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However, image quality is decent with some caveats. I’ll deal with the good bits, then move to the issues.
Sure, the TCL 10 Pro doesn’t have cameras to match those of the iPhone SE or Google’s budget Pixels, and it leaves something to be desired in terms of gaming performance and software. However, this device gets enough of everything else right that it’s at least a better choice for a mid-range Android handset than the Galaxy A51, which is quite an achievement for an up-and-coming brand looking to establish itself against icons like Samsung. The TCL 10 Pro battery seems to underperform for its size, so I tried it out against the Google Pixel 3a XL and Xiaomi Mi Note 10 using Geekbench 4’s battery test. It came out with 5182 points, fewer than the Pixel’s 5344 – even though that phone has a smaller 3700mAh battery. If you’re looking for a phone that offers what OnePlus models once did then you may be mildly disappointed by the TCL 10 Pro. It doesn’t come housing a top-tier Qualcomm processor; just the kind you’d expect to see at the price and there are better best mid-range phones out there.
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Samsung’s Galaxy A51 seems to handle Asphalt 9 a bit more smoothly than the TCL 10 Pro does on the whole, but the arcade racer is still certainly playable on TCL’s device, and neither phone can run that game properly at maxed settings anyway. Personally, I think TCL made the right choice in selecting silicon that prioritizes overall performance compared to graphics muscle, but avid gamers may come away a little disappointed. TCL 10 Pro review: Battery First to be changed was the app menu layout. It comes arranged by category as standard, which is completely impractical. Your app drawer ends up being three miles long, with half of your apps ending up in an “other” category. Handy. While it’s a solid attempt to put the TCL brand on the map, the TCL 10 Pro finds itself falling in between two stools. You can spend a little more and get something much more fluid and capable, or spend a little less with hardly any compromises and even one or two improvements. Our main camera has a 64-megapixel Samsung S5KGW1 sensor, a large 1/1.72-inch 64-megapixel chip. It’s used across a bunch of Xiaomi phones including the Remi Note 9 Pro, but only one Samsung line to my knowledge – the Galaxy A71. Despite being rich in megapixels, Samsung doesn’t use it in its top-end phones.
In addition, general image processing isn’t nearly as good as that of Google, Xiaomi or Huawei phones at the price. Fine textures sometimes end up looking “painted”, turning gravel into brush strokes, and fine detail is over-sharpened. Handsets from Samsung, for example, offer smarter screen calibration that ensures your photos appear true-to-reality no matter the colour mode used. TCL puts its own spin on screen optimisation, too: Nxtvision. This is really just a fancy name for the part of the Settings menu that lets you customise the display, but it does include some neat features. The TCL 10 Pro also has a mode for shooting in low-light conditions, called Super Night Mode, and above you can see how it compares to Google's implementation of Night Sight in the Pixel 4. Now, this isn’t a totally fair comparison; the Pixel 4 is, of course, a legitimate flagship, rather than a midranger like the TCL 10 Pro. That said, I didn’t have a Pixel 3a on hand when conducting this TCL 10 Pro review, and besides, sometimes it’s good to see precisely what you’re missing when opting for a cheaper phone over a pricier one. A few issues stop it earning a higher score. Battery life should be better than it is considering the TCL 10 Pro has a solid Qualcomm CPU and a 4500mAh battery. There’s no zoom, and the cameras and image processing isn’t as good as that of the bigger names. This impacts low-light performance, too, which is fairly poor.All that’s well and good, and if that were the end of the display conversation, I’d rather have the TCL’s panel, as it’s rare to find an OLED screen this good for such a low price. But for all TCL’s Nxtvision bells and whistles, the 10 Pro’s display comes up short in one very important respect: brightness. Whereas the iPhone SE can be cranked all the way up to 625 nits, this handset tops out at 398 nits, making outdoor viewing a little more difficult than it should be. TCL 10 Pro review: Camera There’s also a little shutter lag to the TCL 10 Pro camera. It’s only around a third of a second, but this is noticeable when comparing directly to phones from some of the better-known names. Nxtvision also automatically upconverts SDR to HDR, earning the phone Netflix HDR10 certification. Really, our only complaint is that the display can be a little difficult to see in direct sunlight. In addition, the almost flat rear means the cameras sit on the same pane of glass as the rest of the rear, and this too is concerning. However, those two LED flashes aren’t just for show. Their plastic caps sit a fraction above the glass, which means when resting on its rear, the phone is actually sitting on these caps. Potential crisis averted.
However, the TCL 10 Pro doesn’t offer 5G, the gorgeous matte-glass rear of the device is too easy to damage, the interface requires some tweaking to get it just right, and camera processing could do with a lighter touch. In addition, the TCL 10 Pro faces strong competition from the Xiaomi Realme 6, which is cheaper. General performance, too, is excellent. I saw far more responsive transitions and much lower lag than I experienced the week before using the Samsung Galaxy A51. The TCL 10 Pro has a snappy feel not dissimilar to a true high-end phone. TCL 10 Pro performance – Super snappy However, the TCL 10 Pro does have a lovely glass and metal build, plus an excellent curved OLED screen whose appearance isn’t too far away from phones in our best phone list. The 10 Pro is a high-class, lower cost phone of the type we mostly only see from Chinese brands these days. Unlike with the Exynos-powered Galaxy A51 I recently reviewed, the TCL 10 Pro opens apps in a snap, even if they’re not already loaded into memory. It boots fast and responds instantaneously to gestures, too. With a multicore Geekbench 5 score of 1,604, the TCL 10 Pro outpaces the Galaxy A51 (1,293), Pixel 3a (1,336) and Moto G Power (1,387), indicating superior system-wide performance. Close-up indoor food pictures with reasonable natural lighting look quite appetizing at first glance, but there was a tendency to pump up the reds and greens to an unnatural degree. On a couple of occasions the AI algorithm couldn’t make its mind up whether it was taking a food shot at all, and kept flipping between two modes, revealing an unwitting flip-book illustration of the unnaturalness of this effect.TCL promises at least one major Android version upgrade for the 10 Pro, which isn’t encouraging but also, unfortunately, is the status quo for cheap Android phones. Google supports all its Pixel devices with three years of updates, while you can expect even more than that from Apple for the new iPhone SE. TCL 10 Pro review: Verdict On the bright side, battery performance is pretty good, and you’ll be able to clear a full day of usage without issue. You’ll have to make do without wireless charging, but that’s hardly the norm at this end of the market (though the iPhone SE says hi again).
The Google Pixel 3a XL has a far better night mode than any of these phones. TCL’s 10 Pro brings up the rear, with a dim shot that features less detail than the rest, although it’s similar to the Galaxy A51, but darker. The TCL 10 Pro’s software utilizes a custom UI on top of Android 10. But the TCL UI isn’t the worst take on Google’s operating system we’ve ever seen. The TCL 10 Pro is undeniably slower than its rivals. An average Geekbench 4 multi-core score of just over 4,000 stands at around 40% less than the Realme X2 and its Snapdragon 730G.The 10 Pro has a 4,500mAh battery that should easily get you through a full day. In our battery drain test, which streams HD video over Wi-Fi at full brightness, the phone lasted 11 hours and 29 minutes. With more conservative use, you should be able to get a few more hours of screen time. We’re glad there’s the option, and indeed this is quite a customizable UI in general. But not everyone will go delving into these deeper menus. The default software offering should be better. Battery life A slightly older mid-range Snapdragon CPU leaves the TCL 10 Pro with the same Adreno 612 graphics chipset as phones such as the Moto G8 Plus. And, again, performance falls short of that of the Xiaomi Mi Note 10. The TCL and Xiaomi high-res modes do have benefits if you need to crop into images post-shoot The Pixel and Xiaomi phones handle the texture of the rear wall and the concrete far better than the Galaxy or TCL. Also note how the leaves and grass look far more “stressed” than images from other phones, as a result of sharpening. Still, the TCL’s fence shows more detail than the Samsung Galaxy A51’s.
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