TCL 50 XL 5G smartphone review – Almost fine for $159

REVIEW – The TCL 50 XL 5G is a new release by TCL that is available at Metro by T-Mobile. It’s free with certain plans or $159 at full price. The company says the phone will eventually be available at other carriers and unlocked at Amazon, but there were no specifics given. One Samsung folding smartphone costs over $2100. Sony just released a new phone that costs $1500. The TCL 50 XL only costs 1,590 dimes. Can a $159 phone eek by these days? Did TCL continue to build on their record of good value at surprising prices. How did this econo-phone perform?

What is it?

The TCL 50 XL 5G is a new smartphone available as of May 2024 at Metro by T-Mobile.

What’s included?

• TCL 50 XL 5G
• 18W charger and cable
• SIM tool
• Standard paperwork

Tech specs

Design and features

The sides of the TCL 50 XL smartphone are flat instead of rounded and as a result are comfortable and more secure in the hand. I got a rubbery corner protector case but got to where I trusted myself to use the phone with the case off.

Curved edge phones have always surprised me by how hard they are to hold securely. Maybe it’s collusion with case makers? When I get a phone with curved edges it is immediately secured into a case.

I haven’t heard of ‘2.5D glass’ so I found this: “2.5D is only a naming convention that is used for addressing contoured glass, which is any glass that has a slight curvature towards its edges. So, 2.5D glass can be Gorilla Glass or any other brand of glass, strengthened or not.” TCL makes no claims about the glass so it must not be Gorilla, and may not be strengthened or I would expect the marketing specs to specify.

The TCL 50 XL has a fingerprint reader on the power switch under the volume rocker switch. It worked surprisingly well except when I had the case on the phone. Any case that prevents full finger exposure onto the surface of the reader will probably impede its ability to identify the print and unlock the phone.

The rear camera setup is a 50MP three lens cluster which includes depth, ultra-wide and macro.

The macro function can make some interesting pics but it’s nothing super impressive. I usually prefer to close-up in regular lens mode.

You’d expect low light to be a challenge for a budget phone so the 50 XL will surprise no one who needs to turn on the flash or add light to a scene.

No one buys a $159 phone for its sound quality, but for podcasts or casual music listening the 50 XL delivers more than its money’s worth. Clarity is good with no ‘splatter’ with the volume fully up. There’s even a bit, just a bit, of bass response. It’s a ‘tap’ vs. a ‘boom’ but hey, check the price again.

With good earbuds or over-ear headphones the 50 XL delivers excellent sound to the listening device.

The screen quality is sharp over its full dimensions, and colors are rendered accurately in comparison to my Pixel phone.

The 50 XL has NFC!  That’s seen less often on budget phones. Google Pay worked flawlessly through the 50 XL.

Assembly, Installation, Setup

Setup took me longer with the 50 XL than it usually does with other phones I’ve reviewed. I first tried to get the 50 XL to recognize my Pixel 6a. No dice. The phones wouldn’t communicate. Rebooted both, re-tried, had to move on. I then cabled the two phones together. I had to use my own cord because while TCL includes a charger and cable with the 50 XL, it’s USB-A to USB-C. With the two phones cabled together they seemed to recognize each other but wouldn’t do the data transfer. Rebooted and re-tried.

I resorted to what I usually do anyway and set up the phone with my last Google backup of my Pixel and all went well in relatively short order. If I had started with the Google backup setup I’d have been done within an hour. The really long part of phone setup is going into every app to make settings, get 2 factor authorizations, set permissions, notifications and tweaking all the settings that are not captured by the Google backup process.

The OS got an update as soon as I checked for one. TCL continues to update my older 30 XE quarterly and I’d expect the same with the 50 XL. Good on TCL! Security updates really matter to potential buyers.

Performance

A couple of times when charging the TCL 50 XL smartphone with the 18W charger and cable that came in the box, a ‘Slow charging’ indicator was on the screen.

I rotated the USB-C plug and Fast charging was indicated.

The 50 XL camera performed in the category of ‘pretty well’. Greens got embellished a bit and some well lit scenes were grainier than they appeared in reality.

One area where the phone occasionally struggled is with photo processing and backup.

It was a surprise to see how long it sometimes took the 50 XL to upload photos to Google Photos. The phone has 6GB RAM so it should have no operational lags. It would occasionally take the 50 XL several minutes to upload one photo to Google Photos on my fast home wifi. I think the process got stuck in a loop sometimes so I’d reboot the phone, then when it revived, the upload of that pic was brief, yet slower than other phones I’ve used.

I also sometimes had to wait several seconds to edit a photo in Google Photos instead of the Edit function opening immediately. I’d be looking at a pic that I took, tap ‘Edit’, and a ‘waiting spinner’ appeared until the Edit screen opened. It was often a 10-15 second wait before I could edit a photo. This was intermittent. Sometimes Edit opened immediately.

There was no perceptible lag for any other phone process. I moved quickly through multiple apps with no hiccups.

While testing the 50 XL on phone calls, words and syllables occasionally dropped out when people spoke to me during calls. This did not happen with every call, but did so on several calls. I first attributed this to having wifi calling on but when I turned off that feature the issue persisted. The 50 XL signal bars were always at 2 or above at my house which is comparable with any phone I’ve had. I experienced no dropped calls during my time testing the 50 XL. The conversation cut-out problem was intermittent so could it have been T-Mobile, a wonky tower, or solar activity? (That last one isn’t a joke anymore.) It happened enough that I lean towards it relating to a ‘cut corner’ part inside the 50 XL.

It’s important to acknowledge that signal bars are only a representation based on software programming. With two phones on the same carrier, my phone may show 3 bars while your phone shows two bars, and vice versa.

Occasionally, and fairly frequently, an app would send a notification that did not trigger the system-wide notification sound on the 50 XL. The notification was there to read visually, but had not triggered the usual alert tone I had set as my notification sound.

What I like about the TCL 50 XL 5G smartphone

• Great screen brightness and color
• Nice battery size without making the phone feel heavy
• No bloatware
• OS settings are easy to follow and use

What needs to be improved?

• No calls dropped but there was some audio ‘cut-out’ from people I called
• Fast charging should be consistent with the supplied charger
• Photo processing and camera performance could be enhanced
• A software update could improve notification sound delivery

Final thoughts

If the shortcomings of the TCL 50 XL 5G aren’t an issue for you, it can only be had at Metro by T-Mobile stores or ordered online for now. Or keep an eye out for other sources later if you don’t want to change carriers. Hopefully software updates can resolve the issues I had with the 50 XL 5G.

Price: Free with applicable plans or $159 retail.
Where to buy: Metro by T-Mobile in stores and online as of May 2024.
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by TCL. The company did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.