TCL 10 Pro review: Visual Luxury Hits the Mid-Range

While being best known round these parts for producing TVs, TCL has taken their first step into the mobile market with three new phones including TCL 10 Pro.

When we gave our first impressions of the device a few days ago, we knew this was more than your bog-standard mid-ranger. The build quality and the attention to visual detail were obvious. It’s clear that TCL want to make a name for themselves in the hyper-competitive mid-range market.

Display Greatness, Indeed

TCL’s slogan for 10 Pro is ‘Display Greatness‘ and they have certainly done that. We have a beautiful 6.47 inch AMOLED curved screen on the front with an ever so slight teardrop notch for the selfie camera.

Teardrop notches have their critics but to be honest it really doesn’t affect your viewing experience. But, if you do want that full-screen-like experience, you can blacken the area either side to hide it.

Due to being an AMOLED screen, we get an in-built fingerprint sensor in the screen although it’s not the fastest you’ll find in today’s market. Even when you register the same finger multiple times, it still misreads it a fair amount. It also regularly takes a couple of seconds to unlock which means optimisation is needed for it.

The fact that TCL specialise in TV, you’d expect some of that expertise to be brought over to the TCL 10 Pro. As it happens, watching Netflix or Disney+ on TCL 10 Pro looks particularly good.

Not only is the phone HDR 10 compatible, but it also comes with the NXT Vision app. This dynamically adjusts saturation and sharpness to give you a clearer image. It also upgrades SDR content to HDR on Netflix and the like.

If you struggle to comfortably use phones with 6+ inches screens then you’ll be happy to know that a one-handed mode is included on the TCL 10 Pro. You can even choose what size you want the screen to be ranging from 3.5 inches to 4.5 inches.

Don’t expect any high refresh rate screen though. It’s just the standard 60hz.

No Camera Bulge Allowed

The camera set up, especially on the rear is very unique. Instead of having a black square bulge, that you see on the flagships of today, the TCL 10 Pro has 4 camera set up lined up horizontally and flush with the back frame.

The two flash LEDs either side of the lenses are slightly raised above the four sensors. These flashbumps give extra protection to the cameras when placing it on a surface. They also mostly eliminate wobbling when using the device in the same situation. Leading Irish tech journalist/OG Clubland legend, Mark Kavanagh will surely appreciate the latter.

The device comes with a 64MP wide-angle lens along with a 16MP ultra-wide, a 5MP macro and 2mp depth sensor. You can record up to 4K at 30fps.

Premium Build without the Price

The aluminium frame feels fantastic in the hand. You’d expect this premium feel from €1000+ phone so this is a massive feather in the cap for TCL.

There is only one colour available, Ember Grey, which may sound a bit bland but it looks superb in the flesh, fading a dark grey to a smoky silver from top to bottom.

TCL 10 Pro is covered front and back in Corning Gorilla Glass 5, which should give you some confidence if you do drop it. However, it’s an incredibly slippy phone so you’re going to want to put on the provided phone cover as soon as possible.

On the right-hand side of the phone, you have the power button and volume keys. On the left, you have what TCL call the ‘smart button‘ which just launches Google Assistant. However, its placement leaves a lot to be desired – the number of times I accidentally opened Assistant it was criminal. You can’t program it for a different use or turn it off so you’re stuck with it.

TCL 10 Pro comes with a headphone jack (praise be) which seem to be exclusively now for mid-range phones. There’s one mono speaker on the bottom which gives decent sound but obviously the louder you go, the less clarity you get.

Juicy Innards

The TCL 10 Pro launches with Android 10 and TCL’s own TCL UI mashed on top of that. That means a bit of bloatware such as THREE separate file apps that come with the phone.

As previously mentioned, the phone comes with NXT vision; a feature that converts SDR content to HDR with AI creating a custom colour scheme and contrast model for each file. TCL have included several nifty little app and applets to maximise the performance of the phone.

Apps like Optimise manage any inessential or idling apps that are negatively impacting the device’s performance. There’s also a game mode which activates automatically whenever you launch a game.

In terms of raw specs and innards, TCL 10 Pro is more than competitive in its price-range.

A Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor is comprised of four Kyro 460 Gold and four 460 Silver cores. The Snapdragon 675 is far from a world-leading processor, and I would have personally like to have seen the Snapdragon 720. The 720 being a more efficient 8nm technology versus the 11nm of the 675.

That being said, there is enough grunt for a premium feel – the UI is silky smooth and power-hungry apps/games have minimal lag.

Our review model comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage. There’s a 4,500mAh battery inside TCL 10 Pro which comfortably got me through over a full day of heavy use. The TCL 10 Pro comes with an 18-watt charger that gives 50% battery life in 30 minutes.

Specifications

Conclusion

TCL 10 Pro is a fantastic phone for the price. For just €449 (£399) you get an incredible premium-feeling phone with an AMOLED screen and HDR 10 support.

The 6GB of RAM is enough for a premium-feeling experience while the 4,500 mAh battery and the fast charging means you should never have to worry about running out of juice.

TCL 10 Pro launches in the UK on week 23 (1st-8th June) and Ireland in week 27 (29th June-5th July) and for this price, you’ll struggle to find a better offering.