Sony Xperia L2 review

Camera

The Xperia L2 comes with a 13MP camera on its back. It's a 1/3.06" sensor behind an f/2.0 aperture lens. There's no OIS, nor do we expect the L2 to have any. It does have an LED flash next to the lens.

Much like the L1, the Xperia L2 uses Sony's latest camera UI, but cuts back on features. There is no section for shooting modes, which means you can't even capture a panoramic photo. You change between Auto, Manual, and video by swiping up and down (or left and right, if you're holding it in portrait).

Other than HDR override, in Manual mode you get access to shutter speed selection (1/4000s - 1s), exposure compensation, white balance, and a manual focus slider. The manual ISO setting (100-3200) is still tucked away in an extra settings menu.

Camera interface

Image quality

Image quality is rather dismal. Photos have a general mushiness to them, with an extra level of softness in the corners. Noise is abundant too. Dynamic range is quite narrow, and white balance leans towards a colder that ideal rendition of colors.

Camera samples

Being a Sony phone, the Xperia L2 will engage its 'backlit' scene mode when in Superior auto, and that in its essence is an HDR mode. You can manually switch on HDR too, in Manual mode. In practice, manual HDR shots are even softer than regular ones. Other than that, you can count on boosted midtones, recovered highlights, and, oddly, darker shadows.

HDR: Superior Auto • Manual, HDR Off • Manual, HDR On

Of course, you can also have a look at our Photo compare tool to see how the Xperia stacks up next to the competition. We've pre-selected the Xiaomi Mi A1 and the Moto G5S Plus, but you can replace those with your choice of phones.

Sony Xperia L2 against the Xiaomi Mi A1 and Moto G5S Plus in our Photo compare tool

Selfies

The Xperia L2 borrows the selfie cam from the XA2 - it's an 8MP shooter with an ultra wide 120-degree field of view, perfect for group shots.

With that being said, image quality isn't spectacular by any stretch. A bit surprisingly though, the shots we got out of the L2 are sharper than the ones from the XA2.

Selfie samples - ultra wide

The ones shot at the narrow setting are softer, by definition - not much else you can expect when you crop the center portion of the sensor and upscale it back to 13MP.

Selfie samples - narrower FOV

Video

The Xperia L2 can record video up to 1080p/30fps - the modest chipset can only do so much. There's no electronic stabilization either.

Videos are encoded with a 16.2Mbps bit rate, and audio is a stereo track at 128Kbps.

The prevalent softness continues into video with the 1080p footage looking like upscaled 720p at best. Dynamic range is quite narrow, but you could say that colors are nice.

We've also uploaded a short sample (10s, 22MB) on our server, which you can download and examine for yourselves.

If you'd like to compare the Xperia L2' video camera to some other phones, head over to our Video Compare Tool below.

Sony Xperia L2 against the Xiaomi Mi A1 and Moto G5S Plus in our Video compare tool