I find great joy in discovering the new wave of entry-level to mid-range smartphones that are hitting the market these days. The price versus performance value of these devices are great and I’ve reviewed some impressive smartphones that come in under R5,000 from big brand names.
The latest budget smartphone I got to play with is not from a big brand, and you’ll be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Tecno before; No, not the 90’s music genre, the Chinese smartphone brand that focuses most of its efforts on the African and Indian markets. Tecno Mobile has been around since 2006 and it’s since delivered an impressive portfolio of products that cater to the entry-level and mid-range market segments.
The Tecno Spark 7 Pro sits at the top of the range, in its class, and delivers a solid set of features. For one thing, the 6.6-inch LCD sports a 90Hz refresh rate and the Mediatek Helio G80 chipset offers really good mid-range performance. There’s also 128GB of storage space and a wonderfully adequate 4GB of system memory.
It’s evident that the Tecno Spark 7 Pro is not pretending to be anything other than a mid-range device with its plastic back cover and the dated micro-USB charging port. Neither of which I mind if this device is a solid performer for the money you pay, but more on its performance later.
In-hand, the Spark 7 Pro feels good, the textured plastic back cover is not slippery and won’t attract nasty fingerprints. The buttons sit sturdily and the construction overall is solid. The green version I received for review is rather nice, and I enjoyed showing this phone off in public. The branding on the back may not be to everyone’s liking but it’s subtle enough to be overlooked.
There’s a three-camera cluster on the back of the smartphone that houses the 48mp sensor and unfortunately no wide-angle lens. The images produced by the camera is sharp and colour saturation straight out of the camera is impressive. I also loved the close-up capabilities of this camera and shooting in low-light conditions did not prove to be a difficult task for the Tecno Spark 7 Pro.
On the audio front, the built-in speakers are pretty loud and more than sufficient for gaming but for the best audio experience the 3.5mm audio jack will come in handy. Of course, you can connect a pair of Bluetooth speakers or headphones too.
When it comes to the day-to-day performance of this smartphone, I was pleasantly surprised with what the Tecno Spark 7 Pro delivers. The 90Hz screen looks smooth and I had no issue running any of my processor-intensive apps or games. While you may notice the occasional stutter when it comes to processor-intensive tasks, in games you can simply turn down the graphics settings to clear this up. To see just how well this smartphone handles games, I installed PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9. I played a few hours of PUBG Mobile and can honestly say it was a really good experience. Compared to my high-end device that I play the games on normally, the Tecno Spark 7 Pro held its own, albeit at lower graphical settings. Running 3DMark benchmarks confirmed these findings.
The only thing that I did not like about the Tecno Spark 7 Pro is the fact that the dual-SIM slot is network locked to Vodacom. This means that the primary slot can only accept a Vodacom SIM and the second slot can only be used if you have this SIM present. If that’s not bad enough, the second SIM slot cannot be used for data, only voice. Hopefully, a network unlocked version of this phone will be available in the market at some point but for now, this is a biggie, so keep it in mind.
Unless you have money to burn there is no need to spend the price of a small car on a smartphone, and the Tecno Spark 7 Pro proves this point quite nicely. For a few grand you get a mid-range device that is game capable and will run all of your Google apps without much hassle.
While the Tecno Spark 7 Pro will likely appeal to a younger crowd, it’s certainly a device to keep your eye on if you want great value for money.