 less, if that’s your priority.

Should you buy it?

Maybe. The S21 FE is a good-looking phone with a lot of features. The only issue I take with it is value. When the S20 FE landed in 2020, it was a budgetary balm for the $1,000 Galaxy S20. But Samsung and everyone else managed to bring prices down this year, so debuting the S21 FE at $700 makes it a harder sell.

For $100 more, you can get the base model S21, which has more RAM, a better telephoto camera, a slightly nicer build with the metal frame covering the camera bump, and a more pocketable size — though that last part might not be a benefit for everyone. Conversely, for $100 less, you can get the Pixel 6, which has a better camera overall (even with the lost telephoto courtesy of a sensor crop), better software, more RAM, and handy Pixel-exclusive features like call screening, translation tools, and a lot more, though it has a worse screen.

In 2020, the Galaxy S20 FE was a slam dunk and a contender for phone of the year, but in 2022 the S21 FE is late to a very different kind of party. The market has shifted, and the S21 FE now just plugs a gap between Samsung’s premium mid-range A-series phones and the Galaxy S. And while the new Galaxy S21 FE is a good phone, it’s not a great value. It could be a good deal on discount or through a carrier promotion, but the full price tag is a tough sell.

Buy it if:

• You can get a good deal through a carrier.
• A good screen, battery life, and updates are priorities
• You can’t spend just a little more for the S21 or don’t like the less expensive Pixel 6.

Don’t buy it if:

• You want a fantastic camera.
• You buy your phones off-contract at full price — this is a poor value for that.

UPDATE: 2022/02/17 09:00 EST BY TAYLOR KERNS

Stuck in the middle

Ryne handed off his Galaxy S21 FE to me after our initial review was finished, and I’ve been using it for the past couple of weeks. On the whole, I agree with his take: it’s a fine phone, but one that struggles to stand out against the competition — including from Samsung itself.

The first thing that struck me about the phone was its build. Like the S20 FE before it, the S21 FE is very competently put together, and the fact that Samsung stuck with the S21 series’ general design language for this year’s S22 phones means it doesn’t feel out of date compared to the company’s newest releases. It’s handsome, familiar, and not at all fussy. I’m into it.

Battery life and performance have been good enough that I’ve never given much thought to either; I didn’t find the phone dying before I thought it should, and despite its six gigs of RAM — a bit stingy for 700 bucks — it doesn’t ever feel slow. It's also gotten its promised February update, so I feel good about its software prospects.

I’ve carried a Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro more often than not for the past several months, and coming from either of those, the S21 FE’s cameras feel like a marked downgrade. They’re not bad cameras, but the primary sensor here isn’t nearly as large as the one in the newest Pixels, and I found the FE frequently resorting to slower shutter speeds than I expected it to, leading to blurry shots. Even in relatively well lit settings, I got plenty of photos that, while noise-free thanks to their low ISO, had pronounced motion blur because the shutter speed was set to 1/30 or 1/40 where I would’ve expected 1/60 or faster.

I do like the S21 FE; on balance, it’s a really good phone. But it's sandwiched between two phones that I think offer more value: the Pixel 6 costs $100 less and takes better photos, and the base-model S22 only costs $100 more and has better cameras and newer, more powerful internals. It’s hard to know who exactly to recommend this phone to. If you know you want a Samsung phone and you absolutely can’t (or don’t want to) pay more than 700 bucks, the Galaxy S21 Fan Edition could be right up your alley. Just try to catch it on sale.