The TCL 10 Pro costs £399 Available from the 1st June
TCL is the brand most people might know for creating phones like the Blackberry Key 2 but last month unveils three handsets – TCL 10 5G, TCL 10L and what we are reviewing today the TCL 10 Pro which costs £399.
On first impressions when this arrived a few weeks ago I was impressed with the 91% screen to body ratio as all as the quad-camera set up and minimal bezels I was excited to see what this phone could do.
Cost wise this phone is £399 meaning it’s coming up against some stiff competition from the likes of the more well-known brands like the Apple iPhone SE or Samsung A-Series or even the Huawei 5G P40 Lite that sits at £379. So it’s a real battle of the mid-ranger phones.
Design-wise this phone looks really good TCL has made it with a screen that curves around all sides and it comes with small bezels and a centrally positioned display notch. Meaning it’s nice to handle. This phone is available in two colours ember grey and mist green.
On the back of the handset TCL have avoided the massive camera bump and have that rear quad camera almost flat on the back. Which I prefer over phones like the iPhone 11 with a camera that makes it wobble when you place it on a flat surface due to the raised camera.
Elsewhere on this phone you have a USB-C port on the bottom for charging the phone but if you are a fan of wireless charging this phone will disappoint you as TCL have decided against that feature but it’s a mid-range handset so I think you can live without it.
USB-C port as well as the speaker and sim card tray.
This phone is IP52 rated meaning it is splash-proof so the odd bit of water won’t hurt just keep it away from the outdoor pools we have all built since the crazy amount of time we had due to this coronavirus lockdown.
Also on this phone as well as the normal volume and power button on the other side you have a dedicated shortcut button which is used to bring up google assistant. At the top of the handset, you have a headphone jack and yes I did say headphone jack and don’t check your calendar this is not the year 2000.
The Headphone Jack is back!
Another feature I liked was the on this phone is the optical in-display fingerprint sensor which found this to be a very suitable security feature and throughout my testing of this phone I found it worked very well and I think it only failed once.
Battery wise this phone comes with a 4,500mAh which was ok it lasted most of the day. This current lockdown did prevent me from doing the normal tests but as mentioned it lasted most of the day and from a zero battery to 50% took about 40 mins charge.
Inside the phone, you are given the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 and you’re also given 8GB of RAM as well as 128GB of expandable storage which falls nicely into the spec you come to expect with this flurry of mid-range handsets that have all hit the market. This spec of this phone will allow you to use this phone for most tasks you would normally do with your phone. However, I tried to play some mobile games and this is where it fell down it provided a below-par experience as I felt some games like COD a little slow and the graphics could have been better. What you do get is the Edge bar as this gives you a shortcut to access your frequently used app which is great for bringing the most used app up in seconds.
Display-wise I was very happy with the 1080P OLED display when watching Amazon Video I found the display was colourful with a gentle colour profile. When watching a video on youtube I have found the curved sides can create accidents as if you get an advert pop up it’s hard to remove it when it’s in landscape mode.
Moving on to the cameras you have a 24MP front camera and on the back, you have 4 camera:
Front of the handset
Back of the phone – Quad camera Set up with stylish Mist Green finish.
The overall look of these cameras look great but the overall experience in parts was a little disappointing. Some images ended up unnatural or even fluorescent when you use the Zoom to the max. The only saving grace is the ultra-wide shot which is fantastic.
No Zoom used
5x Zoom you can see this phone is making images unnatural
10x zoom – really shows this camera disadvantages the images look fluorescent
The ultra-Wide shot is the saving grace.
When taking pictures of faces I found a statue in my local woods and when taking shots especially in low light performance I found it unimpressive the more you zoom the more the picture becomes more pixelated.
No Zoom in Low light conditions
10x zoom- You can see the more you zoom the more pixelated it gets.
Moving on to the video recording and this is also an experience that is just ok at best. The video recording can go up to 4K at 30fps and does slow-motion video up to 960fps and 720p. I found the quality had some oversaturation and also some flicker in the playback.
Overall the TCL 10 Pro is a decent phone. It’s not perfect by a long shot but in the mid-range sector, there is a lot to enjoy about this phone. Such as the display with minimal bezels and the screen curves on all edges. You also get a headphone jack and shortcut key for bringing up your google smart assistant however you can very easily press the button by accident. Battery wise this phone will give you a full days use then you will need to charge unless you watch a lot of Netflix or youtube that I found did eat the battery.
You also get a nice range of cameras but sometimes less is more as TCL’s image processing can be a little bit of a disappointment.
Other negatives are the flash modules protrude slightly and this phone does not provide wireless charging but if you can look past that this phone will keep most happy unless you’re looking for using a phone mainly for photography reasons if that is the case I would look elsewhere.
This is not a bad attempt from TCL and I look forward to the future when they improve the camera quality and some other small issues then they will have a quality handset on their hands one that could really target the top 3 brands.
Overall Rating- 4 Stars
The TCL 10 Pro costs £399 Available from the 1st June
