TCL 10 Pro: New Blueprint For Budget Flagship

Now when you think of TCL, you think of amazing & affordable TVs. They recently expanded their product line and step into the smartphone arena. Now, this isn’t outside of their expertise or wheelhouse at all. TCL was behind the Alcatel brand of mid-range devices and more recently, the BlackBerry DTEK & Key devices. Fast forward to the top of the year, they unveiled devices coming under the TCL brand. They have 3 devices to launch w/ the TCL 10 L, 10 Pro, & 10 5G. Our focus will stay on the only device in our possession: the TCL 10 Pro.

TCL made sure to do their homework when it comes to their design for this thing. The 10 Pro has a premium piece of hardware w/ curved display, small bezels, metal frame, durable glass, and flat camera sensors so it lays flat on a table – all within a lightweight gloss/matte package. But not as slippery as it appears to be.

It doesn't look or feel like a phone that costs under $500.

TCL takes their TV expertise and brings it here w/ their NXTVISION technology. What it does is converts SDR to HDR in real-time and make for more saturated colors, darker blacks, and better contrast. This makes their 6.47inch curved AMOLED display a lot better than many screens – even flagships. I truly love the display on this, even w/ the 1080 x 2340 resolution, it feels like a high-end panel. However, you can change the color profile to tone the colors down a bit if that’s not your cup of tea. The display also has a Blue Light certification as well as Adaptive Tone, Reading Mode, & Eye Comfort Mode.

You do have an optical in-display fingerprint sensor but it isn’t fast and at times hit or miss.
There’s an always-on display option that works will notifications, time, & date.
You got the return of the infrared blaster on this guy to use it as a remote control for your TV as well as control smart products and appliances.
There is a customizable smart button to make it open whatever app you wish.

6.4inch curved AMOLED display w/ HDR10 support + 1080 x 2340 resolution
Snapdragon 675
CPU6GB of RAM + 128GB of storage expandable up to 256GB via microSD
A quad rear camera setup w/ f/1.7 64MP main sensor, f/2.4 16MP Super wide-angle, f/2.2 5MP Macro, and f/1.8 2MP Super low-light video sensors
f/2.0 24MP selfie camera
Android 10 w/ TCL UI
dual mics
infrared sensor
3.5mm headphone jack
a single speaker w/ audio amplifier
Bluetooth 5.0
4500 mAh battery w/ reverse wireless charging + fast charging

Inside of the 10 Pro, you got a budget chipset. It’s a an octa-core Snapdragon 665 CPU coupled w/ 6GB of RAM + 128GB of storage expandable up to 256GB via microSD. So outside of the processor, we’re getting high-end stuff here. Now back to the chipset, it does do a good job handling multitasking and such. I was able to play Call Of Duty Mobile w/ ease and not too much lag or hiccups. It doesn’t feel like a huge drop from a flagship CPU but can easily handle most things you can throw at it.

Since this is the Pro line, TCL put a 4500 mAh battery inside of this. You can charge it via USB-C up to 18W but no wireless charging present though. You do have a type of reverse wireless charging via a cable so that’s a workaround of sorts. Don’t worry as the battery can easily last you all day. Like over 12 hours of juice while doing a lot of streaming via YouTube, Spotify, emails, gaming, and more. Last but not least, TCL’s fast-charging can get you from 0-50% in 30 minutes so they take away all of the goodies.

TCL equipped their 10 Pro w/ many shooters – 4 to be exact along w/ 2 LED flash sensors. You got 64MP, 16MP super wide-angle, 5MP macro & 2MP low-light video sensors on the rear. On the front, you got a 24MP selfie camera and for video, its capable of up to 4K@30fps + Super Slo-Mo up to 960fps.

Click on photo for full resolution

In good-to-great lighting, you can get good-to-useable photos/videos. However, you do get oversaturated colors and oversharpened results. Unfortunately outside of that, the rest of the camera falls into the budget quality. Moving from good-to-great lighting gives you results that are noisy, lack of detail, & full of inaccurate colors/white balance. This goes for both photos & videos BTW. Their dedicated Night Mode gives you noisy but useable image w/ the sky being overblown.

On the upside, the Macro lens is pretty good and the image stabilization for video ain’t bad either. So it’s not a complete swing-and-a-miss for the shooters on here. But it’s after the PIxel 3a (soon-to-be 4a) and the iPhone SE sequel, it’s gonna make it hard for this quality pass like before – even for lower-tier budget phones.

TCL made sure to give this latest from Google as this is equipped w/ Android 10 underneath their own TCL UI. It’s pretty lightweight as it maintains the majority of stock Android throughout the navigation experience. This brings forth some familiar features from other phone makers and some new ones.

So we’ve seen the Smart Manager on overseas Android devices to monitor apps, battery, RAM management & more. Borrowed from Samsung, you got an Edge Bar on the right side of the screen to add up to 12 app shortcuts. TCL has something called Super Bluetooth that allows you to support up to 4 headphones or 4 speakers at once. Outside of that, you’ve got quick launch shortcuts to open specific apps when unlocking, NXTVISION (for the display), Music, Gallery, Radio, File Share, Compass, & Video apps.

Although not perfect, the 10 Pro has the potential to replace OnePlus in the top-tier budget space now that they've grown out of it.

The 10 Pro is one of those smartphones that I didn’t think I would love as much as I did. It has a lot going for it but all is not amazing though. The in-display fingerprint scanner & the cameras are a mixed bag of hit-or-miss. Now to shoot them some bail, many phonemakers struggle w/ the cameras early on so TCL still has some work to do in those areas. Outside of that, they did nail just about everything else – from display, design, battery life, & pricing. Definitely offering a lot for $450 to give you a little more than your typical budget offerings. Especially now that OnePlus leveled out of the budget, TCL can fix some things to take that spot.