ZTE is no stranger to the budget market. They offer a huge variety of cheaper phones, including lots of prepaid options in the US.
With the ZTE Blade 11 Prime, they're aiming to deliver one of their best budget-friendly phones yet by including some features that you really don't see in this price range. Can they pull it off? Let's find out.
Design
- Solid plastic
- Headphone jack
- Side-mounted fingerprint scanner
ZTE has crafted up a pretty well designed shell for a sub-$200 phone. It feels sturdy in hand, although it is made of plastic. It's not a particularly premium plastic, but the phone doesn't feel like it'll break easily. The coating is also fairly grippy, making it easy to hold onto. This is useful, since it's a pretty large phone housing a big screen.
All the staples are here, too. There's a speaker on the bottom beside the USB-C charging port, a rare headphone jack on the top, and a fingerprint scanner integrated with the power button on the side. The volume rocker sits just above that biometric scanner.
Bezels are fine, although not particularly small. There's a teardrop notch at the top of the screen to make room for the front-facing camera, but with the chin on this phone I feel like it might have made more sense to just shift the screen down and avoid the notch altogether.
The blue color that ZTE sent for this model also looks pretty great, in my opinion. I'm a big fan of variety colors lately, instead of the same old boring black and white.
Display and audio
- 720p resolution feels stretched
- Bright and colorful
- Decent speakers
ZTE has chosen to use just a 720p resolution for its 6.5-inch display, which feels pretty dated these days. The colors look pretty good and it gets fairly bright, so all things considered it's actually a good screen for the price, but some text can look blurry and you won't get the same crisp detail on some other phones that don't stretch the pixels so far.
But even with that particular resolution, I think the phone is very serviceable for watching movies or other media. I think you'll notice how bright it gets and how good the colors look, which should overshadow the low resolution. Usually.
The speakers are a little small and a little tinny, but definitely not the worst I've ever heard. They'll get the job done as long as you're not expecting any surround sound simulation or Dolby Atmos. ZTE didn't ditch the headphone jack, either, so if you're not happy, just plug in your favorite headphones. Problem solved.
Performance
- Mediocre processor
- Sluggish browsing experience
- GPU performance is decent
If there's an Achilles heel for this phone, it's the processor ZTE chose. The Blade 11 Prime uses a Helio P22, and it struggles.
Despite having 4GB of RAM, which should be plenty, this phone can really start to lag and hitch with basic tasks. Scrolling through social media or your Google feed is downright rough depending on how much is going on, and even flipping through your home screens can feel like you're using a phone that's well past its upgrade point.
The paired GPU holds up a little better, and I could successfully play things like Call of Duty: Mobile at solid frame rates. This also bodes well for YouTube and other video playback, at least.
Battery and charging
- Good battery life
- Wireless charging for cheap
The ZTE Blade 11 Prime packs in a 4000mAh battery, which isn't the biggest battery we've seen in a phone this size, but it does do the trick pretty nicely. You can easily squeeze a full day of usage out of this phone, even with some considerable screen on time. I'm assuming the 720p resolution plays a big role here.
But what's perhaps the most interesting thing about this phone is that it offers wireless charging, which is basically non-existent in the $200 price range. ZTE somehow managed to make it work, so you won't have to save your wireless charging pads for flagship phones anymore. And honestly, if ZTE can do it with the Blade 11 Prime, they've pretty much knocked out every other phone's excuse for not having it.
It works well, too! You're only getting 5 watts of charging speed, but that's pretty standard, and wireless charging isn't typically the solution for fast charging, at least not yet.
Camera
- Decent performance
- Poor low-light shots
- Lacks detail
Don't expect the world out of a $200 phone's camera, and you won't be disappointed. The ZTE Blade 11 Prime is fine, and just fine, and that's okay.
You'll be able to take some photos in decent light. Low light is a struggle, things can get a little noisy sometimes, and fast moving subjects don't fare well. It's perfectly serviceable for the price range and not much else.
Worth it?
- Great prepaid package
- Bad CPU performance
- Wait for the next one
This one's a tough recommendation. I think ZTE did a commendable job with the budget they were going for, and wireless charging in this device should absolutely turn some heads.
There's a lot to like, especially if you're primarily using your phone for gaming or watching videos. If you're big into taking photos or social media, however, it's just not a pleasant experience. That processor really puts a black eye on the package, even without any additional software fluff from ZTE. You can completely count out any kind of productivity work.
If you fit the bill, however, you can get a phone with a pretty good, very large screen with wireless charging for less than a couple hundred bucks, and that's nuts. If ZTE can tweak this just a bit for the next iteration, they're going to have a budget-friendly king on their hands.
ZTE Blade 11 Prime | $192 | ZTE
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