InFocus M2 review: Great smartphone, excellent price

InFocus, an American brand which entered India recently, seems to be locking horns with existing rivals in the budget smartphone segment. What other rivals are offering for a price tag above Rs 6,000, InFocus seems to offer a better hardware on a tighter budget.

The InFocus M2 sports an excellent form factor—very comfortably sized to fit every palm. At first glance, one would mistake it for the older generation Motorola Moto G, but this one is a tad smaller. With an 11.09mm thick body and 146 gram weight, the device feels nice to hold on to.

Sporting a glossy front panel, the display is a fingerprint magnet. The display panel features the earpiece with a front camera and an LED light/flash for selfies and video chats. The bottom area houses the three capacitive buttons for home, menu and back, but instead of being backlit, they are printed with reflective paint. The power button and the volume rocker take their places on the right and left sides of the phone. The top features the headphone jack while the bottom holds on to the micro USB port. The arcs-shaped rear panel has a rubberized texture with the primary camera, LED flash and a speaker grill. Being slim in width, and along with the rubberized rear panel, the InFocus has a very comfortable grip.

The M2 has a 4.2-inch display with an HD 355ppi WXGA panel sporting a resolution of 1280×768 pixels. Down under, the smartphone is powered by a MediaTek MT6582 chipset with four 1.3GHz processors, 1GB of RAM and a MALI-400 graphics processor. The internal storage supplied is 8GB and can be expandable to 64GB via the micro SD card slot. The rear camera and the front camera sport 8MP sensors with individual LED flashlights. Supporting dual SIM with 3G support, the InFocus M2 also has connectivity options such as Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth, and GPS. Additional features include FM radio, Ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, G-sensor and Gyroscope sensors. The InFocus M2 is fuelled by a 2010mAh battery, which can give you a maximum talk time of 480 minutes with 3G enabled. The M2 runs on an Android KitKat 4.4.2 operating system and features InFocus’ InLife UI along with EZ Launcher.

On the performance front, the InFocus does not show any issues such as lagging or halts. The user interface is smooth, but does not sport an app drawer. All app icons are seen on the desktop screens. Preloaded apps such as Chrome, Facebook, Dropbox and a few more are already present, so you don’t need to waste time and data downloading the apps after setting up. Sporting a quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM, the InFocus is good enough for casual gaming and alike. Due to the smaller display, you may need to change to Google Keyboard, or install another one of your choice as the default keyboard has very tiny keys, making typing a little cumbersome.

The display on the M2 is great—thanks to the smaller screen size at 4.2-inches and the HD resolution with, the ppi increases to 355, making the image quality look crisper and more detailed. The viewing angles are also good with absolutely no inversions or negative images on the screen from any angle. Movie playback is enjoyable with crips colours and sharpness.

However, on the other hand, the audio quality from the onboard rear speaker is a little disappointing. The volume is average and lacks adequate mid and bass levels. You would have to cup your palm behind the smartphone in order to watch casual videos from YouTube, social platforms or online websites. We suggest you put on headphones in order to get better quality music or audible vocals.

The camera on the rear and the front are powered by 8MP sensors. It seems to be a first smartphone with 8MP cameras on both sides (with LED flash) priced below Rs 5,000. The rear camera has a surprisingly good imaging performance, as compared to other rivals in the market. For the low price tag, the performance of the camera is excellent. Pictures shot by the rear camera are above average and have an above average contrast ratio.images are also pretty sharp and colour reproduction is almost true to life. However, the focusing and capturing of images is a little slower, making instantaneous photography a little sluggish. On the other hand, HDR performance is also not up to the mark. The front camera being an 8MP is not as good as the rear camera. The images are a tad grainy and you would need adequate light on the subject for a sharper image. The front camera also features automatic smile detection.

Overall, the performance of the InFocus M2 is great. With a surprisingly above average camera performance and a quad-core processor under the hood, the M2 is a great choice for those hunting for an Android smartphone on a shoe-string budget. We definitely recommend the M2 for budget smartphone seekers. If you are looking for other budget smartphones in a slightly higher range, you could also check a few low-budget handsets from Motorola, Xiaomi, Lenovo, ASUS and a few others.