Acer Liquid Z520 hands-on: large screen meets low price point

There aren't many Android phones that can offer a large screen at a low price. This is the goal Acer's aiming at with the Liquid Z520 – a 109-euro ($118) phone packing a 5-incher at its front. But what do you actually get for this kind of money?

The answer is a rectangular-ish, plasticky smartphone with low-end specifications. On one hand, the Acer Liquid Z520 is not a beauty contest winner and it is also on the chubby side. But on the other, the phone has a good grip to it thanks to its textured back cover. Don't hold your breath for the screen on this guy. Sure, it is fairly large, but its resolution is just 480 by 854 pixels, which is disappointing. We also noticed fingerprint smudge sticking to its surface rather easily.

A peek under the hood of the Acer Liquid Z520 reveals a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek SoC (as indicated by the CPU-Z app) along with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. We did notice some stuttering while checking out the handset, which hints that the phone isn't a great performer and might lag when pushed. The phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat with a pretty stock-ish feel to it, although we noticed a few additions to it, including DTS audio tweaks and a redesigned recent apps menu where space for shortcuts and up to nine recent items has been made. On the back of the Acer Liquid Z520 we find an 8MP camera, while a 2MP front-facing cam is used for shooting selfies. 

And that's the Acer Liquid Z520 in a nutshell. If your budget is extremely tight, this could be an option worth considering, although our advice would be to spend a few bucks extra on something a bit more capable in the hardware department.