The good news is that it’s entirely usable day to day. Performance matters more than numbers, though, and for that Blu gives mixed results. None of which can compare to last year’s flagships, much less the latest leaders, but still, not bad, considering! There’s a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor powering the operation, a 5-inch, Gorilla Glass 3 (a generation behind, but still hearty) HD display, and 5MP/8MP front and rear cameras.

Still, they’re better than you’d expect for something that costs about what you’d spend on a 3-D movie date. We might as well talk about the specs, too, although if you care much about specs you’re not the target audience for this phone. Buying it with no ads at all will cost you $100 or $110, respectively. Unless you’re a Hamilton away from affording a critical blood transfusion, it’s worth stepping up. For 10 bucks more, you can double both of those. The entry level, ad-laden R1 HD costs $50, which nets you 8GB of storage and one measly gig of RAM. That one starts at $150 with offers and ads-plenty cheap, but it’s got nothing on the R1 HD. The other is the Moto G4, the latest in an established lineage of high-quality, inexpensive phones. As for the caveats, its R1 HD is one of two phones that are Prime Exclusives, a new program that gives Amazon Prime members steep discounts on devices in exchange for allowing ads on their lock screens, in their notifications, as well as on a suite of preinstalled Amazon apps. It’s a smartphone company, based in Florida, that specializes in surprisingly affordable hardware that runs minimally tweaked Android firmware.

Let’s back up for a minute, because Blu isn’t a name most people know-this is not the e-cig company, please do not try to vape this phone-and that price tag comes with a few important caveats.īlu itself is easy enough to explain. The only benchmark it needs to clear is: Can you believe this only costs $60? And honestly, I still can’t. Is this camera better than that one? Is this interface more responsive? Does this battery last long enough (probably not)? The Blu R1 HD asks an entirely different question, though.

That’s usually the word reviews pivot around, after all. I started to enjoy the Blu R1 HD a lot more as soon as I let go of the word “better.”

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