• About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Tech News, Magazine & Review WordPress Theme 2017
  • Home
    • Home – Layout 1
    • Home – Layout 2
    • Home – Layout 3
    • Home – Layout 4
    • Home – Layout 5
  • Review

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    Fujifilm X-T2 review: The definition of a great camera

    The Analogue Nt Mini is the perfect NES console for video game lovers

    Using a mind reading device, ‘locked-in’ patients told researchers they’re happy

    Watch Cruise’s self-driving Bolt EV navigate smoothly to SF’s Dolores Park

  • Gaming

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    The Analogue Nt Mini is the perfect NES console for video game lovers

    GoPro’s Karma drone is back on sale after design flaw made them fall out of the sky

  • Gear
    • All
    • Audio
    • Camera
    • Laptop

    Apple Watch Series 2 Is Swimproof and Comes With Built-In GPS

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Jack Dorsey says he’ll continue running both Square and Twitter

    Fujifilm X-T2 review: The definition of a great camera

    The Warby Parker of hair color, Madison Reed, scores new funding and a CMO

    Shopify CEO attempts to defend continued hosting of Breitbart’s online store

    Trending Tags

    • Best iPhone 7 deals
    • Apple Watch 2
    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • iOS 10
    • iPhone 7
    • Sillicon Valley
  • Computers

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    Fujifilm X-T2 review: The definition of a great camera

    Shopify CEO attempts to defend continued hosting of Breitbart’s online store

    SpaceX targets February 18 for Dragon resupply mission to ISS

  • Applications

    Apple Watch Series 2 Is Swimproof and Comes With Built-In GPS

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    Jack Dorsey says he’ll continue running both Square and Twitter

  • Security

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    The Warby Parker of hair color, Madison Reed, scores new funding and a CMO

    Shopify CEO attempts to defend continued hosting of Breitbart’s online store

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
    • Home – Layout 1
    • Home – Layout 2
    • Home – Layout 3
    • Home – Layout 4
    • Home – Layout 5
  • Review

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    Fujifilm X-T2 review: The definition of a great camera

    The Analogue Nt Mini is the perfect NES console for video game lovers

    Using a mind reading device, ‘locked-in’ patients told researchers they’re happy

    Watch Cruise’s self-driving Bolt EV navigate smoothly to SF’s Dolores Park

  • Gaming

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    The Analogue Nt Mini is the perfect NES console for video game lovers

    GoPro’s Karma drone is back on sale after design flaw made them fall out of the sky

  • Gear
    • All
    • Audio
    • Camera
    • Laptop

    Apple Watch Series 2 Is Swimproof and Comes With Built-In GPS

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Jack Dorsey says he’ll continue running both Square and Twitter

    Fujifilm X-T2 review: The definition of a great camera

    The Warby Parker of hair color, Madison Reed, scores new funding and a CMO

    Shopify CEO attempts to defend continued hosting of Breitbart’s online store

    Trending Tags

    • Best iPhone 7 deals
    • Apple Watch 2
    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • iOS 10
    • iPhone 7
    • Sillicon Valley
  • Computers

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    Fujifilm X-T2 review: The definition of a great camera

    Shopify CEO attempts to defend continued hosting of Breitbart’s online store

    SpaceX targets February 18 for Dragon resupply mission to ISS

  • Applications

    Apple Watch Series 2 Is Swimproof and Comes With Built-In GPS

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    Jack Dorsey says he’ll continue running both Square and Twitter

  • Security

    To regain advertiser trust, Facebook is tracking ads by the millisecond

    National Academy of Sciences endorses embryonic engineering

    Google has been asked to take down over a million websites

    Watch Dogs 2 Update Coming This Week, Here’s What It Does

    The Warby Parker of hair color, Madison Reed, scores new funding and a CMO

    Shopify CEO attempts to defend continued hosting of Breitbart’s online store

No Result
View All Result
rTechnews
No Result
View All Result

TCL 10L review: A modern phone for only $250, but there are trade-offs

gadgetnews by gadgetnews
May 14, 2020
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


TCL’s 10L is the company’s $250 budget phone. 

Sarah Tew/CNET

Chinese electronics giant TCL has made a name for itself in the US through its Roku TV offerings, which have impressive displays that punch well above their prices. But after years of trying to break into the phone industry through sub-brands such as Alcatel, Palm and BlackBerry, the company is trying again and using its own name. 

LikeGood value for priceModern design

Don’t LikeMono speaker is weakNXTVision display tech doesn’t add valueLag issues

One of the first of these new phones is the $250 TCL 10L, which will be available May 19. Overall, the 10L is a good attempt at a budget phone, and while it doesn’t have many flashy features, it admirably handles basic tasks and has an elegant design. For the price, it’s a good rival to the Moto G Stylus ($300 at Motorola). But because Motorola’s phone performed much more smoothly, I recommend it between the two. 

Design: Modern despite the price

Unlike TCL’s flashy concepts like a slideable phone and a triple-screen folding tablet, the 10L is a more traditional smartphone, running Android 10 (an upgrade to Android 11 is promised), with a large 6.53-inch full HD LCD screen. It has a cutout in the upper left corner for its 16-megapixel selfie camera. 

Power and volume buttons adorn the right side of the plastic-backed device while a customizable “smart key” is on the left that can be programmed to open preferred apps or do tasks, such as a double press to open an app and a long press to summon the Google Assistant. The “Mariana blue” adds a bit of color and flashy patterns under sunlight. 

The TCL 10L’s Mariana blue finish flourishes under sunlight. 

Eli Blumenthal/CNET

A mono speaker is located on the bottom of the phone to the right of the USB-C port while the top has a 3.5mm headphone jack. When I played videos and music on the phone, the speaker was pretty bad, particularly at higher volumes. You’ll want to use headphones.

A fingerprint scanner can be found on the back, which is responsive though not the fastest I’ve seen. There is also an FM radio when wired headphones are plugged in. As one might expect given the price, there is no IP-rated water resistance or wireless charging.

Given its reputation in TVs, I hoped that the display on the 10L would be a standout in its class. The company touts that its phones have “NXTVision,” a feature that boosts the display’s colors and can convert SDR content to HDR through a combination of a “dedicated display” hardware chip and some software tricks. 

TCL’s NXTVision display tech is supposed to boost the display’s quality, but often just oversaturates the picture. 

Eli Blumenthal/CNET

But to me, this feature didn’t really add much. When I turned it on, videos streamed over Netflix, YouTube and Disney Plus often ended up looking oversaturated, as did online matches of Call of Duty Mobile. It could be a personal preference, but I had to turn the feature off.

(BTW: I tried to download Fortnite from the Play Store but the app oddly didn’t show up, something TCL said was due to it not yet being certified to work with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 processor. Downloading the game from Epic Games directly did work, but it struggled to play.)

The 10L’s included case is a nice touch, though its branding isn’t subtle.

Eli Blumenthal/CNET

The phone has a preapplied plastic screen protector on the display. While it helps fight scratches, I found that taking it off improves the display’s visibility, particularly outdoors. A plastic case is included in the box, and while it’s not of the highest quality (and features big TCL branding), it is a nice add-on that helps with gripping the device. 

Camera: Good… if you have lots of light

The 10L has four rear cameras.

Eli Blumenthal/CNET

Besides some lag issues (which I’ll get to later), overall the 10L camera works well and can capture pretty good photos, especially when shooting in daylight or in areas with plenty of light. People and objects were sharp and the colors vivid and I actually enjoyed the macro lens for super close up shots of objects, though details from its 2-megapixel sensor wasn’t great. (FYI, the main camera has a 48-megapixel sensor, but a 12-megapixel resolution is set by default.)

The 10L takes nice shots outdoors. 

Eli Blumenthal/CNET

Taking photos at night without a flash, however, was difficult. As with most phones that don’t have their own night mode setting, photos taken on the 10L in these environments were grainy and out of focus. 

Night shoots are not one of the 10L’s specialties. 

Eli Blumenthal/CNET

The camera has a special mode called “High Pixel,” which can shoot at the full 48 megapixels. But when I tried it out, it didn’t provide much improvement and it required me to be steady for several seconds. That’s a big ask when taking pictures of moving subjects like children. 

The 10L puts a watermark in the left corner of photos by default. 

Eli Blumenthal/CNET

As for video, quality on 4K or 1080p isn’t great when shooting indoors, while the lack of optical image stabilization is noticed (there is electronic image stabilization but it doesn’t help much). The phone’s front-facing camera also took serviceable photos, but without plenty of natural light they weren’t anything special.

One annoying camera issue I want to bring up: By default, the camera app includes a watermark that displays a TCL 10L logo and the tagline “display greatness” in the lower-left corner of every photo. This can be turned off in the camera settings, but it’s an unnecessary step for what should be off by default.

Processor and battery: Manageable, but not great

Beyond the Snapdragon 665 processor, the 10L includes 64GB of storage, with the option to expand through microSD, and 6GB of RAM. On paper, the 10L should be faster than the Moto G Stylus, for example, because Motorola’s phone has the same Snapdragon 665 processor but 4GB of RAM. In practice, the G Stylus fared better during benchmark tests, possibly due to Motorola using a cleaner version of Android. 

Geekbench v.5.0 single-core

Note:
Longer bars indicate better performance

Geekbench v.5.0 multicore

Note:
Longer bars indicate better performance

With day-to-day usage, the 10L sometimes performed admirably, like when I played graphic-intensive games like Call of Duty or scrolling through a content-heavy app like TikTok’s For You Page. But other times there were constant small lags when doing basic tasks like opening up the phone’s app drawer, closing or switching apps and scrolling through some webpages or playlists on Spotify. 

The processor also struggled and lagged for a few seconds when switching between the various lenses on the rear of the phone, particularly when switching between the main 48-megapixel shooter and the phone’s 8-megapixel ultra-wide and 2-megapixel macro lenses. 

One other thing: For some bizarre reason the “User Support” feedback app was locked in the notification tray and couldn’t be swiped away. The only way to clear it was by going into Settings, Smart Manager, Notifications and toggling the app to off. Like the watermark in the camera app, this is another software issue that should’ve been resolved before shipping. 

We’re waiting on official battery test results from the lab, and I’ll update this review when they come in, but anecdotally, the battery is solid. It can last all day without a charge, and was able to stream both Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War with the brightness jacked up and still have about 24% of battery left over. 

TCL 10L spec comparison

TCL 10L

Motorola Moto G Stylus

Motorola Moto G Power

Display size, resolution

6.53-inch LCD; 1,080×2,340 pixels

6.4-inch LCD; 2,300×1,080 pixels

6.4-inch LCD; 2,300×1,080 pixels

Pixel density

395ppi

399ppi

399ppi

Dimensions (Inches)

6.39 x 2.98 x 0.33 in

6.24 x 2.98 x 0.36 in

6.29 x 2.98 x 0.38 in

Dimensions (Millimeters)

162.2 x 75.6 x 8.4mm

158.55 x 75.8 x 9.2 mm

159.85 x 75.8 x 9.63 mm

Weight (Ounces, Grams)

6.35oz; 180g

6.77 oz; 192 g

7.01 oz; 199 g

Mobile software

Android 10

Android 10

Android 10

Camera

48-megapixel, 8-megapixel super wide, 2-megapixel macro, 2-megapixel depth

48-megapixel wide-angle, 2-megapixel macro, 16-megapixel ultra-wide angle

16-megapixel wide-angle, 2-megapixel macro, 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle

Front-facing camera

16-megapixel

16-megapixel

16-megapixel

Video capture

4K

4K

4K

Processor

2.0GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 665

Snapdragon 665

Snapdragon 665

Storage

64GB, 128GB

128GB

64GB

RAM

6GB

4GB

4GB

Expandable storage

Up to 256GB

Up to 512GB

Up to 512GB

Battery

4,000 mAh

4,000 mAh

5,000 mAh

Fingerprint sensor

Back

Back

Back

Connector

USB-C

USB-C

USB-C

Headphone jack

Yes

Yes

Yes

Special features

90Hz display, NXTVision Display

Stylus, Action Cam

Price off-contract (USD)

$250

$300

$250

Price (GBP)

£199

N/A

N/A

Price (AUD)

AU$500

N/A

N/A



Source link

gadgetnews

gadgetnews

Next Post
Samsung Galaxy Fold Lite release date, price & spec rumours

Samsung Galaxy Fold Lite release date, price & spec rumours

Please login to join discussion

Recommended.

Amazon Echo Show 10 review

Amazon Echo Show 10 review

February 25, 2021
Can you run iOS apps on Windows 10? (No, but you can run Android)

Can you run iOS apps on Windows 10? (No, but you can run Android)

August 2, 2020

Trending.

Justice League Snyder Cut News, Rumours & How to Watch in UK

Justice League Snyder Cut News, Rumours & How to Watch in UK

February 12, 2021
OnePlus 9, Red Magic 6 & Xiaomi Mi 11

OnePlus 9, Red Magic 6 & Xiaomi Mi 11

February 14, 2021
Best USB-C docks and docking stations for laptops and tablets 2021

Best USB-C docks and docking stations for laptops and tablets 2021

February 13, 2021
PomaBrush Review: The Minimalist Electric Toothbrush

PomaBrush Review: The Minimalist Electric Toothbrush

August 11, 2020
100 Funny Things to Ask Alexa

100 Funny Things to Ask Alexa

February 10, 2021
rTechnews

We bring you the best Premium WordPress Themes that perfect for news, magazine, personal blog, etc. Check our landing page for details.

Follow Us

Categories

  • Apple
  • Applications
  • Audio
  • Camera
  • Computers
  • Gadget Reviews
  • Gaming
  • Gaming News
  • Gear
  • Laptop
  • Latest News
  • Microsoft
  • Photography
  • Review
  • Security
  • SmartPhone News

Tags

Apple Watch 2 Best iPhone 7 deals Buying Guides CES 2017 iOS 10 iPhone 7 Nintendo Switch Playstation 4 Pro Sillicon Valley

Recent News

Save £250 on the HP Envy 13, Our Favourite 13in Laptop Right Now

Save £250 on the HP Envy 13, Our Favourite 13in Laptop Right Now

March 5, 2021
FlexiSpot Comhar EG8 Standing Desk Review: A Pricey But Stylish Option For Work And Gaming

FlexiSpot Comhar EG8 Standing Desk Review: A Pricey But Stylish Option For Work And Gaming

March 5, 2021
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2021 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Review
  • Apple
  • Applications
  • Computers
  • Gaming
  • Gear
    • Audio
    • Camera
  • Microsoft
  • Photography
  • Security

© 2021 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.