Sure, the TCL 10 Pro doesn’t have cameras to match those of the iPhone SE or Google’s budget Pixels, and it leaves something to be desired in terms of gaming performance and software. However, this device gets enough of everything else right that it’s at least a better choice for a mid-range Android handset than the Galaxy A51, which is quite an achievement for an up-and-coming brand looking to establish itself against icons like Samsung. Why you can trust Android Central Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. And to achieve that snappy performance, the TCL 10 Pro doesn’t include any extraordinary hardware. The device has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor accompanied by 6GB of RAM, which is slightly better than the Google Pixel 3a XL‘s Snapdragon 670.

Still, the phone’s setup is led by a 64MP f/1.8 camera with a 1/1.7-inch sensor, and that's accompanied by a 16MP ultra-wide camera. Which isn’t too shabby at all. Indeed, the TCL 10 Pro is capable of capturing some really good, detailed shots in good lighting, and even some serviceable night time shots. A slightly older mid-range Snapdragon CPU leaves the TCL 10 Pro with the same Adreno 612 graphics chipset as phones such as the Moto G8 Plus. And, again, performance falls short of that of the Xiaomi Mi Note 10.The TCL 10 Pro Case is the most challenging case available. It provides up to three times the drop protection of the ordinary case. It provides uncompromising safety for your phone. The TCL 10 Pro phone case is only compatible with the TCL 10 Pro. It fits with the TCL 10 Pro measuring 158.5 x 72.4 x 9.2 mm (6.24 x 2.85 x 0.36 in) and phone model numbers T799B, T799H. Even when it comes to purpose-built mid-range hardware, though, the Snapdragon 675 isn’t the newest option in Qualcomm’s range. It was powering the likes of the Moto Z4 around this time last year, and we’ve since seen the superior Snapdragon 730 and 730G finding its way into phones such as the Samsung Galaxy A80 and the Realme X2. The TCL 10 Pro also supports 18W fast charging, which it claims can get you from 0 to 50% in 35 minutes. In our own day to day usage, we observed that half an hour of charging with the battery at 27% yielded a 37% gain. The Google Pixel 3a XL and Xiaomi Mi Note 10 are considerably better in this respect. It’s no disaster for the TCL 10 Pro’s camera, though, since it’s able to render better shadow detail than the Samsung Galaxy A51. Both TCL phones feature identical button layouts, with the volume and power buttons lining the right edge and an additional Smart Key on the left edge that can be customized to launch various apps (we'll get into that a bit more later). You'll also get NFC with either phone — a particularly uncommon perk in the 10L's price range — though unsurprisingly, neither offers luxury features like water resistance or wireless charging.

Contrast is predictably superb, motion handling is excellent, colours are vibrant and top brightness is sufficient for decent clarity on sunny days. I’m pleased to report that it works well, with the app having lots of presets for popular UK and US brands.

However, 4K/30 does support electronic image stabilisation, which is a must if you want handheld footage to look smooth. Macro photos are passable, with greater close-up detail than you’d see from the main camera. However, the macro isn’t good enough to make me want to actually use it regularly. Portrait depth images aren’t great, either. Too often you’ll see images that look unnatural thanks to dodgy depth mapping.

The TCL 10 Pro’s software utilizes a custom UI on top of Android 10. But the TCL UI isn’t the worst take on Google’s operating system we’ve ever seen. Close-up indoor food pictures with reasonable natural lighting look quite appetizing at first glance, but there was a tendency to pump up the reds and greens to an unnatural degree. On a couple of occasions the AI algorithm couldn’t make its mind up whether it was taking a food shot at all, and kept flipping between two modes, revealing an unwitting flip-book illustration of the unnaturalness of this effect. Play a game such as Ark: Survival Evolved and you’ll have to drop the graphics down from the top Epic setting to Medium to make it comfortably playable. You’ll need to hold the TCL 10 Pro in place for a number of seconds while taking these ‘Super Night’ mode shots, but the difference in quality between these and simply leaving the phone’s auto mode to handle things is marked. Photos captured with the 10 Pro’s 64-MP main lens incorporate quad-pixel binning to allow more light to reach the sensor, so the result is 12-MP regardless. That equals the iPhone SE’s resolution, and thus, this pair of shots of a mandevilla flower from both phones are similarly sharp. However, there’s a massive gap in color and detail; the hues on the TCL phone are boosted into the stratosphere, such that the texture of the petals and leaves are totally absent. Imperfections that are noticeable on the iPhone SE’s take are curiously absent in the 10 Pros’ rendition, as they’ve been smoothed over with excessive blur.

Select Your MacBook Model:

Numbers are helpful, but the real question is, do the Adreno 612’s deficiencies make the TCL 10 Pro that much worse to game on compared to similarly-priced handsets? Honestly, I don’t think so. Unlike with the Exynos-powered Galaxy A51 I recently reviewed, the TCL 10 Pro opens apps in a snap, even if they’re not already loaded into memory. It boots fast and responds instantaneously to gestures, too. With a multicore Geekbench 5 score of 1,604, the TCL 10 Pro outpaces the Galaxy A51 (1,293), Pixel 3a (1,336) and Moto G Power (1,387), indicating superior system-wide performance.

The TCL 10 Pro also has a mode for shooting in low-light conditions, called Super Night Mode, and above you can see how it compares to Google's implementation of Night Sight in the Pixel 4. Now, this isn’t a totally fair comparison; the Pixel 4 is, of course, a legitimate flagship, rather than a midranger like the TCL 10 Pro. That said, I didn’t have a Pixel 3a on hand when conducting this TCL 10 Pro review, and besides, sometimes it’s good to see precisely what you’re missing when opting for a cheaper phone over a pricier one.

TCL 10 Pro vs. TCL 10L

One hour of Netflix streaming, with the brightness set to full, lost us 8%. That’s pretty similar to the Realme X2’s 7%, and significantly better than we got with the Huawei Nova 5T.