Review: Coolpad Mega 2.5D Works Well, But Doesn’t Stand Out

Coolpad Mega 2.5D looks quite premium and has an impressive list of specifications. But is worth your money?

Coolpad Mega 2.5D offers a decent performance on a budget, but is it worth your money? (Photo: The Quint)

Coolpad has been a relatively low-key brand of late with its thunder being constantly stolen by its Chinese counterparts like Xiaomi and Lenovo. To change that, and to make serious in-roads in one of the most lucrative smartphone market, Coolpad has launched a slew of mid-range to budget smartphones.

Coolpad Mega 2.5D is one such smartphone, with a price tag of Rs 6,999. So, what’s so special about this one? Let’s figure out.

Coolpad Mega 2.5D has a 2.5D glass on the display, hence the name. (Photo: The Quint)

Pros:

• Big screen size
• Full metal body design
• 2.5D glass on the front

Cons:

• Low-light camera not very impressive
• Laggy performance

What’s Good?

Coolpad Mega 2.5D is a beautiful looking device. It’s metallic, thin and light. The back of the smartphone is slightly curved which makes it easier to hold. The 5.5-inch HD display is glazed with a 2.5D curved glass (hence the name) from edge to edge. The phone gives an overall premium feel in a very easy-on-the-pocket price.

The 4G smartphone has 3GB of RAM which does okay for basic multi-tasking and casual gaming. Talking of 3D games, the experience gets limited because of the screen sharpness and the lack of colour depth. It has 16GB in-built memory, with the option to expand it up to 32GB via a microSD card.

Coolpad Mega 2.5D lacks the punch in the display (Photo: The Quint)

Mega 2.5D comes with a MediaTek quad-core processor which runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. There’s a custom Coolpad UI which does away with the app-drawer system.

The custom UI also changes the notification panel as well as the overall functionality of the device. A few features, like the theme center and phone manager, among others, resemble those we’ve also seen in Xiaomi’s hugely popular MIUI.

The smartphone has 8-megapixel cameras, both in the front, and at the back, which perform decently. The colour contrast is satisfactory but the colours go a bit towards the light side.

The front camera has a beauty mode, which effectively gives you a virtual plastic surgery in most of the photos. Good luck recognising yourself there!

The camera on Mega 2.5D is satisfactory in daylight, but loses details and colours in low-light conditions. (Photo: The Quint)

What’s Bad?

Coolpad Mega 2.5D has two qualities it’s trying too hard sell through its name - ‘Mega’ and ‘2.5D’. Sadly, none of them is a novelty here. Almost every second or third phone nowadays comes with a similar design approach.

Coolpad Mega 2.5D feels like a generic smartphone and doesn’t stand out (Photo: The Quint)

On our review device, we particularly found the touch panel to be a bit unresponsive along the lower edge.

The battery performance is pretty average, derived from a 2,500mAh non-removable battery in the smartphone. Also, the 3GB RAM doesn’t quite match up to the actual performance seen on the phone, since the phone showed a visible pause while switching between apps, and the graphic-intensive games had a couple of frame drops too. So, not done.

You may need to keep the power-bank handy for this one. (Photo: The Quint)

Why Buy it?

Coolpad Mega 2.5D lacks a fingerprint scanner (Photo: The Quint)

Coolpad Mega 2.5D works well for the price, but feels quite generic when compared to other phones in this segment. Also, it isn’t able to match with the new Xiaomi Redmi 3S which retails in the same segment.

Coolpad Mega lacks a fingerprint scanner and the refined user experience seen on Redmi 3S. If you still decide to go for this, it would be a ‘mega’ leap of faith.