Review: The Cheapest 4G LTE Phablet Leagoo M8 Pro (N30,000)

This is the cheapest full fledged 4G smartphones going for just N30,000 and it offers you everything you need in a smartphone. Got my own copy and I’m not disappointed at all with what I see.

Leagoo M8 Pro 4G Phablet is a smart device that comes with impressive dual rear camera and one selfie camera, FingerPrint ID, air gesture, 4G LTE and lot more. Atleast the features outweigh the price compare to what local OEMs will give you.

First of all, let me start with the good side

Pros

1. It features an excellent camera

2. Perfect blend of plastic, glass, and zinc alloy body

3. A dedicated audio chip for enhanced sound quality which is missing in most of the high range phones.

4. OTG supported

5. Replaceable battery

6. Dual rear camera and excellence performance

Cons

1. No Fast charging/ Turbo Charging

2. No LED notification

3. 720 video recording (unknown sensor)

Technical Specifications

Display: 5.7 inch, 1280 x 720 Pixel 2.5D Arc Corning Gorilla Glass 4 screen
CPU: MTK6737 Quad Core 1.3GHz
GPU: Mali T720
System: Android 6.0 ( Freeme OS 6.0 )
RAM + ROM: 2GB RAM + 16GB ROM

 
Camera: 8.0MP front camera + 13.0MP + 5.0MP back camera
Sensor: Gravity Sensor, Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Fingerprint Sensor
SIM Card: dual SIM dual standby. Micro SIM + Micro SIM
Feature: GPS
Bluetooth: 4.0
Network:
2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
3G: WCDMA 900/2100MHz
4G: FDD-LTE 800/900/1800/2100/2600MHz TD-LTE B40

Battery: 3500mAh removable battery

Dimension: 79.8 mm x 154.5 mm x 8.8 mm

Weight: 170g

Form Factor

Leagoo M8 Pro is not in the league of expensive smartphones but allow you to enjoy the features of high end smartphones. Comes with perfect blend of plastic, glass, and zinc alloy body; the front is covered with2.5D glass and coated with Gorilla Glass Protection 4. Meanwhile, the rear molds from plastic and the side frame forge from zinc metal.

At the top of the screen is 8MP selfie camera sitting beside the center earpiece, there is a dedicated somato sensoralso located which enables the user to enjoy air gestures as well.

Moreover, there’s no button present at the bottom. The makers have made the front bottom neat and clean. The three traditional buttons as screen touch based.

The right side holds the volume rocker with the power button slightly above. You need to detach the phone battery to be able to insert your sim. Two Micro sim with a dedicated slot for your SDcard.

The bottom has only the Micro usb-port for charging while the speaker is located at the bottom back of the phone

At the top you can find 3.5mm audio jack.

Display

Leagoo M8 Pro 4G Phablets comes with a 5.7-inch display, featuring Corning Gorilla Glass 4.0. The screen resolution is IPS LCD 1,280 x 720 pixels with a PPI of 257, which is relatively low when compared to any 1080p display. Plus, it comes with the MiraVision Technology pre-installed. Large and bright display.

Battery

Leagoo M8 Pro come with a removable battery of 3500mAh capacity that can atleast carry you for a day even though you are a heavy user. The only downside side is that it doesn’t supports fast charge.

Network & Connectivity

Leagoo M8 Pro 4G Phablets operates on about 6 LTE Bands and I was able to try out MTN, Etisalat, InterC network. 

Storage and Performance

Leagoo M8 Pro comes with 16GB of internal memory, and as for the Ram, it comes with 2GB Ram. So far so good, multitasking is okay and I haven’t experience any issues so far.

With a powerful MediaTek MT6737 quad-core processor with a clock speed of 1.3 GHz, M8 has increased the performance of additional 20-30%. This phone also attracts gamers with an ATR Mali-T720 GPU with 2 GPU cores and a RAM of 2GB with a clock frequency of 640 MHz.

Geekbench Test

We also did the Geekbench test to determine the CPU performance only, and the result is shown below in the picture.

 

Camera

The selling point of this smartphone is the camera… a little bit above my expectation. The rear camera comes with 13MP+5MP camera  with Led Flash and 8MP front camera. The camera has all essential features like autofocus, digital zoom, Panorama, HDR, Face Detection, ISO setting, timer, etc.

However, the camera only supports 720p video recording. I guess they don’t want to push hard with a MediaTek SoC.

The images below can speak for itself

Software

Leagoo M8 Pro comes preloaded with Android 6.0 Marshmallow which is optimize for the phone as Freeme OS 6.0. We already know that Android 7.0 has been already released, but still, most Chinese manufacturers are slow in updating the OS. Same is the case with Leagoo.

All Google Apps are pre-installed even on this Chinese variant. Apart from these, there is no unnecessary bloatware.

Final Verdicts

Leagoo M8 Pro is a pocket friendly 4G Phablet with incredible dual camera with led flash. You don’t need to spend much to enjoy great features. With ($81)N30,000, you can get this device. The only downside for me is the weight (170g) because of the zinc used for the body build. But the Pros outweigh the Cons

You can get it on Gearbest for $81.99 using your Naira master card or get it on Jumia for N35,000.. just difference of N5,000.