FULL DISCLOSURE: LG Q60 was received from LG South Africa as a seeding unit.

The LG Q60 is a comfortable phone to have. It’s not too big, feels good in hand and pretty much does what is expected of it. With a small bezel and a little teardrop around the front facing camera, the LG’s screen measures a decent 6.26" with 19:9 aspect ratio. This helps the phone to be thinner in hand when compared with mid range models of a year or so ago. 

Unfortunately, and perhaps my biggest gripe with the Q60, LG opted for a screen with a resolution of 720x1520 and not the regular 1080x1920 pixels. That’s close to a million pixels less on the screen, which unfortunately can be picked up in the crispness of the display. It’s an unfortunate choice that is a big mark against the Q60.

Wide angle all the way

One of the features I love about LG is the way it has incorporated wide-angle photography. Start the Q60’s camera and it opens on a regular angle (shot at 16 MP), but if you want to go wide, just zoom out with a 120° view at 5 MP.  This wider angle might give your photography an edge on Instagram, especially for landscapes. 

The Q60 does have a tri-camera setup so includes portrait mode that distorts the background, but it takes a bit of time for the phone to actually process and display the photo captured. Low light performance could have been better, and so too the selfies, and overall the image quality is good without being exceptional. Oh yes, there are also eight types of scenes the phone can identify with it then adjusting your settings accordingly (food, city, pet, etc), while it also incorporates Google Lens which can help you search using your camera (it showed which sneakers I was wearing for example).   

Luckily the battery is decent, coming in at 3500 mAh. My usage, which can sometimes be YouTube heavy, stretched into the evening. One of the better aspects of the phone is the onboard DTS:X 3D Surround Sound. Plug in your earphones (yes, it still has a 3.5mm jack) and you are served up some awesome audio. It’s really noticeable when switching this option on and off on how much this feature improves your tunes.

A fingerprint scanner at the back, and a dedicated Google Assistant button on the side rounds off the Q60, although the amount of times I accidentally pressed the Assistant button (or the car cradle activated it) makes me believe it could have been better placed higher up. 

Midrange and all that jazz

With Android 9 onboard and LG’s unobtrusive UX 7 on top, it was smooth sailing all around. If there is critique, it’s the pre installed bloatware. Both Instagram and Facebook cannot be deleted, only disabled. If you’re buying a phone, you should really be able to decide what you can delete off your phone and what not.

While not slow, the Q60 falls slap-bang in the centre of midrange performance with its 2.0 GHz octa-core Mediatek MT6762 chipset and 3 GB of RAM. With an Antutu benchmark score of 78 497 it competes with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy A6+ and the Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra, both phones that are a bit older. With 64 GB of storage and a slot for a microSD card, storage too is comparable. 

With a retail price of R3 800 in South Africa, the LG Q60 is up against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy A20 and Huawei Y7 2019, pretty similar devices at that price point, with a few things that counts for and against them. While the wider camera gives the LG Q60 the edge for photography, its screen resolution knocks it back down again. Nonetheless, the LG Q60 should definitely be on your mid-range shortlist if you’re aiming for the sub-R4k mark.