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Doogee N40 Pro Review

Written By AJ Viray
Published • September 15th, 2021
Gadget ReviewsMobile
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Doogee has brought its latest and affordable smartphone to the Philippines, the N40 Pro. This isn’t a rugged phone, unlike the S97 Pro that we reviewed recently. However, it packs a MediaTek Helio P60 chipset, 6,380mAh battery, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and quad rear cameras. So if you’re interested in getting this device, here’s our full review.

Table of Contents

Design and Construction

The Doogee N40 Pro‘s design will actually remind you of the POCO M3. It comes with a thin and light body made with a sleek polycarbonate leatherette design and is slightly curved towards the frame. Also, on the back, you’ll see this massive piece of black glass, which houses the quad-camera setup and the large Doogee logo.

The Doogee N40 Pro is available in four different colors: Midnight Blue, Forest Green, Caramel Brown, and Classic Black, which is the one we have here.

Upfront is the 6.52-inch IPS HD+ screen with an aspect ratio of 20:9. You will also find here the earpiece, the 16MP front shooter, and the indicator light tucked away in the teardrop notch. There’s no glass protection mentioned, but it comes with a pre-installed screen protector. The bezels are small enough, except for the chin, as usual.

The right side contains the volume rocker and power button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor.

While on the left is the hybrid dual SIM tray. The buttons are made of plastic; they’re easy to reach and tactile.

Nothing is found at the top, meanwhile down at the bottom, we have the main microphone, USB-C port, and loudspeaker.

Overall, despite it’s made of faux leather, I still like the design. It’s easy to grip, lightweight and fingerprint resistant.

Display and Multimedia

Moving on to its display, the N40 Pro is equipped with a 6.52-inch IPS LCD with a 1620 x 720 resolution which equates to 269ppi. The screen is vibrant and good enough for reading texts, viewing photos, watching videos, and playing games. Viewing angles are decent too. The screen can also get really bright, so you can still comfortably use it outdoors.

If you don’t like to see the notch while you use a specific app, you have the option to hide it. You can also adjust the color temperature to your liking and change the font style.

As for audio, the phone comes with a single downward-firing speaker, and it gets really loud, but if you’re looking for the best sound quality at this price range, you’d better be looking elsewhere. The absence of a headphone jack at this price range is also potentially a turn-off for some, so keep that in mind if you’re considering this particular device.

Camera

Moving on to cameras. The Doogee N40 Pro Pro features quad rear cameras with a 20MP main, an 8MP ultrawide, a 8MP macro, and a 2MP depth sensor. Upfront is a 16MP Samsung selfie camera.

Images produced from the N40 Pro are quite impressive. It’s not perfect, but getting good lighting, they look pretty good. It has a great dynamic range, good contrast, sharp details, and rich colors. As for ultrawide, images produce grayish colors that make some scenarios look gloomy. The portrait mode does a pretty good job of separating the subject from the background, though sometimes it can be quite a hit and miss.

The N40 Pro is also capable of shooting macro but don’t expect good quality. Also, there’s no dedicated Night Mode here, so it’s advisable to avoid low-light shots with this device as it just gets muddy and lots of noise. Selfies, on the other hand, are sharp with accurate colors that are good for social media postings. There’s a beauty mode if you opt to have smoother skin.

Video-wise, it can shoot up to 1080p at 30fps, and the quality is okay; however, it struggles sometimes to focus on the subject. Plus, it also doesn’t feature any stabilization.

OS, UI, and Apps

As for software, the N40 Pro runs on Android 11. It’s a pretty straightforward UI, almost stock, and uses an app drawer with custom icons and wallpapers. It uses on-screen navigation keys by default, and there are also Gesture Controls that you can find under the settings menu. We get the usual Google apps, and that’s pretty much it.

As for additional features, it comes with Digital Wellbeing and parental control to keep track of screen time and add content restrictions and set other limits to help your child balance screen time.

Out of the 128GB of storage, you get 118GB, and if that’s still not enough, there’s a dedicated microSD slot, so you don’t need to worry.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the N40 Pro is a MediaTek Helio P60, paired with an ARM Mali-G72 GPU, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. Doing basic tasks like navigating the UI and browsing the web, and the performance is smooth throughout. However, the device tends to slow down if there are three or more apps that are running in the background.

We tried playing Genshin Impact on it, and we experienced some frame drops. You can improve the performance if you lower the settings. Also, do take note that the phone does heat up a little.

For some numbers, here are the benchmarks scores that we got:

AnTuTu v9.1.1 – 196,629
3D Mark – 1,234 (OpenGL 3.1), 1,273 (Vulkan), 184 (WildLife Extreme)
PC Mark – 6,526 (Work 3.0)
Geekbench 5 – 282 (Single-Core), 1,039 (Multi-Core), 1,226 (OpenCL)
AndroBench – 486.24 MB/s (Seq. Read), 331.08 MB/s (Seq. Write)

For biometrics, there is a side-mounted fingerprint sensor and face recognition. They work, okay, but they’re slow and take a while to unlock.

Connectivity and Battery Life

When it comes to connectivity, the Doogee N40 Pro has the basics covered from 4G LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Dual-SIM is supported, but it’s a hybrid setup, so you won’t be able to use two SIMs if you have a microSD card installed.

Battery-wise, a 6,380mAh battery powers the N40 Pro. It also supports 24W fast charging that will take up to 2 and a half hours to recharge from 0 – 100%. In the PCMark’s battery test, the battery life was rated 21 hours and 25 minutes, which is great.

Meanwhile, in our standard video loop test, which entails the phone to be in Airplane mode at 50% brightness, 50% volume, and with headphones plugged in, the device gave us 25 hours and 35 minutes worth of playback.

Conclusion

Now let’s talk about the price, where this device absolutely stands out. For less than PHP 8,000USD 136INR 11,557EUR 130CNY 993, the N40 Pro packs good capabilities at a low price. It has big storage to start off, a massive 6,380mAh battery with support for 24W fast charging, and a USB-C port. However, if you’re thinking of getting a new budget smartphone in this budget, we recommend that you get the POCO M3 one instead.

So what do you think about the Doogee N40 Pro? Do you consider getting one? Let us know in the comments.

Doogee N40 Pro specs:
6.52-inch HD+ (720 x 1620) IPS LCD, 261PPI
MediaTek Helio P60 chipset
ARM Mali-G72 GPU
6GB RAM
128GB UFS storage
Expandable up to 256GB
Quad rear cameras (Samsung):
• 20MP (main)
• 8MP F2.2 (ultrawide)
• 8MP F2.8 (macro)
• 2MP F2.8 (depth)
16MP front camera
4G LTE
Dual-SIM
WiFi 802.11ac/a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 5.0
NFC
GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou
Fingerprint scanner (side)
Android 11
USB Type-C
6,380mAh battery w/ 24W fast charging
210g
Midnight Blue, Forest Green, Caramel Brown, Classic Black