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- Exquisite matte display
- Solid battery life
- Lovely telephoto camera
- Not the fastest processor
- Weak ultrawide camera
- Side-mounted fingerprint sensor
TCL has been producing smartphones with its matte “Nxtpaper” screen coating for a while now, but the TCL P80 Ultra represents the next step in its evolution. Where all past models have made do with lower-quality LCD displays, the P80 Ultra pairs Nxtpaper tech with a premium AMOLED display, meaning that same paper-like feel and eye-care features but with the vibrant colours, true black level response and perfect contrast of AMOLED.
I’ve always been a fan of Nxtpaper devices, but it is with incredible ease that I say this: the TCL P80 Ultra is the best version yet. AMOLED really brings the matte display to life and all of my complaints about TCLs previous screens are swept away here.
The P80 Ultra has great battery life and a mostly solid selection of cameras, but more modest performance speeds and shorter software support than some rivals take some of the shine off. Still, if you’re a regular e-reader who is sick of carrying multiple devices, the TCL P80 Ultra is the best phone/e-reader you can buy right now.
TCL P80 Ultra: What you need to know
This shiny new AMOLED display is a 6.83in panel with a resolution with a sharp 2,772 x 1,280 resolution and a peak refresh rate of 120Hz. As a Nxtpaper screen, it also has that gorgeous matte feel and eye-care features like anti-glare, PWM dimming up to 3,840Hz and low-light brightness that drops the screen down to just 2 nits, perfect for avoiding eye-strain during late-night reading sessions.
As with other TCL phones, the P80 Ultra also features a Nxtpaper switch on the right edge that transforms the display, making it look more muted and flat, just like an e-reader. This makes switching to reading mode fast and instinctive, with the Max Ink mode taking things a step further by restricting background apps’ ability to send you notifications, allowing for a more serene, uninterrupted reading experience.
The selfie camera is a 32-megapixel offering and over on the rear is a triple-camera set-up: the main shooter is a 50-megapixel sensor and it’s joined by an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 50-megapixel periscope telephoto shooter that offers a 3x optical zoom.
Inside, the TCL P80 Ultra is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 7400 Ultra chipset, clocked at a frequency of 2.6GHz and backed by 8GB of RAM and 256GB, or 512GB of storage. The battery has an above-average capacity of 5,800mAh and supports wired charging up to 45W.
Price and competition
The TCL P80 Ultra starts at £480 for the model with 256GB of storage, while the 512GB version costs £530.
My favourite phone around this price is currently the Google Pixel 10a, which costs £479 for the 256GB model. There’s no 512GB variant, unfortunately, but anyone happy with less storage can nab the 128GB model for just £399.
While the Pixel 10a excels in overall camera quality and benefits from a fantastic seven years of software support, it doesn’t have a telephoto camera. If you want one of those included, the Nothing Phone (4a) with 256GB of storage is also currently going for just £399 – though once again, there’s no 512GB option.
Also at £399 is the 256GB Honor 600, which lacks a telephoto camera but comes close to the Pixel’s software support, with six years of OS updates and security patches. There’s also a 512GB version, but this is increasingly difficult to buy right now. I’ve seen it for around £419 occasionally, but stock is severely limited.
Design and key features
The TCL P80 Ultra comes in three colourways; my review sample is the straightforward Midnight Blue but there’s also a bright “Sunlit Gold” variant or a rich Burgundy colour. All three have a matte aluminium frame and a matte plastic rear that does a reasonable job at hiding fingerprint smudges.
The last TCL Ultra phone that I reviewed, the Nxtpaper 60 Ultra, had a massive 7in display to better bridge the gap between phone and e-reader. While it certainly benefitted reading, I found the phone a little unwieldy. The TCL P80 Ultra and its 6.83in display feels like a better balance, with the 78 x 8.3 x 163mm (WDH) measurements edging closer to phone than Kindle. The 193g weight is decent for a phone of this size, too, meaning that long reading sessions shouldn’t result in wrist ache.
There’s no Gorilla Glass topping the panel, but the screen is covered with a layer of nano crystal shield glass for scratch protection. The phone is also rated IP68, meaning that it’s dustproof and can withstand submersion in 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes.
One downside of the otherwise excellent display is that you don’t get an under-display fingerprint sensor. Instead, this is incorporated into the power button on the right edge. Both it and face unlocking via the selfie camera work well, but as a lefty, I find power button fingerprint sensors fiddly and better suited to right-handers.
The phone’s software is built on Android 16 and TCL has pledged four years of OS updates and six of security patches. That’s not on par with the seven and seven that Google gives the Pixel 10a, but is otherwise very competitive for this price. You get the usual grab-bag of AI features, too, such as translation, writing assist and transcription.
Display
TCL bringing AMOLED to its Nxtpaper series is the biggest highlight here, and the new display did not disappoint in my testing. Colours pop beautifully, black areas are deep and inky, contrast is exceptional and the screen is capable of incredible brightness. With adaptive brightness set and a torch shining on the light sensor, I saw the brightness zip up to an outstanding 2,153cd/m2, which is far brighter than you’re ever likely to need.
As impressive as this was, it did make the screen very hot very quickly, so it’s a good job that it only went that high under test conditions. Using the screen in direct sunlight saw it get bright enough to remain easily readable, but it didn’t soar into supernova territory, and the panel stayed at a far more manageable temperature.
More to the point, you shouldn’t need excessive brightness when faced with the sun’s full might, because the Nxtpaper display is blessed with an exceptional anti-glare coating. Nano etching in the matte layer effectively disperses reflections, meaning that even when the sun is shining directly on the screen, you’re still able to clearly see the contents of your display without having to squint past an obnoxious glare.
Colours look gorgeous on the standard Vivid setting, but anyone looking for authenticity will prefer the Natural colour profile, where I recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 99.1% and a volume of 101.9%, with an average Delta E 1.13 indicating near-perfect accuracy.
Flick the Nxtpaper switch and select the Paper Mode and these colours will fade to a soft pastel palette, similar to what you’d see on the Kindle Colorsoft. This setting is great for reading comics and the like, but you can further customise it in the settings, dialling the colour all the way down to simple black outlines and altering the screen temperature.
This kind of personalisation is always appreciated, but I just wish it wasn’t buried in the settings menu. Previous Nxtpaper devices let you choose between standard e-ink and colour ink when you flicked the switch, but the P80 Ultra only offers Paper and Max Ink modes, which feels like an unnecessary restriction.
Performance and battery life
The Mediatek Dimensity 7400 Ultra chipset is a middle-of-the-road SoC, with an acceptable peak clock speed of 2.6GHz and 8GB of RAM. I found it to be perfectly functional in daily use, allowing me to undertake simple operations, run multiple windows simultaneously and engage in some work tasks without slowing down. It’s a fine processor that gets the job done.
Compare it to the competition, however, and you see the cracks start to form. For one thing, the P80 Ultra is no more powerful than the Nxtpaper 70 Pro or the Nxtpaper 60 Ultra. More of an issue is just how much faster the Google Pixel 10a is, with a lead over the TCL of 59% in the Geekbench 6 single-core test and 35% in the multi-core.
It’s much the same story on the gaming side of things, with the TCL P80 Ultra firmly at the rear of the pack in the Geekbench 6 Vulkan GPU test. If your gaming habits are relatively casual, you’ll get on with the P80 Ultra just fine – I ran laps in Asphalt Legends without framerate dips – but anyone who regularly runs demanding 3D games will find the Pixel better equipped to handle them.
Where the TCL P80 Ultra really impressed me, however, was its battery life. I was quite underwhelmed by the last TCL Ultra’s stamina, so I was curious, bordering on optimistic, to see the P80 Ultra fitted with a high-capacity 5,800mAh cell. And it did indeed deliver in my testing, lasting for 26hrs 45mins.
The Google Pixel 10a still leads the class with its ridiculously good result of 38hrs 24mins, but this is a solid result for a mid-range phone, and will easily see you through a full day of use without issue.
The 45W charging is decent but it has that massive 5,800mAh battery to fill, so it’s not the fastest around. 30 minutes on charge brought the battery to 48% and it took 1hr 15mins to hit 100%. That’s still better than the Pixel 10a, at least, which needed around 90 minutes for a full charge.
Cameras
The 50MP (f/1.8) main camera is a reliable shooter in good lighting, snapping a decent amount of detail and producing natural-looking colours. The only minor issue I had with it was that some shots looked a little washed out on particularly sunny days, with the image processing being a little stingy with the contrast.
Night photography is competent, too, with natural colouring and a fair amount of detail when you have artificial light sources to work with. There’s a bit too much visual noise in the sky but overall, this isn’t half-bad for a mid-range phone.
The 50MP (f/2.4) 2x periscope telephoto is far from a given at this kind of price, with telephotos still most commonly found on upper mid-range and flagship devices. So its mere presence here is a win, and as it turns out, it’s not a bad little shooter, either. In fact, it’s my favourite of the P80 Ultra’s cameras.
I found it performed particularly well with highly-detailed, colour-packed close-up scenes. Just look at the photograph below of a bug hanging out on a rose; the level of detail in the stem and leaves is superb and the clear background separation makes the pink petals really pop.
The P80 Ultra can zoom all the way up to a frankly silly 100x, but detail drops off dramatically by that point. You can still get solid shots up to around 30x, which is very good for this kind of money – the Pixel 10a tops out at a rather meagre 8x in comparison.
The 8-megapixel ultrawide is, unsurprisingly, the weak link of the rear trio. The 112-degree field of view isn’t as wide as some rivals and the level of detail it can capture is mediocre. It does at least match the colour tone of the main camera and contrast is quite good, but that’s about it for positives.
Video is fine for this price, shooting 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps on the rear camera and 1,440p at 30fps on the 32MP selfie camera. The only rival that has a slight edge on video is the Google Pixel 10a, as it supports recording 4K at 60fps.
TCL P80 Ultra: Verdict
And that is the main takeaway here: for an all-round mid-range phone that excels across the board, the Google Pixel 10a remains your best bet. The TCL P80 Ultra isn’t exactly trying to be a jack of all trades, however, instead zeroing in on a specific use-case and putting all its eggs in that basket.
And it seriously succeeds on that front. The TCL P80 Ultra has what could well be my favourite phone display ever, with all the benefits of AMOLED combined with the paper feel, eye-care and anti-glare of Nxtpaper. Add in excellent battery life and a solid selection of cameras and this is a no-brainer for anyone who regularly e-reads on the go.
