I tested Doogee's V Max LR - a rugged phone that's identical to the V Max Play with one big difference that also makes it cheaper

Doogee V Max LR: 30-second review

Doogee’s V Max series includes some monstrous phones, all powered by the same MediaTek Dimensity 7300 SoC and a huge 20500 mAh battery.

The V Max LR is the cheapest option and delivers an almost identical design to the Play model, but with the omission of the projector.

Instead, the LR has a measuring sensor, which is slightly less niche and might be useful to anyone in the construction industry who doesn’t already have a gizmo for that.

Using an integrated app, this can measure lengths and areas easily and can be activated via the custom button.

In my V Max Play review, I covered some of the silly mistakes that Doogee made with that phone, like the included bumper that covers over the camping lights, among others. And, the LR model fixes none of these issues and repeats them all verbatim.

However, this choice has the significant advantage of being cheaper than the Play, a phone I felt was way too expensive. Direct from Doogee, the LR is $110 less than the Play, which gives us a good idea of what adding a projector adds to the cost.

That doesn’t make the LR cheap; it's just not the high cost of the Play.

If you want an impressively large phone with enough battery life to last a week of general use, that enhances the owner's biceps, and doubles as a tape measure, then the LR meets all those criteria.

If you don’t care that it's so unwieldy and not inexpensive, it might provide good service, but this isn't a combination that calls to our best rugged phones collection.

Doogee V Max LR: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $580/£465
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions directly from Doogee or from many online retailers.

Doogee sells its phones directly and through online retailers like Amazon and AliExpress.

In the USA, the V Max LR sells for $579.99 directly, or you can get it on Amazon.com for $769.99, but at time of review, it's discounted to $639.99.

A better deal can be had on AliExpress, where the V Max LR sells for $545.51, though I’m unsure whether that price includes tariffs on Chinese imports into the USA.

For UK customers, it's available from Amazon.co.uk for £630. It's also on AliExpress, where the latest price is only £463.23. And, across Europe, AliExpress charges €524.32 for the global version of this phone.

Other phones that offer a rangefinder include the Blackview BV9300 and the Unihertz 8849 Tank 3. The Blackview has been replaced with the BV9300Pro model, but the old one with the same measuring technology as the LR costs around $480 on AliExpress. That seems cheap, but the BV9300 only has 75% of the battery capacity of the LR, and half the storage.

Equally, the original Unihertz 8849 Tank 3 has been superseded, you can still get it, but only the models without the rangefinder.

Given that most phone makers who previously included a rangefinder have removed it from their devices, it hints that it wasn’t a feature that sold many devices.

• Value score: 3.5/5

Doogee V Max LR: Specs

Doogee V Max LR: design

• Heavy and thick
• Annoying bumper

I’ve already covered the ergonomics of this phone in my Doogee V Max Play review that you can read here, so let's keep this brief.

At 771g, this is an excessively heavy and bulky device that doesn’t fit easily in your pocket and would be a nightmare for anyone who has wrist strength issues or a child.

To make it marginally easier to carry, Doogee created a hard-plastic bumper with an integrated rubber handle.

It’s obvious to anyone using the phone for the first time that the person who designed the bumper never saw a physical phone, and just created it using a CAD model.

I say that because the carrying handle sits over the user-customisable button, and gripping the phone triggers that button every time. So, where on the Play you open the phone to always find the projector controls on the screen, here you always meet the measuring app.

Another clue to the lack of joined-up thinking is that the LR, like the Play, has two large LED arrays that act as a camping light, but the bumper obscures these entirely behind solid plastic. Therefore, to use them, the bumper must first be removed, which isn’t easy in either light or dark.

I do wonder about the number of people involved in the design and production of the LR and the Play who either didn’t notice or chose to ignore the obvious faults in this aspect of the design as it moved from concept to production. But, they did one or the other.

As a phone and a bumper, neither of these things is Doogee’s finest hour.

Design score: 3/5

Doogee V Max LR: hardware

• Same SoC as Play model
• Confuses IR and Lasers

The underlying Android 15 platform on the LR is unchanged from the Play, and therefore, you can read my review of that phone for a greater insight into what the Dimensity 7300 Energy offers, and if it's something you might want in your mobile devices.

To paraphrase my previous views, it’s a decent SoC with more than enough power for the majority of use cases, even if it’s not ideal for the hardcore gamer.

Its strengths are supreme power efficiency, which, given the phone's battery capacity, results in exceptional running time.

The one feature that Doogee removed from the Play to create the LR was the projector, but its omission left physical space within the design, and the engineers decided to fill that with something more practical and less niche.

You may be wondering what the LR stands for in this phone, and it's the Laser Rangefinder. But this is where we head down a rabbit hole, because I’m not sure whether this phone has a laser rangefinder.

What makes me unsure? Well, in the app, when you activate the measuring system, it says “Turn on infrared”, not “Activate Laser”. But when you do that, you can see a visible laser spot where the phone is pointed. If this were infrared, it wouldn’t be visible, since humans can’t see the frequencies of light that are generally classed as infrared.

In an attempt to resolve these apparent contradictions, I checked the documentation that came with the phone and found no reference to laser light or any safety warning regarding that or IR. Admittedly, the two-page manual was a generic one, and not specific to the LR, but surely if you have a product with a laser in it, of whatever power, that needs a specific kite-mark or something?

What I do know is that, alongside the area on the phone where the ‘laser’ comes out, there's an IR sender/receiver. Doogee mentions it has this in its promotional materials, calling it an “Infrared Remote Control”, although there are no apps included to use it.

My guess, and take this with a huge pinch of salt, is that the laser is a marker so you can see where it is measuring to, and the actual measurement is performed using Infrared, because that’s much cheaper than the electronics to calculate the return of a laser beam.

That would explain why the device's maximum range is 40M and its measurement accuracy is rated at ±3-15 mm. Eventually, I found a reference that said 630-670nm visible infrared, which confused me even more, because that’s in the visible light range, and strictly not in the true infrared range.

I could be wrong, and I’ll be happy to accept it if I am, but whatever the LR has isn’t a ‘Laser Rangefinder’, as is typically defined.

Can it measure distances? Yes, although not that accurately. As they say, measure twice, cut once.

• Hardware score: 4/5

Doogee V Max LR: cameras

• Rear camera: 200MP Samsung S5KHP2 primary camera, 20 MP Sony IMX350 Night Vision Camera, 8MP Ultra Wide Angle & Macro Camera
• Front camera: 32MP Samsung S5GD1

Again, I’ll spare you my repeated thoughts on the camera system of the LR, since it's identical to the same arrangement in the V Max Play. I covered that subject in my review of that phone, so I’ll give a general overview of my thoughts here.

The phone's sensor is good, and the HP2 primary camera in particular is an excellent choice for those wanting crisp, well-saturated images, even in low-light conditions.

It’s combined with the workman-like 20MP Sony sensor that is good for night vision and a workable 8MP sensor for ultra-wide-angle and macro scenarios.

For the sake of thoroughness, I’ve taken another series of example photos using the LR, but there isn’t any practical difference between these and the ones I took using the Play.

One thing I failed to mention on the Play, but I’ll include here, is that neither of these phones has Widevine L1 support, with only L3 encryption. That means that the majority of streaming services will limit the quality of a streamed movie or TV show to only 480P, irrespective of the screen resolution. Many Chinese phone makers don’t care about Westerners watching Netflix, and Doogee is one of those, it transpires.

In short, the cameras are good, but avoid the encouragement of the underwater mode, since given the weight of this phone, if you let it slip from your hand, it will be heading rapidly to the deep six.

Doogee V Max LR Camera samples

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

• Camera score: 4.5/5

Doogee V Max LR: performance

• Decent SoC
• GPU is game-friendly
• Big battery

I put this data in the review to underline that the LR and the Play versions of the Doogee V Max are the same phone inside.

Yes, there are different results, but the difference is no more than what you get by repeatedly running the tests. The only oddity is why the Play has a lower PCMark score, and I can only conclude that a firmware update that happened between my testing made a change that upgraded the LR on that one test.

If the LR is compared with other rugged phones, the performance is decent but not spectacular. As a good example, the Oukitel WP210 that uses the Dimensity 8200 scores 6023 on the 3Dmark Wildlife test. Therefore, faster phones are available, but the platform on the LR outclasses many designs, like the Blackview BV7300 or Oukitel WP300.

• Performance score: 4/5

Doogee V Max LR: Final verdict

As I iterated with the V Max Play, the phone's physical size is a deal-breaker for many, since it limits who can carry it and how far.

On the other hand, if the phone will typically be in a vehicle, then it might not matter.

The idea of removing the projector and putting in the measuring system and its price reduction seems, on paper at least, a good idea.

Though the V Max LR still isn’t an inexpensive phone, especially if you buy it through Amazon.

There are good things about this phone, like the cameras and the SoC, but they’re balanced by the price and a few dire aspects, such as the poorly designed bumper.

That bumper wasn’t good on the Play, and now it's appeared on the LR. I just hope Doogee redesign it for any subsequent V Max models.

Should I buy a Doogee V Max LR?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

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