TCL 10L smartphone review
The TCL 10L is a budget Android smartphone that punches way above its weight, writes DAVE BULLARD
With the world’s economies in tatters and the price of top-end smartphones soaring to the mid-thousands or even higher, more and more people are looking for a good-looking, full-featured phone that won’t break the bank.
The new TCL 10L is a model that sits below the psychological $500 barrier at $449 and ticks a lot of boxes when it comes to features and quality.
First impressions are that this is a much more expensive phone. About the size of an iPhone 11 Pro Max or a Samsung Note 10+, it has a screen that stretches almost the full height (16.2cm) and width (7.6cm) to a very slim rounded bezel, or frame. Or, to put it another way, it has a 6.53-inch display with a 91 per cent screen-to-body ratio.
It has a bright and crisp screen, with sharp detail and good contrast and colours – far better than you’d expect at this price point. It makes watching high-res video a real pleasure. I found it did struggle a bit in direct sunlight, but to offset this it has a “Sunlight display” setting as part of TCL’s proprietary NXTVISION display and camera technology.
The back panel comes in Arctic White or Mariana Blue colour options. It’s made of plastic, not glass, but personally, I’ve never seen the attraction of a glass back – I can’t think of anyone I know who doesn’t have their phone in a case. So this wasn’t a biggie, for me.
Speaking of cases, the 10L comes with a clear silicone one in the box. It’s pretty nice but comes printed with the watermark “Display greatness” across it. It would be nicer just left plain.
On the right edge of the phone are keys for power and volume, while on the left is a smart key that can be set for a variety of uses. For example, you can set it to launch the front camera with a single press, go into selfie mode with a double-press or start video recording with a long press. Dead handy.
There’s a fingerprint sensor on the back for unlocking the phone, which can also be done through facial recognition.
When it comes to connectivity, besides Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – which lets you connect up to four Bluetooth speakers or headphones – on the bottom there’s a USB-C port and on the top is a 3.5mm headphone jack. In the box is a set of earphones.
Which brings us nicely to the audio performance. Those earphones are OK, but a bit on the bright side and could do with a boost in the bass department. And the phone speakers are the same – decent, but lacking soul.
On the back of the TCL 10L is a strip of four cameras – a 48-megapixel main, 8MP super wide, 2MP macro and 2MP depth – flanked by two flashes. (No optical telephoto, which isn’t surprising at this price.) There’s also a 16MP front-facing camera.
The camera app has a number of decent features. Besides the usual suspects, such as panorama, portrait and HDR, it has slow-motion, super macro (down to 4cm), in-recording snapshots, light trace mode (which lets you capture the movement of lights using a long exposure), face beautification and real-time bokeh (the blurring of the background while keeping the subject in focus). It’s capable of recording 4K video at 30fps.
Photo quality is very good overall for a phone at this pricepoint, with sharp subjects and vivid, saturated, colours, but in our TCL 10L smartphone review the camera tended to blow out the highlights a bit in bright light and produced quite grainy (noisy) results in low light.
Battery life was impressive during our test, with the 4000mAh battery generally lasting close to two days. Specified charging time to 100 percent is 145 minutes (about 2.5 hours).
The bottom line
TCL might be a new brand-name in the mobile phone world, but the company has been making phones for years, and it shows. The TCL 10L smartphone is a hugely competent contender in the sub-$500 bracket and should be right up there on your go-to list.
THUMBS UP
● Really good screen
● Good build quality
● Great performance
● Gives value for money
THUMBS DOWN
● Display suffers a bit in sunlight
● So-so audio quality
● Camera isn’t great in low light
TCL 10L price
$449 at JB Hi-Fi and Officeworks
TCL 10L specifications
Operating system: Android 10
User interface: TCL
Dimensions: 162.2mm x 75.6mm 8.4mm
Weight: 180g
Display: 6.53-inch LCD Dotch
Resolution: 1080 x 2340 pixels, 395PPI, LCD LTPS FHD+
Colours: 16.7 million
Rear cameras: 48MP, 8MP super wide, 2MP macro and 2MP depth
Zoom: 10X digital
Front camera: 16MP
Internal memory: 6GB RAM + 64GB ROM EMMC; 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM
UFS
End user memory: 44G/107GB
External storage: Micro SD card, up to 256GB
Battery: 4000mAh
Talk time: 34 hours (3G), 27 hours (4G) typical use
Standby time: 559 hours typical use
Charging time: 145 minutes (100%)
Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 665
CPU: Octa-core (Qualcomm Kyro 260 4 x Gold 2.0GHz,4 x Silver 1.8GHz)
GPU: Adreno 610
