Competent Mid-range

Wire

ZTE Blade Vec Pro

by matthew yap

Hoping to snare the local budget conscious consumers, ZTE launched an extensive line of smartphones that range from entry level to flagship in October 2014. Naturally, ZTE had been kind enough to send to the PC.com Tested Labs some review units of its mid-range series for review. This month, I have the Blade Vec Pro in my review queue.

Slip of a Phone

Though just one notch higher on the range, the Blade Vec Pro is more similar to the Star 1 than the Blade V5. Its sleek and slim profile is lightweight enough that you might not even feel it in your pocket. At the front is the 5in 720p display with a 5MP front-facing camera. At the back is a 13MP rear-facing camera is, obviously, at the rear. On the right side of the phone you have the power button and the volume rocker, while the two 3G SIM slots are located on the other side.

Family Friendly

What about features? A noticeable function is Family Mode – an option that turns the smartphone into a series of large tiles. The closes use I can think of is that it’s for children or elderly people who need the larger fonts to read text and navigate around the controls of the Blade Vec Pro. Other than that, the operating system is as vanilla Android KitKat as it gets.

Average Performer

Powering the Blade Vec Pro is a 1.4GHz MT6592 Octa-Core processor with 1GB RAM – just enough for some Web browsing, social media crawls, and – maybe – a few simple 2D games. It’s not a multi-tasking powerhouse but it gets by. The battery life is decent, eventhough it’s only a 2200mAh, and likely to last you through work or school before you have to charge it.

Tough Competition Ahead

The ZTE Blade Vec Pro is for all purposes, a capable mid-range phone. Unfortunately, the problem is that it doesn’t stand out against its other competitors. Its asking price also makes it a hard choice to pick, when you can pay just a bit more for flagship devices from other brands.

Benchmark
3DMark Ice Storm Extreme xx
Antutu xx
Basemark X High Quality 6307
Anomaly 2 High Quality 394394
GFXBench Manhattan 535 (8.6 fps)
GFXBench Manhattan 1080p 502 (8.1 fps)
GFXBench T-Rex 972 (17.4 fps)
GFXBench T-Rex 1080p Offscreen 923 (16.5 fps)

Specs
Price RM788
Dimensions 142.3 x 70.4 x 7.8 mm
Weight 152 g
Chipset MediaTek MTK6592 ARM-Cortex-A7
Graphics Mali-450
Memory 1GB RAM
Display 5 inches, colour IPS TFT 720 x 1280 pixels
Camera 13MP rear-facing, 5MP front-facing
Storage 8GB, expandable via microSD
Operating System Android 4.4.2 Kitkat
Battery 2200 mAh