LG X Power Review

Introduction

If you want a dirt-cheap phone with a huge battery, LG has got something for you. The LG X Power is a plastic phone with a generic design, but what makes it worth a look is what’s under the hood: a giant, 4100mAh battery.

The LG X Power features a 5.3” display, but its physical size is more akin of that of a modern 5.5-inch phone - it’s those screen bezels that make this phone appear a bit larger than its peers.

A phone is a long-term investment, so we’re not looking at just size or battery. We ought to answer the most important question: is the LG X Power a good phone all around? And is it worth buying or are there too many compromises that come with its low price? Join us as we take a deeper look at its performance, camera capabilities, display quality and battery longevity below.

Design

With its generic plastic design, the LG X Power does not look great, nor does it stand out in any way. It’s still solidly put together, though.

A throwback to the plastic Android phone designs that were prevalent a couple of years ago, the LG X Power feels a bit like an old-time relic, but without the value usually associated with such antiques: it’s an all-plastic affair with no trendy metal or glass elements. It is cheap and it feels cheap, period. Yet, this does not mean that it is flimsy: rather the opposite, it’s still put together solidly, with no moving parts.

We also appreciate that it’s relatively thin, despite its large battery. The X Power measures 0.31”, or 7.9mm in terms of thickness, and it weighs 139g for a very light-weight, airy feel.

The back cover has a very delicate pattern to it and a soft-touch finish that makes it a pleasure to hold. Overall, the X Power - with its slightly tapered screen towards the top and bottom and the lack of any rough edges - is fairly ergonomic, with a cozy in-hand feel.

Disappointingly, there is no fingerprint scanner on the phone. These days we store a ton of personal data on our devices, and we see the lack of fingerprint protection as a fairly critical omission, even on a cheap phone like the X Power.

Just in case you’re wondering, the handset also lacks any form of special water protection.

Display

The 5.3” LCD display has bluish colors and lacks a bit in terms of sharpness, but the bigger issues are its annoying big bezels and screen reflections that make it harder to see outdoors.

The LG X Power sports a 5.3” IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels.

There are two big drawbacks about this display: it’s got big bezels all around, which makes the physical size of the phone larger than it ought to be, and secondly, it’s a very reflective panel that is hard to read outdoors.

The 720 x 1280 pixel resolution works out to a pixel density of 277ppi, so yes, there is some pixelization that’s especially visible when you read text. For such an affordable phone, though, that’s expected and not a huge flaw in our book.

Colors are also far and away from perfection: whites have a blue tint and colors on the whole are just off. The color gamut is limited and tones appear dumbed down.

We should also note that there is an ambient light sensor that adjusts screen brightness automatically well. It’s a given for most high-end phones, but we still see some affordable phones without it, so it’s nice that LG does not cut corners in this regard. It’s also nice that the phone has an LED notification light signaling when you have missed messages.

Interface and Functionality

LG’s interface has a distinct visual style that may not appeal to everyone.

LG’s UX 5.0 interface is a playful take on the serious business of Android. Okay, we admit it, Android might be as much of a platform for play, as it is for serious work, but we still feel in foreign waters with the style of the icons, the colors and the overall feel of LG’s interface. It has this juvenile look to it.

The elephant in the room when it comes to the interface is that there is no app drawer. Just like Apple’s iOS, and similar to many Chinese custom takes on Android, the user interface on the LG’s X Power places all your apps on your home screen, and it’s up to you to manage them. For us that’s not a big deal, but for those used to having an app drawer, this might be irritating.

Turning to more practical aspects of the interface, the virtual on-screen keyboard on the X Power is not among the finest experiences. We found ourselves typing a bit slower than usual and making a bit more mistakes: vibration feedback on the keyboard is not turned on by default, and even when you turn it on, the vibration motor fuses feedback signals after each keypress into one indistinct long signal, so you don’t get the needed distinct feedback after every keypress. This is annoying and just not a great typing experience.

On the plus side, things like Knock On and Knock Code are supported on the handset, so you can conveniently tap instead of use a PIN code, or use the double tap to wake and sleep the phone.

Processor, Performance and Memory

There is the occasional stutter, but for the most part the X Power runs fine in daily use. Heavier tasks and games, however, are too tough of a challenge and slow it down significantly.

The LG X Power comes in two versions: the international one is running on the 28nm MediaTek MT6735 system chip with 2GB RAM. The MT6735 is a fairly old SoC that was common on entry-level Chinese Android phones from last year, while the US model - bound to arrive on Cricket Wireless - is powered by the Snapdragon 210 and has 1.5GB of RAM. We’ve got the former, MediaTek-powered unit up for test, but the performance of the Snapdragon version should be in the same ballpark.

As to the MT6735, it’s a quad-core chip with four Cortex A53 CPU cores running at the rather modest 1.3GHz.

The fairly low screen resolution and LG’s optimizations make this phone a fairly smooth performer for daily tasks like taking a call, browsing the web or Facebook, and running email errands. There is the occasional stutter, but it’s not constant, nor major.

More intense tasks, however, make the phone noticeably slower: benchmark results attest to that. The X Power has a very low GeekBench score, testifying that its CPU is not particularly fast, and when it comes to games and graphics performance, it falls further behind, scoring a rather measly 4.7 frame rate on the GFX Manhattan on-screen test.

Another reason for concern is the extremely limited amount of on-board storage: you have around 7GB free. Luckily, there’s a microSD card expansion slot, and using that would be a wise decision.

Internet and Connectivity

4G LTE connectivity and mobile Chrome as the pre-installed browser.

Good news is that even being this affordable, the LG X Power comes with 4G LTE on board. The US-bound Snapdragon model has support for bands 2, 4, 5 and 12, while the international model supports LTE bands 3, 7 and 20.

Web browsing happens via the pre-loaded mobile Chrome, a fast and agile browser that has a nice, optimized for touch card-based interface.

In terms of other connectivity, you also have Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC support.

Camera

Very good image quality, but video falls short of expectations.

The LG X Power features an 8-megapixel rear camera with a single LED flash and an f/2.2 lens, as well as a 5MP front-facing selfie shooter.

The camera app itself is great: it starts quickly and has convenient, separate buttons for photo and video taking. This allows you to start recording in the right mode without having to switch between modes, and this rapid reaction allows you to capture impromptu moments that would otherwise be missed.

There are a bunch of film effects that you can apply to images to get that look and you can also shoot panoramas, but puzzlingly, there is no HDR mode in the camera.

Image Quality

Images from the X Power look good: when you can get the focus right that is. The focusing is definitely on the slow and skippy side, and we’ve had quite a few images turn out blurry, where other phones would be able to lock a razor sharp picture.

Apart from that, we’re happy with image quality, especially for such an affordable phone: it lacks a bit in dynamics, but it captures pleasing colors, generally decent exposure, and doesn't exhibit huge issues with sharpness (when you get the focus right).

The built-in single LED flash, however, when fired, changes the colors of a picture to a cold, greenish tint that does not look good. In pitch black, using the flash is better than nothing, but if you can go without it, you’d have a more pleasing picture.

Selfies, taken with the front camera, however, turn out excellent: with plentiful detail and nice colors.

Video quality

Given its affordable price, it’s not really a surprise that the LG X Power does not record video in 4K. It can still record footage at 1080p at 30fps with a bitrate of around 17Mbps, but the lack of 4K video puts it at a disadvantage against devices in almost the same price range like the Nexus 5X supports sharp 4K resolution.

Video at 1080p, however, is still not great: it is very shaky, there is no form of stabilization to help here. This ruins a lot of the capture, but also sharpness is not as crispy as you’d expect from a good 1080p footage, and we could not get the phone to use continuous auto-focus.

Audio and speaker quality

The loudspeaker is sufficiently loud, but audio lacks any sort of depth and is not particularly clear.

On the back of the LG X Power, closer towards its bottom, there is a single, small in terms of physical size loudspeaker. It gets easily muffled when you place the phone on its back, but even when it’s not muffled, sound quality is not particularly inspiring: the speaker is sufficiently loud, but lacks in clarity and depth. Overall, it is that lack of clarity and pronunciation that makes this a rather average speaker.

Call Quality

Abysmal call quality

These days, we’re rarely disappointed with the call quality on phones, but the LG X Power is exactly that case. Especially in the earpiece, when you take calls, the quality is quite abysmal: it’s way too quiet and voices sound distorted, so it’s sometimes hard to even understand what your caller is saying.

On the other end of the line, our callers report hearing us better, but not great: there are still some minor issues with clarity, but the situation is better on that end.

Battery life

Monster battery life: two days on average, and moderate use might even get you to three days on a single charge.

With a massive, 4100mAh battery, a frugal chip and a lowly screen resolution, the LG X Power has all it takes to last a ridiculously long time.

And it does: it fully lives up to LG’s promise for two-day battery life, and with moderate use we can see certain users getting even three days on a single charge.

In our custom test that measures typical use without measuring stand-by time, the LG X Power scored the best of all phones that we have ever tested! Impressive! With a score of 15 hours and 18 minutes, it has nearly double the longevity of Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge (7 hours and 15 minutes) and the Apple iPhone 6s (8 hours and 15 minutes).

If you get a QuickCharge 2.0-compliant charger (we’re not sure whether such a charger will be included in the box), you can get faster recharge times, and that would be important given the large size of the battery cell. With a regular charger, replenishing the battery from 0 to 100% might take quite a bit of time.

Conclusion

When you draw the line, the LG X Power hits a few home runs: its battery life topped our charts and that’s truly special. The phone will last you two and even three days on a single charge, something that those owning flagships will envy you for.

At the same time, the LG X Power is not terribly compromised in any way: yes, call quality is bad, and true, the on-board storage is really scarce, but in daily tasks the phone handles itself fine and the camera takes good-looking images when you can deal with the fiddly auto-focus.

At a full retail price of just around $160, the LG X Power is dirt cheap, yet these days, we’ve seen great phones discounted to a price close to that. The excellent Nexus 5X is often on sale for as low as $200, and spending a bit more can get you the solid Moto G 4th Gen that has more storage and a much faster system chip. And then, if you are not afraid to experiment with importing a phone from China, you can get a Xiaomi Redmi 3 with a similarly great, 4,100mAh battery at around the same price.

Yet, even considering the competition and even despite its bland and uninspiring design, the LG X Power is a very good value for the money and beats all its rivals in the battery game.