LG decides to use the G3 branding beyond its flagship phone with smartphones like the LG G3 Beat, but does it retain its bigger brother’s charm?
The Beat is very similar to the other G3 smartphones like the Stylus and the flagship itself, because it is basically a G3 after all. The design from top to bottom is exactly identical to the LG G3: bezels, back buttons, arc design and more (even laser autofocus). If you like the G3’s design but can’t afford it, you can get all of its beauty in the smaller and more affordable Beat.
The smaller form factor of the LG G3 Beat is caused by the smaller display at 5-inches. It’s still an IPS panel, but instead of QHD, you get only 720p, but that’s not really a bad thing. If you’re coming from 1080p screens and sharper, you might notice the pixels and the downgrade in quality – but to the untrained eye, the Beat’s display looks more than great with the colors and contrast. The viewing angles were also wide and only allowed little change in colors when viewed from the sides.
We think that LG’s strategy of branding their other phones as G3s can be quite confusing or even misleading for some, but there are a few reasons why we can also happily agree with the branding: most of the experience you’d expect from a G3 is found here. You can double tap to wake the phone, have a Knock Code, use your device as a QuickRemote and it also employs LG’s UI skin for Android KitKat.
LG’s UI has a lot of beautiful design elements, but we still see the need for improvement in some areas like the notification bar.
With a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU paired with 1GB RAM and an Adreno 305 GPU, the LG G3 Beat didn’t stutter or lag in our use, navigating through the device, opening apps or even watching the videos we took. As expected, it is not as snappy as the higher end phones, but this is more than enough.
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Surprisingly, for a phone of this caliber, the camera is quite impressive. It’s an 8 megapixel sensor paired with laser autofocus and flash, and the photos that it takes are really good. They’re well saturated, vibrant and bright even in situations with lesser light. The only problem that we saw is that it sometimes oversharpens the images. All the same can be said even in video.
As for watching videos and playing music, the LG G3 Beat is nothing special, but it’s no slouch either. The speakers are loud but they’re far from producing whole sound, and the display is really good for watching video. LG’s apps for these also make the experience worthwhile.
Looping video at 50% screen brightness and 100% audio volume, we managed to drain the 2,540mAh battery in a good run of 9 hours. Standby time is also really great since we left it off the charger overnight with WiFi on and 10% left, and we woke up to 5%.
LG G3 Beat (D724) specs:
5-inch HD IPS display, 294ppi
1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU
Adreno 305 GPU
1GB RAM
8GB internal storage
up to 64GB via microSD
8 megapixel Laser AF rear camera w/ LED flash
1.3 megapixel front camera
Dual-SIM, Dual-Standby
3G HSPA+
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0, A2DP, LE
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
USB 2.0
Android 4.4.2 KitKat
2,540mAh battery
137.7 x 69.6 x 10.3 mm
134 g
White, Gold, Titan Black
SRP: Php13,990
The LG G3 Beat is a great phone in our opinion, but the name could be quite misleading. The G3 Beat is not the LG G3 in a smaller form factor, meaning you don’t get the same specs and performance – but what you do get is a similar experience in a more affordable package.
What we liked about it:
- Vibrant 720p display
- Loud speakers
- Long battery life
- Great camera
- No stutters
What we didn’t like about it:
- Oversharpened images and videos
- Expensive when you consider specs
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