Microsoft Lumia 650 review: Dress for less

Introduction

The Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL provided the answer to the platform's fans starved for quality hardware and the complete flagship experience. The budget-friendly Lumia 550 that launched alongside didn't get as much attention, but served its purpose just fine - introducing the new Windows 10 to the masses.

Now, everyone will agree this is far from a complete lineup and, a few months later, Microsoft is ready to do something about it. The Lumia 650 is a gorgeous looking phone - we can't think of a better way to start filling the blanks.

It is amazing how much of a style difference a bit of metal can make. The Lumia 650 looks much more refined than any Lumia device to date (including the Nokia Lumia 830, which too flaunted a metal frame). Actually, we might as well go ahead and say it - the Lumia 650 looks better than its flagship siblings, the Lumia 950 and 950 XL.

So, if all that hotness is available for less than $200, what's the catch? To put it gently, the internals don't quite do justice to the classy exterior.

Key features

• Windows 10 Mobile
• Aluminum frame around polycarbonate body with an exchangeable back cover
• Slim and surprisingly lightweight body
• 5.0 inch OLED display with 720p resolution and 297ppi
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 chipset, quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7, 1GB of RAM
• 16GB of built-in memory
• 8 MP, f/2.2, 28mm main camera with a single LED flash
• 5 MP, f/2.2 front camera capable of 720p video recording
• Cat. 4 LTE (150/50Mbps); Wi-Fi b/g/n; Bluetooth 4.1; GPS/GLONASS/BDS; microUSB
• 2,000mAh battery capacity

Main disadvantages

• Entry-level chipset
• No 1080p video recording
• Rather low battery capacity
• No support for Windows 10 Continuum

A punchy AMOLED screen does wonders for the overall impression - it's a Windows phone after all with plenty of black throughout the UI - and that's actually not where the good stuff ends. A solid 16GB of inbuilt storage is good enough to get you started and for everything else, there's a memory card slot. A fairly wide selfie camera is on the plus side as well.

Unfortunately, the product team didn't have much budget left after these had to resort to using entry-level hardware, which has resulted in a rather unbalanced end product. It's not that the raw processing power is not enough - Windows smartphones are known to be quite frugal. But the choice of chipset has limited other aspects of the phone experience - the absence of 1080p video recording is one of them.

Microsoft Lumia 650 in official photos

Obviously, LTE support was a higher priority than high-res video for the intended markets and demographics. Anyway, the compact and sturdy Lumia 650 will certainly get a lot of attention from budget-conscious users.

We'll have a look at what you will be getting with the Lumia 650 on the following pages. This review is a little shorter than usual but hopefully sharp and to the point.