LeEco (formerly known as Letv) may be still considered as a newcomer to the smartphone game but they have released quite a few high-quality smartphones in a short amount of time. LeEco Le 2 is one of their latest offerings and it indeed looks like a nice phone for a reasonable price. Learn more in our full review.
Thanks to Oppomart for sending LeEco Le 2 for a review.
LeEco Le 2 Review: VIDEO
LeEco Le 2 Review: UNBOXING
The phone ships with some paperwork, USB C cable, SIM ejector pin, a fast charger and last but not least USB type C to 3.5mm headset jack adapter since the LeEco Le 2 does not have a classic 3.5mm headset jack.
LeEco Le 2 Review: SPECS
Display |
5.5″ 1080p (Full-HD) |
Processor |
Mediatek MTK6797 Helio X20, 64-bit, octa-core (up to 2.3GHz) |
RAM |
3GB |
Camera |
8MP Front/16MP Back |
Connectivity |
Bluetooth, 3G, 4G, GPS, WIFI, GSM,EDGE, GPRS, UMTS, HSPA, HSPA+, dual-SIM. |
Battery |
3.000 mAh (non-removable) |
Dimensions |
To be confirmed |
OS |
eUI 5.6 (Android 6.0) |
Storage |
32GB (not expandable) |
LeEco Le 2 Review: DESIGN and DISPLAY
The first impressions once we took the phone out of the box – it is just gorgeous. The phone has an excellent all-metal build quality, nice and tactile buttons and rose gold color looks awesome.
One of the most interesting aspects of this phone is that it does not have a headset jack. Instead, LeEco assures that this phone is capable of providing even a better audio experience via the USB C port. I have to tell you that the sound quality via the earphones is very good and the volume output is loud.
We have a 5.5″ 1080p display, which is nice, sharp and visible outdoors, nicely backlit capacitive buttons, notification LED and 8MP camera on the front. Design-wise, Le 2 is very similar to the Le 1s, which is also a great looking phone.
The metal material of the phone is very nice to the touch. We have a 16MP camera, dual tone dual-LED flash for picture taking. The fingerprint scanner works straight from the standby mode, it is fast and accurate.
The IR blaster is here to control devices like TVs. The sound quality from the loudspeaker is pretty good and it can get pretty loud. However, the sound could have slightly more depth.
LeEco Le 2 Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
LeEco Le 2 sports some great internal hardware components. It uses a Mediatek Helio X20 clocked at 2.3GHz, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which is not expandable.
The gaming performance is good but not perfect. If you play high-demanding games like Asphalt 8 on medium graphics, there will be no skipped frames or lag and the gaming experience is very good.
However, once you set graphics to maximum, you should expect some occasional stutter from time to time. Still, the phone is a pretty good performer considering it’s price and the phone will get only better with future software updates.
Also, the phone gets a little warm pretty quickly but it does not overheat to uncomfortable levels, so you do not need to worry about that.
LeEco Le 2 Review: BENCHMARKS
For some unknown reasons, Antutu 3d bench app could not be installed. We will update this section with Antutu scores soon.
LeEco Le 2 Review: USER INTERFACE
When it comes to the user interface, we have the eUI 5.6, which is built on top of Android 6.0. If you are familiar with the eUI, it hasn’t really changed much. All apps sit on the home screens and we have LeTV services’ quick access button at the center. However, all the content is in Chinese on our Chinese review unit.
What I love about the eUI is that you can quickly access settings toggles, adjust brightness, open or close your recent apps and so on, and you can do that all in one place by simply clicking a left capacitive button.
As usual, we have some customization options, quite a few settings and tweaks to play with.
A few software bugs include duplicated icons for some apps and camera crashing issue once you go into settings menu (only in picture taking mode). I’m pretty sure these issues will be fixed very soon with the upcoming software update.
Another issues include quite a few missed Chinese-English translations. LeEco simply did not really bother translating some menu sections.
Most importantly, the UI is running fast, fluid and I didn’t have a single hiccup no matter how many apps were open in the background.
LeEco Le 2 Review: CAMERA
The 16MP camera can take some great daylight images, which have plenty of detail, natural looking colors and sharpness.
The quality decreases with a lower amount of lighting but the pictures still look pretty good.
The low-light camera performance is mediocre as on all phones in this price range. You may get some okay looking images but they will still have a lot of noise and low amount of detail.
The phone can shoot videos at 4k resolution. However, I could not play 4k videos on my Macbook. This is exactly the same issue I had on the Le 1 (tried 5 different players, downloaded various codec packs etc.) but I will leave download links to the original files below the video.
As for 1080p video, it is not bad but the main issues are that it is a bit shaky and there is no continuous auto-focus feature.
An 8MP selfie shooter is pretty good for some self-portraits.
Download camera samples (Part 1)
Download camera samples (Part 2)
LeEco Le 2 Review: CONNECTIVITY
You can be rest assured that there will no connectivity issues (including GPS) on this device. The only shortcoming is that the 5GHz wifi range could be better (compared it with the Samsung Galaxy s7 edge).
LeEco Le 2 Review: BATTERY LIFE
LeEco decided to stick with the 3000mAh battery and I was able to fully charge it in 1h 20 mins with a supplied charger.
As for day-to-day use, I could get around 4.5 hours of screen on time on a light use and around 4 hours on a heavy use of the phone. Not the best result but pretty good for the size of the battery.
LeEco Le 2 Review: CONCLUSIONS
So, here it is, the LeEco Le 2. The phone looks and feels premium due to its all-metal build and it feels great in the hand.
Also, we have a nice, sharp and bright display, very fast user interface with quite a few customization options, good cameras, accurate fingerprint sensor and fast charging feature out of the box.
For some users, the lack of the headset jack is a shortcoming but if you usually use a pair of Bluetooth earphones like me, you don’t really care about it.
Although we like the UI, it has quite a lot of missed translations, which is inexcusable for the company, which aims to become a big player in the international market.
Also, the lack of the microSD card slot may not be a deal breaker but a lot of users really appreciate this cheap storage expansion option.
Other than that, LeEco is a great and high-quality phone. You can get it for around $200 via the third-party resellers and it is definitely one of the better options for the price at the moment.
