TCL Stylus 5G Review: Stylus over substance

The stylus feels great, but the software does not

It's a post-LG Mobile world. For a while now, the only option you had for a budget-friendly phone with a stylus was the Motorola G Stylus series. With two versions at disparate price points, Motorola was well-positioned to be the only game in town in this niche. The T-Mobile-bound TCL Stylus 5G shakes that up a bit by bringing some premium specs and features down to a lower price.

At just $258, TCL’s Stylus 5G barely misses out on being the cheapest stylus phablet on in the US, but with a Dimensity 700 and 5G it has similar specs to phones that cost about an extra Benjamin. While the software doesn’t have the same polish as Motorola’s, the stylus itself feels much better in the hand. However, with all the considerations given to the stylus part of this phone, I’d have liked to see similar attention paid to the rest of the package.

Design, hardware, and stylus features

The layout of the Stylus 5G is pretty intuitive, with the power button just under the halfway point on the right side for easy single-handed use. Above that is the volume rocker, and on the left side is the SIM/MicroSD card tray. From left to right on the bottom you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack, the USB-C port, the bottom-firing speaker, and the eponymous stylus. While other cheap phones are designed to emulate the more expensive glass sandwich look, the TCL Stylus makes no attempt to disguise its plastic, going with a textured back for better fingerprint resistance. The sides also eschew the clean smooth look that’s popular right now for texture lines for added grip.

While many manufacturers are losing the charging brick, the Stylus 5G comes with an 18W wall wart. This isn’t particularly fast by today’s standards, but it’s the maximum speed the Stylus supports, so it’s nice to get the best possible option included.

It’s surprising to see the MediaTek Dimensity 700 here. The fact that it’s a MediaTek chipset isn’t the surprising bit—we've seen it in phones like the Moto G 5G very recently, but the Dimensity 700 rarely makes appearances at such a low price, a notable exception being the Galaxy A13 5G. That said, the Stylus only has 4GB of RAM. That's on the verge of too little for long-term reliability in 2022.

Display

The 6.8-inch 1080p panel in the Stylus is decent, with good colors, and high enough brightness to see in direct sunlight, but it won't blow you away. I’m not saying it’s a bad display, but I'm really missing the high refresh rate of some newer budget phones. TCL being a display manufacturer is a clear advantage here, and it could have allowed the Stylus 5G to have a vastly better display than other OEMs at this price, but instead, its display is almost identical in size, resolution, and overall quality to the one found in the $250 Moto G Stylus, but at 60 instead of 90Hz. To its credit, the TCL Stylus has darker blacks than the Moto G Stylus, but not dark enough to not notice the bezels or chin on the TCL phone.

The display also leans on software in the forms of TCL’s NXTVISION and HDR upscaling. Most of the time I didn’t notice or think about these bits of visual tuning, which is a bit of a mixed bag. Sure it isn’t bad enough to be negative, but if it’s not good enough to notice when it’s on then it can’t really be called a selling point either.

Being honest, the entire point of this phone is the stylus, and TCL did pay attention to its design. While most other capacitive styli are skinny, round, and difficult to hold firmly, this one has a thicker more rectangular shape that’s that I find much comfier. The shape is reminiscent of a carpenter’s pencil, so you can set it down without having to worry about it rolling away, and it even has a magnet in it to pull it into the phone.

Software and performance

TCL made several software adjustments for the stylus. You get a similar customizable floating menu as what the Moto G Stylus lineup has, but pre-loaded with some stylus-centric apps. My Script Calculator 2 and a TCL-specific version of Nebo are the two apps in question. MSC2 has great handwriting recognition and does algebra equations just as easily as it does basic arithmetic, and Nebo for TCL lets you easily take notes and draw on top of PDFs.

The Stylus 5G also lets you save your signature right on the device, which is a big help if you find yourself signing things often. Another subtly great stylus feature is how quick notes work while the screen is off. If you remove the stylus without turning the screen off, the Stylus 5G will open a quick note with a black background and blue text by default, that way you can write down that idea you had in the middle of the night without your screen frying your eyes. TCL didn’t invent this—Samsung added this to the Note series years ago, but it’s still nice to have.

At the end of the day, though, the stylus optimizations are better on Motorola's phones. Samsung's, too, but they're all much more expensive. it wouldn't be so bad, but the software is generally buggy.

While it’s always nice to see the Dimensity 700 in cheaper phones, the Stylus 5G only has 4GB of RAM to the 6GB of the Moto G, and that difference is pretty easy to notice since it can feel sluggish when apps have been in the background too long and need to restart. TCL is using some pretty aggressive memory management, including a dedicated “Smart Manager” app that lets you know your RAM usage and what apps are in your cache that could be cleared out. These tools are often more trouble than they’re worth. Maybe just put more RAM in the phone?

The memory management was actually so aggressive out of the box that the Stylus would force quit the YouTube app every time I used background play. An update has already been pushed that fixed that, as well as an issue I had where the YouTube app just vanished from the phone. Fast updates like that at least give me more confidence in TCL’s ability to stay on top of things. While it’s just limited to two years of security and a single Android version update, that is pretty in line with most other budget options on the market.

Battery life

The 4000mAh battery isn’t big compared to other phones in this price range, but it’s still enough to make it into two-day phone territory. I generally only charged it every other day, and never really hit the point where I was worried it would die on me. I know that adding a built-in stylus is a surefire way to sacrifice battery capacity, but the Stylus 5G doesn’t seem to be hurting much from that.

Cameras

The Stylus 5G is in pretty well-trod territory with a 50MP main shooter, since even sub-$200 devices are seeing those now. Also on the back are a 2MP macro, 5MP ultrawide, and a depth sensor. Around the front in the hole punch is a 13MP selfie camera. Video on the main and selfie cameras is limited to 30fps no matter the resolution, which tops out at 1080p for them both.

Picture quality out of the main shooter is okay in bright sunlight, but don’t expect any miracles in low light. You will lose the occasional nighttime shot to motion blur, and even stationary objects won’t be free of graininess, but it’ll be fine at capturing precious moments during daylight hours. Also expect pictures from this camera to come out much cooler than any of the others, even with warm light sources.

The selfie camera has a bit of artificial smoothness pumped into it, which I’ve always thought can ruin pics, but there’s no shortage of people face tuning their shots before they hit the gram, so it’s not like there’s no demand for that. At least it’s better than artificial sharpness turning your pores into craters.

The 5MP ultra-wide is more useful than the depth sensor since it actually gives you added flexibility. 5MP isn’t exactly great, and you should expect to lose fine details, but that’s not why you use an ultrawide. It's significantly wider than the main camera, and has a close enough minimum focus distance for interesting perspective changes you couldn't manage otherwise. It'll definitely suffice for some group shots in even fairly cramped spaces—much better than chucking another 2MP lens onto there and calling it a feature.

The “super macro” camera doesn’t really feel very macro to me. The field of view is wider than the main camera, and the minimum focus distance is barely any closer. What pictures it does manage to get that the main couldn’t still turn out grainy under even the best of conditions because, as you can probably guess, 2MP is pretty bad by today’s standards. Probably for the best that it’s hidden away in the extra camera modes.

Should you buy it?

Probably not. If you’re in the market for a phone with a stylus, you’re probably only looking at the S22 Ultra or the Moto G Stylus lineup. Even in the sub-$300 bracket, it's harder to justify a 4G phone provided you plan to use it for a few years. You have to spend $500 to get that from Motorola. So, the TCL Stylus 5G does have its place—just a very small one.

I really like the stylus-centric features TCL included—along with its fast note-taking, and focus on handwriting recognition, but I wish the rest of the OS had as much fine-tuning. It's a shame because the phone has a decent display and stylus. If you’re looking at the Moto G Stylus 5G, stepping down to the TCL Stylus 5G will probably have too many tradeoffs for your taste, especially since T-Mobile carries a $300 cut-down version of the Moto G Stylus 5G. If you were only looking at the 4G Moto G Stylus, the extra eight bucks for TCL's 5G phone is worth it.

Buy it if…

• You want a phone with a built-in stylus and 5G on the cheap
• A flagship phone is out of the question

Don’t buy it if…

• You can spend a little more to get the Moto G Stylus 5G
• Software glitches drive you up the wall

Q: How does the TCL Stylus 5G compare to the Motorola Moto G Stylus?

The Moto G Stylus can be had for just $8 less than the TCL Stylus, but that meager increase nets you a much newer MediaTek Dimensity 700 compared to the Helio G88 in the Moto model. It also comes with faster 5G support, but gets 2GB less RAM, 1000mAh less battery capacity, a slower refresh rate on the display, but at least has the same storage capacity, resolution, and megapixel count on the main camera. The Moto G Stylus also has higher resolution wide angle and selfie cameras, but has a skinnier stylus that's harder to use, and only has Android 11 compared to the Android 12 the TCL Stylus ships with, though both are slated for a single Android release and 2 years of security updates.

Q: How does the TCL Stylus 5G compare to the Motorola Moto G 5G

While both phones have the same SOC, the Moto G 5G has 2 extra GB of RAM, twice the storage, an extra 1000 mAh of battery capacity, a higher refresh rate 90Hz display, but at a lower resolution of 720p. At about $100 extra with the same SOC, some extras are to be expected, but both phones have 13MP selfie cameras, 50MP main cameras, 2MP macro and depth sensing cameras, but the TCL also adds a 5MP wide angle camera along with its stylus. Both shipped with Android 12 and have the same promise of 2 years of security updates and Android 13 at some point in the future.