Xolo Era 2X First Impressions: Stuck in time

When it comes to ultra budget smartphones, which cost not more than Rs. 7,000, there is no beating the Indian phone makers. However, things change drastically as one moves beyond the 7K budget. Phones like Xiaomi Redmi 3S and the relatively new Meizu M3S put up a much better show than any of the competing devices. Still, there is no harm in trying and that’s exactly what the new Xolo Era 2X tries to do. The phone packs a MediaTek 6737 SoC, coupled with 3GB of RAM. The MT6737 is a relatively new budget level SoC from MediaTek, but doesn't offer a significant upgrade in performance over the MT6735 SoC, which has been widely used by budget smartphones since 2015, including the Meizu M2.

Equipped with this newer SoC, the phone does a decent job in keeping up pace with day-to-day applications such as YouTube, Gmail, messaging apps, calling, camera and more. It is only when, if you push it a little hard, like when we left a dozen apps running in the background and tried to start Asphalt 8, the load time increased significantly. However, the phone did handle a couple of heavy games we tested on it with just a few noticeable lags. Gaming aside, the phone also stutters occasionally when switching between apps or browser tabs. Here are some synthetic benchmarks to show you the performance difference between the Xolo Era 2X and its peers.

Moving forward from performance numbers, the phone’s design is rather dull. To be more specific, it reminds me of the Micromax Canvas Spark. In a time when every other comparable device is boasting a metal back and huge battery packs, the Xolo Era X2 makes do with a plastic build and just a 2500mAh battery. That being said, Xolo has done a decent job when it comes to build quality including the quality of plastics used. However, the matte-ish back is still a bit slippery and doesn't inspire confidence when using the phone with one hand.

Still, the 5-inch form-factor, which is a currently the un-said standard among budget phones is ergonomic as the phone has rounded edges. The placement of the rear speaker is still questionable since the bottom mounted speaker gets muffled easily. Further, it is not that loud either and is almost inaudible on 50% volume.

The small display features a 1280 x 720p resolution, which feels like an improvement if you consider Xolo’s previous attempts in this category. Further, the display has good colour reproduction and viewing angles. However, the display does not feel as crisp when compared to the likes of Redmi 3S or the Meizu M3S. The sunlight visibility is also much better than a majority of phones in the budget segment, but the touchscreen does not have a smooth feel, and touch response becomes a little sluggish at times.

The UI on the phone is pretty straightforward and is almost stock for the most part. it is running a custom HiveLauncher, which apparently looks and work as well as the Google launcher. Beyond that, all you get are a bunch of pre-loaded applications and the entire JIO app suite. Good thing is, you can uninstall these applications if you don’t use them. The rear mounted fingerprint scanner does a decent job, but is not as fast as its competitors.

At the back, the phone has an 8MP camera, which is a slow at focusing and goes into pause mode if you tap to focus while taking an image in low light. The image quality is not at par with most smartphones out there. Images taken in ample lighting conditions look decent, but have a slightly cooler tone. Also, images don’t look adequately sharp. Low light images come out to be outright bad, where the camera struggles to focus and there is too much noise in the images taken.

Overall, we think the Xolo Era X2 is too late to the party and with an average performance and a mediocre camera, the phone does not make a very positive impression. We will be further testing the phone extensively and will be adding newer observations in our upcoming review. 

Follow Us

Hardik Singh

Light at the top, this odd looking creature lives under the heavy medication of video games. View Full Profile