44 APRIL2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE386
SONY’SCURRENTGENERATIONof
smartphones covers every possible price
bracket: there’s the lavish, 4K screen-
equipped Xperia 1, the mid-range Xperia 10
and, for lighter wallets, the Xperia L3.
Despitethis handset happily settling
down in the bargain bin, the experience it
presents is actually nothing of the sort
you might expect forits price.Likeamore
generally successful Honor 9X (see page 41),
it looks just like aphone you’d payalmost
three times as much for–and it has afew
hidden surprises, too.
MORETHAN MEETSTHE EYE
While the body is made of plastic –only the
frame is metal –ithas areasonably
convincing metallic finish, preserving the
premium look. The Xperia L3 also includes a
side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the right
edge,which is used forsecureunlocking and
authorising contactless card payments via
NFC. This sits between the phone’s power
button and volume rocker,while asingle USB
Type-C port can be foundatthe bottom.
The latter supports Sony’s Xperia Adaptive
Charging, which monitors your phone as it
charges, supposedly ensuring that the battery
doesn’t degrade quickly.Moreurgently,it
ensures that just afew minutes of charge will
deliver afew hours of use before battery
levels drop back to zero.
There are,however,acouple of rough
edges. The rear panel can flex inwards when
pressed –agiveawayofits cheap plastic
construction –and the volume rocker,which
sits near the bottom of the handset, feels
awkwardly placed. Forsomething so cheap,
however,these areminor
concerns; design-wise,
we’re otherwise very
impressed with what Sony
has managed to produce.
The front is fitted with
an edge-to-edge 18:9
screen, with reasonably
slim forehead and chin
bezels above and below.
The Gorilla Glass 5-coated
screen measures 5.7in
from corner to corner,
with an HD+ display
resolution of 1,440x720.
In technical testing, we
found that the Xperia L3’s
IPS panel was capable of
producing 96% of the
SONY XperiaL3
★★★★★
£148•From http://www.amazon.co.uk
VERDICT
TheXperiaL3isawonderfullycheapphone
thatonlyoccasionallyremindsyouofitsprice
ANDROID8.0SMARTPHONE
sRGB colour gamut, with
an average delta-E of 2.32.
Even if they’re not
particularly accurate,
then, colours have
plenty of pop across the
palette, and the Xperia L3
is also capable of reaching
asunlight-friendly
maximum brightness of
504cd/m2. Likewise,a
contrast ratio of 1,641:1
is very good fora
phone this cheap.
The MediaTek Helio
P22 processor is much
more in line with
budget expectations,
as is the relatively
modest 3GB of RAM.
The 32GB of eMMC Flash
storage isn’t toostingy,
but in any case you can expand it with
microSD cards up to 512GB.
Sadly,Geekbench 4’s single-core and
multicore CPU benchmarks failed to run
on the Xperia L3, although in subjective
everydayterms, it’s nippier than that
makes it sound. Switching between apps is
abreeze,and we didn’t encounter any
slowdown issues when running CPU-intensive
applications such as Google Maps.
Don’t expect huge gaming power,asthe
Xperia L3 averaged 10fps in the GFXBench
Manhattan 3onscreen test and 17fps in the
offscreentest. Basic games will be playable,
though just not advanced 3D games –and it’s
worth noting that these results are only very
slightly behind those of the
excellent Motorola Moto
G7 Power (Shopper376).
LONG SHIFT
Battery lifeisgood, too, a
likely side effect of the
lower-spec processor.The
Xperia L3 reached 15h 52m
in our video playback test,
well short of the MotoG7
Power but longer than the
Honor 9X and other budget
smartphones like the Honor
10 Liteand Nokia 5.1.
Lastly,the Xperia L3 is
fitted with adual-camera
setup.One of these sensors
is astandard 13-megapixel
lens, while the other is
a2-megapixel depth-
sensing unit, used for
fancy bokeh-effect
portrait shots. An
8-megapixel selfie camera
sits above the screen,
completewithaface-
smoothing beauty mode.
Although the camera
software makes changing
settings and modes
somewhat fiddly,the
camera itself does quite
agood job at capturing
detail-rich images in a
variety of lighting
conditions, with well-
balanced exposures
and accurate-looking
colours. The HDR
mode lifts up shadowy
areas quitenicely without losing detail in
overly bright areas of the image,while
visual noise is kept to aminimum, even in
low-light environments.
Its video capabilities are limited, however.
There’s no frame-rateadjustment –all
recording resolutions are locked at 30fps –
and the camera is only capable of recording
video at amaximum resolution of 720p.
Youwon’t find any form of imagestabilisation
here,either,sofootage is easily subject to
juddering and tearing.
LITTLETO LOSE
Still, while it might not be in the same league
as its Sony stablemates, the Xperia L3 offersa
dependable blend of usability and asking
price.It’s adangerous line to tread, and we’ve
seen along list of budget-priced phones
falter in recent years, but the Xperia L3 is a
respectable choice forthose on low budgets.
NathanSpendelow
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
See page 84 forperformancedetails
PROCESSOROcta-core2GHzMediaTekHelioP22•
SCREENSIZE5.7in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,440x720•
REARCAMERA13 megapixels, 2megapixels•STORAGE32GB
SPECIFICATIONS
15h52m
