LG’s latest low-end mid-ranger comes with a disappointing set of specs considering its price and its competitors. Though it has a pretty solid main camera, there are some compromises to be made.
LG seems to be cutting back on some of its big smartphone investments in 2020, skipping out on a new G-series flagship and instead, releasing the LG Velvet. That makes use of mostly mid-range specs, so the company clearly isn’t trying to compete at the same level as some other manufacturers.
However, LG is still investing in the lower end of the smartphone market, with the refreshed K series being announced back in February and launching last month in Europe, comprised of the LG K61, K51S, and K41S. Out of those, the K61 is the higher-end model, and that’s what LG sent me to try out.
I haven’t really used an LG phone for a significant amount of time before, so this was a somewhat new experience for me, and I’d say it was alright. I compare it directly to the TCL 10L I reviewed earlier in the year, because it launched at the exact same price in Portugal, €279.99, and there are advantages and disadvantages to each of them.
The LG K61’s design doesn’t really do much to stand out, but I liked it more than I thought I would. The overall design language reminds me of some older smartphone designs, like the LG G5 from 2016, but it doesn’t feel outdated when I look at it. There’s something about its curves that makes it look nice and it’s also super comfortable to hold, so while it’s somewhat bland, it definitely has some design points going for it in my view.
On the back of the phone, you’ll find the quad-camera setup in a horizontal layout and, again, the curvature of the camera module really feels like it adds to the design here. Likewise, the fingerprint sensor below it is also round and it works about as well as you’d want it to.
Going around the edges of the phone, the right side only has a power button and a SIM card slot, all pretty standard.
The left side has the volume rocker with separate keys, and below that, an extra button to engage with the Google Assistant. I’m not a huge fan of buttons that only work with digital assistants, and the TCL 10L would have had an advantage here — but at some point since my review, the «Smart Key» on it also got turned into a Google Assistant button, so it’s neck and neck between the two.
The top edge has nothing aside from a single microphone. Meanwhile, at the bottom, there’s another microphone, a speaker grill, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a USB Type-C port for charging.
The display on the LG K61 is also pretty standard for its price point, being a 6.53-inch Full HD+ LCD. It looks pretty good, I would say, but it’s not something that will blow your mind. Colors look good without being overly saturated, and I think it does a slightly better job with pure blacks than some other LCD panels. It doesn’t get incredibly bright outdoors, so some users might have trouble viewing it comfortably, but I didn’t have any problems with it.
More important to me is the ability to change the display scaling, which lets me make UI elements smaller on the screen. This may seem trivial, but a surprising amount of phones don’t let me do that, and it’s annoying to have large screens being wasted by displaying huge icons for everything.
