Samsung Galaxy A27 vs. Galaxy A37

We only recently finished reviewing the Galaxy A27. It had a pretty delayed launch compared to the rest of its Galaxy A family siblings, like the Galaxy A37, which came out all the way back in April. That’s just one of the explanations for the pricing faux pas the Galaxy A27 finds itself in.

In the US, Samsung technically launched the A27 at $350, while running a promo for the A37 at $330 at the same time. That was quickly corrected with the A37 getting back its old price – $450, which coincidentally is exactly how much the Galaxy A57 costs at the moment.

Things aren’t much different in Europe. A quick search on Amazon Germany shows that certain colors of the Galaxy A27 will cost you around €300, or in other words, the same price as the Galaxy A37.

So, it’s only natural for buyers to wonder if it is even worth it to consider the Galaxy A27, since the A37 can be had for essentially the same price. Spoiler alert – the A37 is quite superior all around, but we’ll still go through the individual points to show you why.

Table of Contents:

For starters, you can compare the complete spec sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the following text.

Size comparison

The Galaxy A27 and A37 are physically identical. The A27 is slightly thicker, and the A37 is slightly taller, but quite insignificantly so. There is also a four-gram weight difference in favor of the A37 – hardly something to care about. The Galaxy A37 has its SIM tray on the bottom while the A27 has it on the left side, but that’s hardly even an observation, let alone a serious comparison point.

One thing Samsung undeniably improved design-wise on the A27 this year is the switch to a much more modern-looking selfie punch-hole design. It replaces the teardrop notch of the Galaxy A26 and looks much better in our opinion.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Samsung decided to downgrade the ingress protection rating on the A27 this year. It now has to settle for a basic IP64 rating, which is not only worse than last year’s A26 model but also far behind the Galaxy A37’s IP68 rating.

Other than that, both phones are made of Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the front and back and a plastic frame sandwiched in between. Both the A27 and A37 feel perfectly sturdy, with practically no flex or hollowness.

We kind of like the color options for the A37 a bit better, personally and for whatever reason, it doesn’t gather dirt and grease quite like the A27 does.

Display comparison

Both phones have 120Hz Super AMOLED (Samsung-made), 6.7-inch displays with a FullHD+ resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. Nothing out of the ordinary. However, the two particular panels used by Samsung have notably different performance profiles.

We can’t say for sure whether these are different panels altogether or vastly different quality bins of the same panel, but regardless, the difference in performance, especially brightness, is big. In our standardized testing, the A27 managed around 800 nits of max brightness in a 75% window, which is annoyingly just shy of being actually usable outdoors. Clocking around 1,246 nits in the same test, while far from a chart-topper, the A37 has no such problems dealing with daylight. And while neither phone supports HDR, in a small 10% window, the A27 managed just 1,090 nits, while the A37 sits much more comfortably at around 1,904 nits.

Both phones can refresh at up to 120Hz, and neither has a markedly better system for automatically adjusting its refresh rate. That said, the A37 seems to be a bit more prone to lowering its refresh rate when it matters, like during web browsing, than the A27. Also, we had a bit more success with actually getting games to run at above 60fps on the A37. Though things were hardly as consistent as we would have liked.

Battery life

Both phones have a 5,000 mAh battery and roughly comparable OLED displays (though the A37 does seem to be using its adaptive refresh rate a bit more efficiently). However, the two phones have vastly different chipsets. As a result, the Galaxy A27 seems to offer notably better voice call endurance, with the A37 making up ground in the other three tests, particularly the web browsing one. Neither phone offers remarkable battery endurance by modern standards, but both do quite all right.

Charging speed

Charging is a clear and decided win for the A37. It is rated for 45W compared to the basic 25W of the A27. But more importantly, this translates very clearly into real-world charging speed. Plus, for whatever reason, the Galaxy A27 is one of the slower-charging Samsung devices we’ve tested recently.

Speaker test

Loudspeakers offer another clear win for the Galaxy A37. Compared to the A27’s mostly mediocre single-speaker setup, the A37 offers a stereo speaker setup. Well, technically, a hybrid one with an amplified earpiece acting as the second channel. Still – vastly better than the A27. The A37 is markedly louder and also sounds better, cleaner and with a richer sound stage.

At least the Galaxy A27 doesn’t miss out on any audio features and enhancements for what that’s worth. Both phones have Dolby Atmos support with a full equalizer, as well as an UHQ upscaler and Samsung’s Adapt sound and Separate app sound features.

Performance

We already went ahead and called the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 inside the Galaxy A27 and the Exynos 1480 inside the Galaxy A37 vastly different, but that might have been a bit of an overstatement. Performance-wise, these are two quite similar chips.

Even architecturally, they share quite a bit, particularly in the CPU department, where both have two symmetrical four-core clusters with Cortex-A78 cores doing the heavy lifting and Cortex-A55 ones for efficiency. The only real difference is their respective maximum clock speeds.

Their GPUs do differ – an Adreno 710 for the A27 and an Xclipse 530 for the A37 – but they are again similar in terms of performance.

Both phones start at 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. In a rare win, the Galaxy A27 has expandable storage too, whereas the A37 lacks that feature.

Both phones rely on UFS 3.1 storage chips.

Benchmark performance

As we said, the two chipsets certainly have their differences, but their performance output is not too dissimilar, certainly in the same ballpark. The A37 has a slight advantage in the CPU department as well as in most GPU tests, but it is really not substantial. AnTuTu scored our two review units remarkably close to each other. Though we should note that our A27 review unit has an 8GB/256GB setup, whereas the A37 we tested has a 6GB/128GB config.

Camera comparison

The Galaxy A27’s main camera on the back relies on the in-house JN1 50MP 1/2.76″ sensor, while the A37 does come with a significantly larger 1/1.56″ main camera imager. There’s a fairly pronounced difference in focal length here, the A27’s 27mm equivalent being noticeably narrower than the A37’s 23mm lens.

The A27’s ultrawide is a downgrade compared to the A26’s, and it’s now using a 5MP sensor instead of an 8MP sensor. The A37’s 8MP sensor’s output is upscaled to 12MP, so on the ultrawide end, you’d have 5MP vs 12MP shots from the two phones. Both have fixed-focus lenses.

There’s also a third camera on each of the phones’ backs – a dedicated ‘macro’ module which uses a 2MP sensor on the A27, and a 5MP one on the A37.

The selfie cameras report nearly identical numbers in hardware apps, but our A37 didn’t disclose its exact sensor names, so we can’t be sure. Either way, you’d be looking at 12MP 1/3.2″ sensors with 25mm fixed-focus lenses.

Image quality

Daylight

The A27’s main camera sharpness isn’t ideal, with detail being on the soft side, particularly in indoor conditions. Outdoor color reproduction is pretty great, with reliable auto white balance and pleasing saturation levels, while indoor scenes can be a little off in both respects, but nothing too problematic. Similarly, dynamic range and contrast look very good when shooting out in the sun, but indoor scenes can end up more washed out or with blown highlights.

The Galaxy A37 will get you better sharpness and superior detail. Dynamic range is also wider on the more upmarket model, and color rendition is better in indoor shots too, while outdoors it’s just a little different and we just might prefer the A27’s warmer greens.

You can see here how the coverage of the two cameras differs, with the A37’s frames being noticeably wider in the scenes where we shoot from a fixed spot.

Daylight, main camera (1x): Galaxy A27 • Galaxy A37

2x zoom photos from the A27 have thick sharpening halos, and detail isn’t great. The A37 is no benchmark in this respect either, but it does do meaningfully better than the A27 in terms of detail.

Daylight, main camera (2x): Galaxy A27 • Galaxy A37

On the ultrawide end, the A37 will get you a bit more detail – its 12MP ultrawide shots come from an 8MP camera, so it’s somewhat of a moot point, but it does have an advantage. It’s also got wider dynamic range and better colors in indoor scenes, but we do prefer the A27’s greenery, again.

Daylight, ultrawide camera: Galaxy A27 (0.5x) • Galaxy A37 (0.6x)

Low light

Low-light photos from the A27’s main camera at 1x aren’t particularly great in absolute terms, but they just might be decent for the class. The A37’s low-light results are consistently sharper, though not necessarily by a lot, and we still find them just slightly better overall.

Low-light, main camera (1x): Galaxy A27 • Galaxy A37

While neither phone impresses at 2x in the dark, the A37 is better here as well, capturing somewhat sharper images with a little more definition.

Low-light, main camera (2x): Galaxy A27 • Galaxy A37

On the ultrawide end, the A37 isn’t really doing better than the A27. Its shots can lose saturation in some scenes, where the A27 preserves color better, and despite the extra resolution, the detail is often not sharper or better defined – just bigger.

Low-light, ultrawide camera: Galaxy A27 (0.5x) • Galaxy A37 (0.6x)

Selfies

Selfies from the Galaxy A27 are quite good, as are those from the A37. We wouldn’t say the A37 has a significant advantage overall, though it just might have the upper hand in dynamic range in high-contrast scenes. The A27 might actually be a little better in the dark, though.

Selfies comparison: Galaxy A27 • Galaxy A37

Video quality

The Galaxy A27 can record video at up to 4K30 with its main camera, which can also do 1080p at up to 60fps, while the ultrawide and the selfie cameras max out at 1080p30. The A37 has 4K30 on the selfie camera too, and it’s way better than you’d normally expect, so that might be a point to consider when choosing between the two. Stabilization on the A27 is available at up to 1080p30, while the A37 has EIS in 4K30 too.

Below we have a few frame grabs from the videos taken by the two phones at each focal length, so it’s easier to compare them to one another.

Unstabilized 4K or stabilized 1080p, the A27’s main camera footage is on the soft side, though 2x is quite good in its own context. The A37 has the upper hand here in sharpness and detail, in both resolutions, plus it does offer electronic stabilization in 4K. The A37’s footage has a bit more contrast and saturation, though that’s neither here nor there. On the ultrawide cameras, the A37 has a bit of an advantage, too, thanks to wider dynamic range and a notch better sharpness.

Daylight video screengrabs, Galaxy A27: 0.5x • 1x (4K) • 1x (1080p) • 2x

Daylight video screengrabs, Galaxy A37: 0.6x • 1x (4K) • 1x (1080p) • 2x

In the dark, the A37’s main camera footage in low light is sharper in both 4K and 1080p. Neither ultrawide is any good.

Low-light video screengrabs, Galaxy A27: 0.5x • 1x (4K) • 1x (1080p) • 2x

Low-light video screengrabs, Galaxy A37: 0.6x • 1x (4K) • 1x (1080p) • 2x

Verdict

As things currently stand, the Galaxy A37 is simply the better buy. It delivers meaningful improvements in nearly every area that matters, including display brightness, charging speed, speakers, camera quality, video recording and durability, while also offering slightly better overall performance. The fact that all of this comes at essentially the same asking price as the Galaxy A27 makes the decision particularly easy.

The Galaxy A27 isn’t a bad phone on its own. It still offers solid battery life, dependable performance for everyday use and expandable storage via a microSD slot, which remains a rare feature these days. If you specifically need that storage expansion or happen to find the A27 at a substantial discount, it can still make sense.

At today’s street prices, however, we struggle to recommend the Galaxy A27. The Galaxy A37 is the more complete smartphone in almost every respect, and unless the price gap grows considerably, it’s the one we’d pick without hesitation.