Not too many people have heard of the Kazam Tornado 455L, and frankly, you aren’t missing that much if you’re only looking for flag-ship phones. You see, The Kazam Tornado 445L is a budget smartphone, that doesn’t look, nor feel, like a budget smartphone.
The Kazam Tornado 455L looks exactly like Sony’s Xperia line, and it aims to compete with the Japan-based company.
Kazam Tornado 455L Review
What is the Kazam Tornado 455L? What are the Kazam Tornado 455L specs?
It’s Kazam’s way of competing with Sony. You can take it with you in the pool, because it’s waterproof, and you can even drop it on cement, from pocket-distance, without fearing that you just destroyed your phone – it’s equipped with Corning’s Gorilla Glass.
It’s quite slim, and its rectangular shape makes it look high-end.
The Tornado’s key features, and specs:
- Primary Camera 13 mp
- Quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 CPU
- Android 4.4
- Large screen
It’s not the best smartphone on the market, but for those specs, and priced at about $200, it’s one device you should test before deciding what to buy.
It’s in no shape to race against Sony’s flag-ship phone, but if you want something that resembles their top-of-the-line product, the Kazam Tornado 455L might be just the one for you.
Kazam Tornado 455L Price: $200
Kazam Tornado 455L
Design Talk
So we’re going to start with its design.
Like I said before, it resembles perfectly Sony’s Xperia device, and this is clearly no coincidinc. It’s a lot of things, but being new, and original just doesn’t stick to Kazam’s smartphone.
The Tornado 455L is Sony Xperia Z3+’s cheaper, and less powerful doppelganger. Here’s the thing. It doesn’t feel, or look like a budget device. This way, Kazam tries to garner some loyal Sony fans. But does the cookie crumble?
You can find Corning’s Gorilla Glass on both the front, and the back side of the phone. Usually, budget phone makers tend to envelope their devices in low-quality plastic, but not Kazam. Although, you can feel the plastic, which is not high-quality, but neither poor, on the sides of the smartphone.
Because it’s not entirely made out of plastic, it doesn’t make those annoying creaking sounds that usually appear out of the blue when you put a little bit of pressure on cheaper smartphones.
I mentioned earlier that the Kazam Tornado 455L was waterproof. Not the good kind, mind you.
Sony, and other flag-ship manufactures, build water-resistant USB ports, and headphone jacks. Low budget ones, don’t, and this is the case with the Tornado 455L. It has waterproof flaps, that need reflapping after use. Kazam’s rubber flaps cover the phone’s four ports – one microSIM, one microSD, one microUSB, and the headphone jack.
Micro this, and micro that, but unfortunately, the rubber flaps are poorly constructed, and this can be noticed quite easily. It becomes so annoyingly tedious to just unseal, and reseal them. Also, you can’t just push them back in place. You need to seriously do some finger dancing, and push like your newborn baby is on his way.
It’s a 5.5-inch smartphone. They will always seem too big for my hands.
The smartphone feels smooth, with no blocky, or sharp builds, and buttons feel high-quality. Note, they feel, but they clearly aren’t. I didn’t encounter issues with them on my one month test period, but I could feel them cracking under their very own weight.
Kazam Tornado 455L
Screen Talk
It does feature a 720p resolution, but it’s stretched out on the 5.5-inch screen. Whatever you do on your smartphone – play games, watch movies, or short clips, surf the web, or type away borderline endless messages – you’ll need a big screen.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t excel in this area. Indeed, it does look pretty good, but when you start a Google search, and start reading an article, you’ll notice pixels.
It doesn’t do well when showcasing pictures. You can see that the colors are bland, and quite lifeless. Colors look like someone threw a shade of grey goo over them. It doesn’t have those vibrant colors that you might be accustomed with. No sharp, and fresh images for you.
One thing which I ignored completely, but found that other tech reviewers bashed to smithereens, is the auto-brightness mode. Sure, indoors brightness should be set to low, and outdoors should go to its maximum capacity, automatically. But the thing i, it doesn’t do this very well, and it flusters every time. When you set it manually, you won’t have problems with seeing text when you’re outside, on a sunny day.
Kazam Tornado 455L
Software, and Performance Talk
The downside of buying a Kazam Tornado 455L is that you’re going to be stuck with Android 4.4 Kitkat, which by now, is starting to feel old, and tired. No, you can’t even upgrade to Lollipop. Android M is out of the question.
Although you’ll be missing out on the game-changing Lollipop, and the unreleased Android M – which won’t bring new big features, instead it will focus on polishing already implemented stuff – Kitkat 4.4 isn’t really that bad.
You can still run everything that’s available on Google Play. The downside being that it will indeed feel outdated. The substantial visual improvements that Lollipop came packed with aren’t, clearly, present.
But there’s a silver lining here. The majority of budget phones that force themselves to run Android Lollipop tend to kill themselves slowly, because Google’s latest update just wants their heart, and soul. You can’t give something that you don’t have, right?
Asphalt 8
This way, by implementing a limit, which is 4.4 Kitkat, Kazam eludes performance issues.
It’s quite the eager rabbit performance wise, even though it has a slow processor when compared with high-end products. The Snapdragon 410, which is paired with 2 GB of RAM, makes the 720p smartphone quite a catch. The majority of Snapdragon 410-devices are usually equipped with a tiny 1 GB unit.
The Snapdragon 410 does well even with Asphalt 8, but not on max settings. It can run, and play almost anything on the Play Store, only with a few games, and apps that just don’t work that well. You can still run them, but think of lower framerates, and a sluggish experience.
The 64-bit chipset, which is on the low side of performance products from Snapdragon, tends to heat up when using 4G internet. Because it’s being hugged to death by two glass sides, temperature tends to rise higher than the norm, but somehow, it doesn’t reach molten lava levels like Sony’s Xperia Z3.
Kazam Tornado 455L
Camera Talk
The primary 13 megapixel camera which can be found on the rear side of the phone outputs the same quality as older flagship smartphones a.i Samsung Galaxy S4, Motorola Moto X, and LG G2, and G3.
The secondary, front, 5 megapixel camera is more than capable of taking selfies for Facebook, Instagram, or whatever cool new social media platforms you kids use today.
While it is old, the rear primary camera doesn’t output low quality as you may think, and it bodes pretty well in low light setting. Although, it falls short when compared with the iPhone 6, even the iPhone 5.
If you keep your hand steady, you can get pretty good pictures, but only if. I dub the Kazam Tornado 455L SlowPoke. Shutter-speed is super-slow, and it will take a while until it you get your desired photo.
The dual-LED flash comes in quite in handy when illuminating people’s faces.
If you’re looking for a smartphone for taking pictures, I recommend you look elsewhere. The motive being that its camera unit, although equipped with 13 megapixels, just takes so long to shoot a decent picture. It feels like there’s a tiny man inside of your device that slowly paints what he sees, and if you move it just a little bit to the left, he gets grumpy, and smashes his canvas.
The HDR mode should be used only if you’re immortal. I got sick of it after trying it for a day, and didn’t use it that much. Not just because it takes so long to work, but also because it somehow warps the picture taken, and makes it look ethereal, and otherworldly. Creative types might love it. I just hate it.
Also, if you’re shooting still objects, like statues, buildings, and whatnot, you need to go to your smartphone’s gallery to see your end result. Kazam doesn’t seem to make anything easier when it comes navigating on their device.
It saddens me that the Kazam Tornado 455L has such an awesome hardware, but the budget phone manufacturer went the wrong way optimizing the whole thing.
What I found underwhelming also was the quality of the lens. I don’t want to call it poor, or just plain sucky, because preferences, are preferences, but I expected something more from the 13 megapixel unit. Pictures tend to have a purple tint, but I found no issues with sharpness.
All in all, out of 100 pictures taken, I only managed to salvage 20’ish. If you don’t mind scouring through countless duds, and if you have a happy triggerfinger, go for it. I don’t want to repeat this experience.
If you want to take videos, be warned that the Kazam Tornado 455L is limited to only 720p. As far as I know, the Snapdragon 410 processor can shoot 1080p videos. This is odd, peculiar, and I’ll further look into this issue to find out why it’s factory limited.
Kazam Tornado 455L
Battery Life Talk
Kazam’s Tornado 455L battery consists of a 2,600mAh unit, which performed rather mediocrely when tested with a continuous 720p video. It lasted about 8 hours and 30 minutes.
Day to day use drained Kazam’s battery, and I had to plug it into a charger before I went to bed
In all fairness, it isn’t bad, but it isn’t good. When you think that this is a budget phone trying to resemble a flag-ship one, you tend to get pass this little thing.
Kazam Tornado 455L
Sound, and Call Quality Talk
I found the sound, and the call quality rather poor. You don’t have a grille from whence the sounds comets, and it seems that it squeezes through the plastic sides – somehow.
At the beginning of our review, I noted that the Kazam Tornado 455L resembles Sony’s Xperia Z3+. I should just add that it does so only visually. Quality wise, it doesn’t even touch Xperia’s toes.
The thing is, it definitely lacks clarity, and pumping up the volume doesn’t do any good. In fact, it worsens the situation by adding distortion to it.
It has a noise cancellation mic on the back, but it doesn’t help it that much.
Kazam Tornado 455L Verdict
Should you buy the Kazam Tornado 455L?
If you’re on a budget, and you just want to spend $200 on smartphone that resembles some high-end product. Sure. Go ahead. If you don’t plan on taking pictures, and you just want a decent device, it’s more than worth it – price to value ratio.
- Pros
– Large 5.5-inch screen
– Enveloped by two Corning Gorilla Glass panels
– Okay’ish battery
- Cons
– Disappointingly stupid camera
– Annoying water proof rubber flaps
– Horrible sound quality
– Mediocre call quality
What else can you buy for $200?
Asus ZenFone 2
Well, the Asus ZenFone 2 is under $200, and it offers a quad-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z3560 processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of on-board storage. It’s equipped with a 5.5-inch 1080p LCD screen. It runs Android 5.0 Lollipop, and it’s main camera is a 13 megapixel unit. It also has a secondary 5 megapixel front facing unit.
Motorola Moto G
How about Motorola Moto G – the second generation smartphone from Motorola. It’s about $180, and the 5-inch device features a 1280 x 720 resolution, a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor at 1.2 GHz. It has a rear facing 8 megapixel camera, which can’t be used for serious photography, but it does well in the Post-to-Facebook department It also has a 2 MP front facing unit.
The downside is that it only has 1 GB of RAM. It runs Android 5.0 Lollipop, and be sure that the company will continue to bring new updates to their smartphone for the next two years. Even though they probably will kill the device.
Xiaomi Redmi 2 Pro
And the last one which I can recommend at the current moment is Xiaomi Redmi 2 Pro. It’s about $200, but it comes equipped with 2GB of RAM, and a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 processor. The 4.7-inch 720p LCD display is just perfect in size. Not too big, and not really that small.
As the previously discussed Motorola Moto G, Xiaomi Redmi 2 Pro has a rear facing 8 megapixel unit, and a front facing 2 MP camera.
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