TECHWEEK
The model has a 5-inch LCD display. By today’s standards, such a small diagonal is more of an advantage than a disadvantage, since many users have already lost hope of finding a smartphone that is comfortable for a small hand. However, the class of the device makes itself felt: the screen resolution is only 960×480 pixels, that is, you can only dream of HD here. The pixel density is small, 218 ppi, but quite sufficient brightness (384.6 cd / m 2 ).
Is it worth talking about the correct display of colors in devices of this price group? Here, of course, there is no reason for delight either, although the sRGB space is covered by 81%. Simply put, it is not a bad option, especially since with such a resolution it is not necessary to pretend to have a high-quality display of content. But you can watch videos on YouTube without any problems.
Communication modules: Forget about 4G
To provide the ZTE Blade L8 with a low price, the manufacturer has eliminated almost everything from the design. There is no NFC and no fingerprint sensor, not to mention the face recognition system. Moreover, you can also forget about using modern communication standards such as LTE in this device. There is a radio module with 3G support, which in our tests of mobile data transmission provided a maximum speed of only 42 Mbps. Is it worth making a claim to the device, taking into account such a price? At the end of this article, we added a couple more competitors, but they are somewhat better, and in some ways worse than our hero. Because buying a smartphone is cheaper than $70. Is always a compromise.
The built-in memory could be very tiny, like 8 GB, but here they “weighed” as many as 16.
With cameras, everything is traditional for superbudgeters: the 8-megapixel main and 5-megapixel front ones are filmed with strong noise in cloudy weather or indoors. Videos are recorded here in HD resolution and at 30 frames per second. Well, at least there is autofocus.
Performance and battery
As you might expect, the Blade L8’s performance is only sufficient for basic tasks. Equipped with a four-core UNISOC SC7731E processor with a clock speed of 1.3 GHz and 1 GB of RAM, this budget smartphone running the Android 9 Go operating system did not go far in the benchmarks: with 2,569 points in PCMark, it became one of the most weakest of all the devices we tested, including in terms of graphics performance. Our test PDF took a whopping 43.5 seconds to download over the WLAN connection.
Devices of this class are usually equipped with a small battery. Here, too, only 2,000 mAh, and this is quite enough for at least a day (considering that the user is unlikely to play games or watch videos all day). It’s a pity, of course, that charging takes too long: about 4 hours. In the first half hour, the battery receives only 19% of its full capacity.
Conclusion
Of course, for that kind of money, it is difficult to find a smartphone that will completely suit you. ZTE Blade L8 is not bad compared to competitors: it has compact dimensions (this is very important for many), fresh Android 9.0, albeit in a truncated version, 16 GB of permanent memory … The lack of NFC and many other functions can be understood, but the fact is, that there is no 4G support is really frustrating. Although, again: fast internet is needed to watch videos, but those who are determined to watch for a long time and a lot will probably choose a smartphone with a better screen.
