LeEco Le 1s Review – Beauty, Brains and Brawn

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The LeEco’s Le 1s is trending, thanks to its tempting specs to price ratio. The handset has been priced just right to facilitate the kind of bumper start mandatory if you wish to make a dent in the crowded and ultra-competitive Indian smartphone market space. Le 1s isn’t the only one shifting gears though. Lenovo, Honor and Xiaomi are already set with worthy rivals. Besides they have been around for a while and have better brand outreach. Has Le 1s got what it takes to overshadow existing players? Let’s find out in our full review.

Note: If you are looking for precise details like free storage, USB OTG support, benchmark scores etc. you can also read our LeEco Le1s FAQ

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Also Read: Should you buy the Lenovo K4 Note or LeEco Le 1s? – Comparison, What Matters, What Doesn’t

Pros

  • Powerful performance
  • Premium metallic unibody design
  • Fingerprint sensor
  • Intuitive UI

Cons

  • Display could have been better

Key Specifications and Features:

Model Le 1S
Display 5.5-inch full HD (1920x1080p) IPS TFT LCD display with 401ppi
Processor 64-bit class 2.2 GHz Mediatek Helio X10 Octa-Core CPU, Power VR G6200 GPU (700 MHz)
RAM 3GB
Internal Storage 32GB, No MicroSD card support (25.53GB Free)
Software Android Lollipop based EUI
Primary Camera 13 MP Isocell sensor, LED Flash, PDAF, F2.0 aperture lens
Secondary Camera 5MP Front-Facing Camera, F2.0 aperture lens
Dimensions and weight 151.1×74.2×7.5 mm and 169 g
Battery 3000 mAh, Fast charging
Others Dual SIM (Nano + Micro), 4G LTE, Fingerprint sensor, USB OTG
Price Rs. 10,999 (Buy)

Design is Cool, Display not so much

Over the last year, metal has become synonymous with ‘premium’ feel and Le1s plays to the gallery with a metal unibody design. The delectable chamfered side frame with neat drilled speaker holes, symmetrical placement of front camera and proximity sensor around the ear-piece, inconspicuous navigation keys, the illusion of narrow bezels (black boarder around display) – all add up rather nicely to make Le1s a head turner.

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On the rear side, the fingerprint sensor has a mirror like finish and my fingerprint actually gets imprinted on it when used (and that looks cool). For the first couple of days, I didn’t realize that the two strips on top and bottom are actually plastic and not metal. In terms of looks and design, Le1s looks better than K4 Note and Honor 5X in our opinion.

Also Read: Beginners Guide for Choosing The Perfect Smartphone Display

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The screen is very sharp and crisp, and color tones are vivid too, but the display is dim and plagued with cold blue tint. Color mode option in the display settings came to our rescue. The soft mode is what we liked best. Problem solved. (It will appear unnaturally yellow at first, but let it remain for some time and the eye-raping blue tint in other modes will be more discernible and feel hideous to you).

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With brightness slider positioned at extreme right and with auto brightness on, sunlight legibility wasn’t a problem for us, but watching videos indoors wasn’t very satisfying. The day scenes in the video content I played appeared darker than they should have. LeEco says it is working on a software update to fix this.

The touch glass used is of very good quality. It is quite deft at resisting smudges and scratches.

Le 1s Photo Gallery

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Performance is the best you can expect at this price

Besides beauty, it has got brains too. The octa-core Helio X10 ticking at 2.2 GHz works like a charm for all day to day activities and for high end gaming as well. The performance is surprisingly good. With 3GB RAM on board, we expect this to hold true in the long run. We had no issues with Ram management and multi-tasking either. It gets warm with prolonged gaming sessions but there are no ‘heating issues’ that you should be wary of.

Call quality and in-call volume has been very good in our area. The 3000 mAh battery will get you through one day even with fairly heavy usage. We are getting screen on time of 3.5 to 4 hours (our usage is heavy).

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What makes things better is fast charging support. If you have access to a charging point through your day, you can swiftly replete the battery. On days you don’t have luxury of mid-day charging, make use of handy battery saver modes present on EUI.

Fingerprint sensors is fast. In the first few days we felt that it failed to recognize our impression more often than not, but after setting it up again and with few days of usage, the fingerprint sensor consistency has improved. It’s fast and accurate.

The IR remote in Le 1s works great. Using Universal Remote feature is quite simple and we could configure all our devices to use with them.

Camera is good, but not groundbreaking

Le1s has 13MP rear camera and 5MP selfie camera with wide angle lens on top. You will get the same configuration on most handsets today, but by now we all know camera performance isn’t about megapixels or the lack of them.

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The 13MP camera is in fact very decent. You can click good shots in natural lighting. In indoor lighting, the camera appears to compensate on details to avoid noise, but the end result is often very useable.

The camera app allows you to lock focus and then shift metering box, something we find ourself using a lot. There is HDR mode and 4K recording options as well, but both leave you wanting for more. The selfie camera is one of the better ones in this budget. The camera on Le 1s is good enough for all basic needs and social media purposes, but won’t give it an edge over existing competition.

Camera Samples

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EUI is very impressive

The reason we have been infectiously optimistic about Le 1s is its software interface. Besides being feature rich, UI is consistent and doesn’t drag the performance down. All your needs are well taken care of here. There is no app drawer by default though.

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Quick settings can be accessed form recent apps keys. This is something we like, though it takes some getting used to. You can decide precisely what apps get to exploit data, re-arrange quick settings panel, manage notifications and app permissions, make better use of uncluttered notification shade, and a lot more. System apps like gallery app, message app, etc are well designed too. You can also check settings for system apps in a separate tab in primary settings menu.

Only thing we have missed so far is the option for double tap to wake. The fast fingerprint sensor compensates for the same, but there are time when you just wish to check notifications on lock-screen without lifting the phone off the table.

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Also we couldn’t install Google Cardboard app from playstore (You can sideload and install it, but it won’t work). There are very few pre-installed apps on our review unit which is a good thing. Besides timely rolling out bug fixes, LeEco is also working on Android Marshmallow update for Le 1s.

Conclusion

The Le 1s turns out to be a very impressive phone for its price. There is no area where it particularly disappoints, but its biggest strengths are beautiful design (beauty), powerful performance (brawn) and intuitive software (brain). With a new brand after sales support is always questionable. The company’s claim of 550 service centers is assuring, but only time will tell how well LeEco performs on that front. If you are willing to take that leap of faith, we have no qualms about recommending Le 1s if you are restricted by a budget of around 10K.

Deepak SinghDeepak Singh
Deepak has more than 8 years of experience in covering technology for several eminent publications in India. He currently leads an enthusiastic team of young writers at Smartprix and tries to uphold the highest quality standards.

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4 Comments
User
Subhash
Anonymous
7 years ago

My budget 10000 max. Leeco le 1s eco great buy or not.same review say heating problem in Leeco mobile phone. please suggested right idea.

Reply
User
Deepak Rajawat
Anonymous
7 years ago

It’s a good buy for 10K.However, we understand your heating concerns as reported by many, What you can do is go for L 1s Eco. If you can slightly stretch your budget, then in that case you can buy LeEco Le 2.

User
piyush Padalia
Anonymous
8 years ago

Super smart phone in wel come in India @@@

Reply
User
Soumya
Anonymous
8 years ago

Yaa as comparison to Xiaomi , Honour, Le 1s has good pricing with specifications but it also lacks some features as Double tap unlock, Fingerprint App lock, Fingerprint camera click without information (hidden) and in battery, it charges quickly and similarly discharges also very quickly then what is the gain of giving 3000mh battery ? And also everybody knows it is a metallic one but othersothers might have used other mettalic phone in this case it gets hot very quickly. Its a great phone but it needs to be updated. Hope LEeco will rectify this in next update, waiting anxiously for the new update…

Reply
User
gourav agarwal
Anonymous
8 years ago

le1s , Lenovo k4 , moto g turbo which is better ?

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