Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Two minute review

Chromebooks started their rise by being popular with students, who liked their web-based nature and long battery life, but eventually, businesses realised its virtues.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (CP714-1WN) isn’t a low-cost plastic Chromebook for students but an elegant Ultrabook concept with a 14-inch HD touchscreen and an aluminium body.

Designed as a web-based workhorse, Acer gave it a durable, full-size keyboard with a backlit design that makes it easy to type in low light.

Even with a lightweight metal and plastic exterior, the Spin is a hefty  3.09 lbs (1.4 kg) and is 0.7 inches (18.05 mm) thick. That’s an almost identical weight to its predecessor and not so heavy that you would have trouble carrying it.

Acer has previously released two versions of its 713 design, and the new 714 builds on that legacy by providing more power and functionality while retaining much of the form factor and styling that made the 713 series so popular.

However, in this transition to 12th Gen technology, Acer managed to misplace the MicroSD card slot from the previous model, lost the terrific 2256 x 1504 resolution screen, and the battery life of 10 hours hasn’t gotten any better.

What you do get here is a much better Intel 12th Gen processor with more powerful graphics, HDMI out, a Thunderbolt 4 port and a stylus that is neatly housed in the chassis.

The jury is still unsure if this constitutes a significant improvement over the 713, but it’s a classy piece of hardware and a notch above most hybrid Chromebooks.

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? $730/ £799
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct from Acer or through an online retailer.

At more than $700, the Spin 714 is at the more expensive end of the Chromebook spectrum, but it is cheaper than ASUS CB9400CEA Chromebook and the Google Pixelbook.

Acer also makes an Enterprise edition of this model that costs £1,099.99 in the UK and is priced specifically for Corporate customers in the USA at around $1049.99.

The Enterprise versions typically come with more RAM, up to 16GB, and business administration tools are preinstalled on them for easier rollouts.

T1here are cheaper Chromebook options from Acer and other brands that can offer a similar specification for much less. Intel, Lenovo, HP, Asus and Acer all make ARM-based designs that are less than half this cost.

As a good example, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i is closer to $500 for a similar if less powerful design.

• Value: 3 / 5

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Design

• Attractive styling
• Excellent port selection
• Inbuilt stylus

We’ve seen enough broken Chromebooks to know that they can be abused by their owners, so being able to take a few knocks is essential for a business tool like the Spin 714.

The Spin 714 uses a very similar physical design to the 713, and given how successful that machine was, that Acer stuck with a similar plan isn’t a big surprise.

However, the devil is most certainly in the detail here, and the Spin 714 has arguably lost as much as it gained from the 713.

For those unsure about the ‘Spin’ aspect of this design, this Chromebook has a fully extensible hinge that allows the screen to go from fully closed to 360 degrees open, allowing the machine to operate as a tablet. It can do all the positions between those extremes to provide tent mode for watching a presentation or streamed content.

This flexibility allows for a hybrid use model, where the 714 can be a conventional laptop or a tablet, depending on the demands.

Mostly for tablet mode, the screen is touch-sensitive, and Acer does include an integrated stylus if smudgy fingerprints annoy you as much as they do us. The stylus isn’t a pressure sensitive one or has any buttons, but it's better than using your finger.

A nice touch is that the slot it lives in is also the charger for the stylus, and just 15 minutes inserted in its home is enough to recharge power for four hours of use.

If it wasn’t running ChromeOS, the same hardware could run Windows or Linux happily since it has all the ports and Intel x86/64 parts needed for a good computing experience.

On the left side is a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port, a full-size HDMI out, the 2.5mm audio jack and a power button. And on the right is another Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB 3.0 Type-A port and a volume rocker.

We’ve seen some poor USB-C implementations on Windows laptops, where the port used for charging is exclusive to that job and can’t be utilised for any other purpose. But here, the Thunderbolt 4 ports on each side are interchangeable, allowing charging on whichever side is most convenient.

This isn’t the biggest keyboard we’ve seen on a machine this size, but it is backlit and has a pleasant key travel for typing. We’re less convinced about the touchpad. It’s small, but as you have a touch screen, you’re not forced to use it without a mouse.

A fingerprint sensor below the keyboard and to the left of the touchpad, and a 1080p webcam at the top centre of the screen with a physical privacy cover (hooray).

Probably the most significant difference over the 713 is the display, which is a less bright and less impressive resolution than what came before.

For those that never saw the lovely 400 nit panel on the 713, the one on the 714 is fine, but it doesn’t offer the same refined experience, sadly.

• Design: 4 / 5

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Hardware

• 12th Gen CPU
• Thunderbolt 4 port
• Same battery size as 713
• No LTE or SIM slot

Where the 713 used 10th and 11th Gen Intel parts, the 714 has the Intel Core i5-1235U, a 12th Gen CPU with ten cores. Depending on the 713 model, that machine either had a Core i7-1185G7, i5-1135G7, i5-10210U or i3-1115G4, but the i5-1235U used in the 714 is probably better than all of those options.

Because of the way ChromeOS works and its inherent web functionality, seeing the processing power in this machine in action is challenging. But, we did notice that when using the machine for standard tasks, it didn’t run the fans, something the 713 did, irrespective of the processor model.

Keeping cooler has advantages for power consumption and the life expectancy of the chips, so we’re all for those changes.

A major selling point on the Acer website for this model is that it offers a Thunderbolt 4 port, which has backward compatibility with USB 3.2. On a Windows laptop, this would be a desirable feature, as it would allow the connecting of external Thunderbolt or USB-C SSD storage and high-speed transfers.

However, moving files on and off the device is a 20th-century approach to problems. Because the advantage of a Chromebook is that everything is stored on the Cloud and not shuffled around using file managers.

The deeper we delved into the different strategies that a Windows PC and a Chromebook have to file management, the more we wondered why does this machine have a 12 Gen Core-i5 class processor? Can its power never be effectively used on web-based applications or data? This high-end class of Chromebook ends up wanting to be one thing but acting much more like a Windows PC, and the inclusion of Thunderbolt 4 only highlights this contradiction.

If you’re an IT person who has a user that has a Chromebook that insists on moving files from the system to external storage and back, they evidently don’t understand how to use it.

There are some exceptions to this, like video editing and graphics design, and it could be useful for bringing a media movie collection along on a trip, but the majority of owners that understand Chromebooks are unlikely to use it, ever.

While we did see less fan activity and a cooler running processor, we didn’t notice that this machine lasted any longer on battery.

The 56Wh 3-cell Li-ion battery seems the same as was in the 713, and the quoted ten hours of operating lifespan is effectively the same.

That the battery doesn’t go further with a 12th Gen processor onboard hints that other factors, like the NVMe storage and the new screen, are consuming the extra power that the Core i5-1235U efficiency provides.

Whatever the power consumption equations are, it provides enough power for a good working day, and a 65W Liteon branded USB-C charger is provided that can give you four hours of running time for 30 minutes of charging.

A bigger battery would have been appreciated, but it might have made the 714 heavier than a Chromebook should be.

The missing part of the 714 hardware ensemble is mobile comms because when they’re not connected to the Internet, Chromebooks aren’t at their best.

Why Acer didn’t include a SIM slot to allow for LTE and 5G connections on the move is a genuine head-scratcher, and it forces owners to use a phone as a WiFi access point to get it connected away from the office. That they didn’t even offer this in the Spin 714 Enterprise edition (that has more RAM and preinstalled remote admin tools), is even more bemusing.

Removing the MicroSD card slot from the 713, we’ll forgive, but not including any mobile comms options is less defensible.

• Hardware: 4 / 5

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Performance

• ChromeOS
• Too powerful for some benchmarks

Chromebooks are difficult to judge from a performance perspective as they don’t typically run predefined executables like Windows machines. This Chromebook can run Android applications, but this is done using hardware emulation. Making it not an apples-for-apples comparison with an ARM-based phone or tablet.

We ran PCMark for Android and 3DMark, with varying results. 3DMark refused to run most tests declaring the system to be too powerful, but we did extract a Wild Life result from it.

What scores we did get told us that this is a powerful machine, which isn’t much of a shock. The performance of a Chromebook is dependent on many things that aren’t internal hardware in most scenarios, so does the power in this one ever get fully exploited? We have our doubts.

The Acer Spin 714 Chromebook desperately wants to be a Windows PC, and that’s somewhat at odds with running ChromeOS and being designated a Chromebook.

• Performance: 5 / 5

The Acer Spin 714 Chromebook is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a high-quality Chromebook and is prepared to pay for a refined experience. It has a sleek design, excellent performance, and works effectively with ChromeOS.

It is significantly cheaper than other Chromebooks in its class, but its special features, such as the 360-degree hinge, stylus, and Thunderbolt ports, make it more appealing to power users.

However, as this is a Chromebook and not a Windows PC, will the power in this machine ever be effectively leveraged? And, if it isn’t, then what is the point of such a high specification?

The new 714 design does offer a few new twists over the 713, but owners of the previous generation might miss its superior screen and MicroSD card slot. But the technology that this design most needed was LTE/5G comms, and for whatever reason, Acer engineers didn’t consider that to be something worth including.

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook: Report card

Acer Spin 714 Chromebook?

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30-second review

This phone isn’t a ThinkPad computer, but it has been themed to look similar and work alongside Windows systems.

However, there are a few big reasons why you might want to deploy this Android phone in business, the first being security.

Alongside the usual protections offered by Android 13 (not 12), Motorola put a special security module in this device that isolates encryption keys and other security information from main memory, making them much more difficult to access nefariously.

When you combine that with a centralised management service that allows phones to be wiped, locked, and specific software to be installed remotely, then this is a device that the IT department will hopefully like and not curse.

And, sporting the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC, this is easily one of the most powerful phones we’ve ever tested. In short, it can handle computing tasks that would crush other designs.

We should also mention that it is drop, dust and water resistant (freshwater, not salt), has a fantastic camera that can shoot 8K video, and is dual SIM.

While it has a few minor omissions, the only significant caveat here is the price. But considering the technology that Motorola stuffed inside, the ThinkPhone might well be worth that inflated asking price.

Lenovo ThinkPhone price and availability

• How much does it cost? $900/ £899
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct Lenovo, Motorola or through an online retailer.

Business phones often aren’t expected to be cheap, and the ThinkPhone isn’t. At almost £900 in the UK, and the same number in dollars in the USA, that’s more than a 256GB Apple iPhone 14 and slightly less than the iPhone 14 Plus.

Alongside the phone, Motorola has designed a wireless charging stand, but the pricing for that accessory isn’t currently available.

• Value score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone design

• Thin and lightweight
• Rugged without rubber plugs
• Narrow screen border

When the term ‘rugged’ is used for a phone. It is normal to expect chunky and heavy designs that look destined for life on a building site or farm. The ThinkPhone isn’t remotely like that, yet it still achieves the same drop standards and waterproofing as those with industrial styling.

Weighing only 188.5g, this is half the mass of a typical rugged Chinese phone and should easily fit inside a jacked or even a trouser pocket.

Yet, it still has a 6.6-inch display, is dust and waterproof according to IP68 without rubber plugs, and it can handle being dropped 1.5m.

However, there are a few caveats about the robust side of this design that Motorola placed in the copious notes on its product page.

These include the fact that liquid damage isn’t covered by the warranty and that the water immersion of 1.5m for up to 30 minutes is only for fresh water and not the ocean. And, that last detail explains why the camera has all manner of photographic modes, but underwater photography isn’t one of them.

The button layout is predictably Android, with the power and volume controls on the right and a user-customisable button on the left. We should complement Motorola on the user-assignable button, as we’ve seen plenty of implementations that weren’t as flexible as the one in the ThinkPhone.

The SIM slot isn’t on the left side but on the bottom next to the USB-C port. The phone accepts Nano-sized SIMs but has no place for a MicroSD card.

Given how new this design is and the cutting-edge technology in it, that it didn’t use eSIMs or have any MicroSD card reader was disappointing.

The camera cluster is on the top left, and it stands proud of the flat underside of the phone, causing it to rock when placed on a flat surface. The flat base is designed to make charging the ThinkPhone wirelessly easier, but the camera cluster does the complete opposite.

One other design curiosity with the ThinkPhone is that the screen has a very narrow border minimising the chassis of the phone noticeably. As nice as this looks, we had a few occasions when the phone didn’t react to a finger press. We eventually realised that another fingertip had inadvertently made contact with the screen due to the thin border, which interfered with the touch sensor.

For those curious, the fingerprint reader is embedded in the screen, making it equally accessible for right and left-handed owners.

Once we realised this, it was relatively easy to counter, but a new owner might think the phone isn’t working correctly and send it back.

Design score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone hardware

• Ultra powerhouse
• Amazing camera specs
• Modest battery size

With Chinese phone makers pressing more powerful SoCs into their rugged designs from MediaTek, the Qualcomm SoC in the ThinkPhone takes phone performance to a whole new level.

The details of how powerful the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is are further documented in the performance section, but this is easily the most powerful phone this reviewer has tested.

What makes it so powerful is the tri-cluster core arrangement, headed by a single Cortex-X2 core that runs at a blistering 3.0GHz. To that headline act are added three fast Cortex-A710 cores at 2.5GHz, and the final cluster has four efficiency Corex-A510 at 1.8GHz.

The supporting GPU is an Adreno 730, a notch up from that used in the Snapdragon 888 and 865. The icing on this architectural cake is that the SoC connects to 3.2GHz LPDDR5 memory, with 8GB in this model.

That power level will eat most phone tasks for breakfast, but it’s also critical in the camera functions that require that performance.

Another standout choice in this phone is the pOLED display technology that’s rated for HDR10+ presentation. The natural resolution of 1080 x 2400 allows for 1080p video to be fully shown and allows extra pixels for the interface.

The quality of this panel is remarkably high, but it would all be just window dressing if the video encryption technology wasn’t onboard to allow the best streaming quality. Thankfully this phone, unlike so many others, does support Widevine L1, meaning that streaming Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon should result in the best quality images with a good connection.

The ThinkPhone is one of the few phones that is HDR10+, Amazon HDR Playback, and YouTube HDR Playback certified that we’ve seen.

The review phone came with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but it may be that Motorola will make versions of the ThinkPhone with 128Gb or 512GB depending on demand. Memory can be bumped to 12GB by subverting some of the storage into what appears to be RAM to the system, a feature we’ve seen on Android 12 phones.

Other hardware features include dual Dolby Atmos capable speakers, WiFi 6E networking, and 5G comms.

There are only blemishes on this hardware tour de force, and those are the lack of any support for a MicroSD card and that it doesn’t support eSIMs.

• Hardware score: 5/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone cameras

• Rear cameras: 50MP f/1.8 primary, 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide, 2MP, f/2.4, (depth)
  Front camera: 32MP f/2.5 (wide)

With so many cameras using the Samsung HM2 108MP sensor, it's refreshing to see one that goes for fewer pixels and instead focuses on the delivery of high quality images and video.

The best video resolution we’ve seen from the HM2 is 4K, but the sensor on the ThinkPhone (and we believe it is an Omnivision OV50A) offers 8K at 30fps, 4K at 60fps and slow-motion video of up to 960 fps for 1080p captures. And, its gyro-EIS stabilised to help with getting those smooth shots.

For portrait work, the camera can use Phase detection autofocus (PDAF) to keep the objective in focus while allowing the background to blur. And there is also a continuous shooting mode that’s ideal for getting sporting events or similar.

But even without the special modes, and there are plenty, the results from this camera are excellent, almost irrespective of lighting conditions.

The output is almost certainly the result of a four-way pixel binning algorithm that reduces chromatic aberrations and clarity but still manages images of a good resolution.

And, for those wanting the very best results, it can shoot in RAW mode.

Overall, the camera on the ThinkPhone is excellent, and the photo application has, with a few small exceptions, got all the special modes and manual controls for those that use them.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone performance

• Benchmark breaking performance
• Game capable SoC

Having an SoC fail to run a test is usually down to a missing feature, but with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, several of our standard benchmarks refused to execute because it was ‘Maxed Out’. When trying to run Slingshot and Wild Life on 3DMark, the benchmark declared that “Your Motorola ThinkPhone is too powerful for this test”. And, the only 3DMark bench we managed to run successfully was Wild Life Extreme.

As a result of these issues, we’ve included a selection of GFXBench results to represent better the performance envelope that the ThinkPhone is capable.

This phone strongly suggests that we need a whole new slew of testing tools for phones because the performance of the new Snapdragon SoCs is on a whole new level.

However, Qualcomm also has the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with its Adreno 740 GPU that has been seen previously in the Samsung Galaxy S23 and the Xiaomi 13. Tests on those devices show that the Gen 2 and Adreno 740 silicon is marginally faster than Gen 1 and Adreno 730 combination.

Unless you already have a Samsung S23 or an iPhone 14, the speed and power of the ThinkPhone should impress you.

• Performance score: 5/5

Lenovo ThinkPhone battery

• Decent 5000 mAh capacity
• 68W Fast charging
• 15W Wireless charging

As rugged phones go, 5000 mAh is a modest amount of battery capacity, and realistically the most you can expect from this platform is a couple of working days of use.

But because of the modest-for-a-rugged-phone battery capacity and the 68W charging from the included TurboPower charger, charging is rapid, and you are soon ready to go.

Alternatively, for those that like to charge overnight, the Qi-compliant 15W wireless charging will work equally well and saves the USB-C port from wearing out.

The only aspect of the battery and charging of the ThinkPhone that is mildly disconcerting is how warm the phone can become when rapidly charging over USB. It doesn’t get excessively hot, but it is noticeable when you pick it up.

While all batteries do heat up charging, we’d be wary of this one if it suddenly started to get any warmer than normal.

There is a balance here that Motorola is making about keeping the ThinkPhone light and thin and having enough battery to operate for long enough. The ThinkPhone should get you through two working days unless you play games, but it isn’t enough time for an extended adventure holiday or hiking expedition.

• Battery score: 4/5

The hardware in the ThinkPhone is exceptional, and when combined with management tools like Moto OEMConfig and Moto Device Manage, this becomes more than just another Android phone.

There are a few minor issues, like the lack of a MicroSD card slot, but mostly the phone's specification is excellent.

More of an issue is the price because being more expensive than Apple isn’t a notoriety that most phone makers wish to have. With the high quality of the hardware and software platform, we appreciate that Lenovo sees the ThinkPhone as a premium solution. But more aggressive pricing might have been a better choice as it would have attracted more customers not having a business pay for their phone.

Lenovo ThinkPhone score card

Should I buy a Lenovo ThinkPhone?

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Two-minute review

In recent months we’ve covered the Ulefone Armour 16 Pro, 17 Pro and here now, the 18T.

It would be easy to conclude that the numerical progression was a ladder of performance specifications, but that would be an oversimplification.

There aren’t many similarities between this and the 16 Pro and the 17 Pro, although the 18T does borrow some features from its predecessor.

For those curious, there is a cut-down Power Armor 18 and also a new Power Armor 19 design, but the 18T is still the flagship of this series, in our opinion.

Where the 16 Pro was a relatively inexpensive design with an underpowered SoC, the 18T is a high-powered solution with a premium phone price tag.

With a retail cost of $570, phone buyers expect plenty for their money, and the 18T has the best specification we’ve seen from Ulefone so far. 

Where the 19 uses the less expensive MediaTek G99 SoC, the 18 and 18T use the 5G capable MediaTek Dimensity 900 SoC, delivering more processing power and double the GPU performance of the G99.

The choice to go with the Dimensity 900 is probably more about 5G coms than anything else, but having this power is also helpful for the FLIR thermal imaging sensor.

We’ve seen thermal imaging before on the Cat S63 Pro, and this is the same FLIR 3.5 that is on that phone. Very often, rugged phone makers use the cheaper FLIR 2.5 sensor, which was on the CAT S60, Ulefone Armor 11T 5G and Blackview BV9800 Pro, to mention just a few.

On this phone, the newer FLIR 3.5 sensor offers a better resolution, achieving greater detail and clarity in the images it captures.

The other notable feature of this design is that it has the same accessory port as the 17 Pro, and through that, there are various specialist accessories available, including an endoscope.

When you combine the ability to detect temperature distribution and having an endoscope to look at difficult-to-reach areas, the 18T starts to look like it might be ideal for those in automotive repair or similar businesses.

The downside to having such a powerful SoC and feature set is that this is the most expensive rugged design that Ulefone makes. The 18T is priced as a premium phone, and the customer mostly gets premium parts for their investment.

As this is most likely to be a second phone for most customers, is that just too much to be a practical consideration?.

Ulefone Armor 18T price and availability

• How much does it cost? $570/ £620/ $AU $880
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct from AliExpress or on Amazon.co.uk

In addition to the phone, Ulefone has a selection of accessories that can be bundled. A case increases the cost by another $25, a Wireless charging base by $25, an Endoscope by $50, and a 1000x Digital Microscope is another $50. The cheapest upgrade is a tempered glass screen protector that costs just $10 when bought with the phone.

Considering that the Power Armor 16 Pro costs just $160, the official $699.99 that Ulefone is asking for the Power Armor 18T does seem a bit shocking.

However, if you don’t get it directly from Ulefone and are willing to wait for delivery from AliExpress, it can be had for around $570.

Not available on Amazon.com currently, but we found it on Amazon.co.uk for UK customers for £619. However, that’s a good £120 more than AliExpress charges for the same phone.

• Value score: 4/5

Ulefone Armor 18T design

• Solid construction
• By-the-numbers buttons
• Accessory Port

As rugged phone designs go, the 18T is rather stylish, avoiding some of the travel case aesthetics emblazoned on other products.

By bevelling the edge all around, the 18T is easy to pick up, and the angled slots on the underside make it easy to hold even when wet.

To achieve waterproofing sufficient for submersion, two rubber plugs protect the USB-C port on the bottom edge and a 3.5mm audio jack on the top.

You can avoid disturbing the USB-C one if you use wireless charging, and the audio jack one can also be avoided if you have Bluetooth headphones.

The button selection and positions are what we’ve come to expect on rugged Chinese designs, with a combined thumbprint reader/power button and volume rocker on the right and a user-customisable button together with the SIM tray on the left.

The SIM tray can take either two NANO SIMs or a single SIM and a MicroSD card, which isn’t ideal.

The one special external feature that it shares with the 17 Pro is an accessory pogo-pin style connector, designated as the uSmart connector, on the bottom left. Previously we criticised this aspect because attaching an accessory requires the removal of a screw that can be easily misplaced.

This mechanism is implemented exactly the same on the 18T, and it makes the likelihood that once an accessory is attached, like the endoscope or microscope, it will be left connected permanently. This needs a redesign so accessories can be snapped on and off easily and without needing a screwdriver.

Our only other comment about the design is related to the camera cluster, as it is positioned to the very left on the back. For those used to not having the camera in the middle, this is probably fine, but we did have some issues with fingers straying into the shots.

Overall, the accessory port aside, the design of the 18T is good, and it sells the go-anywhere ethos of this device admirably.

At just over 400g, it’s also one of the lighter designs, especially when compared to some of the big battery designs we’ve seen recently.

Design score: 4/5

Ulefone Armor 18T hardware

• High spec platform
• Decent battery size
• Endoscope option

There is a schism developing in rugged phone designs, where the lower budget phones are using the Helio G series SoCs, and then devices like the 18T are moving to the next level with the Dimensity chips, all made by MediaTek.

The 18T uses the Dimensity 900, an SoC with a great combination of performance and efficiency cores blended with a capable GPU and 5G comms.

While this is great compared to the Helio G99, for example, it doesn’t quite meet the performance levels of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G, but it is substantially better than the 765G.

In short, for most users, the 18T has more than enough power for the majority of applications and provides a smooth user experience. To make moving between apps, the 18T comes with a very healthy 12GB of RAM, and this can be expanded by another 5GB borrowed from storage by enabling ‘memory expansion’ mode in the settings.

The screen is a good quality 6.58-inch IPS panel with a natural resolution of 1080 x 2408, a size that Ulefone decided to market as FHD+, despite that being 2220 x 1080 pixels.

We’ve seen many odd screen resolutions recently aimed at providing extra vertical pixels to accommodate the inclusion of the forward camera or Android interface elements.

It’s enough to show 1080p videos without borders. If the software has been configured to offer that in ‘full screen’ mode, it can also operate at 120Hz.

With rugged phones, battery life is usually of interest to the customers, and here Ulefone gave the 18T a decent 9600 mAh of capacity. Some phones around have more than twice this amount of battery, but they’re much heavier and less convenient to carry.

Compared with other Ulefone designs, this is more than the 17 Pro offers (5380 mAh) and identical to that in the 16 Pro.

The quoted standby is 524 hours, 39 hours of calling, 22 hours of video and 15 hours of gaming. Those numbers are fractionally down on those of the 16 Pro, but the processing power in the 18T is substantially greater.

This capacity is enough battery for at least four days of use, and with curation, a week is a plausible objective.

But what elevates this design is that Ulefone gave this phone 66W charging, allowing it to recover 52% of its battery capacity in 30 minutes. Wireless charging is four times slower.

Using the OTG technology in the USB-C port, the 18T can supply up to 5W charging to other devices, which is useful for earbuds and other chargeable accessories.

We should also mention that the WiFi 6 support is much better than WiFi 5 if you have a router that supports the newer technology. The dual Band GPS is also very accurate, but the real stand-out technology in the 18T is the cameras that we’ll cover next.

• Hardware score: 5/5

Ulefone Armor 18T cameras

• 108MP sensor on the rear
• Wide-angle, macro and night vision
• Four cameras in total

The Ulefone Power Armor 18T has four cameras:

• Rear cameras: 108MP Main Samsung HM2, 5MP Macro Samsung S5K5E9 sensor, FLIR Lepton 3.5 Thermal camera.
  Front camera: 32MP Samsung S5KGD1 (wide)

The HM2 is a very popular choice for rugged designs now, as it’s a massive 108MP 1/1,52” sensor that includes Samsung’s ISOCELL Plus and Smart-ISO technology.

It is possible to take massive 108MP images if you are prepared to forego any special modes. But where this sensor really shines is when you drop to 12MP mode. In this reduced resolution, the sensor uses 9-in-1 pixel binning technology to effectively enhance the sensor pixels from 0.7μm to 2.1 μm, providing remarkably clear and colour-accurate results.

In this phone, it can also take 4K video, although all video is restricted to 30fps, sadly.

Alongside that sensor is a 5MP microlens camera that has a 60x super magnification mode. Our only reservation about this feature is that it is rather difficult to use if the item you wish to look at in detail isn’t flat, as it can’t autofocus. Our examples include a couple of macro shots, one of a coin and the other of a banknote, and the coin was much more difficult to achieve.

However, the flagship camera feature on this phone is the FLIR Lepton 3.5 sensor, and it has a separate application to grab thermal imaging data as photos or videos.

It can also take thermal time-lapses if you need to see how the temperature of something changes over time. There is even a feature that allows the FLIR sensor to stream a live video over YouTube, which might be useful for remotely monitoring an experiment.

While not the most important part, the front 32MP camera is decent quality and can capture 1080p video

Overall, the camera side of the 18T has some remarkably strong aspects, and the results are usually excellent.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Ulefone Armor 18T performance

• Game capable SoC
• Lacks Widevine L1 encryption
• Power and efficiency

We’ve seen these numbers on the Doogee V30 that uses the same SoC, and they looked very good then.

It eclipses the Helio G99-powered phones and is remarkably close to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 chips used in the Nokia X30 and Huawei Honor X9a.

Octo-core SoCs are usually strong at multi-thread tests but less impressive at single-task challenges. But in the Dimensity 900, the dual 2.5GHz Cortex-A78 performance cores deliver excellent single-thread performance. And, for power efficiency, it has

six lower-clocked Cortex-A55 cores built to achieve excellent results in multi-threaded scenarios.

Compared to the MediaTek Helio G99 phones like its Power Amor 17 Pro brother, the 18T is around 30% faster at single-thread tests and up to 25-30% better at multi-threaded.

Probably the biggest difference is created by the Mali-G68 MC4 GPU,  as it is at least 40% faster than the Mali-G57 MC2 used in the G99 designs and up to 80% in the 3DMark Wild Life benchmark.

This makes the Dimensity 900 in the 18T much more suitable for gaming and smooth video playback of even 4K files. However, this phone doesn’t support Widevine L1 encryption, and the best resolution you will get from Netflix and Disney+ will be 480p, unfortunately.

• Performance score: 4/5

Ulefone Armor 18T battery

• Decent 9600 mAh capacity
• 66W Fast charging
• 15W Wireless charging

People expect a rugged phone to have a decent battery capacity since the great outdoors doesn’t usually have power sockets on each tree.

The built-in lithium-ion polymer cell offering 9600mAh is enough for a weeklong trek with some restraint and last at least four days of normal use.

That is the same capacity as the 16 Pro, but given this device's performance and 5G capability, it doesn’t quite go as far when used in the 18T. The 524 hours of standby is just four hours less than the 16 Pro manages, but the talk time drops more dramatically from 52 hours to 39 hours, confusingly.

But conversely, the 16 Pro only had 18W charging (10W on the pogo pin base), whereas the 18T has 66W over USB-C and 15W wireless charging.

That makes it much easier to get the 18T fully charged, and overnight it can happily use wireless charging, something the 16 Pro didn’t offer.

For those wanting a massive battery, like the 22000 mAh on the Doogee V Max or Unihertz Tank, the 9600 mAh in the 18T might seem relatively modest. But it's more than enough for most jobs, and including it didn’t make this phone excessively heavy.

• Battery score: 4/5

There is plenty to like in the Ulefone Power Armor 18T, as this is easily the most impressive rugged phone from this brand we’ve seen so far.

It’s well made, able to take the knocks and environment, has enough battery for days away from civilisation and has some remarkably high-quality sensors.

Our only concern is that in adding all the wonderful features that Ulefone included that they’ve elevated the price to a point where it’s beyond the budget of many 2nd phone buyers.

If you can budget this much for a phone specifically for wilderness trips, working on a construction site, or vehicle repair, then the Ulefone Power Armor 18T is worth some proper consideration.

Ulefone Armor 18T score card

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Two-minute review

The parallels between the Unihertz Tank and the Doogee V Max that we reviewed recently are stark. Both are large and heavy devices, offering a 22000 mAh battery and a high degree of protection from the environment.

But where Doogee went for the higher ground with the Dimensity 1080 SoC and 5G comms, the Unihertz Tank went for a more price-sensitive Helio G99 and got 4G functionality.

For those that don’t play games or have access to 5G services, the difference between them is much less, and the Tank is $90 less for a long operating life away from a power socket.

The Tank comes with a 66W charger that can fill that enormous battery with power in relatively short order.

As feature sets go, the Tank has an excellent one. Along with the Helio G99 SoC, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, this phone also sports a 108MP primary phone sensor, a 20MP night vision camera, 32MP selfie front camera and an incredibly bright Camping Lamp.

That last feature is a unique extra that can output 1200 lumens of light to illuminate a whole room or forest clearing, depending on what you are trying to achieve. We could see this being remarkably useful in the event of a vehicle accident at night, where other traffic needs to be aware of a stopped vehicle that might have lost power.

The Camping Lamp is just one of the unique features available in the Unihertz Toolbox app. These include a compass, basic flashlight, magnifier, bubble level, plumb bob, protractor, pressure gauge, height measure, speedometer, heart rate monitor, alarm and pedometer, amongst others.

This app talks very much to the customer Unihertz is looking to buy this device, who might be a building contractor or outdoor adventurer, or anyone who doesn’t wish to endanger their premium phone with water, dust or being dropped.

While the features in this phone are generally good, the two issues here are that this is a very large and heavy device that isn’t easy to pocket. And, the asking price is at the high end of what is essentially a 2nd phone that might be reasonably expected to cost.

If you have a particular project in the jungle or desert and do not want to take your Samsung or Apple phone to that party, then the Unihertz Tank is a credible, if slightly pricey, choice.

Unihertz Tank price and availability

• How much does it cost? $370 / £270
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? Directly from Unihertz and through online retailers

According to Unihertz, the Tank was priced at $399, but it is now $30 cheaper at $369.99 direct from the makers. Those prices do not include local sales tax, it should be noted.

It appears that there are four different models, one each for the US, EU, Canada and Others (Asia, Oceania and UK), but the cost is the same for all.

It only comes in black, so there is no choice of colour scheme.

We found the same phone on Aliexpress and other online retailers, but the price was broadly similar.

For US customers, the Tank is unlocked for all carriers, but for some, like Verizon, the phone isn’t officially certified.

• Value score: 4/5

Unihertz Tank design

• Solid construction
• Two custom buttons
• Dedicated flashlight

Rugged phones can all look rather similar since there is only a limited direction that designers can go when presented with a large screen, cameras and battery to package.

Like the Doogee V Max, the Tank has slopes on the sides underneath to make it easier to pick up, but that won’t actually help if your wrist doesn’t like supporting 560g of dead weight.

For viewing videos, a stand would be a helpful accessory to own.

The button layout on the Tank is a little odd, as it has two programmable buttons on the left side. One, picked out in red, is in the middle, and the other is reset, making it almost invisible, on the top left.

That second position is the standard location for the SIM tray, and to accommodate this difference, the tray has been moved to the top. It takes a Nano SIM on each side, but this phone has no MicroSD card option at all.

But back to the buttons. As much as having custom buttons on the phone can be useful, the lack of thinking that went into these is depressing. A good example is that it is possible to set the flashlight to come on with one of the buttons, either with a quick press, long press or double action. But there is no accompanying action to turn it off, inconveniently.

This function only turns the ‘flash’ LED on, not the much bigger Camping Light, which is annoyingly inaccessible using the custom buttons.

When you eventually discover how to turn it on, the Camping Light is impressive since it reputedly outputs 1200 lumens of light. That’s enough to provide illumination of a relatively large area, much greater than a typical phone flashlight mode might achieve. It might be perfect for camping, but this light is so bright that if you look into it, even briefly, you’re effectively blind for the next few minutes.

It’s also only accessible through the Toolkit application and not accessible through the Android OS.

The light is an exciting feature and not one we’ve seen on a rugged phone before, but the implementation is less than ideal.

What impressed us more was that access to the USB-C charging port is good, as it uses a large rubber plug to keep water and dust out, and this location also has a 3.5mm audio jack for headphones.

Overall, the Tank offers very solid construction, unsurprisingly, though how features like the Camping Light and custom buttons were approached could have been better.

Design score: 3/5

Unihertz Tank hardware

• Powerful platform
• Big battery size
• No MicroSD

We will talk more about the Helio G99 used in this phone in the performance section, but as SoC packages go, it is one of the better and more capable options available.

When combined with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage, it makes for a highly responsive experience, even if you load lots of apps onto Android 12.

The considerable 6.81-inch IPS LCD screen is bright and crisp, even if it’s a slightly odd 1080 x 2340 resolution. The only issue we noticed with this was that when using YouTube and playing 1080p content, the frame is scaled when there is sufficient resolution to present it fully.

This phone, like most Chinese phones, doesn’t support Widevine L1, so the maximum supported resolution on most of the big streaming services is limited to 480p, sadly.

Leaving the 108MP main camera sensor to later, the two headline features of this phone are the massive 22000 mAh battery and the unique Camping Lamp on the rear.

We saw a battery this big previously in the Doogee V Max, and in that phone, it is the dominant feature of that design. It makes the Tank ideal for long camping adventures where mains power is unlikely to be available, as the phone can operate for more than a week without conserving power.

The downside of this battery is the weight that it adds, bringing the Tank to a stout 560g, another 17g more than the V Max.

With this much battery and reverse changing functionality, it is possible to use the Tank as a power bank for other devices.

Where massive batteries are available elsewhere, the camping lamp is something we’ve not previously seen. This LED panel on the underside of the phone can output up to 1200 lumens of illumination in a space that is approximately 15 square centimetres.

That much light coming from a 55-inch TV is bright. But compressed into a small trapezium-shaped panel, it is way too much for the human retina to handle comfortably close up.

When you are not blinding yourself, the light will illuminate to a decent range in complete darkness, and when combined with the battery, the light can remain on for a long time.

One feature missing from this phone that is typically included is a MicroSD card position in the SIM tray. Therefore, the 256GB of storage that comes with this phone is as much as it will ever have, as no MicroSD expansion is possible.

• Hardware score: 5/5

Unihertz Tank cameras

• 108MP sensor on the rear
• Wide-angle, macro and night vision
• Four cameras in total

The Unihertz Tank has four cameras:

• Rear cameras: 108MP Samsung HM2, 2MP Macro, 20MP Sony IMX350 (Night Vision)
• Front camera: 32MP SONY IMX616 Sensor (Wide)

The Tank is the third phone we’ve seen sporting the 108MP Samsung S5KHM2 main sensor in the past month. And given some of the results we’ve seen, it is understandable why phone makers are flocking to this option.

Taking up to 12000 x 8992 resolution pictures is impressive, although this resolution must be traded down to 12MP if you want PRO controls or special modes.

Of the phones with this sensor, some offer 4K video, and others do not, and unfortunately, this one limits video capture to 1440p.

It also gets stuck with the same limitations of frame rate we’ve seen elsewhere. Irrespective of video capture resolution, the frame rate is locked at 30fps.

Overall, image quality is good from the full 108MP mode, 12MP feature and video.

The only exception to this is the low-light capability, as alongside the main sensor, Unihertz included a 20MP Sony night vision sensor that uses infrared illumination to create artificial daylight in complete darkness.

Alternatively, the Camping Lamp can be turned on, which works like a portable ‘Sun Gun’ device used by broadcast news cameramen.

That does assume that you are using these features to take photos and not just wander around a forest at night without injury, where you might find the Camping Lamp more useful.

The story of the Unihertz Tank and its cameras is a familiar one, where some excellent sensors were used but then not fully exploited by the software compiled for the phone.

Not to say that it can’t take excellent photographs, but with some attention to detail, it could have taken even better ones with fewer limitations on modes and frame rates.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Unihertz Tank performance

• An effective SoC
• GPU overtook by Dimensity
• Fluid experience

If this phone had appeared earlier, perhaps we’d be celebrating its performance more than we are now. The Helio G99 is a great SoC that combines some high performance with excellent power efficiency, and it crushes all the other chips in the MediaTek G series.

However, MediaTek also makes the Dimensity series, and the 900 and now 1080 derivatives run rings around the G series devices.

Other than some subtle clock speed changes, mostly on the two Cortex-A76 cores, the big difference between the G99 and the Dimensity 900 is the GPU, where the Ulefone Armor 18T can call on the Mali-G68 MC4, whereas the G99 only has the ARM Mali-G57 MP2.

Using 3DMark benchmarks to gauge the differences, the Wild Life test scores 1350 on the G99-powered Unihertz Tank and 2198 on the Dimensity 900 imbued Doogee Armor 18T.

The performance divergence on single thread problems is less, but the G99 is an inferior design to the Dimensity 900 and 1080.

But, compared with the other G and P series SoCs from MediaTek, the performance is very good, and this phone is markedly cheaper than the Dimensity using designs like the Doogee V30, Ulefone Armor 18T and Doogee V Max.

Unless you play intensive 3D titles, you are unlikely to notice the difference because this phone has enough power, memory and storage to deliver a good user experience.

• Performance score: 4/5

Doogee V Max battery

• 22000 mAh
• 66W Fast charging
• No Qi charging

One mistake that we noticed on the Doogee V Max is thankfully not repeated here, as this phone can take 66W charging, allowing the 22000 mAh battery to get a full charge rapidly.

That’s twice the inflow of the V Max, and this design can go from empty to full in around 2.5 hours and 90% in less than two.

With the battery full, the phone should easily last a week's regular use, and for those that don’t check their phones every few minutes, potentially double that timescale.

If you intend to power splurge, the battery can keep the 1200-lumen Camping Lamp lit for 6 hours, and you can make a call that lasts for six days.

As the USB-C is bidirectional, the Tank can be used to recharge other phones and even laptops.

The only disappointing aspect of the battery on this phone is that Unihertz didn’t bother to provide it with wireless charging.

There is some logic to the lack of wireless charging since the best Qi charging tops out at about 20W, meaning it would take a very long time to charge this battery using wireless transfer.

• Battery score: 4/5

The whole premise of this design is ‘2nd phone’, since there is little about this design that would make anyone carry it on a daily basis. For worksite appearances and jungle adventures, it’s a credible proposition, but $370 for a secondary device isn’t an impulse buy.

The battery life and camera on this phone are both good, but are they wonderful enough to holster such a cumbersome piece of gear? We have our doubts.

Unihertz Tank score card

Should I buy a Unihertz Tank?

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Two-minute review

Doogee believes that ‘more is always better’, and proof of that is the V Max.

This is a rugged phone with everything set to 11 on the dial. Big screen, powerful SoC, lots of RAM and storage, an impressive camera selection, 5G, and the biggest battery we’ve seen in a phone so far.

This is our first phone review covering a design that uses the new MediaTek Dimensity 1080 SoC. An option increases the clock speeds and RAM capacity seen on the Dimensity 900 series and includes 5G comms.

But by far, the one headline feature of this phone is its 22000 mAh battery, a capacity that 

dwarfs that in other phones, including many rugged designs.

When you put a battery in a phone that dwarfs that in some laptops, there are significant physical changes that make the V Max either the phone you must have or make it entirely impractical.

The obvious advantage of a battery this large is that it can operate for a week or more without a recharge. With management, this could be extended to a considerable time without mains power. That could be critical for a camping break or adventure holiday where the nearest power socket might be a long walk away.

The flip side of having all that battery time is that this is a very heavy and bulky phone that doesn’t easily fit in a typical pocket. The weight is 543g or nearly 1.2 lbs for those that like those measurement systems.

Wielded as a blunt instrument, the V Max has sufficient mass to seriously injure someone unlucky enough to be stuck with one.

If the brick-like nature of the V Max doesn’t put you off, what you get is a very capable design with an excellent camera cluster, 5G comms, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The processor and GPU combination makes the V Max suitable for gaming, and it supports dual Nano SIMs for a convenient combination of work and play potential.

In short, if it wasn’t for its gargantuan size, everything else about this phone would be pretty useful, especially at the current asking price.

Just don’t buy one for a person who has anger management issues and likes to throw things.

Doogee V Max price and availability

• How much does it cost? $460
• When is it out? It is on pre-order after an initial release
• Where can you get it? It can only be bought from Doogee directly

Normally we’d provide a range of regional pricing for a phone like the V Max. But currently, this phone is on a restocking pre-order from Doogee, and the price is in dollars irrespective of where you order it from.

According to Doogee, the V Max has already been reduced from $749, although it makes little sense that you would cut the price of a design that is currently out of stock.

The asking price is $559, although Doogee is offering a code for an extra $100 off at this time, presumably to prime the sales channel ahead of its return to stock.

When this design becomes more widely available, we suspect the discounted cost is likely to become the asking price, predictably.

There are three colour choices; Classic Black, Moonshine Silver and Sunshine Gold.

• Value score: 4/5

Doogee V Max design

• Built to last
• By-the-numbers buttons
• No audio jack

One can’t help but sympathise with the designer of the V Max, saddled with the challenge of getting the contents of this phone inside a case.

However approached, this solution was never going to be elegant or stylish, and the V Max is neither of those things.

The best description of this phone is techno-brutalism, a monolithic block that has some chamfered corners and bevelled edges added to make it seem less like a brick.

That said, the metallic sides are pleasing to touch, and the overall shape fits neatly in hand, assuming you’ve got shovel-sized appendages like your reviewer.

The thickness of this design allows for speakers to be mounted at both top and bottom, allowing for a mild stereo effect when playing games in landscape mode.

While the camera cluster is slightly raised, the back is mostly flat, suggesting that this phone might wirelessly charge, but according to the specifications, it doesn’t.

The button layout is the now de facto model that all rugged phone makers have gravitated to, where they place a thumb-print reader/power and volume rocker on the right and a custom button with the SIM card slot on the left.

On the bottom edge is a carabiner slot for connecting the phone to a belt strap and the USB-C port. That’s the only way this phone can be charged, and to protect it from water and dust ingress, Doogee covered it with a rubber plug.

The plug is relatively easy to dislodge with a fingernail, but each removal and reinsertion does reduce the likelihood that the port will be fully protected. The designers did make the cover small to minimise exposure, but this negated the possibility of a 3.5mm audio jack on this model. No adapter to provide this functionality through USB was included.

Overall, those who designed this did their best but avoided anything remarkable or groundbreaking in the context of such a large phone.

Design score: 3/5

Doogee V Max hardware

• Dimensity 1080
• 5G Comms
• Massive battery

The specification of this phone elevates it above almost all the rugged Chinese designs we’ve seen so far.

MediaTek’s new Dimensity 1080 SoC provides an excellent computing platform as its previous 900 series, but with marginally higher clock speeds and a generally better instruction set.

While it uses the same Mali-G68 MC4 GPU as its predecessor, the extra processing power in the two Cortex-A78 cores pushes the GPU harder, and it achieves a little more.

For those that live in a region with coverage, the 5G support in this design boosts mobile data performance significantly. And, with WiFi 6, it’s also swift when you have a suitably specified router at home or in the office.

One curiosity of this design is the amount of RAM, as most phones tend to be capped at 8GB, whereas this has 12GB. It’s also one of the new designs with the potential to take some storage and make it work as RAM, adding up to 8GB if the user sets that option.

Therefore, unless you spend your days endlessly loading new apps, it seems unlikely that you’ll quickly run out of space to store them or RAM for them to run.

The camera cluster is also impressive, but the stand-out feature of this hardware is the 22000 mAh battery. This battery scale provides not only extreme longevity but using the OTG capability of the USB-C port the power can also be utilised to power other devices.

The only feature weakness we noted was that the dual Nano SIM card tray only takes one SIM if you use a MicroSD card. A better solution might have been to offer e-SIMs on this phone, allowing the MicroSD card not to limit the phone to a single SIM.

But conversely, this phone has a feature we’ve not seen before in that it uses a dual-frequency GPS, allowing for even greater positional accuracy even in urban environments.

• Hardware score: 5/5

Doogee V Max cameras

• 108MP sensor on the rear
• Wide-angle, macro and night vision
• Four cameras in total

The Doogee V Max has four cameras:

• Rear cameras: 108MP Samsung S5KHM2, 16 MP OmniVision OV16B10 (Ultra-Wide), 20.2 MP Sony IMX350 (Night Vision)
• Front camera: 32MP SONY IMX616 Sensor (Wide)

We’ve seen the 108MP Samsung S5KHM2 sensor before, and while it has limitations in that the full resolution comes without all the clever features, it is still an excellent picture-capture device.

If you want special beauty modes, then pictures are limited to 12MP, although these modes operate with shake compensation and other enhancements.

Alongside the headline 108MP Samsung sensor are a 16MP OmniVision OV16B10 Ultra-Wide lens and a 20.2MP Sony IMX350 Night Vision sensor, extending the camera repertoire further.

Like the Doogee V30, which uses the same Samsung S5KHM2 sensor, the V Max can capture video up to 4K in resolution. And like the V30 and the Ulefone Armor 17 Pro, it isn’t possible to have any control over the frame rate.

Not being able to trade resolution for frame rate is possibly one of the few things keeping the likes of GoPro in business, as many of the phone makers don’t exploit the sensor hardware fully.

As for the results, with a sensor this big, they’re generally very good, and it only made a mess either because of focusing issues to do with sunlight refraction or exposure compensation for highlights. The camera has a full PRO manual mode where ISO, EV, WB, manual focus and shutter speed can all be directly controlled.

In short, like the V30 that came before it, the V Max has a high-quality camera that could have been incredible with a better camera application.

We should also mention that while you can capture 4K video and play it back scaled down on the 1080 x 2408 resolution screen, you won’t be watching streaming content in 4K or even 1080p. Like it appears all rugged Chinese phones are, the V Max doesn’t support Widevine L1 security, reducing the service offered by Netflix and Disney+ to 480p resolution.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Doogee V Max performance

• Excellent performer
• Strong GPU
• Power and efficiency

For the short story, this is the most potent rugged phone we’ve tested so far, and it is easily head and shoulders over those that use Helio-based SoCs.

Looking at it from a Qualcomm Snapdragon perspective, it falls fractionally short of the performance of the 778G, but the difference is less than a single percentage point in many tests.

The only caveat is that many games have been specifically coded to use the Snapdragon instruction set for enhanced performance, which might make them run better on Qualcomm SoCs.

But back to the numbers, there are many highlights here, so let’s look at a few especially impressive results.

In the Geekbench single thread task, a score of 734 is a first, with the previous best being the Dimensity 900-powered Doogee V30 achieved 694. And, the Geekbench multithreaded and OpenCL scores are equally beyond what we’ve seen on Dimensity 900 and Helio G99-powered devices.

To give an impression of how much better gaming is on the V Max over an Helio G99 SoC phone like the Ulefone Armor 17 Pro is relatively easy. The 3DMark Slingshot scores are 5315 on the V Max against just 3675 on the 17 Pro. That’s nearly 45% faster.

Compared with an Helio G85 phone, the V Max is almost twice as fast across the board.

Performance on this phone is not an issue, regardless of what you want to use it for.

• Performance score: 5/5

Doogee V Max battery

• 22000 mAh
• 33W Fast charging
• No Qi charging

The battery on this phone is both a blessing and a curse. Having 22000 mAh converts, according to Doogee, into 2300 hours of standby (96 days), 240 hours of ‘normal use’, 19 hours of calling, 40 hours of video, 90 hours of music and 25 hours of gaming.

That’s plenty of capacity, although the battery is a major contribution to making this design so large and heavy.

Where things are less wonderful is in respect of recharging. With a battery so large, getting it charged becomes an issue. Doogee did include a 33W charger, and using that does speed up things somewhat.

But typically, we’d estimate that charging 5000 mAh using 33W charging takes around 90 minutes, and scaling that up, the V Max could easily take more than six hours to reach its full potential. And, if you don’t use the 33W charger, it could take considerably longer.

The Doogee V30, as a good example, offered 66W charging and also 15W wireless charging, and both these options would have been appreciated on the V Max, but neither was used.

It may be that using 66W charging on such a large battery for a least three hours has implications for the generating of heat within the phone, but whatever the reason, charging is a limitation of this phone.

• Battery score: 4/5

With so many great features and excellent performance in this phone, it seems churlish to talk about some of the obvious failings, but these need to be aired.

The scale and weight of the V Max do push it into a place where practicality becomes an issue, and for many people, this device is just too big and heavy.

Those that don’t mind lugging such a large phone around are rewarded with a feature-rich design that ticks many boxes, including 5G comms, a 108MP camera, top-tier SoC performance and a massive battery capacity. All this for a very reasonable price.

Just make sure that you have huge pockets to put it in.

Doogee V Max score card

Should I buy a Doogee V Max?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

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Two-minute review

Each time Doogee comes out with a new flagship design, it moves the bar for numerous companies in the rugged phone sector.

The new V30 takes features exclusive to premium branded phones only months ago and delivers them in an affordable package for those that work outdoors or yearn to adventure.

Ticking the rugged phone boxes, this is an IP68, IP69K and MIL-STD-810H compliant design that can handle dust and water, including full submersion for limited periods and shallow depths.

But the parts of this phone that will interest the discerning customer are all inside. Specifically, the Dimensity 900 SoC, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and 108MP camera.

These make the V30 a potent and capable phone that can connect using 5G when available and capture the world around it in astounding detail.

On the rear are a 108MP Samsung S5KHM2SP03 main camera (F1.79, 90-degree FOV, PDAF) a 20MP Sony IMX350 night vision camera (F1.8, 70-degree FOV) and a 16MP wide-angle & macro camera (F2.2, 130-degree FOV).

For selfie-takers, the front has a 32MP IMX616-AAJH5-C front camera (F2.0, 90-degree FOV).

Like we’ve seen before with this sensor, the taking of 108MP images negates some of the special features like HDR and Bokeh, but you can get those things in a 12MP mode.

However, other phones don’t offer 4K video capture, and the V30 does, along with lower resolutions.

Viewing those pictures or streamed content is easy on its 6.58-inch IPS 120Hz display with a natural resolution of 2408 x 1080, similar to one of that we’ve seen before on the Ulefone Power Armor 17 Pro.

With a battery capacity of 10800mAh, the V30 should operate for more than three days of normal use without needing a recharge. And, using the included 66W charger, it can recover 50% of its battery capacity from empty in around 30 minutes.

These features and its 5G functionality make the V30 an exceptionally good choice for anything travelling abroad, capturing images and video and then securing them over cellular or WiFi connections.

It might not be the cheapest rugged phone design, but the amount of technology that Doogee shoehorned into it makes it easily worth the asking price.

Doogee V30 price and availability

• How much does it cost? $449.99 / £407.99/ $AU 779
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions direct from AliExpress or on Amazon.com

The Doogee V30 costs $449.99 directly from Doogee or $529.99 on Amazon.com for next-day delivery. European costs from online retailers are slightly better, with the Amazon.co.uk cost being just £407.99.

Whereas direct from an Australian online retailer, the V30 costs AU$ 779.

But if you want a real bargain Doogee has this phone at its own outlet on AliExpress, and it costs only £329.16 or $395.24, although delivery might take 30 days or more.

Considering the features of this phone, the price is very competitive.

• Value score: 5/5

Doogee V30 design

• Built to last
• By-the-numbers buttons
• No audio jack

From the outside, there isn’t much radical about the V30, as it falls into the familiar tropes where most large rugged phones fall.

One unique aspect is that the phone's body has a boat-like profile, making it slightly easier to handle than some thicker phone models. Having its sides elevated also helps when picking up, which might otherwise be a challenge.

The construction uses a combination of a milled metal frame covered largely in impact-resistant plastic and dense TPU. This has been texturized for better grip and to match a section of ‘leather’ on the flat underside.

One curiosity is the side panels that have a wood grain finish, although it's hard to determine what they’re actually made from. It all looks nice, and with the ‘Leather’ underside, it gives the phone the feel of a luxury car interior.

Every phone maker seems to be glued to this layout with the thumb-activated power button, and Doogee engineers didn’t buck that trend. It works well for right-handed users and less elegantly for left-handed.

Typically, rugged Chinese-made phones come with a SIM tray that can accept two Nano SIMs and a MicroSD card, but the V30 only supports one Nano alongside the MicroSD or, alternatively, two Nano and no MicroSD.

However, as we’ll cover elsewhere, this phone supports eSIMs, so it can have up to five different numbers and services if required.

The charging and data port is the USB-C variety placed on the centre of the bottom edge and covered in a rubber plug. We’ve seen designs by Ulefone recently that dispensed with the rubber plug but still offering to waterproof, something Doogee needs to consider offering in its designs.

However, the phone will wirelessly charge at 15W with a suitable Qi wireless charger if repeatedly removing the plug annoys you.

What is missing is any 3.5mm audio jack. Doogee assumes music fans will be using Bluetooth or buy their own USB-C-to-audio adapter, as one isn’t included in the box.

What you get with the phone is a plastic tool to avoid breaking a nail opening the SIM tray, a Euro pinned wall-socket PSU rated to 66W, USB-C to USB-C OTG cable, some screen protecting accessories and a User Manual.

Design score: 4/5

Doogee V30 hardware

• Powerful
• High specification
• eSIM flexibility

The MediaTek Dimensity 900 is the SoC of choice for flagship designs for those companies unwilling to pay Qualcomm for the latest Snapdragon silicon. We’ve seen it used in the V30 and the Ulefone Power Armor 18T, and it impressed us in both devices.

This is a third-generation MediaTek APU that combines dual ARM Cortex-A78 performance cores with six ARM Cortex-A55 cores for efficiency. Its integrated GPU is Mali-G68 MC4 can handle 4K video encoding/decoding and supports OpenGL3.1 and Vulkan for 3D rendering.

As an SoC and not just a CPU/GPU, this 6nm chip can connect to LPDDR4X or LPDDR5X, and supports UFS 2.1 and 3.1 storage.

In this phone, the memory type is LPDDR4X, and this is one of those designs where the amount of RAM can be expanded by sacrificing some of the storage. This memory fusion mode enables up to 15GB of RAM to be allocated, nearly doubling the amount available for apps.

But it isn’t just the SoC and memory model that is premium on this design. The networking technology is also state of the art, with WiFi 6 (2x2 MIMO), Bluetooth 5.2, and mobile comms for 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G cellular services.

Using the dual SIM mode can choose from physical SIMs and eSIMs, and if the service provider supports the mode, it can communicate over dual 5G links at up to 2.7Gbps download speeds.

Where the eSIM model used in the V30 is truly revolutionary is that the whole process of getting a service can be achieved from the phone. If you imagine wanting to go to a distant country and needing a local number and service, this would normally involve sourcing a physical SIM and paying for that service when you arrive.

Using the pre-installed eSIM store, you can simply select the country and the required data plan, sanction the payment and magically, you’ve now got access to the local service and a mobile number. And, if you are involved in some shuttle diplomacy or the like, it is possible to have four eSIM numbers active at any time.

The only disappointment in the hardware is that the V30  doesn’t support the Widevine L1 video decryption standard, only L3. With only L3 decryption streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ reduce the best resolution available to just 480p. 1080p playback on YouTube and with capture videos is possible, but not over the mainstream services.

This limitation appears to be the norm among Chinese phones, regrettably.

• Hardware score: 4/5

Doogee V30 cameras

• 108MP sensor on the rear
• Wide-angle, macro and night vision
• Four cameras in total

The Doogee V30 has four cameras:

• Rear cameras: 108MP Samsung S5KHM2, 16 MP OmniVision OV16B10 (Ultra-Wide), 20MP Sony IMX350 (Night Vision)
  Front camera: 32MP SONY IMX616 Sensor (Wide)

We’ve seen the 108MP Samsung S5KHM2 main sensor before on the Ulefone 17 Pro, and it can deliver some amazing resolution images if you need the highest levels of detail.

The trade-off for getting 12000 x 8992 resolution pictures is that it will only do this in a basic snapshot mode, with all the clever Pro and specialist capture being limited to 12MP.

With such a large sensor and all the light it can capture, the 12MP results are excellent, but it would be nice to extract more resolution without losing all the shooting modes.

Where this camera design differs from that in the Ulefone 17 Pro is it uses 8MP supporting wide-angle sensors, while the ones in the V30 are 16MP and 32MP. This results in better close-up and macro results, along with better selfies.

But it isn’t only the supporting sensors that are generally better, but also the way that the main 108MP is exploited is superior in the V30.

We’ve seen designs that use this sensor and then offer only 2K video resolution, but the V30 does offer 3840 x 2160, aka  4K UHD. The screen might not have the resolution to display these capture without scaling, but it can grab video at 4K.

There is still work to be done here, Because irrespective of what video resolution you pick, the only framerate available is 30fps. Not only is this not helpful for those that like 25fps, but it also ignores all the possibilities for slow motion.

That point aside, the results from this camera are outstanding, with exceptionally crisp images and natural colours, and they’re relatively artefact-free.

While I’m sure that the latest Apple or Samsung premium design might be able to do better, there isn’t much that is substandard about the images the V30 can capture.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

Doogee V30 performance

• All-round performer
• Strong GPU
• Power and efficiency

The performance of this phone is terrific, as across the benchmarks. These results display its superiority to MediaTek Helio series SoCs and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G in every test. The Dimensity 900 is equivalent to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 in a few respects, though it is marginally better in many areas.

Where often Octo-core SoCs are good at multi-thread tests but less wondering at single-task challenges, the 2.5GHz Cortex-A78 performance cores deliver excellent single-thread performance. But when two of these are combined with the six Cortex-A55 cores, it can also achieve excellent results in multi-threaded scenarios.

Compared to the MediaTek Helio G99 phones, the V30 is around 30% faster at single-thread tests and up to 25-30% better at multi-threaded. And it entirely crushes lower G and P series SoCs.

The Mali-G68 MC4 is also a dramatic improvement over the Mali-G57 MC2 used in the G99 designs, delivering an improvement of around 40% in most of the 3DMark benches and closer to 80% in Wild Life.

Overall, the performance of this phone is fantastic, as the configuration of the SoC allows for high performance and power efficiency when priorities change.

There is nothing low-budget about the performance of the V30.

• Performance score: 5/5

Doogee V30 battery

• Good battery size
• 66W Fast charging
• 15W Qi charging

When phones get more than 10,000 mAh, they’ve got enough battery for extended use without a recharge, and this one has 10800 mAh of battery inside.

According to Doogee, the V30 should operate for more than three days of typical use without needing a recharge, and it might make it to a fourth.

The included 66W charger can recover 50% of its battery capacity from empty in around 30 minutes, although if you use the 15W wireless charging, it will take four hours to reach the same level.

There are rugged designs that offer more battery, but they trade weight for that advantage, and the physical mass of the V30 isn’t so great that it becomes impractical.

The available capacity is enough for a camping holiday, and the power efficiency of the platform makes the most of it.

• Battery score: 4/5

The V30 is easily the best Doogee phone we’ve tested so far, with many positive aspects and relatively few caveats.

It has a powerful platform, an impressive camera, decent battery life and 5G communications. But the stand-out feature is the inclusion of eSIM technology, which makes international use significantly less of a hassle.

We’d like to see more camera options at 108MP, framerate control on the video, and L1 Widevine decryption, but those things could all be added with firmware and software enhancements.

Doogee has set a new high watermark for rugged phones, and we can’t wait to see how its competitors react.

Doogee V30 score card

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