Micromax Canvas Express 2 review: Another budget smartphone

In recent times, there has been a huge reduction in the price of smartphones. Today, handsets with good specifications are available for less than Rs 10,000. Many renowned smartphone manufacturing companies are very serious about this segment. For this reason, there are many ‘value for money’ handsets available in the market for the users. The country’s leading smartphone manufacturer Micromax has also been presenting its strong claim in this segment.

canvas express 2 The smartphone is Micromax’s latest budget handset which you will be able to buy exclusively from e-commerce website Flipkart. Available for Rs 5,999, this device is one of the cheapest smartphones of Micromax. Direct competition of this device with great specifications Karbonn Titanium Mach Five (Read review). We will try to know about Express 2 in more detail in this review.

Look and Design
Micromax Canvas Express 2 may be a budget device but at first glance it does not look cheap at all. The entire body is plastic. The gold strips on the edge of the handset give it a metallic feel. Overall the look is like a premium device. The 5-inch screen, thin frame and slim profile make the phone compact and easy to use. Due to plastic body, the weight is also less.

The volume rocker and power button are placed on the right edge of the handset. The speaker along with the microUSB port is placed at the bottom and the 3.5mm audio socket is placed at the top. The design has been kept very simple and elegant which goes in favor of Express 2.

Micromax Canvas Express 2 features a 5-inch display with 720×1280 pixels resolution. Its color reproduction, brightness and sunlight legibility are good. This is a device with a great display at this price.

Specifications and Software
Apart from a 5-inch 720pixel screen, the device has a 2,500mAh replaceable battery, 1.4GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6592M chipset, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of inbuilt storage, microSD card support (up to 32GB), and dual-SIM connectivity.

Micromax Canvas Express 2 smartphone runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system. By the way, today most of the Android smartphones in the range of Rs 10,000 run on Android 5.0 Lollipop. Let us tell you that information has been given on the box of the handset that Canvas Express 2 can be upgraded to Android Lollipop. However, after checking on the system update screen we found that there is no update available at the moment.

The user interface is very simple, much like the stock version of Android KitKat. There are not many options for customization, but basic settings and controls are provided. Considering the price, we found the user interface to be efficient. Hopefully those who buy this device will not be disappointed.

There are many apps pre-installed on Micromax Canvas Express 2. The system also gives advertisements intermittently which is very irritating. One good thing is that most of these apps can be deleted.

camera
Canvas Express 2 has a 13-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel front camera. We expected good resolution images with this sensor, but found that the camera sensor is severely lacking in terms of detail and sharpness. At first glance the photos look good, but when zoomed in the camera’s shortcomings come to light.

However, the performance of the camera is good in terms of color and lighting. Photos taken outdoors generally showed a lack of noise and its white levels were also good. Because of this the colors do not appear washed out or oversaturated. Photos taken in low light can only be described as satisfactory. We should also keep in mind that it would be unreasonable to have high expectations from the handset’s camera in this price range.

The camera app of the handset is very similar to Google’s popular camera app. For this reason most of the settings and modes are visible on the screen. The only complaint is about the small viewfinder area.

performance
Talking about performance, Micromax Canvas Express 2 sometimes disappointed and sometimes pleased. The device performed well in playing our test videos and in benchmark tests, but the performance in daily use and gaming was less than satisfactory. The user interface works a bit slow, apps take longer to open and the smartphone becomes very slow while gaming. Games like Angry Birds 2 and Dead Trigger 2 did not run properly. Apart from this, while playing these games, the battery drained very quickly and the handset also got hot.

Benchmark scores exceeded our expectations. The smartphone got scores of 28,560 and 10,864 in AnTuTu and Quadrant tests respectively. The GFX Bench and 3DMark tests scored 16fps and 6,365, respectively. The benchmark scores were satisfactory but there were a few glitches in using the handset which cannot be ignored.

There was no deficiency in the basic functions of the phone. Call quality, signal strength and Wi-Fi strength are good. The sound coming from the speaker was a little below the standard. The biggest disappointment was the battery life of the Express 2. The phone’s battery lasted only 6 hours 5 minutes in the video loop test and in daily use the battery power drained faster than expected. The battery of the phone could not last for a whole day, that too with normal use. By evening we needed a charger.

our decision
The entry-level smartphone segment is an important market for any phone manufacturing company. Micromax is trying to make its presence felt with the Canvas Express 2 smartphone. The device looks good and is also compact. It is very easy to use, which means it fits perfectly in terms of all the basic needs. The specifications of the device are such which are generally seen in more expensive devices. In such a situation, it is an attractive option for budget smartphone buyers.

However, when compared to the Carbon Titanium Mach Five the shortcomings become apparent. The device’s poor performance in graphics-based tasks and frequent slowdown in running apps and games are the biggest shortcomings of this smartphone. The camera is good on paper, but a bit weak in taking pictures with details. RAM and internal storage are less which will affect the normal use of the device. The device doesn’t have any unique features. You can say that it has no USP.

If you are looking for a simple entry-level smartphone that looks good then the Micromax Canvas Express is a good option. If basic work is done then the device will work well. However, if you want a slightly better device then we would suggest that you consider the Karbonn Titanium Mach Five or spend a little more money. u euphoria Buy a smartphone.