The TCL Plex gets a seat at the premium smartphone table

THE NEW TCL PLEX ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED SMARTPHONES OF THE YEAR HAS BEEN LAUNCHED IN AUSTRALIA. IT’S STYLISH AND PACKED WITH FEATURES NORMALLY FOUND IN A $1K PLUS SMARTPHONE. THE LAUNCH IS SET TO CREATE A NEW BENCHMARK FOR SUB $500 SMARTPHONES.

TCL has released a new premium smartphone called the Plex and the good news is that the device is sub $500 in Australia, despite incorporating a superior camera, display and unique video and camera shooting capabilities over many of its rivals.

TCL, a leading manufacturer of TVs and smartphones for other brands, now aims to establish its name in smartphones beyond the BlackBerry and Alcatel brands, which it owns the rights to.

In Australia, the Alcatel range is already the third most popular smartphone brand due in part to its performance, price and functionality.

The new TCL Plex is a mid-range premium smartphone with the Company focusing on two key areas in designing it: display and camera.

The Plex has three cameras: a 48-megapixel main sensor from Sony, a 16MP ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP cam that’s meant strictly for low-light shooting.

TCL claims it has “an industry-leading 2.9μm big-pixel, low-light sensor”, as well as various algorithms for reducing noise and a Super Night Mode for those dark, dark environments.

During early testing, which SmartHouse undertook at the IFA launch in Berlin, the camera looked and felt like a device that should be $200-$300 more expensive. The camera-shooting performance actually delivers on what TCL claims.

As you would expect from a leading display manufacturing company, who’s TVs are more popular than Samsung in the all-important US TV market, the standout feature is the 6.53-inch FHD+ LCD display, which TCL has humorously dubbed “Dotch” due to its hole-punch cut-out on the upper left.

Just as with its TVs, the company manufactures this screen itself. And there’s a new mode that’s been introduced by TCL called NXTVISION, which applies a lot of image processing when activated.

How this works is simple. Colours on the TCL Plex’s screen are intensified with its 6-axis colour enhancement for radiant images.

Edges are honed with 2D edge enhancement for sharper pictures and visual contrasts, which are made more striking without being over-exposed with targeted contrast enhancement.

With the SDR to HDR real-time conversion feature, the TCL Plex offers HDR-like video enhancement with increased contrast, amplified colour, brighter highlights and darker shadows.

Under the bonnet, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 675 processor powers the device, which is an excellent processor from the world’s leading smartphone processor company.

For sub $500, users also get 128GB of storage, 6GB RAM and a 3,820mAh battery. The Plex also supports microSD storage up to 256GB.

For music lovers, the Plex has a headphone jack and consumers who buy it will get an excellent pair of noise-cancelling headphones, which can be plugged into the Plex directly or connected via Bluetooth.

And talking of Bluetooth, this device comes with Bluetooth 5.0, as well as what TCL calls a “Super Bluetooth” option, which allows up to four Bluetooth speakers or headphones to connect to the Plex simultaneously.