TCL 10 5G UW: This 5G Android phone is shockingly good for $399

Our Verdict

The TCL 5G UW is a good alternative to the Google Pixel 4a 5G if you're looking for a inexpensive 5G phone. The cameras aren't as good, but you get long bombardment life and solid operation for the cost.

For

Depression price for 5G phone
Long battery life
Decent performance for the toll
Good LCD screen

Against

Display is dim
Express to Verizon

Tom's Guide Verdict

The TCL 5G UW is a good culling to the Google Pixel 4a 5G if yous're looking for a cheap 5G phone. The cameras aren't as good, but you get long battery life and solid performance for the cost.

Pros

+
Low price for 5G phone
+
Long battery life
+
Decent operation for the price
+
Good LCD screen

Cons

-
Brandish is dim
-
Limited to Verizon

Information technology's been a breakout twelvemonth for TCL, which used to devote its smartphone efforts to building devices nether other companies' make names, but has spent 2020 making phones for itself. And the TCL ten 5G UW may be the telephone maker's crowning accomplishment.

TCL 10 5G UW specs

Price: $399
Screen size: 6.53 inches (2340 10 1080)
CPU: Snapdragon 765G
RAM: 6GB
Storage: 128GB
Expandable: Yes, up to 256GB
Rear cameras: 48MP main; 8MP ultrawide; 5MP macro
Forepart camera: 16MP
Battery size: 4,500 mAh
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 11:07
Size: 6.4 ten 3 x 0.37 inches
Weight: vii.4 ounces

The TCL 10 5G UW takes the finer points of other phones TCL has introduced this twelvemonth — an excellent display, bonny design and serviceable cameras — and adds 5G connectivity. At the aforementioned time, it delivers all of that in a handset that costs $399 — a fraction of what you'll pay for many of the best 5G phones.

Get the all-time inexpensive phones for less than $400
When is 5G coming to you?

There are more complete smartphones than the TCL 10 5G UW out there. But few other phones deliver such sought-after capabilities for this low a cost. In this TCL 10 5G UW review, we'll wait at whether this affordable 5G telephone is the right choice for you.

TCL x 5G UW review: Price and availability

The TCL 10 5G is a Verizon-exclusive, sold through the carrier for $399. Purchase the phone in monthly installments, and you'll pay $16.66 a month for 24 months.

This is one of the least expensive 5G-capable devices you lot can buy. The OnePlus Nord N10 5G is coming to the U.S., though OnePlus hasn't set a toll yet. The fact that the telephone costs ´£329 in the U.K. suggests it will be about as much as the TCL 10 5G when it does state here. Otherwise, if you desire a 5G phone, you're looking at the Google Pixel 4a 5G or the Samsung Galaxy A51 5G, both of which cost $499. (These days, sales on the Galaxy A51 bring the toll of the 5G version down to the TCL x 5G's level.)

TCL x 5G UW review: Pattern

The greatest compliment you can pay to the TCL 10 5G UW is to note that information technology doesn't expect like a sub-$400 phone at outset glance. Pick up the handset and tap the plastic dorsum, and the clandestine'south out of the pocketbook, just TCL excels at designing phones that hide their upkeep origins well.

To business firm the telephone's 6.53-inch display, you get a 6.4 ten iii 10 0.37-inch device that'south pretty like shooting fish in a barrel to fit in one hand. That'southward taller, wider and thicker than Google'due south Pixel 4a 5G telephone, besides every bit the Samsung Milky way A51 5G, both of which accommodate smaller screens (although not that much smaller, in the case of the vi.5-inch A51). The TCL x 5G too packs on more than weight at 7.4 ounces than the v.9-ounce Pixel 4a 5G and 6.6-ounce A51.

You'll appreciate the fact that the TCL ten 5G UW still includes a headphone jack on the top of the phone — a vanishing sight on many smartphones these days. Verizon offers only a Diamond Gray model, and the back of the phone really picks upward fingerprints, especially around the fingerprint sensor on the dorsum.

TCL 10 5G UW review: Brandish

In its short fourth dimension making smartphones under its own brand name, TCL has stood out for its displays, employing many of the features that aid brand it a leading TV supplier. Indeed, when I reviewed the TCL 10L earlier this year, I thought the LCD screen on that budget phone was ane of its acme features — something you usually don't say almost phones that cost $400 or less.

You can make the same argument for the 6.53-inch LCD panel on the TCL 10 5G UW. No, this isn't an OLED screen — to get that, you'd have to opt for the more expensive TCL x Pro — but the colorful pictures it provides are more than enough to outshine other upkeep handsets.

Credit the Nxtvision technologies TCL has built into the phone to augment the TCL 10 5G's display. From the Nxtvision tab in Settings, you tin can turn on SDR-to-HDR upconversion to get brighter highlights, better contrast and bolder colors as you lookout man videos. You can also set the phone to automatically arrange the screen's color temperature based on the ambient light effectually you, while features like a Reading Style can give the screen an e-reader-like cast when y'all accept a long book or article to gyre through.

That said, other phones capture more of the sRGB color spectrum, based on the 105.1% reading we got when we tested the TCL x 5G UW in our lab. The Pixel 4a 5G reproduced 128.3% of those colors, while the OnePlus Nord N10 5G tallied 124.8%. The TCL ten 5G'due south colors are fairly authentic, according to its Delta-E rating of 0.28, edging ahead of the Pixel 4a 5G'southward 0.3 just abaft the Nord'south 0.22 score. (Numbers closer to zilch are better.)

I didn't find any of that, though, when I fired upwards Disney Plus on the TCL 10 5G UW and watched the classic Three Caballeros. Disney'due south colorful South American-inspired animations popped on the screen and the blues, reds, yellows and greens on Donald Duck and his two feathered friends looked as authentic as they do when I watch the same flick on my Idiot box.

Switching over to The Last Jedi, I enjoyed the bright reddish colors of Leader Snoke's throne room and the flash of lightsabers as Rey and Kylo Ren went to town on the Praetorian Guard. Some scenes in Jedi were a little fleck night, only cranking upwards the brightness on the phone took care of that.

And that's my i complaint about the TCL ten 5G'southward screen, echoing something I've noticed with other TCL phones: It'south way too dim. We measured a acme brightness of 385 nits with a light meter, and that'southward well backside the perfectly bright screens of the Pixel 4a 5G (638 nits) and iPhone SE (653 nits). Fifty-fifty the OnePlus Nord N10 5G, which I found distressingly dim, outperformed the TCL 10 5G with a 406-nit reading.

TCL 10 5G UW review: Camera

The cameras on the TCL-branded phones we've reviewed to date oasis't really blown us away, delivering solid pictures, but struggling with overall consistency. That trend continues with the TCL ten 5G UW, which doesn't really claiming the all-time camera phones nosotros've seen simply will produce generally pleasing photos for a device that costs you lot less than $400.

Iii rear cameras handle the pic-taking duties on the TCL 10 5G, with a 48MP main lens doing the heavy lifting. To that, TCL has added an 8MP ultrawide camera and a 5MP macro lens.

I've had issues with some of the color in TCL-produced photos, but that's not in evidence hither in this motion picture of a lamb burger. The burger itself is overnice and pink, and the TCL 10 5G also accurately captures the purple onion and green pickle I've placed under the top bun. In fact, I'd fifty-fifty become so far as to say that the burger in TCL's shot looks tastier than the muted colors that the Pixel 4a 5G produced.

However, the tiki mugs in the groundwork are a little out of focus — especially the C-3PO and Jawa mugs. The Pixel 4a 5G doesn't take that trouble, putting everything in sharp focus for a better-composed shot overall.

The colour wasn't every bit consistent when I tried out the TCL 10 5G'due south ultrawide lens. There'south a streak of washed-out leaves on the trees on the left side of the photo that's non present in the Pixel 4a 5G shot. Instead, Google'southward phone does a better task teasing out those colors on the tree leaves as they're hitting by a beam of sunlight. Yous can likewise make out some of the detailed habiliment-and-tear on the dome over the far left of the house in the Pixel 4a shot.

That's not to say the TCL 10 5G stumbled hither. If you zoom in on the house, you tin nevertheless make out details in the woodwork that lesser camera phones would accept failed to capture. I also think the colors of the house are authentic, even though the brick colour of the driveway and trim feels a bit richer on the Pixel's version.

I'm very impressed by how the TCL x 5G handled a low-light photo with its Super Night mode, even though this phone lacks the defended 2MP sensor the TCL x Pro features to help with dark shots. In fact, the TCL 10 5G even holds its ain confronting the Pixel 4a 5G, which features some of the best low-light photos I've seen in a mid-range camera phone.

I think the Pixel has the better overall shot, capturing more of the green in the Oakland A's hat and highlighting the chocolate-brown wicker footrest that gets a little over-exposed in the TCL photo. All the same, the TCL x 5G does a skilful job contending with the shadows, and it really doesn't wash anything out the way other inexpensive phones sometimes exercise when trying to recoup for low lite.

I continue to exist baffled by why telephone makers insist on putting dedicated macro lenses on their handsets. Only if we have to become phones with superfluous macro features, at least permit them perform as well equally the TCL 10 5G's macro lens did. It kept most of the petals of this pink rose in focus, and you can even spot some flecks of clay on the leaves of the flower. The Pixel 4a 5G, which has no macro lens, struggled to continue the rose in focus when I got upward close to the blossom.

The TCL 10 5G UW can't quite continue up with the Pixel 4a 5G when it comes to portrait shots, but that's largely because Google chooses to crop in closer on the subjects of your portrait. At least TCL's computation software seems to figure out where my daughter ends and the background begins, equally even stray strands of hair are kept in focus. The background blur is a flake more stylish in the Pixel'south version, though.

For selfies, the TCL 10 5G UW relies on a 16MP camera that promises brighter shots thank you to 4-in-1 large pixel applied science. The shot TCL's phone took of me is certainly bright, to the point where the lemon tree behind me is horribly overexposed. You also can't tell what colour shirt I'g wearing, as the TCL 10 5G has made it nigh await blueish. It's supposed to be royal, as you tin can tell from the Pixel 4a 5G photo, which also cuts in closer and doesn't turn the lemon tree behind me into an indistinct smear.

TCL ten 5G UW review: Functioning

1 of the means TCL is saving costs on its 5G telephone is by foregoing the Snapdragon 8 series chipsets that power the most expensive models, in favor of a less powerful system-on-flake that still delivers 5G connectivity. The TCL 10 5G UW runs on a Snapdragon 765G — a pretty skilful processor for a $399 phone, considering y'all'll find it in devices that price $300 more than than TCL'southward handset.

As a result, the TCL 10 5G fares well when its benchmark results are compared to other midrange 5G phones. On Geekbench 5, the TCL phone produced a multi-core score of one,932. That's well ahead of the Pixel 4a 5G's 1,617 result, and even tops more expensive Snapdragon 765G-powered devices like the $699 LG Velvet (one,927). It probably helps that TCL included the same 6GB of RAM establish in those ii phones.

On the graphics front, the TCL 10 5G'southward functioning was on par with the LG Velvet in the 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited test, posting a score of 1,670 (10 frames per second) to the LG phone'south one,680 (10 FPS) score. The TCL x 5G outperformed both the Pixel 4a 5G (1,199 or 7 FPS) and the OnePlus Nord N10 5G (809 or just under 5 FPS) by some measure.

In terms of real-earth use, that ways the TCL 10 5G UW is going to exist able to handle most of the apps and tasks you throw at information technology, especially if y'all primarily apply your phone to surf, stream and upload things to various social networks. Even graphically demanding games perform all right on the TCL 10 5G. Running PUBG Mobile, I noticed a few stutters when driving a jeep across a battleground, only I never ran into the kind of pauses or glitches that would mar gameplay on less capable phones.

The UW at the end of the TCL x 5G'south name stands for Ultra Wideband, which is the proper name Verizon gives its high-speed 5G network. That should give you some thought of what kind of 5G connectivity yous can look from this telephone, though Verizon's Ultra Wideband installations are limited to parts of 51 cities, and they're primarily outdoors.

Most of your Verizon 5G connectivity will come from the carrier'due south lower-spectrum nationwide network, which covers some 1,800 cities and towns across the U.S. Yous may feel slightly faster speeds than y'all'd go from LTE, only nothing along the lines of the 1 Gbps speeds that Ultra Wideband tin can evangelize when conditions are right. That figure should amend as Verizon's network expands, but don't wait game-changing 5G if you opt for this phone.

TCL 10 5G UW review: Battery and charging

The 4,500 mAh battery in the TCL ten 5G UW is more capable of getting you through the day on a charge. In our battery test, which involves having the telephone surf the web over cellular until information technology runs out of power, the phone lasted an average of 11 hours and 7 minutes. That's well ahead of the average for smartphones and places the TCL 10 5G UW on our all-time phone battery life list.

We run our battery test a few times to get that average result, and it'southward worth noting that the TCL 10 5G produced a wide range of results — topping 12 hours on one occasion, dropping down below 10 hours on some other. We'll chalk that up to the vagaries of Verizon's recently launched nationwide 5G network, but in everyday apply, I found that I could become from sunday up to sun down without having to plug in TCL's phone for a power heave.

TCL says its support for fast charging can go a drained phone back up to 37% after 30 minutes. Using the included charger, we were able to verify that merits, as our telephone hit the xl% mark after half-an-hr. That's non every bit much every bit the Pixel 4a 5G or the OnePlus Nord N10 5G, which hit 46% and 68%, respectively, but it'south much faster than the iPhone SE's 5W charger, which just reached the 29% mark later on 30 minutes.

TCL 10 5G UW review: Software

The TCL 10 5G UW ships with Android 10, though an Android 11 update is on its mode. Unfortunately, that's likely the only Android update you'll be getting with this phone, as TCL has committed to but one new version of Android for its x series of phones, along with two years of security updates.

Because this is a Verizon-tied phone, you'll detect a lot of preinstalled apps waiting for you lot when you lot first burn down up the TCL 10 5G. Some — like the My Verizon app for logging into your account, or the Disney Plus app — are quite useful. (Verizon's unlimited data plans, which y'all'll demand for 5G service, include either a Disney Plus trial or a costless subscription.) Others, like Yahoo Mail service or Verizon's cloud storage app, merely take upwards space.

The TCL x 5G UW features both a rear fingerprint sensor and face unlocking among its security features. The latter is a pretty quick way to unlock the device, especially since TCL's fingerprint reader, located on the back of the phone, tin be a petty tricky to locate. Tapping the sensor with a recognized finger will wake up and unlock your phone in ane roughshod swoop, though.

TCL 10 5G UW review: Verdict

I remain convinced that the Pixel 4a 5G is still the all-time pick for people who want a 5G-capable phone, just don't desire to pay meridian dollar for the privilege. But after all the testing for this TCL 10 5G UW review, I'm convinced that TCL's 5G phone is a cracking alternative for people who want a 5G telephone that costs less than $500.

The Verizon necktie-in will be a put-off to people who desire more flexibility when it comes to picking a wireless provider, and the Pixel 4a 5G's cameras certainly outperform what the TCL 10 5G provides. But TCL's phone is capable of taking proficient pictures, and y'all'll get an fantabulous display, a long-lasting battery and performance that matches more expensive phones as office of the bargain.

Lots of phones promise 5G compatibility. But few deliver it at as depression a cost as what the TCL x 5G UW tin avowal.

Philip Michaels is a senior editor at Tom's Guide. He has potent opinions about Apple, the Oakland Athletics and old movies. Follow him at @PhilipMichaels.