Blu Life One X2 News

The Blu Life 1 X2 continues a tendency we’ve seen all year—that of the depression-toll, high-quality unlocked telephone. Like its predecessor, the Life One 10, the $199.99 X2 offers a solid combination of features and performance for the price. But the $200 range is currently saturated with worthy choices, including the Motorola Moto G4, which is uniform with every major U.s. carrier. And Blu’s ain R1 HD, our Editors’ Choice for budget phones, can be had for even less. The X2 is a solid alternative in a crowded field.

Design, Features, and Brandish
The One X2 comes in a 4GB model with 64GB of storage for $199.99, and a 2GB model with 16GB of storage for $149.99. The blueprint and features remain the same beyond both models. We reviewed the 4GB, $199.99 version. The increase in RAM makes for a significant crash-land in functioning, and then I recommend paying the extra $50 for it.

No affair which you get, the phone is made entirely of polycarbonate, unlike the original, which has metal accents forth the sides. That may seem like a step dorsum, simply in terms of the overall look, information technology resembles the attractive ZTE Axon vii. The grayness plastic looks like aluminum, and feels sturdy to the touch.

The 1 X2 measures in at a reasonable 5.8 by 2.9 past 0.4 inches (HWD) and 5.ix ounces. It’due south a refreshing change from all the larger unlocked phones nosotros’re seeing like the Moto G4 (6.0 by iii.0 by 0.4 inches, 5.5 ounces) and the Axon 7 (6.0 by ii.9 by 0.3 inches, 6.ii ounces). I establish it possible to employ the X2 in 1 paw without much difficulty.

The five.ii-inch, 1,920-past-1,080-pixel IPS display is covered by a pane of Gorilla Glass 3 that curves slightly to meet the edges. The resolution works out to a sharp 424 pixels per inch (ppi), slightly more dense than the 401ppi panel on the Moto G4. The Quad Hard disk drive Axon 7 is sharper than both (538ppi), just the X2 gets very vivid and offers good viewing angles. Information technology’southward hands visible in direct sunlight, and colors are a bit richer than on the Moto G4.

A combination domicile button-fingerprint scanner tin can be constitute beneath the display, a feature that’southward becoming more than mutual in this cost range. Information technology’south a chip faster and more responsive than the one on the Moto G4 Plus. There’s likewise an LED flash on the front for selfies. On the right you’ll find a power button and book rocker. The summit houses a iii.5mm audio jack, while the lesser has a micro USB charging port and speaker grille. The back encompass peels off, giving you access to a pair of SIM card slots, and a microSD slot that worked fine with a 256GB Samsung Evo+ card.

Network Performance and Connectivity

Like all Blu phones, the X2 only works on GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. It comes with LTE bands two/four/seven/12/17. The presence of T-Mobile’southward ring 12 is something you won’t find on the R1 HD, and gets you lot meliorate range and LTE coverage. I tested the telephone on T-Mobile in midtown Manhattan where I saw strong network performance, with a height download speed of 23Mbps. In PCMag’due south test lab, which can sometimes function like a Faraday cage in terms of network connectivity, I measured an impressive 15.6Mbps down.

The presence of dual SIM slots gives you the option of having two phone numbers, a handy characteristic for piece of work and travel. The X2 supports Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz band, but doesn’t work on 5GHz or have NFC. If you want those features y’all’ll demand to spring for a more plush device like the Axon 7.

See How We Test Prison cell Phones

Vocalism calls on the X2 are decent. Transmissions are clear and free from garbling, and noise cancellation is solid, but earpiece volume is on the low side.

Processor, Battery, and Photographic camera

The Life One X2 is powered past a Snapdragon 430 processor, a newer offering from Qualcomm that’s a step above the aging Snapdragon 410. The X2 performed relatively well on criterion tests, receiving 43,984 on AnTuTu, which tests overall organization performance. That’due south improve than the MediaTek 6735-powered R1 Hd (31,847), and just shy of the Snapdragon 617-powered G4 (46,260).

The model nosotros tested definitely benefits from its 4GB of RAM. Multitasking was shine and free from any serious instances of stutter or lag. Unlike the G4, which sometimes hits the RAM usage, that never happened with the X2, no matter how many apps I launched. It also handled processor-intensive games like GTA: San Andreas and Asphalt 8: Airborne with only rare instances of dropped frames.

Battery life on the X2 is proficient, clocking six hours, sixteen minutes in our rundown test, in which we stream full-screen video over LTE at maximum brightness. It’s a bit longer than the G4 (five hours, 58 minutes), though the X2’s bombardment is sealed in. The phone is Qualcomm Quick Charge iii.0-enabled, so it can charge to 35 percent in 20 minutes using the included adapter, and to full in little over an hr.

The 16-megapixel rear camera sensor is decent, simply not very reliable. I was able to have practiced photos in well-lit settings, but any other lighting weather presented bug. Exterior on a cloudy 24-hour interval, pictures came out muddy, while indoors in that location was a significant amount of dissonance and it took several seconds to discover focus. The lack of optical paradigm stabilization takes a cost, with many photos turning out blurry. The phone can record 1080p video at 30fps, but it suffers from many of the same problems. The 8-megapixel front-facing photographic camera is good in proper lighting, simply a chip muddy in dimmer settings.

The camera app itself isn’t the most intuitive, requiring you to swipe left to admission settings (including switching between the front and rear sensor), and right for various modes similar HDR and Pro (Pro is a set of manual controls that allow for aligning of focus, exposure, ISO, white balance, and sharpness). Overall, the Moto G4’southward camera is sharper and more reliable.

Software
The Life One X2 runs Android 6.0.ane Marshmallow. I wouldn’t count on getting Android seven.0 Nougat, since the Life One Ten never even received Marshmallow. At that place are too more than changes to the interface this time around. You’ll find custom icons, likewise equally a redesigned app drawer and notification shade. The modifications aren’t as heavy as you lot’ll find on Blu’s Pure XR, which removes the app drawer entirely in favor of an iOS-like interface, but they’re still noticeable.

On the other mitt, there’s simply a scattering of pre-installed apps, all of which tin can be removed except Opera. That leaves you lot with 50.68GB of available storage out of the 64GB total. It’s ample room for more than apps, photos, and video, and you can utilise a microSD menu to take advantage of Marshmallow’s Adoptable Storage feature.

Conclusions

The Blu Life One X2 has just about everything you tin can want in an affordable unlocked phone. You get an attractive build, a well-baked display, solid bombardment life, skilful performance, and even a fingerprint scanner. It edges out the Moto G4 in terms of performance, but the G4 has a better camera and a wider gear up of GSM, CDMA, and LTE bands that allow it to work on every major US carrier. If you’re looking for an even more affordable option, the Blu R1 HD is our Editors’ Choice, and one of the least expensive unlocked phones available, though it comes with significantly pared down specs. On the higher finish, the ZTE Axon vii is another Editors’ Choice that gets you height-notch hardware and performance, simply it costs twice as much every bit the One X2.