Verdict
The TCL 40 SE is a dull phone , but it ’s also cheap and has a couple of notable feature you would n’t expect when spend this little . It has wad of home storage and stereo speakers .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The TCL 40 SE is a cheap earphone . That is the whole deal here . But where a relatively unknown phone brand like TCL might often be off - putting when pass a lot , buying from a blade like this is often a decorous idea if you want the most headphone you could possibly get for your hard cash .
There are real positive here . 128 GB storage for this sort of money is great . The design could easy go to a earpiece that costs double the price or more . electric battery living is just and the display is big enough for well-heeled video cyclosis .
Bad bits ? The TCL 40 SE does not have 5 GB mobile cyberspace and its CPU functioning is abysmal . This slows down the phone noticeably , strike every fundamental interaction you have with it , from flicking through card to loading apps and pick out photos .
Real - world performance could still be much worse , though , becoming a mild thorn rather than make you want to ruin the TCL 40 SE against a rampart . I ’d apprise spending a footling more to get smoother day - to - Clarence Day operation , but if money is tight , this is n’t a bad option .
Design and screen
The TCL 40 SE costs around £ 140 , but would slot flop in next to phones from companies like Xiaomi that sell for £ 300 .
certainly , the whole outer shell is plastic bar the glass used to cover the camera lenses and screen , but the “ look ” is n’t bargain bin fodder . The TCL 40 SE back panel has a shimmering , almost glitter - like effect . And it is subtle than it may come across in some of my photos . The sparkle only shows up in lineal sunlight .
The camera lodging sit in an inlay of glossy plastic that look a portion like glass , using a form interchangeable to the camera design of theSamsung Galaxy S22 seriesphones . But most of all , this is just quite a big - blind phone for something this low - price .
Big , high - quality projection screen clear come cheap these days , as proved by the many gimcrack , large sound from Xiaomi , Realme and Oppo . But it does n’t diminish the mother wit of time value for actual vendee .
The TCL 40 SE ’s boastful 6.75 - inch silver screen does not leave a brilliant first picture , though . Its nonpayment colour temperature is too cool , and it has the color fictional character of a phone essay to look pure without cause a display instrument panel truly capable of it . As such , the TCL 40 SE terminate up search sickly .
you’re able to gratefully improve matters with a quick pinch in the phone ’s setting menu . Its colouring now looks fine enough , and I do n’t find its limited 720p settlement too obvious . There are no hot fixes for the TCL 40 SE ’s mediocre maximal brightness , though .
The phone , unsurprisingly , does not have the kind of showing major power that makes seeing what ’s on - screen door on a bright day easy . It barely receive by . But it is also unreasonable to expect 900 - nit brightness when you ’re pay this little .
Other parts of the ironware to note include a side - mounted fingerprint digital scanner for PIN - liberal secure unlocking , a earpiece jack , microSD bill support and a stereo speaker array . It ’s great to see TCL manage to mash a stereo couplet in the budget phone . It improves the video cyclosis experience importantly . However , they do vocalize a bit coarse at maximum volume and do n’t have the full timber of a truly good phone speaker unit , mind .
Camera
The TCL 40 SE camera await the part on the phone ’s back , and getting a 50MP photographic camera at this price sounds like a buy . Too good to be dead on target ? Sort of .
The secondary camera here are used for window dressing as much as have exposure . They are 2MP macro and 2MP depth detector camera , the typical sick couplet used when a earpiece manufacturer needs to fulfill out a phone ’s picture taking ironware .
Actually taking photos with the TCL 40 SE becomes qualify by the phone ’s limitations too . It feels slow and laboured . You have to wait for the TCL to do its affair . And if you endeavor to take pic too quickly , you ’ll may find some of those frames were not captured at all .
Capturing pics on a sunny sidereal day is a struggle too . The CRT screen is n’t smart enough to compete with powerful ambient light . It ready composition a chore .
However , the camera ironware itself sounds firm enough on paper , with a 1/2.55 - column inch sensing element size of it do the pixel bin sensing element pixels equivalent to a 1.4 micron “ real ” pixel .
It can also raise truly lovely photo during the day , single that might not attend all that different from shots produced with a phone several time the cost . Colours are not obviously undersaturated or oversaturated , there ’s plenty of item for a budget phone and even when you zoom along right in to the images , the signs of processing are ordinarily not too heavy - handed .
The Auto HDR role , essential for stave off blown - out skies and murky foregrounds , is upstanding too . However , just as the TCL 40 SE does not always take the photos the photographic camera app ’s UI advise it does , sometimes when you shoot multiple images in a row , the HDR just does n’t engage .
At Nox the results take a severe nosedive . While the processing sometimes tries all-fired hard to brighten the shot and increase dynamic range like a modern nighttime mode , this results in either scratchy contingent or pure ooze — and often both in the same trope .
Video is also highly limited on two fronts . 1080p at 30 frames per secondly is your maximum gaining control musical mode . I ’m more interested about the total lack of stabilisation , leaving all hand-held videos looking quite amateurish . That suppose , I used the phone to capture some singers at a pub open mic night , and the video — while a judder - fest — could have been a whole lot defective .
Performance
The TCL 40 SE has a supremely weak CPU . It ’s the MediaTek Helio G37 from 2020 , which itself is just any better than the Helio P35 from a lifetime ago , back in 2018 .
This is an former processor , and it was n’t much bull when it was novel . But is it enough ?
For the first 24 hours I thought my time with the TCL 40 SE was going to be a sodding incubus . It seemed inexcusably slow . This was due to the phone downloading and installing app updates in the setting .
There ’s so little headroom here that this kind of basic multi - tasking , now taken for granted , can derail the TCL 40 SE . affair improve after that , though .
The telephone set is still dense throughout . Apps are slow to load , sailing seems more sluggish than I ’m used to and web pageboy do not move with anything like the good will they would through a higher - end phone . However , some of these budget phones can leave you swear at their screen glass as you wait for the practical keyboard to pop up .
I do n’t actually observe the TCL 40 SE all that frustrative to use , as its slow spirit is at least logical .
Judging by its benchmark scores , a worse outcome was possible . The TCL 40 SE mark just 822 points in Geekbench 6 , risky than what a Motorola Moto G2 might go for to achieve . That phone is almost a tenner old .
I could n’t even start the more graphically intensive phone test I normally do as part of a sound revaluation , because the TCL 40 SE just would n’t support them .
This kind of performance in 2023 is like catch a mobility water scooter on a motorway . And yet it ’s a scooter blazing along at 55 mph , as the just - about - passable 24-hour interval - to - day performance is bearable .
apparently you should keep your anticipation of stake low . Asphalt 9 is too choppy to be truly enjoyable in genuine subspecies beyond the tutorial . You ca n’t install Fortnite at all . The Epic Games app wo n’t even let you download it .
Battery life
The TCL 40 SE has a large 5010mAh electric battery . That ’s pretty big for a phone running off such a weak locomotive engine , but about what you should expect from a phone this size .
veridical - humans staying power is good . The phone has endure me into the former - mid good afternoon of the second sidereal day after a full charge , offer a good amount of fender for those who require their earphone to last through a prospicient and challenging day .
Using this phone is also grounds of how spoil we are by today ’s affordable ultra - fast - charging telephone . The TCL 40 SE suffer mediocre “ up to ” 18W load . But it does n’t admit a charger , just a cable . You ’re probable to have a hard clip get a charger that will let it utilize its full speed too .
USB - palladium courser will only draw around 11W accord to my power meter . I used the better part of a twelve adapters to judge to get it to murder 18W. An quondam Lenovo battery charger got the closest , take up around 16W.
This saw the TCL 40 SE progress to just 26 % in 30 minutes , 13 % in 15 minutes . A full heraldic bearing takes a little under two hours , which is jolly tedious by 2023 standards . This is a speech sound you ’ll require to recharge overnight . There is no wireless charging option here — which you never get for this kind of money anyway .
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Should you buy it?
The TCL 40 SE is cheesy , does n’t look too forged and is not a totally frill - free geographical zone . It has two-channel speakers and loads of repositing for a lower - level Android speech sound . You ’re improbable to run out of distance for a long , long prison term .
This phone is slow thanks to its debile central processor . It regard not only the TCL ’s ability to play game and run more demanding apps well , but also how the most bare interaction palpate . Some patience is demand here .
Final Thoughts
There are no truly great phones this cheap , unless you consider feature phones a contender for that rubric . The TCL 40 SE does n’t challenge that statement . But it may not be a bad buy if the budget is fuddled .
It has two-channel utterer , a openhanded screen and piles of storage for a mobile this cheap . The chipset is pretty awful , but does not get too many headache unless you examine to examine to in reality use the TCL 40 SE while the phone downloads or updates apps in the background .
The big compliment I can give the TCL 40 SE is I ’m not do-or-die to get free of it and switch to something else . I have palpate that way about significantly more expensive Androids .
Trusted Score
How we test
We test every mobile phone we review good . We use industry - stock examination to compare feature of speech by rights and we use the headphone as our main machine over the reappraisal period . We ’ll always tell you what we find and we never , ever , accept money to review a ware .
Find out more about how we test in ourethics policy .
FAQs
This phone does not have 5 G , only 4 grand and older monetary standard .
Unlike high - end phones the TCL has a classic 3.5 mm headphone jack .
This speech sound has no official body of water or dust electric resistance .
Test Data
Full Specs
