TCL Plex review: Features | Pricing | Specs

Where to buy

TCL as a brand is far better known in Australia for its range of highly affordable TVs, but it's not actually a newcomer to the mobile phone space. Under its Alcatel brand, it's been selling affordable budget handsets to Australians for many years now, and it's also the company behind the most recent BlackBerry and Palm devices sold locally too.

The TCL Plex is something a little different again. It's TCL's play for a "flagship" in the mid-range space, and that's a field that's hotly contested by phones from manufacturers such as Samsung, Google, Huawei, realme and Oppo.

First attempts are often somewhat awkward affairs, but TCL has actually managed to produce a phone that can mostly hold its head up high against its competition, offering some interesting features for a lower-end mid-range price.

Design

• 6.53-inch display with punch hole camera
• NXTVision app gives limited calibration choices
• Configurable smart key
• Plastic back looks good but can get scratched easily

• Read our full review of the TCL Plex's design

  The TCL Plex's design is just a little bit different to many of its mid-range competitors. For a start, there's the use of a hole punch style front facing camera on its front-facing 6.53-inch LCD display. Not that hole punch cameras are a TCL innovation, but there's not that many that place the hole punch in the top left side of the screen. After several weeks of testing, I still can't decide if it's distracting or not. It's certainly different.

  

  Then there's the nature of that 6.53-inch screen, which TCL calls "NXTVision" display. It's a 1,080 x 2,340 pixel display with 395ppi, pleasantly sharp in its own right, but the whole NXTVision thing comes to the fore with TCL's preinstalled NXTVision app. This allows you to mildly alter the colour display between standard and vivid modes, toggle SD to HDR conversion and add apps to a reading mode that should lead to less eye strain when reading on the TCL Plex.

  I'd still generally prefer to opt for an AMOLED display than an LCD for colour clarity purposes, but if you do like your colours saturated, the TCL Plex can certainly provide that. The difference between its SD and HDR upscaling is quite easily apparent, although again that's a matter of taste and some content will look a little garish if you try to "force" HDR on it this way.

  The right-hand side of the TCL Plex houses standard volume and power keys, but on the right-hand side there's a button that TCL calls the "Smart Key". In many other handsets it would be used to invoke Google Assistant, but here TCL has been genuinely smart.

  

  You can link single taps, double taps and long presses to different features and apps installed on the phone to your choice. It means if you hate accidentally invoking assistants when you press the wrong button you can disable it entirely, but if you want a whole suite of features open to you, you can totally do that too. It's a hugely flexible tool, and a stark reminder to other manufacturers that giving us choice over what to do with these kinds of buttons is a great inclusion.

  TCL sells the TCL Plex in Australia in either a Black or White finish; I've been testing out the model that it calls Black, although in certain lights it appears almost dark blue. There's a horizontal array of three camera lenses at the top above the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and TCL logo.

  It's a smart enough design for the money, although predictably it does pick up some fingerprint smudges in a day's usage. One small criticism here is that it's resolutely plastic, and I knew this from the moment I unpacked it. Not just because of the feel of the plastic, but also because I wasn't the first reviewer to get hold of this particular unit, and it already had a few micro scratches on the back. Nothing disfiguring, but certainly noticeable.

Camera

• Triple cameras, but not the way you'd think
• Super slow-motion is an interesting lens inclusion

• See sample photos and read our full review of the TCL Plex's camera

  It's almost a cliché to assume that a mid-range 2019 handset will feature a triple lens array with standard, wide or telephoto and depth sensing lens in play.

  Again, though, TCL has taken a slightly different path with the TCL Plex and quite what it uses its three lenses for. The primary lens is a 48MP f1.8 sensor that uses pixel binning to deliver 12MP shots with theoretically better low light accuracy, which isn't an unusual play in this space.

  

  The secondary lens is a 16MP f/2.4 ultrawide lens with a 123 degree field of view. Your tastes may vary as to whether a wide angle or telephoto lens is more useful here, but that's the way that TCL has opted to go for the TCL Plex.

  Then there's the third lens, which in many phones of this range would be a pure depth sensor and nothing else. Instead, TCL has opted to place a 2MP lens used for slow motion video capture at up to 960fps and low light video work. This doesn't mean that it omits a portrait mode to speak of; it's simply using computation rather than depth sensing for bokeh effects.

  

  TCL's camera app takes the typical iOS-clone approach familiar in so many other Chinese-produced handsets, which does mean it's quite easy to get used to. TCL includes a mode where you can view your scene through all three lenses at once, but this is a rather silly party trick; you can't shoot with all three lenses simultaneously, so all you're really doing is choosing stills framing for the standard or ultrawide lenses, or opting for video on the third lens.

  Alcatel phones have rarely been camera powerhouses in the past, so my expectations for the TCL Plex were relatively low, but it's actually a fairly capable performer in fair conditions. TCL makes a point of pitching its low light capabilities through its "Super Night" mode, but it's not essentially much better than other phones in this price range. There's a strong tendency to oversaturate colours, and it's certainly below the low light quality you get out of Google's impressive Google Pixel 3A. That's still the phone to beat in low light at this kind of price range, but at least TCL tried.

  TCL Plex sample photos

  

  

  

  

  

Performance

• Snapdragon 675 with 6GB of RAM performs a tad under expectations
• Minimal, slightly garish overlay
• Only Android 9

• View test results and read our full review of the TCL Plex's performance

  The TCL Plex runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage, with support for MicroSD expansion if that's your style.

  That's very much a mid-range 2019 recipe, and puts it in company with phones such as the Google Pixel 3A, although the TCL Plex doesn't quite meet that phone's silky-smooth performance.

  Here's how it compares using Geekbench 5's CPU test:

  TCL Plex

  And here's how it stacks up with 3DMark's Slingshot Extreme benchmark:

  TCL Plex

  Now, benchmarks don't show the full extent of a phone's performance – the Pixel 3A is a better phone than those scores would suggest too – and in day to day operation I had few faults to find with the TCL Plex overall.

  TCL layers its own minimal user interface on top of Android 9. While it's a little disappointing to see a late-2019 handset not offering Android 10, we'll have to wait and see what TCL is like with updates in that respect. Like many Chinese manufacturers, there's a tendency towards garish icon colours with plenty of palette clash in play. Being Android, it's pretty easy to change this out if it does offend your gaze.

Battery life

• 3,820mAh battery performs slightly under expectations
• Fast wired charging

• View test results and read our full review of the TCL Plex's battery life

  The TCL Plex is a larger phone, and in the mid-range market we've seen lots of phones with 4,000mAh or more in battery capacity. TCL has gone just a touch conservative here with a 3,820mAh battery lurking behind that 6.53-inch display.

  

  3,820mAh should be enough for most phones to easily sail through a day's battery life, but the reality of the TCL Plex is that it's alright for a day, but not much more than that.

  Here's how it compared in our standard battery test, running a YouTube video for an hour at maximum brightness and moderate volume:

  TCL Plex

  Phones that score in that range typically can last a day, but not if you're a heavy phone user. That's been exactly my experience with the TCL Plex, which can certainly make it through a day's testing in most circumstances, but not quite as well as comparable handsets. It's the price you pay for that dynamic display at a guess.

  It is at least reasonably swift to recharge, with a USB C connector leading to the supplied fast charging plug. While we've seen wireless charging start to creep down towards phones at the TCL Plex's price point, it's notably absent here.

Verdict

• An interesting mid-range contender

Given TCL's background in super-cheap phones, my expectations around the TCL Plex weren't spectacularly high. While there are some aspects of the TCL Plex experience that could be a little sharper, especially around battery life, it's a generally good mid-range phone for the money, albeit one with plenty of competition at that price point. If the prospect of super-slow motion and fair low-light performance appeal, it's well worth considering.

Pricing and availability

Price

RRP $499

Where to buy

eBay

Alternatives

At that $499 price point, you've got a lot of flexibility when it comes to phone choices. If camera quality is a key concern – and if you can stretch your budget out just a little, or score a bargain – consider the exceptional Google Pixel 3A, which also benefits from guaranteed Android updates.

At the same price point, if you want a phone with a really good camera, there's the realme XT, or the realme 5 Pro if you wanted to save a little money.

You could also opt for Motorola's Moto One Vision at this price point, or indeed its Moto G8 Plus.

Specifications