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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the cheap-but-not-"cheap" dept.

Tom's Guide reports [tomsguide.com]

Blu R1 HD Review: Great for $50, with a Catch

The good

• Superaffordable
• Sleek design
• Bright [5-inch, 1280 x 720] display
• Good battery life

The bad

• Amazon ads are annoying
• Blurry camera
• Has trouble with graphic-intensive apps

[...]This budget Android device can be had for as low as $49 unlocked, but that price is only available for Amazon Prime members who are willing to look at all kinds of Amazon offers and promotions every time they open the lock screen.

[...]Packing a quad-core, 1.3-GHz MediaTek 6735 ARM Cortex processor with 8GB of RAM, the Blu R1 HD is powerful enough for basic tasks, but not great for resource-intensive apps. It never slowed me down during my day-to-day activities, whether I was checking messages, jumping between apps, or watching videos on YouTube or Amazon Video.

However, it's not ideal for the highest-end games in the Play Store. The gory, graphically intense action of Mortal Kombat X was playable but noticeably chuggy on the R1. The game also took quite a while to load, but, to be fair, I wasn't expecting stellar gaming performance from a $50 device.

[...]If you'd rather not succumb to your Amazon overlords, the ad-free version of the phone starts at $99 for the 8GB/1GB model, and costs $109 for the 16GB/2GB model.

[...]One big caveat: [For] carriers, it only works with AT&T and T-Mobile.

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