Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
The Huawei Ascend Y300 places itself in the low-end price bracket, and the performance it delivers correlates with that.
Its 4-inch display is crisp bright and clear and its built in features are comparable with similarly priced phones, while the 5MP camera is a pleasant surprise on paper.
We liked
Huawei have built a solid touch screen device for around £100 with is perfect for people on a tight budget that want the same features as many of its competitors.
The camera in the Ascend Y300 isn't going to blow you away, although it does the job and includes editing features that don't come as standard on competitors.
Storage space is removable and upgradeable so all your content can travel with you and you're not restricted by the limits of the Y300's built in capacity.
The screen is bright and balanced, with no bias towards red or blue, however the pixel density might not be enough for users accustomed to higher resolution displays.
We disliked
The keyboard on the Ascend Y300 is borderline shocking, and it seems like absolutely no thought has been put into the design and placement of certain buttons and keys.
This travels right through the device from messaging to Internet exploring. An unfortunate oversight from the Chinese company, although other options are available to fix this problem with a bit of tinkering.
The Emotion UI built on top of Android 4.1 leaves much to be desired. It loaded slowly, was a bit of an eye sore and didn't have any real benefits in our eyes.
The design of the interface left the phone feeling like it wasn't built for adults, as the overall themes were too childish.
The battery life could also be improved, although it was not too much of a disappointment when compared to the other issues with the device.
Verdict
The Huawei Ascend Y300 is a fairly solid device, and for the price it's hard to complain about the niggling problems we faced.
It's obviously not the company's flagship device, but it is still full of features. It does have a solid build, even though it feels cheap with it plastic casing, and the rear cover of the device needs to be literally prised open to access the innards.
It doesn't weigh too much and it would be hard to call it an eyesore, even though in our opinion it could do with slimming down slightly.
The Ascend Y300 is also lacking in new technology with the exclusion of NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 and 4G, but in comparison this device four years ago would have been called top of the range.
The handset from Huawei is slightly stuck in the past, its feature packed internals are dated and nowhere near ground breaking.
If you are willing to compromise and want to keep some money in your pocket, and fancy embracing a device that has not been produced by the established big boys in the industry, then the Huawei Ascend Y300 could be for you.
