Review: The TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G brings the best of E Ink to a budget phone

TCL is adding more features, i.e. NXTPAPER technology, to budget phones like the 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G. NXTPAPER gives TCL devices beneficial screen features, including so-called zone modes, which imitate an E Ink screen to help reduce distractions and screen time. While this technology is interesting, it doesn’t have a lot of practicality to make this phone stand out from the crowd. But how does the TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G fare overall?

TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G

6.5/ 10

The TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G packs a lot of features for a very affordable price. Three rear cameras, a 90Hz screen, and interesting screen modes make this a compelling option for budget phone seekers.

Pros

• NXTPAPER digital well-being features are innovative
• Long battery life
• Decent performance for the price
• 90Hz screen

Cons

• Meh screen with large bezels
• Cameras struggle without ideal lighting
• Vibration motors are loud and mushy
• Software support is lacking
• Only available on Spectrum Mobile

$150 at Spectrum Mobile

Price, availability, and specs

An ultra-budget phone with a solid feature set

The TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G starts at $150. It is only available through Spectrum Mobile in the US, which allows you to make a one-time payment of $150 or 36 payments of $4.16. There are also numerous deals to reduce the price, sometimes to $0 with a long-term agreement.

What’s good about the TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G?

NXTPAPER is a really innovative feature set

The TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G’s biggest draw is the NXTPAPER technology. NXTPAPER includes a suite of features focused on making the screen more useful and usable. While this feature set has typical things like a blue light filter, there are novel and interesting additions.

The first feature is a coating on the screen that makes it feel like paper, which really works. This coating helps reduce glare and fingerprints and is supposed to make the screen visible from any angle while maintaining color and clarity. It definitely does reduce glare and significantly reduces fingerprints, which makes them practically invisible unless you’re looking for them while the screen is turned off. And there’s a blue light filter, as previously mentioned, to promote eye wellness.

NXTPAPER zones are the coolest feature, allowing you to change the way the screen appears. There are three options: Regular mode, Color paper, and Ink paper. The Regular mode uses the 6.56-inch HD+ (720 x 1612) 90Hz screen with a 180Hz touch sampling rate, just like a normal phone. Color paper and Ink paper are more minimalist screen modes, with either dulled colors or full black and white respectively. When modes are swapped, it slowly changes the screen with a neat ink drop animation and a pretty sound effect.

This is a fascinating idea to help eliminate distractions when needed. I used the Ink paper mode a lot during my time with the phone, and the dull black and white aesthetic helped me curb my screen time by about 45 minutes a day compared to my Pixel 7. This is a great addition to Android’s digital well-being suite that competitors, like the Moto G Play (2024), do not have. The Ink paper mode does not make every app black and white, as apps like Google Photos are still displayed in full color, so you can use them properly.

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The screen also has a 90Hz refresh rate, which is very good for this price point. That’s better than the much more expensive iPhone 16 and 16 Plus at nearly 1/6 of the price. The phone also includes a feature called Smart refresh that switches between 60Hz and 90Hz, depending on what you’re doing to help save battery life.

Speaking of battery, the phone is powered by a 5010 mAh battery that provides all-day battery life. And I mean all-day battery life. With heavy usage, I got more than a day’s worth of power, and with more mild usage, I got over two days of power. That’s phenomenal; the NXTPAPER zone modes really help reduce battery usage.

The performance on this phone is also pretty good, especially for the price. I had little trouble surfing the web, browsing photos, listening to music, or watching a video with the MediaTek MT6835. When I had many apps or tabs open, it did glitch a little here and there, but overall I was impressed with the performance. I’ve used other budget phones that are two or three times the price, which are more laggy than this phone on average. This phone is not a gaming phone, though, as it stuttered when I was playing Alto’s Adventure, which is not an intensive title. I suspect it’s likely due to the 4GB of included RAM, but as long as you don’t game too much, you’ll be fine.

The phone comes with 128GB of storage, leaving plenty of room to install all your favorite apps, download your favorite songs, and take lots of photos. If you do end up running out of room, you can add up to a 2TB microSD card to the device, which is practically endless storage for the phone. This is a feature that most modern flagships don’t have anymore, so it’s a nice inclusion.

The build quality is also great for the price point. The phone feels a lot more premium than its price would suggest, and the form factor is attractive. It’s very sleek, and the Space Blue color is very eye-catching. The camera bump isn’t my favorite, but I think it’s a lot less offensive than something like the OnePlus 12R’s camera bump.

2:43

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What’s bad about the TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G?

The price puts a lot of constraints on the device

While the $150 price tag is appealing, there were a lot of trade-offs made to keep the price this low. The poor vibration motor is one I immediately noticed. It is very aggressive without nuance to the vibrations and feels like brute force over performance. While haptics are not super important to most users, they do make a very loud sound that is amplified by the phone’s plastic build. Even though the phone feels fairly premium in hand, once you hear the vibrations, it feels less premium.

The speakers are very similar. They get very loud, so much so it hurt my ears to turn them up all the way, but they were incredibly tinny. With the volume fairly high, voices sound unnatural and unappealing. The speakers also lack bass, which makes listening to music underwhelming. Luckily, the phone does include a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth, so I’d recommend using some headphones if you’re listening to music or watching a video.

While the battery life is good, charging removes some of its luster. The 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G charges through USB-C and has a maximum charging speed of 18W. In 2024, 18W is pretty slow, and it takes nearly two hours to completely charge the battery, which is a bit of a drag.

The NXTPAPER suite of features is interesting and helps with eye health. However, I feel like a lot of the supposed benefits either don’t work well or are a solution looking for a use case. The screen coating does feel like paper, but I’m unsure if I want my phone screen to feel like paper. It makes swiping and scrolling more difficult since the coating causes a lot more friction than a traditional phone screen.

The screen also doesn’t look as colorful or vivid as advertised, and the viewing angles aren’t great. I don’t know if it’s the screen itself or the coating, but the colors look fairly muted and washed out. Also, those bezels are outrageous for 2024, especially the bottom chin. Bezels don’t matter to everyone, but for those who care, the asymmetry and size are highly noticeable.

The NXTPAPER zone modes are interesting, but their usefulness might be limited; as I said before, they will potentially help with using your phone less. They are also ideal for reading a book on your device, though I don’t feel the need to do that too much. Boox Palma lovers may disagree, but I think a phone screen is too small to read a book comfortably. Besides these two use cases, I can’t think of much use for these zone modes. It doesn’t seem like TCL knows either since I couldn’t find any use cases in their marketing materials.

Cameras on budget phones are usually somewhere manufacturers cut costs first, and this phone is no different. Don’t get me wrong, the cameras are decent, but only in the right conditions. The phone includes a 50MP main camera, 5MP ultrawide, and 2MP depth camera, which is a great variety. I took some nice-looking photos, but it did take some work. The cameras often had trouble focusing and balancing light in less-than-ideal situations.

It also seems like the phone is missing the post-processing found in Samsung or Pixel devices, which may appeal to some. If you don’t have perfect lighting conditions, the cameras struggle to take good pictures, especially in low light, which makes the omitted night mode stick out. If you can find the right conditions, the colors the camera captures look nice, and it has a good amount of detail.

The fingerprint scanner is one of my main gripes with this phone. It is located on the power button, my least favorite location for a fingerprint scanner. I often find myself trying to lock the phone and accidentally re-opening it after clicking the button since the fingerprint scanner is on the power button. It’s also not the fastest or most accurate; it works a little more than 50% of the time.

Another issue I have with the phone is its update support. While I could not find an official statement on the update support for the device, TCL traditionally has offered one or two years of software support. This support length was poor a couple of years ago, and now that many competitors, like the Samsung Galaxy A25 5G, are offering many more years of software support, it’s plain abysmal. Even if a TCL phone is supported for two years, it doesn’t mean it will get an update to a new Android version. TCL needs to up its software support game to make this phone truly competitive in the market.

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Should you buy the TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G?

The price isn’t everything

The budget phone market is becoming more and more competitive. There are numerous options with compelling or well-executed features for a reasonable price. The TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G has some interesting and unique digital well-being screen features that stand out from the crowd. However, the package around these features is not compelling enough for me to recommend this phone to most users.

But if you care a lot about your eye health, the NXTPAPER features may be enough to make this phone worthwhile. The $150 price tag is also cheaper than many other phones on the market, so if you need an ultra-budget phone with solid features, it’s a good option.

However, if you care about your cameras, the quality of your screen, or are a mildly heavy user, there are much better options out there. Samsung kind of dominates the budget smartphone space and has a couple of better options than the 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G. While it is double the price, the aforementioned Samsung Galaxy A25 5G bats well above its price tag. If you want a phone that’s a little closer in price to the TCL phone, the Samsung Galaxy A15 5G is only $50 more and is often on sale for less. It has similar performance with a much better screen and cameras, which are worth an additional $50.

TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G

6.5/ 10

The TCL 50 XE NXTPAPER 5G packs a lot of features for a very affordable price. Three rear cameras, a 90Hz screen, and interesting screen modes make this a compelling option for budget phone seekers.

$150 at Spectrum Mobile

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