LeEco is gradually becoming an established smartphone vendor in India. Keeping up with the competition, LeEco too recently updated their device line-up with the launch of Le 2 and Le Max 2. Le 2 is a budget device which went on sale in India a couple of days ago. We recently did the unboxing of the device and here is our full LeEco Le 2 review to give you a detailed look at the device.
Design & Display
The rose gold variant of our LeEco Le 2 review unit grabbed a lot of attention and its design was meant to stand out. The front of the device is fairly similar to its predecessor with a large display, thin bezels, and Android navigation keys below the display. The phone has a complete metal finish on the back with antenna line running on top and bottom. The square fingerprint scanner sits below the camera module.
Coming to the display, the device features a 5.5-inch panel with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The display has thin bezels and offers good viewing angles. There is an option to tweak the warmth and saturation to make it perfect for you. Its maximum brightness goes up to 500 nits, which is optimum for outdoor visibility, but the reflective screen poses some problem.
OS & Performance
The LeEco Le 2 comes with a heavily customised version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow which the company chooses to call EUI. Like any other Chinese device, the OS resembles iOS, especially due to lack of the app drawer. The UI seems to be a nice mix of features picked from many of the other custom Android UIs, but is a bit heavy on RAM. We got about 1.3 GB of free space out of total 3 GB of RAM.
In our Le 2 review, we found that the Snapdragon 652 does an excellent job in providing best in class performance and giving the AnTuTu benchmark score of over 82000. Despite the OS taking a large chunk of the RAM, we didn’t face any issue while doing heavy multitasking. The RAM management of the device is commendable.
The fingerprint scanner is very easy to reach and its speed and accuracy are just right. Taking a forward-looking move, the company removed the 3.5mm audio jack from the LeEco Le 2. The Type C port will do the job of a headphone jack. LeEco has given Type C to 3.5mm audio adapter in the box or you can buy a new Type C headphones launched by LeEco alongside the device.
Camera
With a 16 MP sensor, f/2.0 aperture and PDAF, one would definitely expect a superior picture quality from the device. The Le 2 gets the job done when the lighting conditions are good but struggles in low light. The grains and noise level tend to grow as the light level falls below a certain level.
The images look good until they are zoomed in, but when you take a closer look, you will get to see the lack of detail and texture. Overall the camera quality is just decent, and there is nothing to brag about its low light performance. The camera app is quite good, though it offers multiple options and all of them are easily accessible.
Connectivity & Battery Life
The LeEco Le 2 is quite rich in terms of connectivity. It is capable of 4G LTE and also supports VoLTE for making voice calls over 4G network. It has Wi-Fi 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and USB Type-C port. As we mentioned earlier, the device lacks a headphone jack.
Talking about the battery, the phone comes packed with a 3000 mAh battery that supports fast charging. The battery would last for a working day moderate usage, and if you tend to be a heavy user then you might find yourself searching for the charger by evening. Fast charging capabilities come to the rescue in such situations.
Also Read: Best Android Smartphones Under 20K
Final Thoughts
With all the great and moderate features set available for a price of Rs. 11,999, the LeEco Le 2 is a device that you can consider. It is in direct competition with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and manages to be better at least in terms of performance. Its display, design, content package and performance are some things that make the device better than most. But the device lags a bit behind the competition in terms of camera and OS bloatware. You must make a wise purchase considering which features matter the most to you.
Hope you found our LeEco Le 2 review useful. Do share your queries and thoughts regarding the device.