TCL 10L Review - Too Budget? By TechnoMinute

As you can tell from the title these are TCL's first offerings into the smartphone market as they continue to dominate in the budget display genre. It's actually pretty cool to see them, try their hand at the smartphone game and, to be honest, they did a decent job. These two devices, the 10 pro and the 10l, serve to offer different segments of the budget market, the latter directly competing with the likes of the Pixel 4a, the iPhone SE and the pro well. The pro is somewhere in between the flagships and the ultra budget minded. In fact, the 10 pro is actually very reminiscent of the early years of OnePlus, but more on that in a different video. So seeing as the 10l is relatively affordable, can it stack up to the competition let's find out so right off the bat? The price is right.

It comes in at 250 dollars and to be honest for 250 dollars. This is a great value phone. It ships with a 6.5 inch 1080p display six gigabytes of ram, a four camera array, a 4 000 William hour battery and, lastly, a rear fingerprint sensor and on paper these seem like decent specs. But if I've come to understand anything, it's that real world experience is always more important than specs. Fortunately, it performs pretty decently.

The overall experience is pleasant and, to be honest, the phone is just solid, it's less of what the phone has and more of what it doesn't have. There's no wireless charging, no waterproofing, no OLED display and no in-display fingerprint sensor, but if these are all things that you can live without, then the 10l makes a surprisingly compelling argument. So, first off the display, the display is a decent 1080p LCD, with an aspect ratio of about 19 by 10 and a pixel density of 395, which, to be honest for a screen. This size is a little low. It's an IPS panel, which means contrast, is good, but that's about it.

It's not an OLED, so you're not going to get those deep, blacks and honestly because of the larger size, it just looks a little lower res than its competitors. Is it a bad display? Well, no, but it's also not going to win any awards either coming from a display manufacturer. I would have expected better with this screen, but, alas, it's pretty mediocre. Now it does ship with a couple of features that TCL is calling not vision, a feature that essentially increases contrast and saturation and supposedly can convert some SDR content to HDR. However, I found this mode a little distracting as it just made.

Everything feel like there was too much saturation now battery life easily got me through a full day with six to eight hours of screen on time and the OS experience is again more of the same. You can obviously see that the 655 is struggling in different apps and while I necessarily wouldn't call this lag, it's definitely a little stutter. At times the phone is running android 10, with a promise to get android 11. Overall, it's a very stock android experience, but does have TCL's UI skin on it. So then, I guess where this phone really starts to Excel is in the camera.

Now before we talk about the camera, we do have to address the fact that this is only a 250 dollar phone and with that there's only so much you can expect from it. However, with that in mind, the camera is actually pretty solid. The phone chips with a four camera array, with a 48 megapixel shooter, an 8 megapixel ultra-wide, a 2 megapixel depth sensor and a 2 megapixel macro, and this is all pretty impressive. Considering the price pictures are surprisingly detailed and while there isn't a ton of HDR, it still does a decent job. Now, as you can see in most of these photos, the detail, dynamic range and sharpness all seem to be there.

However, in all the photos, they all seem to come out a bit dark in each environment. Of course, this is an easy fix in post, but definitely something to keep in mind now. Switching to the wide angle camera- and this is where the image starts- to definitely decrease a bit. Unfortunately, it's a bit hit or miss in low light environments as well. But if you have a steady hand, you can nab some pretty decent shots.

Also, the selfie camera is capable, but nothing amazing. So for a phone that costs 250 dollars, the camera is entirely usable, if not better than some other options out there. Now, if you really want to go deep into the camera, there is a 48 megapixel mode. But honestly, I really didn't notice a difference between that and the standard photo mode. Now video is again okay, it can shoot in 4k.

But honestly, the lack of optical image stabilization makes video not that great. Now the 10l ships in a plastic housing which is incredibly prone to fingerprints and unfortunately, this makes the phone feel somewhat cheap. That said, you're not getting a junk phone at all. The rear, fingerprint sensor included, is very responsive, admittedly not the fastest that I've tested, but definitely better than some and the form factor is very pleasant to use now. Lastly, the phone does feature a programmable button on the side.

Then you can set to open certain apps or launch the Google Assistant, but, to be honest, I found myself disabling it because I kept accidentally pressing it anytime. I take it out of my pocket. Also, the speakers on this phone are mono and are very, very underwhelming, so you're definitely going to want to stick to headphones at louder volumes. So, with all of this in mind, you might be thinking that the TCL 10l is not the best buy. However, I really think it depends on your use case.

If you need a secondary work phone with a good battery life and a solid camera, then this might actually be for you, or maybe you just want to get a phone for your team, but don't necessarily want to invest that much either way. This phone is a solid option and I think for a first attempt into the budget. Smartphone market TCL did a pretty decent job. Now is this phone going to win any wards? No? Definitely not, but if all you need is a competent device, then look no further, as at 250 you're, not really going to find anything better. So that's going to wrap it up for this video.

If you liked it, you know what to do. If you didn't well hit that dislike button, twice big shout out to TCL for sending out the 10l, if there's anything else, you'd like me to know, make sure to drop it in the comments below and as always until next time, peace. You.

Source : TechnoMinute