As is the case with most things in life, you tend to get what you pay for when it comes to mobile phones, and ZTE's Blade L2 - a budget Android blower with a 5-inch screen and a quad-core processor - offers pretty much what you'd expect for its sub-£100 asking price. There are some neat ideas here, such as the thin design and support for removable storage - but the entire package is something of a disappointment, with several crippling problems which make this a tricky phone to recommend, even to those shopping on a shoestring.
ZTE Blade L2 review: Design & Display
There's a whole lot of plastic involved in the ZTE Blade L2's construction - something which shouldn't really come as a surprise, given its budget aspirations. However, while it feels cheap, it doesn't look it - it's surprisingly thin, and boasts an eye-catching design with lots of nice sharp edges and rounded corners. It's also very light at just 166 grams - something which will no doubt have a lot to do with its aforementioned plastic casing.
The back cover is removable - albeit with quite a bit of persuasion - but you can't replace the battery inside. Instead, the cover pops off to grant access to the SIM slot (standard size, not Micro or Nano) and the MicroSD slot.
The TFT screen offers a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels, with a pixel density of 196ppi. It's here that the phone's low-cost background begins to really show through; stretching those pixels across 5-inches leads to noticeable blockiness, especially on text. Also, unless you have it on full brightness - which saps more battery - then it tends to look washed out and drab. Viewing angles aren't great either, and the touch sensitivity is maddeningly inconsistent. Taps and swipes often fail to register properly, and this predictably makes the device very frustrating to use.
ZTE Blade L2 review: Software & User Experience
The Blade L2 ships with Android Jelly Bean - version 4.2.2, to be exact. This puts it well behind other budget Android phones - like the Moto G and Moto E - and we wouldn't hold out on this particular phone getting an upgrade to Lollipop or even KitKat. On the plus side, ZTE has made very few changes to the core Android UI, making this feel like a "stock" experience. You can even uninstall some of the pre-loaded apps to free up space.
The phone's Mediatek MT6582M chipset offers generally decent performance, but it can become sluggish when too much is asked of it. It comprises quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7 and a Mali-400MP2 GPU, aided by just a single GB of RAM. Power users will hit the limits of the Blade L2's performance early on, but less demanding consumers shouldn't find the lack of raw power too distressing.
While the core UI is largely based on stock Android, ZTE has made some changes. The default lock screen requires a long-press to unlock rather than a swipe, and it's possible to select audio profiles directly from the swipe-down settings menu in the notification panel. You can also schedule phone shutdown and activation times in the settings, while an app permissions menu means you can control which applications are allowed to do what. These are minor changes, but handy all the same.
ZTE Blade L2 review: Battery, Memory & Camera
The Blade L2's 2000mAh battery isn't really adequate for a phone with a power-hungry 5-inch display, and we found that it was often a struggle to make it through a single day before needing to charge it up. Annoyingly, the battery cannot be replaced - despite the fact that the rear cover is removeable.
4GB of storage is all you're given with this budget blower, of which you have access to around 2.5GB. With some Android games now taking up over a GB on their own, the need for the MicroSD card slot is clear. You'll want to purchase a card from day one, otherwise you may find that you run out of storage very quickly.
A 5 megapixel camera rounds out the package, and comes with features like HDR, panoramic shots and a rather neat "multi angle" mode which reminds us of the computer Deckard uses in Blade Runner to analyse a photo. It allows you to shoot around an object, and the final image can be interacted with to move through the various angles. You can create some amazing compositions with the mode. However, the general quality of shots produced by the Blade L2's camera is low, and it's also quite slow to capture images. 720p HD video is possible, but the front-facing camera is practically useless. Even video calls look bad.
ZTE Blade L2 review: Conclusion
While other low-cost Android phones have surprised us by offering accomplished packages for not much outlay, the Blade L2 has all the trappings of a device produced on a shoestring. It's thin and looks nice enough, but the screen often fails to register input, the internal memory is limited, the OS is outdated and the camera - despite offering some cool shooting modes - produces lackluster photos and is slow to activate. Obviously when you don't have much cash to spend you can't expect to get the very best Android has to offer, but there are much better budget options out there than this.
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