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TCL 10 Pro Review: The Verdict
Competition for mid-range supremacy is fierce this year. Every manufacturer is chucking its hat into the ring to see who comes out on top, TCL’s entrant is the TCL 10 Pro. Retailing at $749 with specs on par with its major competitors, the device hits the lower cost side without compromising on the tech we’d expect from a mid-tier phone.
What we love
- Decent battery life
- Super fast performance
What could be improved
- NXT Vision over saturates images
- Poor performance in lowlight
- Expected more from the display
The essentials
- Performance: Super quick.
- Battery: 2 days between charges.
- Screen: Good, but expected more.
- Camera: Doesn't perform well in low light but otherwise good.
70/100
$749
More than ever there’s a market for good, affordable smartphones. We’ve already reviewed a handful this year and they keep tumbling down the pipeline. For those looking for a reliable handset that performs well, it’s worth venturing further than just the names you know. The TCL 10 Pro is just one example of quality, affordable tech coming from a manufacturer you wouldn’t normally associate with phones.
TCL, known for its televisions (not to be confused with TLC who don’t want no scrubs) is a relatively new addition to the smartphone market coming out strong last year with the TCL Plex. The predecessor was well received sitting in the ‘budget’ category at RRP $399, and now the 10 Pro is stepping it up a level.
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TCL’s dive into the smartphone realm is an interruption to its usual broadcast, but jumping from TVs to phones isn’t as big of a leap as you might think. What are phones these days if not incredibly advanced multimedia devices? We use them to talk, text, browse online, but also to watch shows and play games.
With the 10 Pro the similarities of the screen in our pocket and the one in a living room don’t just stop with usage. The display is made in house, which depending on how highly you rate TCL televisions is something of note. As someone who has had a couple of cheap TCL TVs in the past it isn’t a huge selling factor in theory. In practice the display is nice, it’s vibrant but not as smooth as other competitors in this price range. While we're now seeing 90Hz and 120Hz panels make their way to midrange phones, the TCL 10 Pro uses a more conventional 60Hz display.
Where the smoothness fails NXT Vision attempts to make up for it. This is an optional setting which ups the contrast and the saturation to make the display more brilliantly coloured. It looks different, but not necessarily better - it depends on your preferences. You can also toggle adaptive tone and reading mode in this setting so the display will change automatically depending on your environment.
Aesthetically speaking, the 10 Pro is lovely. The respectable 6.47-inch display curves at the edges, melding into it’s Forest Mist Green reverse side. Curved edges can be a nightmare in practice as you’re always touching the screen somewhere, but judging solely on looks it’s a stunner.
While the 10 Pro is visually stunning, unfortunately the visuals themselves are not. If you’re going to brag about a display I want to see more from it than just average. I tuned in expecting Game of Thrones quality and ended up with How I Met Your Mother.
Breaking news
As an important bulletin, the performance and battery of the TCL 10 Pro is newsworthy. It’s downright zippy and lasts two days comfortably between charges.
4,500mAh battery capacity sounds good on paper but we’ve been disappointed before by flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S20 that simply don't last as long as you'd think. The 10 Pro is the opposite, allowing for two days of use between charges. Charge times are a bit woeful, however. A one-hour charge will only take you to 40%, and a full charge takes around three hours.
Everything else runs incredibly fast for the price point. There's no delays when opening, closing and switching apps. The only pain point comes with the in-screen fingerprint reader which takes around three seconds to register each time. While not a deal-breaker, as someone who picks up their phone around 100 times per day that’s around five minutes of my day taken up unlocking a phone. Inadvertently it may make you check your handset less, but if you’re not in the business of breaking those habits then pick a different lock method.
Performance and battery life are what really matter when picking a mid-tier phone. Photography and super smooth displays are nice-to-haves, but you’re more likely to throw your phone in frustration based on response time rather than a slower refresh rate.
Exclusive footage
Like so many other Android phones out these days, the 10 Pro has an impressive sounding camera set up which doesn’t quite live up to the hype.
Set up with four reverse cameras including a 64MP primary lens, 16MP ultra-wide lens, 5MP macro lens, and 2MP depth lens, the 10 Pro boasts a range of features like light tracing mode, portrait mode, super night mode and super macro mode. Unfortunately the photography capabilities with these cameras isn’t as impressive as the specs.
Crisp photos and grammable images are easily achieved, but any touch of lowlight sends quality drastically dropping. Even super night mode doesn’t allow too much of a difference between snaps, and super low light videos - well they’re haunting. Here’s a GIF I made shooting my cat using the 10 Pro super low light filming mode. You really need to look closely to see the ghost projection of him.
And here’s my kitties snuggling up with and without night mode at play.
Primary Mode
Super Night Mode
While they look like tiny demons (which they are) in the dark, the day shots tell a different story. In good lighting you can easily get a good pic of your fur baby, your coffee, or a boomerang of you clinking wine glasses.
This brings us to NXT Vision once again, the high contrast hero/villain of the telenovela. Below is a side by side of the same shot with and without NXT Vision AI mode enabled. As you can see the option brings out the colours to create more contrast and colour within the shot, but this isn’t to everyone’s taste. Personally I don’t like it, I prefer to play with my shots in post to make them *pop*, but for snap and share kind of people then it’s one less step.
NXT Vision on
NXT Vision off
Use the pictures as a rule of thumb; if you prefer the look of the one on the right go NXTless, the left then switch it on. Note that you can toggle this on and off at your leisure so you won’t be stuck with it if you change your mind.
Final thoughts
Sitting at the lower end of the price spectrum for a mid-tier phone, the TCL 10 Pro makes some big leaps and for the most part it lands on the essentials. The performance and battery life shine brightest for the 10 Pro, and that in itself is enough to recommend this handset as a quality mid-range choice.
As is to be expected there are some teething issues with low light photography, but not enough to dissuade a purchase. Until recently night mode on an affordable phone was hard to come by so i’ll forgive TCL for not getting it in the bag this time around.
With a lovely, albeit somewhat oversold display and a curvaceous design it’s going to turn heads and it’s worthy of doing so.
Camera Samples
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