There's no denying that Samsung's new Galaxy A series are a gorgeous set of metal smartphones. Ranging from the 4.5in Galaxy A3 to the giant 5.5in Galaxy A7, their all-metal unibodies set a new standard for mid-range smartphones, showing that you don't need to splash out on expensive flagship handsets to enjoy the same kind of excellent build quality and top of the range design.
The Galaxy A5 is the middle sibling of Samsung's new trio, but its 5in 1,280x720 resolution Super AMOLED display arguably makes it the most desirable, as it's easier to handle than the super-sized Galaxy A7 and its higher resolution screen is much better for browsing the web compared to the compact Galaxy A3. It's also very easy to hold thanks to its slender 6.7mm thick chassis, as we were able to comfortably fit our hand round the entire handset and still reach all the way across the screen without feeling like it was too much of a stretch.
Like the Galaxy A3, its metal chassis is cool to the touch and has a kind of glitter finish that shimmers in the light, making it just as attractive to look at as Samsung's Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. We particularly like the dot pattern that sits underneath the front panel, as it helps give the phone a bit more personality than Samsung's previous mid-range handsets.
As with all of Samsung's Super AMOLED panels, the Galaxy A5's screen looked superb. Colours were rich and vibrant and blacks were incredibly deep. Its 1,280x720 resolution also gave images and web pages plenty of definition, although you'll still have to zoom in occasionally to read smaller body copy.
The Galaxy A5's main flaw is its slightly lacklustre performance. Whereas the Galaxy A7 has a snappy octa-core processor, the Galaxy A5 uses the same quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor as its little brother, the Galaxy A3. Unsurprisingly, our initial SunSpider JavaScript tests returned very similar scores, with the Galaxy A5 completing the test in 1,238ms in Chrome and 857ms in Samsung's default browser.
This kind of speed is fine for a £220 smartphone, but it begins to feel a little sluggish when UK prices for the Galaxy A5 are currently sitting around £285 SIM-free. For instance, we noticed a very small amount of lag when swiping between home screens and its TouchWiz app tray, and web browsing was similarly a bit stop and start when it was trying to load image-heavy desktop pages.
This is a shame, as the rest of the phone has plenty of advantages over its smaller sibling. For instance, the Galaxy A5 has a 13-megapixel rear facing camera and a larger 2,300mAh battery, so it should be able to last longer through the day compared to the Galaxy A3's smaller 1,900mAh batter. It still comes with 16GB of storage, but this should provide plenty of room for your various files.
The Galaxy A5 is a beautiful-looking handset, but it's somewhat disappointing performance will no doubt drag it down compared to its more sprightly brothers. Its bigger battery may give it an advantage over the smaller Galaxy A3, but we'll have to wait and see how it fares once we get our hands on a full review sample. It may be more attractive, but for now, it looks as though the Galaxy A5 is very much the awkward middle child of Samsung's new A series.