Leagoo Elite 4 Review

There is a new-comer in the market but this is not something new. Practically, it’s happening all the time now – new brands from China emerging with super-low price tags with not-so-powerful specs. These devices have a very wide market considering they are cheap and they get things done albeit not the most perfect. You would be thinking that these gadgets are only donning the palms of those who couldn’t afford expensive smartphones, but that is where you are wrong. In fact, I have met a huge number of users who used to carry some of the top most expensive phones years ago, and now settling with these cheaper alternatives. Don’t blame them, it’s a “smart”phone for “smart” people and what could be smarter than finding something that fits not only your front pocket, but your rear pocket as well? If you get what I mean.

Introducing the Leagoo Elite 4!

Introducing Leagoo Elite 4, a low-end smartphone that packs enough punches to fight in this wide arena. Let’s see how it performs in the arena.

Unboxing

You’re surprised? I was shocked! The packaging feels premium and not for a second you would guess that this is a China smartphone! Leagoo definitely has put a lot of effort into their package. The box itself has circles on it’s surface that are UV spotted. Opening it up, reveals the phone that gives you the same feeling like purchasing an expensive wallet. Under this device, you will immediately notice a screen protector. SCREEN PROTECTOR! Never have I seen any high-end device offering something as simple as a screen protector which is the FIRST next thing you would purchase after getting a smartphone. Leagoo actually offered this together inside the box!

Look at this and tell me this doesn’t look premium?!

Next you would notice the battery, data + charging cable and the charging adapter on the side nicely arranged. Uncer the battery, you will see a pair of earphone and wait…! An OTG cable! OTG CABLE?! Are you serious?! What else do we have here? Lift the screen protector and the manual package, you will see yet another box for the replaceable earbuds! GOSH! All this for RM499!

Dual-SIM with Dual-4G, microSD and removable battery. Perfect! Just Perfect!

We at Pokde.net are known for our honest and straightforward reviews with no manufacturers ass kissing involved. With that, I sincerely want to applaud for Leagoo for this wonderful packaging effort that they have put into the Elite 4. For the price tag, the experience that this has bought is marvellous!

Appearance

Dazzling White

Leagoo Elite 4 comes in 4 different colours.

Sweet Pink

Leagoo Elite 4 comes in 4 different colours.

Champagne Gold

Leagoo Elite 4 comes in 4 different colours.

Midnight Black

Leagoo Elite 4 comes in 4 different colours.

The second shocker that we got was when we actually touched the device itself. At 141.4mm (L) x 71.8mm (W) x 7.9mm (H), with a super slim bezel, the device feels very elegant in the palms. The front glass finishing is beautiful, the textured back is premium, and the silver lining around the device gives it an appeal of it’s own. The buttons are perfectly fitted on the sides and the build is really solid.

On the front panel, you can see the earpiece next to the ambience sensor and to it’s right is the front facing camera. Softkeys are hardware built rather than OS controlled. Simple and neat facade – just what a smartphone needs. At the back you could see the camera and it’s flash crowning at the top of the device while beautifully notched speaker holes at the bottom.

Specifications

Performance

The device uses a 1.0GHz Quad Core 64-bit MediaTek MT6735 processor coupled with 1GB of RAM and while the specs are average, the output that it churns is really forgiving!

AnTuTu Benchmark

21K is really not a bad score!

AnTuTu Benchmark

Just below the Xiaomi Mi2

Look at that score! 21203 on 64-bit means Leagoo has indeed done some optimization on this hardware to be able to push such a score. And while it delivers, the battery life is pretty decent too. I managed to pull off well over one day on normal day usage and didn’t notice any unexpected overheating issues. This phone does carry some surprises!

User Experience

I’ve been longing to share this part with you guys. You see, at first, I had my doubts when I got this device especially in it’s user experience portion. But just like how it has been surprising all this while, the user experience is really not a downer either. The phone feels very sleek in the palms and gosh, that 137g weight makes it feel feather-lite!

Let’s move to the part that amazes me the most. The speaker! This phone has a very loud speaker, louder than most high-end phones that I have tested before! The laser cut holes at the back does look similar to some of the famous gadgets around nowadays, but that underlying speaker actually made me remove the case and find out what is unique about it!

For the price that you are paying, you actually get a pretty decent camera. It has a Live mode ala HTC Zoe and it’s HDR is actually not bad. It captures pretty good details and works well under low light conditions. If you look at the close-up image of the car-model paper-weight below, you can see how it managed to capture some fine details. The hairline scratches and blemishes are visible. And look at the detail of the front rim vs the rear rim. The depth of field captured is pretty good too. This phone has yet to fail on me in it’s category!

HDR mode in low-light and close-up. Not bad eh?

And just because it’s an entry-level phone, doesn’t mean Leagoo didn’t put effort into it’s interface. Slide the launcher to the left most and you get the music player, slide it to the other end and you get the gallery. Both of these are denoted by little icons in the navigation icons at the bottom. The music player was my favorite here. You actually have to slide the transducer rod onto the disk for it to start playing. This is really retroishly elegant!

This is the music player. You actually have to slide the transducer onto the disk to play!

The gallery is not bad either. Grouping by date captured, navigating around it is pretty easy. Although the functionalities are a tad limited, but I’d say this is how Leagoo wanted you to experience it their way. It’s a little awkward to break the normal practices, but it settles in well after some time. Then you realize it’s interesting on it’s own!

Not bad, eh?

The display is a 5.0″ IPS QHD with 220 ppi. I’m not sure if the specs were actually accurate because I was a little let down with it especially due to the fact that they claimed it to be IPS and I’m a sucker when it comes to IPS! I had some bleeding edges and the colors were a little worn out. Weirdly enough, the screenshots and the raw images output tells a totally different story, so I guess the display is the culprit here. IPS is really not a joke to fit in. Even larger brands have been struggling to get IPS right, so I don’t entirely blame Leagoo on this. It was worth a try, but it didn’t satisfy me enough. At least it does have multi-touch though.

The IPS didn’t live up to what IPS is supposed to be, but nice try Leagoo!

The connectivity has a league of it’s own. It’s dual-SIM with dual-4G capability. WHAT?! Yes, you heard it right. In case you have spent all your money on telco buying dual data plans and have not enough money left for a phone, you can try this one because it will actually run BOTH of your 4G sims. It uses the FDD-LTE standard supporting bandfreqs of 800/900/1800/2100/2600. Other standard sensors are Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi.

So, there you go guys, the Leagoo Elite 4. Super affordable priced gadget that will not fail to surprise you. If the Elite 4 managed to pull this well, I’m actually looking forward to Leagoo’s other products soon. Watch this space, we will definitely be reviewing them again!

Conclusion

The Leagoo Elite 4 has really managed to surprise me beyond what I had expected! The price is perfect, the device delivers, and it seems like Leagoo is serious about their presence in the arena. I’d say watch out to larger China brands dominating the current market. This one is about to bring a big bang!