Sony Xperia L4

SCORE

PRICE £142 (£170 inc VAT) from argos.co.uk

On the face of it, there’s nothing exceptional about the Xperia L4. It uses the weak MediaTek Helio P22 chipset, has 3GB of RAM and only its 64GB of storage deserves praise in this company. The 6.2in IPS screen is unusual, though: it’s only 720 pixels wide, but an aspect ratio of 21:9 mimics high-end Sony phones such as the Xperia 1 II ( see p62).

The screen itself isn’t great, as reflected in its technical results: 80.8% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut with a total volume of 89.2% and average Delta E score of 3.16 illustrate that the Xperia L4’s display is neither accurate nor vibrant. Nor is it overly bright, peaking at 355cd/m². Its one saving grace is a contrast ratio of 1,637:1, which is surprisingly punchy for a phone that costs this little.

Another plus is the relatively bezel-free front, with only a small chin under the display and a circular drop-notch at the top. I was sent the black model for review (the blue variant is more eye-catching) and it’s a simple design, with a robust plastic chassis and curved edges. That said, I appreciate the side-mounted fingerprint sensor, 3.5mm headphone jack and NFC chip for contactless payments.

A triple camera array is laid out neatly in a vertical traffic light formation in the top-left corner on the back of the phone, with a new ultra-wide camera among its arsenal. As long as you shoot in well-lit environments, there’s plenty of detail and visual noise is kept to a minimum, but the portrait mode didn’t add as much background blur as I would have liked and the camera software is fiddly.

It’s the internals that show proper evidence of Sony’s dramatic cost-cutting practices. That MediaTek processor is showing its age, with a score of 148 and 869 in Geekbench 5 – the Redmi Note 9 is roughly 50% faster. Still, the Xperia L4 doesn’t feel sluggish in operation and handles CPU-intensive applications such as Google Maps without juddering to a halt. Battery life is merely adequate, lasting 15hrs 39mins in our video-rundown test.

Cheap and relatively cheerful, the Xperia L4 is another decent effort from Sony. It’s a dependable phone for the price, but there are more rounded budget rivals to choose from.

Octa-core 2GHz MediaTek Helio P22 3GB RAM 64GB storage 6.2in 720 x 1,680 IPS display 13/5/2-megapixel rear camera 802.11n Bluetooth 5 3,580mAh battery 71 x 8.7 x 159mm (WDH) 178g