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Budget phones have been getting really good over the last few years with the

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Nothing Phone A series, the CMF phone line, even the Pixel A series has really

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gotten quite good at very accessible prices. So, Samsung can't rest on their

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laurels anymore. We are taking a look at the A17 5G. That's right, we're still

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putting 5G at the end of phone names to make it seem more sophisticated. In the

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box here, we have our SIM popper, manual, and a USB-C to C cable. That's

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about 3 and 1/2 ft long. Wow, this is a

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cable, all right. And other than that,

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we got nothing. No plastic case included or anything like that. Just a cable, a

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small booklet, and the phone itself. And right away, I got to say, I like that

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they're not using plastic, they're using this like papery material. Honestly, I

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really like it. This feels nice. I'm just going to take it out of the bag. And here we have it. It is a 6.7-in

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screen. This thing is massive. I don't know what the deal with budget phones

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being so big is. It feels like that's that's a trend. Are big screens cheaper?

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Like, I I genuinely don't know. But, this thing is massive and it is

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fingerprinty. My god, I just took this out. I do have gamer fingers, but I

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don't think they're that bad. Okay, well, they are that bad, but it is just so fingerprinty. I'd say go for a white

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model, but it only comes in this black as well as a light blue. Maybe the light

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blue will fare a little bit better. Or, I guess maybe you're just not as like

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nervous as I am because I don't know, maybe I'm a little shy. Don't worry

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about it. On the back here, we have our triple camera system. We have a 5-megapixel ultra-wide, a 50-megapixel

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main camera, and a 2-megapixel macro

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camera. I doubt that these two cameras are going to look very good, but we'll

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take a look. Maybe I'll be surprised. You know, back in the day, 5 megapixels was plenty. And in the big 2026, we're

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going retro with it. Also, on the back, we have our flash and just the the

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little Samsung logo. On the right side of the phone, we have our power button/fingerprint scanner and volume

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rocker. On the top, we have our microphone. On the left side, we have

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our SIM tray. Let's open it up. You know, budget phones sometimes have SD

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card slots and maybe this one does as well. Oh, it does. Look at that. So, we

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have an SD card slot as well as a nano SIM. And we can also see the rubber here

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for water resistance cuz it is IP54.

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And on the bottom we have a microphone, USB 2, as well as a speaker port. You

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know, for phone design it it's a phone. I think the back looks quite nice

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actually and I don't mind the feel of the plastic on the sides. The front looks a little dated with the bigger

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chin which on the screen see if it's that noticeable, but but I find this kind of gap in the front to be a little

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dated. I don't know, it just doesn't look super nice. But, for you know, the

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couple hundred dollars you're spending it's not too bad. Well, the last thing for us to do is to turn it on, but not

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before I turn you on to our sponsor. Thanks to Delta Hub for

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and grab your Hold X with the QR code on screen or at the link down below. You

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know, typically right after I turn on the phone I want to talk about the screen, but first thing I notice is

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performance is pretty slow. And I know the phone's just waking up, but it took

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a second to boot up, then it took a while for the clock to show up, and then just swiping around it feels a little

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slow. Samsung flexes the 2.4 GHz

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octa-core processor on the website, but when you actually look into it the Exynos 1330 that's powering the device

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released in early 2023, which for a phone releasing in current year is a

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little dated and it feels like it. We had Labs take a look at the performance

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of the device and surprise surprise, it didn't perform great. The Exynos 1330

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paired with the four [music] gigs of RAM, that's right, four gigs of RAM in

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this phone performed pretty poorly when compared to the CMF Phone Pro 2 as well

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as the Pixel 9A. We're talking 40-ish

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percent of the CMF Phone 2 Pro's performance, as well as only 18% of the

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Pixel 9A's performance in our stress test. >> [music] >> In our regular benchmarks, it did

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better, getting nearly the same performance as the CMF Phone in single

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core, and 70% of the CMF Phone's multi-core performance, but again, gets

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absolutely demolished by the Pixel 9A. Sure, those phones are a little bit more

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expensive, but when you're hopefully getting a device that's going to last a while, you want it to work well in that

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time. Anyways, back to the screen. This is a 1080 by 2340 screen, so full HD

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plus, and yeah, it looks fine. It's a fine amount

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of brightness, it's a fine amount of detail. Even though it's a big screen,

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so you're not going to get the highest amount of detail when you get up close to it, I think it looks perfectly

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adequate. Wow, look at that full HD plus

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adequateness. It is an AMOLED though, so that's nice. Again, feels pretty

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standard for a phone these days. It'd be odd if it wasn't, especially from Samsung, but yeah, it looks good. It

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also has Gorilla Glass Victus on it, so if you drop it face first, it should be

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okay. Please tell me it's okay. Please tell me it's okay.

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One thing to note [music] is that it's not an HDR screen. So, if you're trying to watch Oppenheimer the way Christopher

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Nolan intended on a phone, you're not going to find the best experience here.

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But, it does get up to 1,150 nits, which is pretty darn bright. It

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also runs up to 90 Hz, so if you're, you know, trying to game at a high refresh

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rate on this old processor, you can dream of 90 Hz. Though, I'm not even

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getting it when scrolling around and anything, so >> [music] >> again, your your mileage may vary. But,

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how does it sound? We see the speaker port on the bottom. Maybe it's going to really blow us away, and you can bring

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this to your next party.

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I hate to say it. For those who were excited, it is only out of this bottom

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speaker, and it doesn't sound good. So, my right ear was pretty disappointed

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with what I was hearing. Really just >> [music] >> awful showing out, honestly. Does not

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sound good at at It's not even particularly loud.

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Mhm. Hey, maybe the camera is excellent though, you know, 5 megapixels used to

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be really impressive and maybe it will be here, too. We do have a 50 though.

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Wow, it couldn't even hold the app open. I just went to the camera for 2 seconds

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and the a YouTube app closed. 4 gigs of RAM is crazy. I know we're in

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a crisis. It feels weird to use the word crisis when it's about the ability to

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buy something for your computer, but 4 gigs of RAM in 2026 is insane.

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I can't keep the YouTube app open and open the camera for 2 seconds and go

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back to the YouTube app, something is wrong with your phone. Why would you Why

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would you sell this? That's crazy. Anyways, anyways, anyways.

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The camera. 50 megapixels sounds like a lot, so maybe it's good. Let's take a

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picture. They have built-in Snapchat filter. I should screen record.

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Does this phone not have the ability to screen record? That'd be crazy, right?

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I tried to screen record, uh, but there's no option and I'm wondering if

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it's cuz there's not enough RAM to screen record and do other things since

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I can't open the camera while YouTube is open.

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That's crazy. But, look at this angle. We have Snapchat filters built into the

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phone, finally. I've not wanted to use Snapchat since

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2016, but, uh, I guess I can without an account now, which is nice. This is

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awful. This is truly awful. Taking a photo without the filters

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though, honestly, that's a that's a decent front camera. It feels like the appropriate amount of sharpness. My

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beard looks a little crispy, but like otherwise, not bad at all. And it has

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the ability to get just the tiniest bit wider. If you just need a little teeny

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bit more room. All right, let's try the main cameras. Here's our

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1x, our

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ultra wide, and you can zoom up to 10x digital zoom

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though. It's not It's not optical. What is nice though, I'll give it some credit, the main camera has optical

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image stabilization, which is great for low light or recording videos. Let's

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take a look at the photos. You know what? In the top down, it It look bad. In the top down when you actually look

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at the photo, he looks a little bit like a painting, but actually there's no

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butt. That That's not great. If it's 50 megapixels, it should look, in theory, [music]

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better than that. Uh let's take a look at other photos. You know what? If you

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don't zoom in, this ultra photo is not bad. You do get fish eye, uh some some

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distortion on the edges of the photo, but it doesn't look bad quality-wise.

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You When you zoom in, yeah, again, it's not the sharpest and and there's a

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little bit of chromatic aberration around the lights, but this is a cool-looking photo. And for our main

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photo, again, perfectly adequate. It's

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not good, it's not bad, it's totally fine. If you don't zoom in, I'd be

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totally fine with this photo and the the level of detail it has. Let's put this into 50 megapixel mode. Maybe that'll

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make a huge difference. I do have to say though, I don't know if you'll be able to see on camera cuz I can't screen

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record. The preview does not look good. I'm surprised that the photos are

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turning out as well as they do considering the preview it does not look

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fantastic. Like, I don't know. Maybe I Maybe I'm just picky. Okay, throwing

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into 50 megapixel mode, it does look a bit better. Look at it. You can see the wrinkles in Reese's face. Again, this is

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actually not a bad camera. I I went over with pretty low expectations, but this

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is totally fine. For recording, we get uh just a couple options. You can do

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full HD or HD, and you can only shoot at 30 FPS in either mode. So, this probably

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isn't going to look amazing, but let's take a video and see. Uh this is a video. I'm talking. I'm moving the

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camera a bit. I'm I'm jostling.

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Not the name, I'm just jostling. And there's Reese. Hey, I'm going to try

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zooming in. How does it sound? You know what? The video, again, zooming in, it doesn't

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look doesn't look that bad. It takes a second to like stop fizzling, but not bad.

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Oh, and there's the switch to 0.5.

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Not bad. Jelly, but not not too bad. Again, I'm

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actually pretty impressed by the video. The optical image stabilization works

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quite well, and even going to the 0.5, it did stutter a bit going back and

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forth. In fact, it skipped something I was saying just very briefly, but that's

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that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Other than that, the specs are not

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anything to write home about. It's got Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.3, uh it charges at

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25 W in that USB 2 port, and there's no wireless charging. So, I'm kind of just

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left wondering, who is this for? Cuz at $200,

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there's a lot of competition. I'm a believer in just buying an old flagship.

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Like, you can probably get an S23 FE for around this price. Uh the CMF Phone is

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only 70 bucks more. The Pixel A is, you know, 100 and some odd bucks more, which

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is a bit of a jump. This does come with 6 years of security updates and 6 years

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of major OS updates, which is nice. So, maybe this would be great for uh parent

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or grandparent, you know, throw it into uh easy mode. I mean, look at this. My

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grandma wouldn't be afraid of this. This is so approachable and friendly. But,

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again, it just seems like Samsung is kind of fallen asleep at the wheel, as

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there's so many phones coming out. There are so many great phones that have come

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out that are still great. At $200, 4

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gigs of RAM is just kind of embarrassing. No HDR kind of puts off

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the people who really want to watch media on this. The gaming performance,

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don't play games on this unless it's cribbage or backgammon.

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I've been a big fan of budget Samsungs in the past, but this one seems a bit

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like a miss. But, what do you think? Does this design entice you enough to

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look past its RAM woes? Let us know down below. Get subscribed, and go have a big

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old glass of water on me.