Friends+Design
- Very good overall build quality, and materials
- Sharp, premium looks, thanks to its chrome-plated sides and a brushed aluminium pattern on the back (which is a 2.5D curved plastic)
- The front looks modern too, with a dewdrop notch display (though bezels/chin are on the relatively thick side)
- The front glass and the sides have rounded edges, making the LG W30 very comfortable to hold
- Useful notification LED
- Fingerprint sensor at the back works well
- LG offers face recognition too, but it's on the slow side and doesn't work at all in the dark
- A little bit on the thicker side at 8.5mm
Display
- Decent, vivid display
- Screen resolution could have been higher
Software
- The software is kept nice and simple with a near-stock Android experience (which is a wise choice by LG)
- There are a bunch of useful add-on features too, including scrolling screenshots, gestures and shortcuts, and MediaTek's DuraSpeed option (which lets you force apps to stay active in the background)
Performance
- Performance is weak point here relative to the competition, with a comparatively weak MediaTek Helio P22 SoC (similar to Snapdragon 625) - regular use is fine, but heavier apps/games will tend to show lags/stutters
Camera
- While LG highlights the triple rear camera setup on the W30 (standard + ultra-wide + depth sensor), which is a rarity in this price segment, the actual performance is average
- The autofocus system is sluggish, and the sensor needs to hunt for a second every time it needs to lock focus
- Objects at a distance in landscape shots lack good detail
- There's also noticeable shutter lag when shooting, even under good light, which means you and your subject have to stay still for a second or two after hitting the shutter button in order to avoid blur
- Wide-angle shots have less detail and visible noise - there's also noticeable barrel distortion on objects towards the sides of the frame
- In the bokeh mode, edge detection feels a little crude - and the frame rate in the viewfinder drops in this mode, which makes it choppy and a little challenging to frame a shot correctly
- Low light quality is very average too (Night mode helps a bit, but not much)
- The 16-megapixel front camera captures passable selfies but has trouble correctly exposing them, leaving blown-out highlights, even with HDR enabled - in low light, image quality is average at best
- The LG W30 can shoot video at up to 1080p, however, there's no electronic stabilisation for either of the sensors - image quality isn't great, and bright areas in the footage are often overexposed - continuous autofocus also doesn't work well all the time
Audio
- The single speaker at the bottom gets quite loud but the quality is below average - highs are shrill and the overall sound is tinny
Battery
- Very good battery life - the low-powered SoC, coupled with the HD display resolution and 4000mAh battery capacity result in very good battery life - you will get up to 2 days of use with a single charge
Verdict
- Overall, the W30 is just an average device in a hyper-competitive segment, and will find it very tough to compete with the likes of Xiaomi, Realme and Asus, which offer higher resolution displays, faster processors, and better cameras
