Founded in 2013, the Chinese company Infinix offers quality products at an affordable price. It is not the most famous brand, but it is quite reputable. Infinix Hot 20 5G is a low-end smartphone.
The smartphone has a powerful processor, a high screen refresh rate (120 Hz), a capacious 5000 mAh battery, supports fifth-generation networks, and all this at a surprisingly low price. Is this really a good combination, and is it possible to get a good device for less than a thousand dollars at current prices? We checked it out.
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The Infinix Hot 20 5G is currently on sale at a price of about $185.
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We get a complete package. As standard, there’s a USB cable, a needle for the SIM tray, and documents such as a warranty card and user manual. In addition, there is an 18W charger, a transparent case, and a protective film.
In general, the build quality demonstrates that this is a budget device, and not very reliable. It’s just ordinary plastic.
We have wide bezels (the bottom bezel is a bit too big) and a drop-shaped hole for the front camera. It looks like the design has gone back a few years.
An interesting solution – there is a notification LED in the upper right, it lights up when charging, but it is also an LED that is supposed to be used for selfies.
The back panel has an interesting texture made of glossy plastic in the form of stripes, which are probably intended for better grip. The back collects a little dust and fingerprints, so it’s better to carry the smartphone in a case.
The green back panel looks cool in the manufacturer’s photos.
Infinix is cheap, so I expected mega-low quality, but no – it feels like we are not holding a super expensive device, and the build quality is good. I should add that there are no certificates of water and dust resistance.
It’s a pretty big smartphone, with a 6.6″ screen, so the wide bezels came as an unpleasant surprise. It is inconvenient to operate it with one hand. The dimensions of the Infinix Hot 20 5G are 166×76×9 mm, and it weighs 204 g.
Recently, I had the opportunity to test the flagship Samsung S23+, which has the same screen size, and wrote there that this size is a bit too big for me in everyday use. I can say the same thing here. And Infinix has even slightly wider bezels. Of course, if someone likes a bigger screen, there is no problem with that. Besides, it is always better to consume content on a large display.
As for the layout of the buttons, it is ergonomic and quite standard. On the right side are the volume keys and the power button, which does not protrude – there is a fingerprint scanner here, so its location is quite good. On the left side is a tray for two nanoSIM cards and one microSD card. The bottom edge is full of features: there is a speaker, a USB-C port, a microphone and a 3.5 mm jack. The top edge is empty.
The fingerprint scanner is located in the side power button. It works flawlessly. We also have face unlocking, which works without any problems.
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We have a 6.6-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 1080×2408 pixels. The rather low brightness – 500 nits – is good indoors, but outdoors in bright sunlight, there are problems with readability. The image on the screen is crisp and clear, and the colours are well reproduced. It’s not AMOLED, but it’s quite decent considering the price.
The screen refresh rate is up to 120 Hz – for a budget phone, wow! It’s very smooth, and I’m pleasantly surprised. It is better to choose the automatic frequency setting for longer battery life.
As for the display, you can also choose a theme, brightness, set a schedule, eye protection mode, reading mode, colour intensity. I also had to abandon the automatic brightness control, because I had to constantly raise it manually, it was too low.
The MediaTek Dimensity 810 is a chip for lower-end smartphones that support 5G and also support Full HD + 120Hz displays. In terms of performance, I had cases when the phone froze for a while, I had to wait a long time for a response (opening/closing an application). Let’s not forget that this is acceptable for the price of 7000 UAH. I thought that nowadays we wouldn’t be able to get an adequate device for that price. However, the Infinix Hot 20 5G, despite the fact that it is not the fastest, works perfectly.
Performance test results:
A small comparison with OPPO Reno 8T, which is more expensive and runs on MediaTek Helio G99. It’s newer, but it shows very similar results in tests:
Infinix Hot 20 5G is available in a single 4+128 GB configuration. Not much, but this is the price range. If we don’t have enough RAM, we can expand it up to 3 GB at the expense of permanent memory, which is better than nothing.
Infinix has provided an option to expand the memory up to 1 TB using a memory card. Thus, we do not have a choice of different configurations, but the manufacturer has taken care of the possibility of increasing the amount of memory.
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The Infinix Hot 20 5G has a primary camera with a resolution of 50 megapixels, but this is not the standard resolution. By default, it’s set to 12.5 megapixels (for better quality), and if necessary, we can switch to 50 megapixels in the settings. There is also an additional 0.3 megapixel camera on the back, but it is only used to collect data on the “depth” of the frame for background blurring.
We have a choice of modes: normal, normal 50 megapixels, beauty, panorama, portrait, slow motion, time lapse, document scanning. And, as standard, night mode. There is no telephoto or wide-angle camera. Videos can be recorded in 720p, 1080p and 2K resolutions. The 8-megapixel front camera is responsible for selfies.
The quality of the photos is acceptable. In good light, the photos are sharp and clear. If the exposure drops, the quality decreases slightly. Close-ups lose a lot of quality, they are blurry and not very detailed. But the night mode was a pleasant surprise, the photos are good, even better than on my iPhone (comparison below).
And now photos from the Infinix Hot 20 5G to illustrate all this, see for yourself:
Standard mode, good lighting:
Low light and night mode:
Comparison at night (you know that it’s hard to compare such phones with the iPhone 13 Pro, but I want to show you how cool Infinix lights up photos in night mode):
As for the selfie camera, it’s good, but it looks too artificial in the beauty mode. You can adjust the correction parameters yourself, but I still don’t like it.
Normal mode:
“Beauty” mode:
I recorded the video in 1080p resolution (this is standard) and in a higher 2K resolution. At the beginning of the 1080p video, you can see that the phone had to catch the focus, but otherwise it’s decent. I also have a video recorded in 2K in the evening, which is quite average, with too much noise.
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Infinix Hot 20 5G is equipped with a 5000 mAh battery. For a budget model, this is a lot; in some more expensive smartphones, we find batteries with a smaller capacity. The package includes an 18W charger.
Charging time with the included charger is over 2 hours.
We have one stereo speaker on the bottom edge. As you can guess, the sound is average, it’s not loud enough. If you turn the volume up to maximum, it becomes unpleasant to listen to – it’s unclear, there are noises. But the headphones are fine, I have no complaints. You can connect the headphones traditionally with a cable and a 3.5 mm jack or via Bluetooth.
Speaking of connectivity, such a budget model has access to 5G. And this is a rarity. And yes, this is standard WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, GPS. The connection was there all the time, I had no problems with the network and the Internet. I didn’t use 5G for long, but I didn’t have any comments either. Infinix supports twelve 5G bands (n1/ n3/ n5/ n7/ n8/ n20/ n28/ n38/ n40/ n41/ n77/ n78), which should ensure uninterrupted use of 5G wherever there is access.
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Infinix Hot 20 5G runs on Android 12 with XOS 10.6. The Android version is already a little outdated, but this does not mean that it is inferior to the newer version, there have been no important updates recently. So everything is acceptable in this price range.
In general, the interface is simple, there are no tricks. There are settings that allow you to work in multitasking mode and facilitate work:
You can also swipe left from the home screen to access a panel with reminders, recent apps, or a link to the step counting app. A very cool solution. In this overlay, we also have a differently structured notification panel. It is divided into two parts, and if you go down on the left side, you will see notifications, and if you go down on the right side, you will see the settings panel. Something like iOS. We also have XOS applications installed. It can be a bit inconvenient, but they can be removed.
In general, the shell is clear, at the beginning, as always, you have to figure out what is where, but then everything is simple and pleasant.
This is a budget smartphone. For about $185, you get a pretty good device. It’s not perfect, but I don’t know if there are any perfect smartphones at all. The screen could have been AMOLED instead of IPS, the design could have been simpler, without such wide bezels, it would have been nice to have a faster charger and better screen brightness. But it would have been more expensive!
Infinix Hot 20 5G is tailored to the needs of the target audience. For a small price, the manufacturer offers us a wide range of features: a good display with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, an adequate main camera, 5G support, a relatively powerful processor or memory expansion.
Infinix offers good features and performance at an affordable price. If you don’t expect too much and the basic features are enough for you, the Hot 20 5G is a good choice.
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