ZTE Nubia Music review - DJ phone with a pop art look and dual headphone jack

Who would have thought: The ZTE Nubia Music offers exceptional features for music fans for less than 150 euros: starting with the really cool design, the comprehensive DTS software for the sound settings and the high volume, and the dual audio jack. A radio receiver is also on board so that you can enjoy music even without the Internet.

The loudspeaker can get loud but then also has a treble-heavy effect. With the equalizer, however, you can actually elicit quite a full sound at a slightly lower volume. There could have been a few more Bluetooth audio codecs, but the most common options and options for Hi-Res audio playback are available.

Of course, ZTE also had to make some savings in order to keep the price so low: The phone comes without 5G, only supports WiFi 4, and has to do without a brightness sensor. The processor is also quite slow and it takes time to charge the battery. At least it comes with the right charger, which is now unusual even for very expensive phones.

If you want to use the ZTE Nubia Music as your everyday smartphone, you will have to live with some limitations. However, if you like listening to music, want comprehensive sound settings, like the design, and enjoy listening to music together via two headphones, the Nubia Music is a decent replacement for a dedicated music player and also has the advantages of a smartphone.

We would like to see a higher-quality sister model in the future that perfects the really good approaches of Nubia Music with better components and escapes the cost pressure.

Actually priced by the manufacturer at just under 150 euros, the ZTE Nubia Music is available at much lower prices from online retailers:

At the time of testing, the smartphone was already available for 110 euros, for example at galaxus.de. You have to pay a few euros more at amazon.de.

The ZTE Nubia Music stands out: The back is either yellow or has a chic pop art design, but is always colorful. The phone is therefore not suitable for every conference table, but its design alone puts you in a good mood in a relaxed atmosphere.

The back is made of plastic, and the camera module is slightly raised by a transparent plate, which also houses the huge speaker with a vinyl record design. In the middle is a DTS-X logo that lights up to the rhythm of the music.

The design and stability of the phone are very good, only very strong pressure gets through to the screen.

NFC for wireless payments is available. The phone is supplied with 128 GB mass storage and 4 GB RAM.

The memory can be expanded via microSD cards, although one of the two SIM slots is then occupied. The card reader only works moderately fast in the test with our reference microSD card Angelbird V60.

If you connect to the Internet with the ZTE Nubia Music, you should not expect excessively high speeds: WiFi 4 is the fastest WiFi standard that the device offers. In our test with the Asus ROG Rapture AXE11000 reference router, we only measured very slow transfer rates: When sending, it is less than 60 MBit/s and the ZTE Nubia Music cannot keep up with similarly expensive smartphones when receiving either.

The data rates are generally sufficient for music streaming, even when streaming Hi-Res audio. However, the data rate can occasionally drop, but this is not noticeable when playing music due to the buffering. Only once during the test did we experience a brief dropout during playback.

You can't use the fastest current standard via the mobile networks either: 4G is the maximum here. There are also only very few frequencies available, which means you often cannot use the mobile Internet when traveling abroad. Reception was also shaky in our tests, especially in difficult situations such as between closely spaced houses.

The touchscreen is easy to use, but the very slow SoC often causes stutters and delays. A fingerprint sensor is integrated into the standby button on the right, which reliably recognizes fingerprints once they have been applied. Unlocking takes place with a slight delay. The user also can use face unlock but this is done in a 2D process via the front camera, making it comparatively easy to manipulate.

The smartphone was originally delivered with Android 13 but was updated to version 14 during our test. However, this is still a year behind schedule, as many phones already receive Android 15.

Even high-end products are usually only updated by ZTE for one year. There is no guaranteed update period for Nubia Music, but you shouldn't expect the software to be available for too long. After all, current Android phones are still supplied with basic security updates via Google Play updates, even if the manufacturer does nothing.

The manufacturer only provides general information on the sustainability of the device, for example, that there is a strategy to produce climate-neutrally by 2050. There is no information about the materials used in the product or the CO₂ emissions during production. The packaging still contains plastic film, so there is hardly any evidence of a commitment here either.

ZTE wanted to save money on its music smartphone and is using an SoC that was already installed in entry-level smartphones in 2021: the Unisoc 9863A. In everyday use, the low performance is noticeable in the often sluggish system and also in the benchmarks, especially in comparison to similarly priced smartphones.

Nevertheless, there is hardly any heat build-up on the device's casing and no throttling of the SoC is noticeable in the 3DMark stress tests.

The speaker is of course important for a music smartphone. It is located at the back of the casing and looks like a vinyl record. It actually offers a decent sound at maximum volume, which clearly outperforms other smartphones in its price range. If you press the volume up button again, a boost is activated, which increases the volume even further. The speaker then becomes noticeably louder again but also sounds a little treble-heavy.

It's a good thing that the DTS software is available on the smartphone, where you can make extensive sound settings and, with a little trial and error, you can actually achieve a sound that you would never have expected from a smartphone in this price range.

If you still prefer to connect headphones or speakers, you can use two 3.5 mm jack ports. These are close together, but most of the plugs we tried could be plugged in at the same time. External sound devices can also be connected via Bluetooth. The most common Bluetooth audio codecs are available for this, but you would have expected more unusual variants for an explicit music phone.

The ZTE Nubia Music's battery has a capacity of 5,000 mAh and thus achieves runtimes of up to 15:18 hours in our WLAN test. This is enough for a day of use without charging, and economical users will probably manage longer. If the smartphone does need to be plugged in, the charging process can take up to 3 hours. The reason for this is the maximum charging power of 10 watts. Nevertheless, a charger is included, as well as a wide range of other accessories.

The ZTE Nubia Music is a smartphone that can actually only do one thing really well: Playing music. This works really well thanks to the extensive equalizer software, a decent speaker, a radio receiver, and two audio ports.

Otherwise, however, the phone is very slow and is unlikely to be supplied with updates.