Bigger, faster AMOLED display
The Samsung Galaxy A34 has a large and spacious 6.6-inch display at its disposal. That makes it bigger than last year’s A33 at 6.4 inches, the Galaxy A54 at 6.4 inches, and the A53 at 6.5 inches. It is a FullHD+ panel with a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels – slightly less than last year, but with a new 19.5:9 aspect ratio. We like the slightly wider and less tall aspect Samsung is going for in this generation, though that is a matter of personal taste.
The 120Hz Super AMOLED panel on the Galaxy A34 performs decently well. In our testing, it managed a decent, though fairly low maximum brightness of 476 nits on the slider. A number that can, however, boost all the way up to a very good 1009 nits with automatic brightness enabled and in bright ambient lighting conditions. The Galaxy A34 is perfectly usable outdoors.
Samsung Galaxy A34 does very well with color accuracy. It has two color modes. The default Vivid mode aims towards the DCI-P3 color space and covers it fairly well, though with a slight blue tint. You can correct for it using the included color temperature slider and get deltaE values close to what we consider color-accurate.
If color accuracy is what you are after, you should go for the natural display mode instead. It covers the sRGB color space nearly perfectly with deltaE values low enough to be considered color-accurate. The Galaxy A34 lacks HDR support on its display. There is no HDR decoder on board the device either. On the plus side, the Galaxy A34 has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification. This allows services like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams and saturate the phone’s resolution.
High refresh rate handling
The Samsung Galaxy A34 has a 120Hz refresh rate, which is up from last year’s 90Hz and great to see. However, the phone has pretty much no automatic refresh rate handling to speak of. In the display settings, you will find two options for refresh rate – Standard and High.
Display refresh rate settings
Both of these actually act like hard toggles. That is to say that once you select 120Hz, the phone runs at 120Hz with practically no exceptions. There are no extra modes the phone can switch down to, like 90Hz or even 60Hz. The UI and apps and games, with very few exceptions like Google Maps, just stay locked at 120Hz.
if: You prioritize a good display, long battery life, and water resistance, and primarily use your phone for browsing, social media, light gaming, and taking occasional photos then Samsung galaxy A34 is right for you is to consider your individual needs and compare it to other options in your budget range.