LG Optimus 4X HD review

Can LG's first quad-core phone offer anything different?

LG Optimus 4X HD review
Power of four cores, but is it a bit too late?

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One of the in-things at the moment – which we first saw on the HTC One X – is the ability to shoot HD video and take photos at the same time.

And the LG Optimus 4X HD offers this facility too which is great. Video is filmed at a maximum 1920x1080 resolution with a frame rate of 3fps. Of course, that means large files – which is why that huge internal memory is so crucial.

LG Optimus 4X HD review

There are various effects that you can add to your videos like faces and fake backgrounds but we found them to be pretty rubbish and gimmicky. If this were a phone aimed at 13 year olds, it'd make sense. But here, it just wastes precious screen estate.

One problem we noticed in our videos is that the camera is constantly trying to refocus. It's a real shame because our videos kept on blurring out as the camera tried to fix itself.

It makes videos unusable in a lot of cases and we can't quite believe this passed LG's own quality control process. However, you can pinch to zoom in on a video you're taking, or do the same once the video is recorded too, which is a really handy feature.

LG Optimus 4X HD review

And while you can have the LED light illuminate your video in the dark, you can't turn it on during a video. There's no option. Which means you have to stop and start again having gone into the menu and fiddled about with it all. It's a tad annoying.

All in all, it means that this isn't the best HD phone video camera out there. And it's a real shame for LG.