Sony Xperia L2 Review

Last year, Sony launched Xperia L1, it was an entry-level smartphone with a MediaTek processor. And at the CES 2018 in Las Vegas came to the second generation, Xperia L2, which has been priced at $249.98 / £169.99 and compared to its predecessor, it has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of native storage. The other features remained more or less unchanged, let’s find out more in this Sony Xperia L2 review.

Design

Ergonomics is definitely not the strong point of the Xperia L2 weighing around 180 grams and has a thickness of 9.8mm. The first impression, visually all are good at it. The design is pleasant, however, It seems that high-quality materials are not used. The housing is made of plastic as well as the rear part which also retains enough impressions.

In addition, the curvature of the rear panel creates a slight space below the fingerprint sensor that once discovered becomes a bit annoying.

On the right side, there are the volume keys and the power button. On the opposite side, there is a slot for the nano-SIM card and for a microSD card with which we can expand the integrated memory. On the bottom edge, there are the USB 2.0 Type-C port and the speaker along with the main microphone. On the top edge, we find the second microphone and the 3.5mm audio jack.

The front is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 4. At the top are the proximity sensor, an 8-megapixel camera, and a small RGB notification LED.

Display

A 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with HD resolution and a pixel density of 267ppi. The panel used by Sony is not exactly the same as that seen on Xperia L1. This display offers a good contrast, thanks to fairly markedly blacks, but not very accurate colors and not a very high brightness that penalize the visibility in more attentive lighting conditions.

Performance

Sony Xperia L2 is powered by Mediatek MT6737T quad-core processor clocked at 1.45GHz (slightly more advanced than Xperia L1) with a 28nm production process and Mali-T720MP2 600MHz GPU paired with 3GB of RAM. It has 32GB of internal storage which can be further expanded by up to 256GB using microSD card.

A fairly dated processor, so Xperia L2 manages to achieve all in all acceptable performance. Regularly used applications start quite quickly but are not fluid in the timeline scroll. Even the user interface, shows some slight slowdown. From the graphics point of view, you can play most of the games without too much trouble but, of course, do not expect a high fluidity.

To complete the hardware compartment we have the dual-band Wi-Fi a / b / g / n, Bluetooth 4.2 and also the NFC. The USB port, as mentioned, is a Type-C. There is also a GPS receiver with GLONASS and also a comfortable stereo FM radio.

It’s still running on Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system. Likely to be updated to Oreo in the reasonable time since Sony already has several devices on the market updated to the latest release of the Google operating platform. The user interface is as usual classic Sony style, very close to stock Android, only with some slight customization.

(Also see Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra Review)

A simple interface that we personally appreciate very much. As standard, we find several pre-installed applications including Movie Creator, AVG Protection, and Sketch. Also the multimedia applications from Sony such as Music, Album, and Video in addition to the PlayStation and News applications.

Battery & Audio

The Sony Xperia L2 comes with LTE support and Sony has also made a Dual SIM variant too. The audio quality is good, clean and a high enough volume. However, in speakerphone, we can notice slight distortion. While playing music the volume is high, but the bass tone is almost completely missing.

Coming to the battery, it has a 3300mAh integrated battery that will allow us to use this Xperia L2 intensely for a full day, even reaching 6/7 hours of active display. In case of need, we can also increase its juice with STAMINA power saving mode. A sore point is the absence of fast charging.

Camera

The camera of the Sony Xperia L2 has not really convinced us, even if we talk about a medium / low-end smartphone. The rear camera has a 13-megapixel sensor with autofocus and f/2.0 aperture, the front one is an 8-megapixel fixed focus with f/2.4 aperture. The camera interface is same as other Sony’s devices, although not complete with some features that we find on the high-end Xperia phones.

Through the rear camera, in good lighting conditions, there is always little detail, considerable noise and a tendency to overexpose in the most illuminated areas. The dynamic range, on the other hand, we found it quite wide.

In poor lighting conditions, the situation gets worse, but not as far as one could imagine. The detail remains always low, but there is not a particular increase in noise. The front camera can capture sufficient quality pictures. Even for videos, the subject does not change. Little defined and tend to overexpose.

Final line

The Sony Xperia L2, as mentioned at the beginning, it is available for $249.98 / £169.99 on Amazon. A price is slightly high compared to other devices on the market, at even lower prices, are able to offer better hardware and also a better user experience.

Coming to technical aspects, Sony Xperia L2 seemed very promising, but in daily use did not satisfy us. First of all, ergonomics: it’s really inconvenient to use. The general performance and the quality of the photos are also not very convincing.

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