LeEco’s Le 1s was already a great low mid-range smartphone and proved to be a tough competition against the likes of Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. LeEco, who had recently entered the greatly competitive Indian market, had to do a lot more than just offer the device if they have to win the trust when it comes to not just offering great hardware but also software and content.
The Le 1s Eco is no different from the Le 1s, except for the fact that the clock speed of the processor is reduced from 2.2GHz to 1.85GHz, and the addition of LeEco Membership and the apps for the same. The best part about it is what LeEco calls as Supertainment – a full year subscription of LeEco membership for free. As a bonus, you won’t see any increment in the price even though the large package of content is offered for free.
Let’s do a quick talk about the specifications – the Le 1s Eco comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display, MediaTek MT6795 Helio X10 chipset that clocks at 1.85 GHz, 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage. Coming with the custom EUI over Android Lollipop OS, the LeEco Le 1s Eco has a 3000 mAh battery and the camera combination is a 13-megapixel rear- and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera.
As for the build quality, the phone is no different from the Le 1s and thus, there is not much to complain about it and it is rock solid with the metal body and good at looks with those chamfered edges, and the mirror-glass fingerprint sensor on the back.
While I’ll have to use it for a while before concluding about the performance and whether the underclocking of the chipset made any difference, let me put some focus on the Supertainment part here. It is a package that includes the following.
Levidi – the on-demand video app where you get movies, TV shows and other video content even from YouTube, all for one year.
For this, LeEco has a partnership with Eros Now, which is quite well known in India for the content they offer. From the date of registration, this service is for free for the first year, and then you can continue using it for the charges of Rs. 490 per month, but that isn’t only about Levidi. You’ll also be able to stream music and have offline music download, thanks to the partnership with Hungama Music, and LeEco Drive is the cloud storage service included, and it offers 5TB of storage.
LIVE – This is the shortcut in the bottom app tray and this is what gives you access to live TV channels. At one time, you can watch nine channels on the screen to decide which one to watch.
While using the device for a day, I switched between these apps quite a few times and the streaming has been good, especially the live TV ones. Apart from Levidi, there is a Leview section that occupies one of the home screens and it offers recommended videos and content, and you can select a particular category to watch videos from. Though, this is different from the Levidi platform.
The price is set at Rs. 9999, which is an excellent price and even though LeEco faces stiff competition from a couple other devices, the Le 1s Eco will be a go-to choice for those who stream videos and music.
I’ve been asked by quite a few whether LeEco plans to offer something after the free offer of one year subscription of the membership, but to be frank, once you are into an ecosystem, you’d rather look for a hardware upgrade and see that you are purchasing the successor to the phone you are using right now, if everything goes good for the year. LeEco might or might not offer anything later, but something worth Rs. 5880 being given for free should be first taken advantage of. If you feel you are fully using the membership, you wouldn’t really mind the monthly subscription later.
For the early view, I’m quite convinced already, not with the hardware but with the content part. The hardware was already something I like, and in the comparison with Redmi Note 3, it seemed better to me. The fingerprint scanner, the different shade for the back panel on the top and bottom, and the USB Type-C to add to the list of what’s good in the device, all of this makes it a perfect phone for the price.
