Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo review: Size me up

5MP camera is not bad

The Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo comes with a 5MP primary camera and a 0.3MP front-facer, which is a marked downgrade from the Galaxy Grand predecessor.

The viewfinder handles both still and video capture, so you don't have to switch modes. However, this is certainly not the most convenient solution - if you're shooting full resolution 5MP photos, you'll have to frame your videos using a 4:3 viewfinder.

The Galaxy Grand Neo camera UI

Let's go over the different modes. There are standard modes like Panorama, Night, and Sports. Panoramas are nice; they do a full 360-degree circle, but the resolution is not that impressive.

Sound & shot captures a photo and records ambient sound. It sounds pretty cool - for example, you can hear the sea gulls in a beach photo or the roar of car engines at a race.

Photos tend to have accurate contrast and colors. We did notice a tendency to overexpose the shots in certain conditions (our macro shot for instance). We also noticed signs of an overly-aggressive noise reduction here and there, resulting in a watercolor effect on the foliage, but it's nothing too bad. Despite the noise reduction, there is still a lot of visible noise left, but it's only of the luminance type and it doesn't get in the way, so we'd say it's actually ok. In the end, the camera on the Galaxy Grand Neo may not be something to write home about, but it doesn't have any serious flaws and it's actually quite usable in good light.

Check out the Galaxy Grand Neo camera samples.

The Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo camera is one of the few still in 5MP-land, but that doesn't prevent you from comparing it to the larger camera sensors found on most flagships with our Photo Compare Tool. You can also see how it stacks up to the original Grand's camera for instance.

Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo in our Photo quality compare tool

720p video capture leaves much to be desired

The Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo stores videos in MP4 files with a bitrate of just over 12Mbps on average. Audio is recorded in mono at 62Kbps and a sampling rate of 48kHz.

Touch focus is available before and during video recording and you can switch back to continuous autofocus if you prefer. You can capture 720p still images during recording, and the samples come out with the same quality as the video.

Videos captured with the Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo have very poor resolved detail, even for just a 720p camera. Videos come out highly pixelated and tend to have a very poor visual effect, even detracting from the otherwise accurate colors and exposure.

Here's a video sample we uploaded to YouTube.

Here is also an untouched video sample from the Galaxy Grand Neo that you can download directly - 720p @ 30fps(16s, 23.8MB).

Video quality comparison

You can also take a closer look at the quality of the Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo's videos and how they stack up against other devices in our Video quality compare tool.

Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo in our Video quality compare tool