TCL 20 Pro 5G phone review

DAVE BULLARD checks out TCL’s new flagship phone – the very good and inexpensive 20 Pro 5G

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It’s tough sometimes when we’re reviewing a company’s flagship product – it’s great to get our hands on top-of-the-line tech and design, but it’s always tempered by the fact that such awesomeness comes with a hefty price tag and will be out of the reach of many readers.

In the case of the TCL 20 Pro 5G phone, however, you’re getting a flagship model for just $799, so I jumped at the chance to see what it was like.

PR gurus Closer Communications sent us the Marine Blue model to try out. (It’s also available in Moondust Gray.)

For me, there were three first impressions that stood out: First, this is a very shiny phone, with a back panel that reflects and plays with light in a very pleasing way.

Second, it’s also a pretty big phone which definitely sits in the ‘plus-sized’ category. At 7.3cm wide and 16.4cm high, it’s roughly the same size as a Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (7.7cm x 16.5cm) or an iPhone 12 Pro Max (7.8cm x 16.1cm).

And third, it has a beautifully bright and sharp screen. It’s a 6.67-inch AMOLED display that curves down into the left and right the edges to give a 93 per cent screen-to-body ratio.

In our TCL 10L review last October, we said “it has a bright and crisp screen, with sharp detail and good contrast and colours”, and that’s true for the 20 Pro 5G as well.

That display performance is due to the company’s proprietary NXTVISION 2.0 Intelligent Display engine, which also adjusts the colour, contrast and sharpness on the fly to suit the content on the screen.

There’s a NXTVISION app on the phone, which lets you control its various functions, such as image enhancement, video and game enhancement, screen colour mode and temperature, a sunlight setting, eye comfort mode (which filters out blue light – great for end-of-day reading when you’re winding down for bed) and a reading mode (which essentially makes your screen look like a Kindle’s – black and white on a sort of sepia background – so it feels more like you’re reading a book).   

I’d found the TCL 10L’s screen struggled a bit in direct sunlight, so I was interested to see what this model would be like. I’m happy to report that there were no problems at all, and I could see the screen well in any conditions.

In the box with the TCL 20 Pro 5G smartphone is a clear silicone case which lets you see the back of the phone and appreciate its light-reflecting qualities. It feels nice in the hand and gives a good grip.

Battery life

There’s also a 9V2A travel charger and cable for refuelling the phone’s big 4500mAh battery. You can also use 15W fast wireless charging, but you’ll need to buy a separate accessory for that.

In my tests, when using the travel charger, the TCL 20 Pro 5G charging time was very good: from empty, it charged to 71 per cent in one hour, 91 per cent in an hour and a half, and 100 per cent in two hours.

Since I had the phone to test during the Olympics, I thought it would be a good idea to see how the battery stood up to a continuous video stream from Channel 7’s 7Plus app. The result was excellent: the 20 Pro got to 80 per cent battery capacity after two hours, 72 per cent after 4 hours, and it was still sitting at 60 per cent after a marathon six hours.

Want to know more about battery capacity? Check out our story: What does mAh mean on a battery?

The last thing in the box is a set of TCL-branded earphones, which aren’t bad at all for freebies. They have a decent amount of detail, a bit of warmth and an overall pleasing sound. However, they suffer from a fair amount of cable noise, or microphonics, which I found a bit irritating.

While on the subject of audio, I found the sound from the speakers on the phone itself to be pretty good but a bit ‘bright’, erring on the treble side, with a bit of a hard edge to it.

Photo quality

For the cameras, TCL has gone for a four-in-a-row camera array stretching down the left side of the back panel, and one on the front which is punched into the display rather than sitting in a notch, which is nice. In a world where many camera lenses are left jutting out of phone bodies, TCL has left the rear lenses flush with the back panel. Also nice.

On the rear are a 48-megapixel primary lens, an ultra-wide, a macro and a depth sensor, while the front camera is an HDR-enabled 32MP model. Key features include optical image stabilisation, scene detection, 2X lossless zoom, 10X digital zoom, Backlight Selfie mode and real-time bokeh – that professional-looking blur you get behind the subject

To put the camera to the test, I took a few photos with both the TCL and an Apple iPhone 12 – both at factory settings. In the examples above, the iPhone photo of the bear is a true representation of the bear’s colour, while the TCL is colder and a bit washed out. The pictures of the flowers are closer. The iPhone 12, however, costs $550 more than the 20 Pro – almost double – so some differences in quality are to be expected.

Security and specs

There are three ways of unlocking the phone: by using a passcode or pattern, by putting your finger or thumb on the fingerprint reader built into the screen, or via facial recognition. All are very easy to activate during the initial setup process.

The TCL 20 Pro 5G runs Android 11 overlaid by TCL’s user interface. The processor is a Qualcomm SM7225 Snapdragon 750G 5G (8nm), and it has 6GB of RAM, 256GB of internal storage and a micro SD-card capacity of up to 1TB.

Like the rest of TCL’s 20 Series lineup, this phone has been verified by Google as an Android Enterprise Recommended device.

Also, as we said in our news story when this phone was announced, the TCL 20 Pro 5G will soon be able to use Multi-Screen Collaboration, which lets you use your phone, tablet and TV together in a seamless way – such as showing your phone screen on your tablet or using your phone as a touchpad to control your TV. It will be enabled on the 20 Pro 5G via a soon-to-come software update.

The bottom line

Overall, the TCL 20 Pro 5G is a very impressive phone. It’s beautifully designed and made, its performance is snappy, and as for that display – it was an absolute pleasure watching the Olympics on it. Big, clear, colourful and highly engaging. The fact is, like the TCL 10L before it, you’re getting a lot of phone for the price. I’d be very happy with the TCL 20 Pro 5G as my day-to-day phone.

TCL 20 Pro 5G price

RRP $799

Available from Vodafone, Mobileciti and Harvey Norman.

www.tcl.com