The Neffos N1 is probably the best phone that TP-Link has ever invented till date. They tend to keep it low and do not design a flagship level device but to include certain elements in every smartphone that they design. For instance, the Neffos N1 includes a fantastic design language as well as great camera hidden. Why do I say hidden? Because it is totally underrated and nobody actually speaks about its camera capability. Of course, there are plenty of extremely good smartphone cameras out there and Neffos N1 could be somewhere low compared to the ones that costs a bomb. So let’s just quickly go through the journey that I went through for two weeks of usage as my daily driver.

What’s in the box?

• Neffos N1 (Space Black)
• Quick start guide
• Safety Notice
• Warranty notice
• Tempered glass
• Sim ejector pin
• 3-pin power adaptor
• USB-Type C cable

Design

Many tend to mistaken and confused if its a Huawei P9 or an iPhone? Well, this is because the camera design on the back seems to be identical to the one on Huawei P9 as for the overall design language resembles latest iPhone series. The volume rockers are placed on the left with a dedicated silent mode button available. This is common in most iPhone’s out there. The power button is placed on the right side of the Neffos N1. The SIM card tray is on top of the power button while on the bottom of the device is where the speaker, mic, earphone jack as well as USB-Type C port located. Last but not least, the fingerprint scanner is placed on the middle-back of the Neffos N1. Overall, this is a pretty good looking smart which can easily attract people’s sight.

Display

This smartphone comes with a 5.5-inch IPS display with Full HD resolution(1920×1080). I would rate the display as good because the lowest brightness level is pretty low compared to most smartphones out there. Perhaps almost as low as how Samsung’s smartphones could do. The display is bright, crisp and clear without any flaws. Protection wise, the glass is pretty seasoned as it only comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

Performance

This is perhaps where most of you might feel like it is lacking, the processor. The Neffos N1 is powered by Mediatek’s MTK6757CD or better known as Helio P25 octa core processor. The overall performance is fine and not the best but perhaps the best of what I have tried powered by a Mediatek processor. It isn’t the most stable processor that I have ever tried, but it did just right. There was no major lags or stutters as my usual usage of social media applications were fine. There were some cases where the Facebook application keeps on crashing after the latest update, so this blame couldn’t go directly to the phone as it should be pointed to Facebook’s error instead. Overall, I would give this processor a rating of 7/10.

Camera& Storage

Perhaps the best part and point of sale for Neffos N1. The camera feature a Dual camera setup of 12MP +12MP. Both of their sensor are set at f2.0 aperture. The secondary main camera setup is for the depth of field feature and could result in great portrait photos. I know that most phones out there already have portrait feature but having a separate sensor makes a huge difference. This also enables you to take decent monochrome shots. Unfortunately, there’s no OIS but the addition of PDAF makes the focusing to be faster and accurate.

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Front selfie camera comes with 8MP sensor with 86-degree Wide angle. The beautification feature on the Neffos 1 comes with 10 levels and they are known as real-time beautification. It simply means that every change that you make to the beautification level with show in real-time before you take a shot.

As for video recording capabilities, the main camera could go up to 4K. Which is good and an value-added feature while the front camera could go up to 1080p .

Speaking of storage space, the internal storage on the Neffos N1 is capped at 64GB. Pretty generous I will say despite the reasonable price tag.  With the inclusion of microSD card slot, you will never have storage issues ever as you can add up to 128GB. The system itself takes about 10GB of storage space, so your true capacity available to use is roughly 54GB.

Network & Dual SIM

There’s no doubt when it comes to Network quality and reliability from TP-Link. They are well-known for supplying routers to Telekom Malaysia and specifically Unifi customers. The Neffos N1 comes with dual band and FDD LTE (Category 4).  Two SIM slots are provided with both being dual standby and both slots can support 4G LTE. I used my DIGI SIM card and the call quality was good but the cellular data resulted in some issues. It seems like DIGI network is facing some issues and therefore that is the only reasons which caused the network fluctuation while on cellular data. WiFi signal is remarkably strong even when I am outside the house. A huge applause as good quality of hardware used from the TP-Link team.

Software

Neffos N1 comes out of the box with Android 7.1.1 Nougat and their Android skin over is called as NFUI (Neffos UI). The version of NFUI is 7.0. There are not much for bloatware available on the phone with almost near to stock experience. Though, there is no app drawer on the Neffos N1. Everything will be stacking on different pages of home screen. Some useful feature that I find on the Neffos N1:-

• Double tap to wake/sleep your device.
• Button settings – you can change the onscreen navigation button orientation.
• Float button – iPhone like on screen button that acts like a shortcut button to most used features such as taking a screenshot, return to home, recent apps, back and lockscreen.
• Eye comfort – bluelight feature which I will always use and certainly a compulsory feature to have by default on any smartphone.
• App cloner – Ability to use two accounts in an application, eg. Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp.

Battery & Fingerprint Scanner

The Neffos N1 comes with a 3260mAh non-removable battery and supports fast charging. I could get 50% of battery capacity within 35 minutes.

The screen consumes most of the battery life as I managed to get almost 5 hours of screen-on-time for a full charge. Not the best battery life available out there but the fast charging can be a compensation. Inclusion of USB Type-C charging cable and port makes it future proof and technologically not outdated.

Fingerprint scanner on this smartphone is really good! It is super fast and fantastically able to unlock even with wet and oily fingers situation. According to Neffos, the fingerprint reader has the capability to learn the unlocking pattery habit and learns to read it quicker resulting in faster unlocking.

Conclusion

For a price tag of RM1099, the Neffos N1  can be subjective to certain buyers. For me, the pricing is fine though it could have been slightly cheaper. However, based on checking – there are plenty of official units going for as low as RM799 at the moment. For RM799, it is probably a good price for your consideration.