LeEco Le 1s Eco Review

China’s LeEco company, which entered the Indian market a few months ago with the Le 1S handset, has started launching fast and cheap phones in the market. By making the phone a medium, the company has introduced its content service ‘Leeko Membership’. The company hopes that these services will become its main source of income in the future.

It’s an interesting strategy, and somewhat of a gamble. Will customers pay for the subscription from the next year after the one year free membership is over? This will be one to watch. Will LeEco be successful in making such an offer that Indian smartphone users will not be able to refuse? Keeping all these things in mind, we introduce you to the review of LE 1S Eco.

Look and Design
If you’ve seen or used the Le 1s, there’s nothing new to say about the Le 1s Eco. Both the phones are exactly the same. The new model is currently available only in Gold variant, but there are no changes worth mentioning in the design of both. There has been no change in terms of dimensions and weight. The test unit given to us still had the old LetiV logo. This is surprising, because the company has had a long time to change this.

The materials and build quality used to make the Le 1s are excellent. Therefore we are completely satisfied with this phone also. It gives a feeling of being more expensive than it looks. It’s a little sharp on the edges, but it’s generally quite comfortable to hold and use.

All important points are easily accessible, including the fingerprint sensor on the rear. A Nano SIM and a Micro SIM card can be used in the SIM card slot on the right side. There is no support for microSD card in the handset. The Le 1s Eco comes with a USB Type-C port that can be used for charging and data transfer. You also get a quick charger, which is bigger and heavier than the usual chargers.

Specifications
Compared to the Le 1s, the Le 1s Eco comes with a slightly lower clock speed CPU. It also comes with an octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 processor, but the company has said that it will give a clock speed of 1.8 GHz compared to the 2.2 GHz clock speed of the old phone.

It has a 5.5-inch display with 1080×1920 pixel resolution. The new variant also has 3 GB RAM and inbuilt storage is 32 GB. There is no change in the 3000 mAh battery, 13 megapixel rear camera and 5 megapixel front camera. You will also find a fingerprint sensor on the rear part.

In this, both SIMs will support 4G LTE network along with Wi-Fi AC, Bluetooth 4.1 and A-GPS. There is no space for microSD card, but 5 TB cloud storage will be available for free in the company membership. These are great specifications for any phone, which makes the Le 1s Eco even better at this price.

This means that you are being given the same old phone with radical changes, but at a lower price. We will have to see how the lower clock speed will affect performance. Hopefully its impact will not be too much.

software
The new Le 1s Eco departs from the older phone in this department. The phone currently runs on Android 5.0.2 and we feel that more work is needed on the custom EUI skin. We believe that unnecessary changes have been made to the general functionality of Android. This custom UI can be further improved by using core software updates and some industry tricks.

However, the most important feature of this phone is the LeEco membership package. This gives the user access to movies, TV channels, songs and live streams. You can access it by tapping the Live icon at the bottom of the homescreen. Simply put, it is a customized version of Yupp TV.

Right now the channel options are limited, but the quality is not bad with a fast internet connection. You will find many news and music channels in 10 Indian languages. But there are no options for sports, movies, entertainment channels right now.

performance
Even leaving aside the media features, the Le 1s Eco is a solid phone. We found that the phone got very hot at times during video streaming and especially while charging. It may become a little uncomfortable if you constantly hold it in your hands. There was no problem in playing the game. Watching movies on a full-HD screen was a great experience. The built-in speakers are good, but not enough for group watching videos.

The effect of low clock speed was not visible much in the benchmark results. The benchmark results of the Le 1s Eco remained around the same as the older Le 1s.

The phone’s battery lasted 6 hours and 7 minutes in our battery loop test, which is disappointing. In normal use, the phone’s battery lasted well and the standby time was also noteworthy.

Camera performance was also like LE 1S. Photos taken in daylight turned out quite good. There was the occasional focus lock problem. Shots taken in low light turned out very bad. Photos taken in light of streetlamps, shop signs or windows were also not usable. This is where the reason behind this variant of Le 1S being cheaper becomes known.

our decision
LeEco has made an interesting decision to launch the Le 1s Eco as a separate model rather than a special edition of the older phone. Both the phones are almost similar. Apart from the difference of Rs 100 in price and a slight difference in clock speed, there is nothing different. The company’s focus is on content and here LeEco will have to do a lot of work to build consumer consensus.

If the content provided by this company is not of your use, then you would prefer to spend Rs 490 per month on some other content of your choice. However, the 5 TB Clyde storage is a great offering in this price range.

If content is more important to you than a lower clock speed processor, then consider the Le 1s Eco instead of buying the Le 1s. On the other hand, if you’re never going to consume the content, buy an older Le 1s. Both are good looking. If you are very conscious about camera quality and battery life then avoid both the phones.