Yu Ace Review – Ticks many boxes, yet faces the Redmi heat

Yu is a sub-brand of Micromax that was launched a few years ago, the brand did bring out some decent smartphones but has been dormant for a while now. The brand had some a decent market in 2014 but the brand actually came out with very few smartphones that were quickly forgotten. After about a year of dormancy, Micromax started talking about Yu again and released the Yu Ace on August 30 for a price of Rs 5,999. The smartphone was launched to compete with the budget offerings from companies like Xiaomi and 10.or.

We’ve been using the smartphone for a while now and one of the best features of the smartphone is its battery life and while the Yu Ace does compromise on the camera, not much can be expected at the price point. In this review, we go through the essentials of the smartphone to understand if the Yu Ace is a good buy.

Design, Build Quality

The design is very subjective in the smartphone and while a few people love shiny colors and chrome accents, most people sometimes prefer a subtle finish on the smartphone. The Yu Ace is made of a very shiny plastic back and while it certainly doesn’t look or feel premium, it sure feels gaudy. The finish also makes the Yu Ace a fingerprint magnet and the device back panel is also easily prone to scratches. The Yu Ace is a pretty thick phone and the thickness is mostly acceptable given the size of the battery that it houses. While the phone does feel very clunky, it is expected that most users would be willing to trade off a few design aspects to get the bigger battery on the smartphone.

The smartphone measures 5.45-inches and is averagely sized, it is very much usable with just one hand and the smartphone doesn’t get uncomfortable to hold unlikely most new smartphones. The screen has a 2.5D glass layer on it and curved glass isn’t common on such affordable smartphones. The fingerprint sensor is on the rear and works pretty good for the price.

Performance

The Yu Ace is powered by the 1.5GHz quad-core MediaTek MTK6739 processor and has 2GB of RAM along with 16GB of internal storage. While the device has very basic specifications, it does handle the basic tasks with ease. We tried a list of apps including a few social media apps, chat apps, banking and other miscellaneous apps on the smartphone, while most apps didn’t have any issue with the performance and we were able to do the regular tasks at ease, few apps did make the phone very slow. We only had an issue running the Snapchat application and the DBS Digi bank application on the smartphone which showed significant stutter on the device. The Yu Ace runs on Android Oreo operating system which gives it access to some of the newer API’s.

While the device is not a great performer, it should be able to handle most of the daily tasks comfortably, the Yu Ace is expected to compete with the recently launched Redmi 6A and both the devices are powered by different processors but have similar overall specifications.

The Yu Ace has a surprisingly good screen for the price point and shows pretty good colors. The display is brighter than an average phone and offered punchy colors and the display on the Yu Ace is arguably one of the best in the price range. While the display feels overly bright in the indoors when the slider is set to max, going outdoors explains the reason for the inclusion of such a bright display.

The Yu Ace runs on Android Oreo and while it is not the latest Android-based operating system, it is still better than Android Nougat that a lot of budget phones run. The best part about the software is that most of the operating system is that Micromax has kept most of the OS stock with little modifications. The brand has customized the icons to an extent but the app drawer, notification shade and even the settings menu are retained stock.

Camera

The Yu Ace comes with a 13MP rear sensor and a 5MP front sensor, despite the big numbers, the camera doesn’t perform all that well. While most of the images we captured were indoor in moderate lighting conditions, the camera failed in capturing much detail in the shots. We tried comparing the Yu Ace to images were taken with the Redmi 5A and Yu Ace didn’t perform as good which is a let-down considering the fact that we weren’t impressed with the Redmi 5A camera either.

The camera does a very basic job in well-lit situations but still fails to capture any detail. The color reproduction isn’t great either and it was a very disappointing experience. The low light images only turn worse and the camera performs very poorly in low light conditions and barely anything is captured by the sensor. The contrast levels are good either and the focus does take a moment to get a lock. We occasionally also noticed a shutter lag and the overall camera experience is far from optimal.

Final Verdict

The Yu Ace has a decent design, while the brand tried to make the design premium, the design ended up gaudy. The performance is decent and can handle the basic tasks while most games will either run in utmost low settings or lag. The camera is a letdown and captures low details. The device has pretty good software and an excellent battery life which makes the device usable for long periods of time. The Yu Ace is a decent secondary smartphone and can also be a good entry level smartphone for a first timer, however, the expectations are low, and the device does few things right.