LG Marquee Review

LG’s Optimus lineup has produced some outstanding hardware. On the high end you have the Optimus 2X, the first smartphone to feature a dual-core processor and the Optimus 3D, the world’s first 3D handset. With the Optimus One line, LG redefined our expectations for a low-end smartphone by offering smooth performance at an affordable price. The Optimus Black slots in between those devices, and is the stylish one of the bunch. Originally announced back in January, the Black is now making its way to the US via Sprint as the LG Marquee. This sleek device offers a 4” NOVA display, 5 megapixel camera and Android 2.3. Included with the Marquee you’ll get the microUSB cable with AC adapter and a 2GB microSD card.

When you look at the LG Marquee it appears to be just another black slab device, but when you pick it up you realize just how small it is. It makes its name by being ultra-thin at just 9.1mm, and with tapered vertical edges the phone almost melts into your hand. The fashionable battery door is showy and the phone’s thinness makes it feel comfortable in the hand despite the lack of soft touch paint.

The LG Marquee is an Android 2.3 device compatible with SprintID. We took a more detailed look at SprintID last year with the Samsung Transform and not much has changed since, except that you are (thankfully) no longer required to install an ID from the get-go. Out of the box is a pretty vanilla Android experience and there is little software pre-installed on the Marquee. You have the Sprint Wallet, Zone and ID apps, Polaris Office and SmartShare which is a front-end app for the Marquee’s DLNA capabilities. 

One option we do appreciate is the Quick Launch key below the volume rocker that you can customize to launch any application. When it is set to the camera it also acts as a physical camera shutter button. LG has tapped Swype for onscreen keyboard duties and we had no problems with lag or unrecognized key presses/swypes.

Powered by a 1GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor backed by 512MB or RAM and 2GB of ROM the LG Marquee runs fairly fluidly. Benchmarks weren’t the greatest with Quadrant scores shy of 1000, but benchmarks don’t always mean much and we didn’t notice any hesitation while using the Marquee. One thing that did catch our eye with Quadrant was that the Marquee seems to be limited to 15fps, which is a shockingly low number. We can’t really say that we noticed a difference in our test videos however, so remember that it is just a number.

We’ve noticed that Sprint is starting to differentiate their 3G devices, giving the better ones Rev. A support while lower-end models just have Rev. 0. The LG Marquee much be on the high end of the spectrum because it has a Rev. A radio to go along with Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPA and Bluetooth 3.0. 

The stock Android browser performs as expected, and the user can double-tap or pinch to zoom in and out. Pages loaded in a reasonable amount of time, but it is not as quick as higher end devices such as the Epic 4G Touch or the EVO 3D.

The LG Marquee’s 5MP camera gave us a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde performance. Outdoors under natural lighting we got good color reproduction, better than average detail and overall good results. Indoors, however, images were grainy and details were poor. The flash didn’t do much to help with image quality. The video camera can capture 720p video which was good but not great. Ours recorded at 23fps, which gave us fairly smooth video with good audio pickup.

With the stock Android camera interface you’re options are fairly limited and you’re stuck with preset modes and scenes rather than being able to tinker with more detailed settings. Up front is a 2MP camera for video chat and self-shots. 

Like we mentioned earlier the LG Marquee only was able to achieve 15fps during Quadrant testing, but with our test videos we couldn’t tell a performance difference. There was some artifacting that we had not seen on other devices with DivX files, but H.264, MPEG-4 and Xvid files all played at 720p with no problems. On the NOVA display movies looked very good. The stock Android music and video players are used, so there are no surprises on that front.

Performance:  

Callers were impressed with the voice quality of the LG Marquee. They said it was a bit hollow, but in general it was very clear with no echo and rated us an 8.5/10. Voice quality was also good on our end with natural reproduction and good volume on both the earpiece and speakerphone. Battery life is rated at just 5.5 hours for the Marquee, which is on the low end even for a smartphone. The battery is only 1500mAh, likely a casualty of the thin form factor.

The LG Marquee is a good phone for what it is, but doesn’t play with the big boys like the EVO 3D, the Photon and the Epic 4G Touch. Thanks to its wonderful 4” NOVA display we’d choose it over the Samsung Conquer 4G and it is likely the best of the rest in Sprint’s lineup. The camera performance could be better at times and battery life may be a concern for some, but the ultra-thin form-factor, super crisp display and good phone performance will draw plenty of users who want more out of their phone but don’t need a top-of-the-line device.