I’ve been testing the BLU Life One X3 for the past few weeks now. And in my testing, I found this phone to really excel in two key areas: battery life and performance. It’s also worth noting that the price of this handset is extremely appealing right now. BLU is selling this phone for $150 for a limited time. But the price will shoot up to $250 very soon so links below if you want to view the Amazon listing.

Now BLU is kind of known for producing smartphones with very appealing spec to price ratios. The Life One X3 is a well-rounded budget smartphone. For example, it features a metallic build construction that feels cool to the touch and relatively premium. What separates this build from the builds of say the new iPhone and Galaxy phones is the separation of material. It doesn’t feel quite as sturdy or ergonomic in the hand as the higher end Android or iOS devices. Often times when I review a budget BLU smartphone, I usually find a “HD display” but it tends to be a mediocre 720p resolution LCD panel. Here we have a Full HD 1080p panel with fairly thin side bezels, solid viewing angles and color vibrancy. We’re looking at a 400ppi, which is certainly retina-pleasing. Content looks pretty good on this display.

There are 3 capacitive touch navigation buttons below the display that you should know about: the back button is to the far left where it should be, the overview button is to the far right, and there’s a home capacitive touch navigation button with a built-in fingerprint scanner that works pretty well. The registration process is pretty time-consuming but once you get all your fingers registered, it doesn’t lock the phone pretty quickly and it’s fairly reliable.

I like BLU’s hands-off approach with the software. It’s running Android 7.0 Nougat and it feels like it’s straight from Google. The default home launcher features Google Now one swipe to the right. There’s an app drawer. Apps don’t have custom skin icons. It’s nice and clean.

With the 64GB octa-core MediaTek processor paired with 3GB of RAM, there’s not a whole lot that this phone can’t handle. You will notice some herky-jerky movements at times when loading apps for the first time and when loading web pages but generally speaking, it performs well for its price category.

The main 13-megapixel camera sensor should work well for the occasional photo, whether it be for Snapchat or via a PDF scanning application or what have you. But the camera performance is really where this phone falls flat against the competition. The sensor features a 2.2 aperture that isn’t up to snuff with the f/2.0 aperture or larger sensors on some other BLU smartphones or other Android phones in general. Also, the software feels really outdated and janky. The shutter speed is also hit or miss. Sometimes it’s fast, other times it’s painstakingly slow. With that said, there is also a 13-megapixel front-facing sensor and when compared to other front-facing sensors, it’s not that bad. There’s even a flash for low-light selfies.

As mentioned in the beginning of this video, battery life is excellent. Under the hood lies a 5,000mAh battery that supports quick charging. You should be able to get two days of moderate to heavy usage with this phone, maybe even longer if you don’t use your phone very much. There is a bottom-firing speaker but it’s pretty average and there’s nothing really special to see here.

The Life One X3 is globally unlocked and it works with all GSM carriers here in the US. It’s tough to recommend for the full retail price of $250. But if you can scoop it up for $149, you should be a happy camper. This price will not last long. I don’t know how long it will last. It’s just a launch deal so visit the link to learn more and if you’re watching this video and the limited time launch deal is not available, I recommend you bookmark the Amazon page and just keep checking back to see if there’s a deal going on. You never know.