Samsung J7 Pro Review: A Midrange Contender

Introduction

The Galaxy J7 Pro is Samsung’s follow-up to the J7 Prime last year. It has a new design though the internals, especially the CPU is just the same as the J7 Prime. What Samsung improved is the camera on the J7 Pro — they installed a 13MP camera both on the back and on the front.

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J7 Pro with Always On Display

J7 Pro back.

Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro Specs

Build and design

If you have no idea about the whole design and build of the J7 Pro, here’s a GIF image of our review unit. It has a pretty solid metal body and a new antenna band design at the back.

We can say that it has the DNA of the J7 Prime. It has two-piece volume control buttons and the loudspeaker is awkwardly positioned on the of the power button.

The physical home button inherits its design to the original Galaxy series and it doubles as the fingerprint sensor. The two capacitive buttons on the left and right of the home button have no backlights.

It feels bulky too. I think it is because of the slightly bumped battery plus the metal body contributed to the total weight of 181 grams. (J7 Prime’s weight is only 167gams).

Display & UI

The J7 Pro sports a full HD IPS display. This is enough already for a midrange device. There is no app drawer and the access to the pre-installed apps is by swiping up from the home button area.

The physical home button is still present, which is the signature design of the Galaxy series. It is flanked by two capacitive buttons which are not backlit.

The stock UI of the J7 Pro.

Fingerprint Sensor

The home button is also where the fingerprint sensor is. In our test, the fingerprint sensor is accurate most of the time.

You can register a maximum of three fingerprints to enjoy this security feature of the J7 Pro.

Samsung J7 Pro Benchmarks

While these benchmarks are synthetic, the real-world experience may vary. One thing we can attest is the long battery life of the J7 Pro. With a very minimal usage of the phone, that means connected to a WiFi network only, the device can last you almost two days.

Camera

The J7 Pro is aimed at the “selfie” enthusiasts that’s why the smartphone has 13MP camera both in front and at the rear.

The standard camera has a wide opening of F1.9, the absence of image stabilization results to blurred images, therefore, you have to have a steady hands when taking photos.

Aside from the automatic settings of the camera, you can also choose to manually shoot. The “Pro” feature, however, has control over ISO and exposure only.

The front camera has an opening of F/1.7 and it has LED flash that can be turned on as steady light during a selfie shot.

Moreover, the front camera settings include other feature like slim face, large eyes, and skin tone adjustments.

With the steady light on.

Standard front camera shot

Performance & Audio

If you have the J7 Prime, you might hold onto it, because the J7 Pro has the same chipset as the Prime. The only difference is the new look and the camera installed in the J7 Pro.

The J7 Pro is armed with 1.6GHz Exynos 7870 octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. This configuration is now the standard in the midrange devices. The best part with the J7 Pro is that it has a dedicated microSD slot, therefore you can enjoy the dual SIM functionality.

The SIM cards are both 4G/LTE and you can only use a nano SIM.

Audio playbacks are clear and crisp. Voice calls, which forms part of the basis of the device is also clear.

Verdict

While the J7 Pro is marketed to the selfie enthusiasts, the phone performed better thru its battery performance. The camera lacks the “kick” we want, it did not wow us in the photo samples presented.