Even though TCL is best known for its TVs, the Chinese company has been making its own brand of smartphones since 2020. Its devices are on the lower end of the price range for Android. For example, its 30 series of phones for 2022 all cost less than £250 (or €300).
This includes the TCL 30 SE, which is the second-cheapest in the 30 line after the TCL 30 E and before the TCL 30, 30+, and 30 5G. At £139.99, it has a strong 5000mAh battery, a big 6.52in LCD screen, and a 50Mp main camera lens that seems to be pretty good.
Specifications
- Display: 6.52 inch
- RAM: 4GB RAM
- Storage: 64GB or 128GB of storage (expandable up to 512GB)
- Camera: 50Mp f/1.9 main camera, 2Mp f/2.4 macro. 2Mp f/2.4 depth and 8Mp f/2.0 front camera
- Battery: 5000mAh
Where to get TCL 30 SE smartphone?
The TCL 30 SE has a 6.52-inch IPS LCD screen with a 1600 x 720-pixel resolution. This gives it a ratio of 20:9 and a pixel density of 269, which isn’t very high but is good enough for looking at websites and photos. On the other hand, the IPS LCD panel doesn’t make for the best video quality, even though it is an HD screen.
The 50MP wide camera is the main camera on the TCL 30 SE. It can take photos that are very sharp and well-balanced when the lighting is good. But even though it has a lot of pixels, the 1/2.76′′ camera is not a very big one. There’s also no OIS to help keep things steady when it’s dark. In fact, the lack of a Night mode is one of the things that stand out the most. When I did my regular low-light test shots, I couldn’t find a low-light mode in the Camera settings menu, and shooting in auto just turned on the flash.
The resulting shots taken in low light are, as expected, blurry and noisy. The lack of any kind of ultra-wide camera is also surprising. The two extra sensors are actually a 2MP closeup camera and a 2MP depth sensor, neither of which is very useful. There are two speakers at the bottom of the phone, which provide stereo sound that is good enough for watching flicks and TV. Still, if you want to listen to music on your phone without earphones, you might be unhappy because the sound quality isn’t great when you turn up the volume past halfway.