Bold claim huh?
Well I stand by it .The Infinix Hot 4 is probably the best sub 10,000 phone you can get right now. I have reviewed and used a number of sub 10k phones and this one pulls something special out of the bag. It is nothing like all those other sub 10k phones. This is a device that is in a class of its own.
Let’s get some things out of the way first. The Hot series of Infinix devices mostly contains devices that are sub 10k, making them very affordable. Second thing, they are quality devices. I have reviewed two of them this year, the Hot 3 and Hot 3 LTE and they were awesome. Thirdly, this is the second iteration of the Hot series to be released this year
I have been asking myself why Infinix needed to release a new Hot in the same year, and after using it, I think I know why.
So back to why I call this the best sub 10k phone
It’s beautiful. It’s very well designed and definitely a much needed facelift from the Infinix Hot 3. The back has a beautiful 3D textured design to it that not only looks good but adds to the overall grip. We have new elements like the fingerprint scanner at the back and with a 5.5 inch screen, it has a slightly bigger form factor than the previous Hot 3. The front, well…that hasn’t changed much. The capacitive buttons are still characteristically not back lit.
We also have a ton of colour options here, mine comes in ‘Luxurios gold’…fancy
I should mention too that it is a tad heavier than the previous Hot 3 but for good reason. I’ll get to that soon
The fingerprint scanner is something new we are seeing here. Infinix has really taken it on to provide this in the devices they have released this year. I think it’s the same one present in the Note 3 and the Hot S. This means that it is quite fast and accurate when unlocking and you also get some actions that you can control using it. You can take a picture and answer a call using it. However, it misses the ‘scrolling through pictures using your finger print feature present in the Hot S
The 720p HD display is bright and colourful and yet again XOS Chameleon reigns here alongside Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Check out my HOT S review for more about it. The 720p screen looks very good, I really can’t complain much here. Colours really pop and it’s a very warm display. Might be too much to ask for a 1080p screen at that price point.
What about performance?
It handles load very well. It is fast and snappy and should handle day to day phone tasks quite well. I browse on several tabs, some social media and casual gaming and this is a breeze on the Hot 4. With a MT6580 quad core processor with 2GB of RAM, I’d call this a good deal. Gaming is splendid here. I play both minimalistic games and casual games that come with graphics that don’t seem to come in the way of the overall performance.
Multitasking is handled well in the Hot 4, though jumping out of apps and coming back in caused them to reload. Overall the performance is quite good. It hasn’t frozen on me yet during my time using it. Another big boost to the performance has to be the massive battery
The battery has been upgraded to a non- removable 4000 mAh power that is massive. This is why it feels heavier. The good thing about such a big battery is that you can afford not to worry about power for a whole day, even 2, might get drained on the evening of the second or morning of the 3rd day depending on how you use it. Crazy or what!
This was the best feature here for me because that is a lot of value for under 10 k. Other sub 10k device that I reviewed was the Cubot Note S. It’s not something that comes easy at that price point and it is a joy to see it here.
We have an 8MP and 5MP camera combo that perform just fine for that price point. We can’t really expect much here but it does pull out some good shots here and there. For the price, some sacrifices had to be made.It suffers indoors but hold up well outside.
Overall this is a very well balanced device. We have some stand out moments like the display, fingerprint reader and battery and some sacrifices like the camera. All in all, it is a very solid device at its price point. There are other versions of it. There is the Hot 4 Lite which doesn’t come with the scanner, comes with 1GB of RAM and no LTE and the Hot 4 Pro that has a better camera (13MP back) and 4G connectivity as compared to the Hot 4
It goes for the low price of Kshs 9,699 on Jumia Kenya.
So why did they have to release 3 more Hot series devices in the same year that it gave us the Hot 3 and Hot 3 LTE? Well because they can. Might be overkill but maybe they wanted to show what a sub 10k device should look like in 2016. To push boundaries. They even call it a bold experiment on their site and trust me, it surely is.
