Le2 Review : Truly without compromise

 

LeEco Le2

I happened to be one of the lucky few (among several lakhs) to be fast enough to apply for "Customer experience Officer " option in LeTv and get my hands on the latest and spectacular #Le2, 6 days before its actual launch.

Having used the phone for the past week,  I should admit that, this by far is one of the best phones I've ever used till date ( I have used a wide variety of phones including Nokia, Samsung, Asus and Xiaomi). Incidentally this is the first LeTv phone I've used till date and being impressed is an understatement

Here's a short frank review of the newly launched #Le2

 

Key Highlights of Phone

       (Specs Image Source : Flipkart.com)

• Price point of 12K , which to me is a brilliant offer for the amount of hardware specifications it carries along with it. Any brand with similar hardware specifications would easily cost 20K. The Mi5 has almost the exact specs(except for the Snapdragon 820) for more than double the price at 25,000

• Rose Gold Colour and Design : The phone's design really stands out and the gold colour adds a beautiful touch to it . A 5.5' device, the phone comes with a nice silicon case , sleek and very easy to handle and operate. The phone is made very light and easy on the hands

• The Le2 doesn't come with a standard 3.5 MM output but rather has an extra joining cable which can be used to connect the earphones. Not sure why this was done, but either ways, the clarity of sound and the speaker is excellent. It comes with a Dolby Atmos speaker and neatly placed in the bottom than the front or rear. This to some extent amplifies the sound volume and quite clear too

• Remote Control feature through Wifi or Infrared sensor to operate any TV!! 

• The user interface looks strikingly similar to an iOS. However on top of this, the phone's interface is easy to handle and the navigation is very fast. The notification bar is retrieved by selecting the left button than scrolling down the top bar , unlike other phones. Guess you can get used to it in a couple of days. 
• An interesting feature is where the phone's unlocking option aligns to the right when you try unlocking with the right hand thumb and vice versa . For a 5.5' screen this is very useful as you are able to operate it quite easily in one hand. 

• The fingerprint unlocking feature is super fast and unlocks the phone in microseconds as you place the finger on top of it.

• Camera : The camera is one of the key highlights of the phone. A 16MP camera in rear and 8MP in front, it has a wide variety of options to take spectacular shots (incl HDR/Panorama/Slow motion videos). It has also options to change ISO,White Balance, Contrast,Saturation etc which seems to be a glaring miss in many high end phones these day. Camera quality is definitely upto the mark (far better than its predecessor) 

• 3GB RAM and Snapdragon 620 processor is a major plus for those heavy usage users. Battery easily lasts for more than 1 day with significant usage 

• Quick charging facility : Having been used to charging for more than 4+ hours, the #Le2 gets charged within the hour and even 10minutes of charging powers nearly 20% charge which can be incredibly useful for emergencies ( Charging port however is USB-C in the phone end and the standard USB 2.0 at the other end to connect to a charger/laptop) 

• Le2 come with Android 6.0 (Marshmallow). Key advantage being you can now control which app needs what kind of access. Ex : You can now prevent your games, music apps or others to access the web/camera/contacts/gallery etc. This ensures higher protection and privacy for your data 

• One of the biggest highlights however is the Live TV option. With a click of a button I'm able to watch all TV channels live ( including Eng/Hindi/Telugu/Tamil news,sports,entertainment etc) . This is aided by a free 1 year LeEco membership when you buy the phone.

Things that can improve

• Radio is a glaring miss. I love to listen to all those radio shows many a time and lack of radio feels like a small disadvantage to me

• Though 32 GB internal memory is sufficient, a lack of SD Card slot can be difficult sometimes. Even at a future state, when you want to format the phone, it would have been easier to just move contents to SD and hit format. This now requires me to backup to a cloud or PC and then reset (again only if required)

•  Minor UI/Design changes to improve user experience and some more inbuilt options for a ringtone/wallpaper would have been nice ( but again you can get them easily online for free)

Verdict - 9/10 (Highly recommended buy)

Redmi Note 3 (Gold) Review

Right from the onset, Xiaomi has set one objective quite clear. They want to emulate the iPhone models and someday try to be better than them. They began by pricing their phones (Starting with Mi3) nearly 30% of a usual iPhone . The phone had a rock solid metal body, a super fast OS without the Launcher (just like an iPhone) and a brilliant camera. Without any second guesses, stocks flew off the digital shelves, through the flash sales conducted by Flipkart

Launch of Redmi Note 3 however has grabbed some eyeballs definitely, not because of their hardware specifications, but primarily the "iPhone" like design . Even the colours weren't spared as they have launched the exact 3 colours of the iPhone 6/6S, namely Silver, Space Grey and wait for it, Rose Gold.

But nevertheless, the Redmi Note 3 definitely warrants a good rating

Price  (Rating : 10/ 10)

The price point is almost exactly similar to other recently launched models. The 10-13K price segment is the hottest in the industry and almost everyone prefers to get something in this budget. (Very few actually opt in for the 25K phones and there's a whole different segment that insists on getting only a 50K iPhone)
Redmi Note 3 is priced at 10K and should definitely admit that it is worth every penny for that price or even more. Good luck even finding a piece , as most pieces seem to fly out of the shelves every time it comes back in stock

Processor (Rating 8/10)


A Snapdragon 650 Processor easily does the trick for Redmi Note 3 . The apps loads very fast and doesn't seem to have any lagging issues

Battery (Rating : 10/ 10) :

One of the most impressive features about the phone is its humongous battery capacity. With a 4050mah battery, this easily gets to power for more than 1-1.5 days even with heavy usage. That to me is a single major advantage that tips the favour of this phone. Almost all phones in the 10-13K doesn't cross the 3000mah limit


 Storage (Rating : 8 / 10) 

  It comes with a default 16GB storage and a optional SD Card slot which relieve the phone of some of the large photo and music files a user wanna carry. Incidentally it also comes with a 32 GB version at 2K extra . On a practical note, the same 16gb SD card would cost you anywhere less than 300rs and better to spend on that instead of a 32gb version model


RAM (Rating : 6 /10) :


Slightly disappointing expectations on this front, the Note 3 comes with only a 2GB RAM and almost everyone would have second guessed and expected a 3GB RAM. The extra 1GB RAM if it had been there would have made a lot of difference to handle several applications and big graphic intensive games. However for a normal user who'd probably use it only for Music/FB/Calling/Whatsapp, 2GB is more than sufficient for the phone to handle its tasks.  You may tend to see some minor overheating now and then after a long call or playing a game, but it shouldn't be of any concern


Camera (Rating : 6 /10 )

The most important feature while selecting a phone is the camera. Xiaomi usually has excellent cameras in their phone , since their Mi3. However the Redmi series has always been a letdown in the camera perspective and never really had much focus on it.  Though they claim to have a 16MP camera rear and 5MP in front, the photos lack sharpness and not as bright in comparison with a similarly priced phone like the Moto G3/G4

OS , General Performance, Design & Overall Rating  :  8/10

Xiaomi 's MIUI is fantastic as always. Smooth , launcher less user interface and works like a charm. It never seems to hang even when multiple applications were opened . The design is also beautiful with the Golden colour to be the highlight of this launch.

Verdict : A definite buy and easily one among the top budget phones in the market