EE Harrier Mini review

Performance

The Harrier Mini’s day-to-day performance, however, was great for such a cheap handset. Despite sharing the same quad-core, 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor and 1GB of RAM as the Moto E, the Harrier Mini was actually faster in nearly all of our benchmark tests. For instance, its score of 505 and 1,471 in Geekbench 3’s single and multicore tests was a fraction higher than the Moto E’s scores of 470 and 1,397. We could see the difference in day-to-day use, too, as apps and menu settings loaded a fraction quicker on the Harrier Mini than the Moto E.

We’re also pleased to see that EE’s stuck with a vanilla version of Android 5.0.2 and has kept pre-installed app clutter to a minimum. There are a few fullscreen widgets you’ll probably want to get rid of, but everything you need as an EE customer can be found in the My EE app. This lets you check how much data, minutes and texts you have left each month, as well as top-up, buy add-ons and access the EE Store. Likewise, EE’s recently launched Wi-Fi calling service, which lets you make and receive calls over Wi-Fi if your signal drops out, will be available to use directly from the dialler later this summer. 

^ The Harrier Mini shares the same grey chassis and yellow highlight ring round the rear camera as the Harrier

Its score of 699 in FutureMark’s Peacekeeper browser test was also a touch higher than the Moto E’s figure of 625, but the difference here was less noticeable when we compared the two phones side by side. Web browsing was relatively smooth, but we did see the odd sign of lag when we tried scrolling down the Guardian’s homepage while it was still loading, for instance.

We were less impressed with the Harrier Mini’s graphics performance, though, as it failed to finish the offscreen Manhatten test in our GFX Bench GL benchmark. This isn’t surprising, as the Moto E only finished with a score of 112 frames (or 1.8fps), but it does mean that it will struggle with more demanding games such as Blizzard’s Hearthstone. When we tried the game out for ourselves, card battles were just about playable, but a few animations and various speech bubbles showed some considerable slowdown in the overall frame rate.

Battery Life

The Harrier Mini’s battery life was more promising, as its 2,000mAh battery lasted 10h 53m in our continuous video playback test with the screen brightness set to 170cd/m2. This should be more than enough to last you through the day, but it still pales in comparison to the Moto E’s battery life of 13h 30m.

Conclusion

As a result, the Harrier Mini isn’t nearly as good a bargain as its Harrier big brother. EE also shoots itself in the foot with its high contract prices. For instance, the Moto E is available on Carphone Warehouse’s iD Network for just £8.50-a-month with an upfront cost of £20 for 500MB of data, while the equivalent contract on EE costs a massive £14.99-a-month with no upfront cost. That’s the same price as the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua, which has a much faster processor and a superior camera, making the Sony handset much better value on contract. Alternatively, there’s also the superb Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 to consider if you’re thinking of changing networks, as this is only £125 on PAYG or £17-per-month on contract and blows every other budget handset out of the water, including the Moto E.