Rugged smartphones have limited appeal, but that’s the point—they’re not for everyone. If you’re working in a hard-hitting environment like construction, or you like to work out or travel to dangerous areas, you’re going to need a durable smartphone that can handle any unfortunate falls, crashes, and smashes that occur.
If that’s the case, the DOOGEE S40 Pro could be the Android smartphone you need, but don’t expect perfection. It isn’t the best Android smartphone in the world, but it does have some redeeming features.
We’ll be putting the DOOGEE S40 Pro to the test to help you decide if it’s the right choice for you in this extensive review.
DOOGEE S40 Pro: Design and Specifications
The DOOGEE S40 Pro is an Android smartphone with all the features and functionality you’d expect from any mid-tier Android phone, crossed with a super-tough casing and Gorilla Glass 4 display that make it an appealing choice for dangerous or physically demanding environments.
The design of the phone is pretty much what you’d expect from a phone with a “rock-solid” tagline on the box, with a casing that combines metal and rubber to keep itself safe and secure from damage. It’s clunky, but that’s the point—it’s designed to feel durable, so don’t expect a slim-style phone here.
It meets the U.S. military’s MIL-STD-810G durability rating for equipment, ensuring that it should withstand hard usage in heavy-duty environments over a longer period. The DOOGEE S40 Pro is also waterproof, with an IP68 rating that ensures that it can stay under 1.5 meters of water for around half an hour without damage.
As far as the tech specs are concerned, however, it’s nothing to write home about. The review model we tested came with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, a 5.5 inch IPS display, and a pretty impressive 4650 mAh battery, which should last a full day with heavy usage (and lasted around 8 hours in heavy usage during our test).
Processing power is pretty limited, however, with the MediaTek Helio A25 system-on-a-chip containing an octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU running at around 1.5 Ghz. Sounds impressive, but this is pretty old tech compared to what competitors like the Ulefone Armor 6E can offer. It does have a few tricks up its sleeve, however.
The DOOGEE S40 Pro comes with a fingerprint scanner, placed on the back for easy access, which is an unusual find at this price range. It also offers a standard 3.55mm headphone jack, dual-sim card slot for nano SIMs (or a SIM and micro SD card), and a customizable quick-launch button on the side.
It also comes with two rear cameras (13 megapixel and 2 megapixel) and 5 megapixel front camera. Video quality might be pretty poor, but you should be able to get a reasonable shot or two with the rear camera. Just don’t expect anything high-end from these snaps.
DOOGEE S40 Pro: Apps, Performance and Battery Life
As a Chinese-manufactured smartphone, there are obvious concerns about the availability of the Google Play store (and other Google services) on phones like the DOOGEE S40 Pro. Thankfully, these concerns aren’t valid, as the Google Play and other Google apps like Gmail are included with the phone as standard.
The S40 Pro’s interface is stock Android, with no real customization other than a custom background. If you’re used to Android, you shouldn’t expect switching to the S40 Pro to be difficult, although iPhone users switching to Android may find it harder.
The DOOGEE S40 Pro comes with a few additional apps to help its target audience, with a “tool bag” app folder that includes a compass, height measuring tool, plumb bob app, and more, taking advantage of its built-in sensors and camera. All worked well during testing, but there’s nothing that you can’t find in the Google Play store.
Whether you’re using the built-in apps or installed your own, performance really depends on what you’re using the phone for. It isn’t high-end, so don’t expect high-end performance, as the S40 Pro doesn’t respond very well under pressure. We’d argue that lag is this phone’s biggest problem, especially after a day’s usage.
After a couple of hours, the lag and lack of responsiveness started to become noticeable enough that it needed a restart to fix the problem. This could explain why the phone comes with an app called Basic Service , which helps to “optimize” the phone by “boosting speed” and clearing running apps from active memory.
Thankfully, battery life during usage is pretty solid. With a number of running apps, a little bit of video playback, and a display set to switch off after 10 minutes across a day’s usage, battery life lasted around 8 hours under what we’d consider to be heavy usage. With a huge 4650 mAh battery, this is probably as good as it gets.
Charging could do with some improvements, however. With a large battery and charging capped at 10W (with a supplied 5W/2A charger), you’re left waiting a pretty long time for a full charge. The S40 Pro also comes with an older micro-USB charging port although, given the retail price, this can probably be forgiven.
DOOGEE S40 Pro: Display and Camera Quality
The DOOGEE S40 Pro isn’t a high-end smartphone, and that’s pretty obvious as soon as you switch the phone on. Brightness under normal lighting is fine, but take the phone outside and you’re going to run into trouble.
Set to maximum brightness, the screen just isn’t able to handle bright, outdoor environments. As a phone touted for outdoor use, this is problematic to say the least. With a 720p IPS screen with a 295 PPI pixel density, the screen quality itself is towards the bottom end of the market, before we even consider the brightness issue.
The overall design of the display and screen casing is pretty standard, although it comes with an oversized bezel that takes into account the rubberized protection built-in to the case to help limit the damage if the phone is dropped. There are certainly better displays, but you should be fine with what you see in normal lighting.
It’s a similar story for the camera which, despite having a 15 megapixel Sony camera lens as the primary back camera, doesn’t do much with it. The quality is reasonable, but it won’t replace your digital SLR camera any time soon. Lighting is bad and the colors seem washed out, so don’t expect to be taking many shots at night, either.
That said, the DOOGEE S40 Pro is rated for hard environments, not photoshoots. In that respect, it does the job perfectly well, acting as a reasonable portable camera for situations that need it.
DOOGEE S40 Pro: Is It the Android Smartphone for You?
The model name might take inspiration from a certain South Korean manufacturer of high-end smartphones, but the DOOGEE S40 Pro isn’t aimed at the high-end. If you need a cheap, rugged smartphone that you can take outdoors, a phone that you’re not afraid to drop or even lose, then this smartphone is an obvious choice.
Unfortunately, the DOOGEE S40 Pro is a little lacking in some key areas. Screen resolution and brightness (especially in direct sunlight) is pretty poor, while overall performance and the included specs put it at the lower end of the Android smartphone market, although it certainly isn’t unusable.
The upside, however, is the cost. Retailing at less than $200, you’ll be hard pressed to find a 4G-capable, Android 10 smartphone for less, but don’t expect perfection, or you’ll walk away disappointed.
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Ben Stockton is a freelance technology writer based in the United Kingdom. In a past life, Ben was a college lecturer in the UK, training teens and adults. Since leaving the classroom, Ben has taken his teaching experience and applied it to writing tech how-to guides and tutorials, specialising in Linux, Windows, and Android. He has a degree in History and a postgraduate qualification in Computing. Read Ben’s Full Bio
3D printer manufacturer, Anycubic, recently released two new printers—the Anycubic Kobra and its bigger, badder uncle, the Anycubic Kobra Max. We were interested in testing both products in our hunt for the best entry-level 3D printers. We’re looking for ease-of-use and affordability, as well as build and print quality.
We’ve published a number of 3D printer reviews from Anycubic—for both FDM printers like the Anycubic Vyper that print with spools of filament and SLA resin 3D printers like the Anycubic Photon Mono X 6K that use a liquid resin as its raw material—and we can say that the Kobra Max has quickly become one of our favorites.
Features of the Anycubic Kobra Max 3D Printer
The most obvious feature of this printer is its size. It is absolutely massive. That means you can print huge items in a single piece. Think of a full helmet or an entire ukulele—these are things you couldn’t print in one piece on a normal-sized 3D printer. Truly, the word “Max” doesn’t sufficiently capture just how big this printer is. Good luck fitting the packaging into your trash or recycling bins!
We were skeptical that a Cartesian printer of this size (which relies on a moveable print bed) would perform well since it has a lot of weight to move around. Admittedly, it’s not the speediest printer out there because of those design tradeoffs, but it works great.
The Kobra Max has an impressive list of technical specifications:
- Leveling: Automatic, 25 points leveling using the Anycubic Leviq technology
- Panel area: 7.95 in² / 51.3 cm²
- Filament run-out detection: support
- Printing material: PLA / ABS / PETG & TPU
- Nozzle size: ø 0.4 mm (replaceable)
- Nozzle temperature: ≤ 500 °F / 260 °C
- Hot bed temperature: ≤ 194 °F / 90 °C
- Average speed: 3.1 – 3.9 in./s (80mm/s – 100m/s)
- Control panel: 4.3 inch LCD touch screen
- Z-axis: double threaded rod
- Print size: 17.7 x 15.7 x 15.7 in. / 45 x 40 x 40 cm (HWD)
- Build volume: 19.02 gal. / 72.0 L
- Machine dimensions: 72 x 71.5 x 66.5cm
As far as we can tell, the extruder is identical to the extruder and print head on the Anycubic Vyper. Furthermore, the Kobra Max has the same automatic bed-leveling system as the Vyper. The system uses a pressure sensor instead of an inductive sensor.
The bed-leveling sensor is right on the nozzle itself, ensuring that it can probe every printable part of the bed. And since the sensor is pressure-based, you could replace the glass bed with any other material and the bed-leveling system will still work. (Inductive sensors require metal to work, so you won’t find them on printers with glass beds.)
Since the Kobra Max’s printing platform is a rigid glass sheet, you can’t remove and flex it to pop your prints off. We prefer removable spring steel build plates, but glass is still a nice printing surface. If your printer doesn’t have a removable bed, glass is ideal because you can use metal scrapers to remove your prints without worrying about scratching the surface.
The LCD touchscreen is identical to the screens used on many other Anycubic printers. As usual, it’s responsive and easy to use.
A note about filament types: the Kobra Max will print with PLA, PETG, TPU, and ABS. However, if you really want to print with ABS and get the best possible results, the printer should be inside an enclosure. Given its size, it may be challenging to build a suitable enclosure for the Kobra Max.
Assembling the Kobra Max 3D Printer
When assembling the new Kobra Max, make sure you have sufficient working space. Since the bed moves forward and backward, you need more space than you’d think. We put it on a 30” folding table, and when it’s printing, it needs about 36 inches, front to back.
Assembly of the Kobra Max is no more difficult than assembling the Kobra or Vyper. The only additional items are the diagonal braces which add stiffness to the frame, reducing mechanical vibration.
It took two people about 15 minutes to assemble. Double-check that you’ve cut all the zip ties used to stabilize the printer during shipping. There are a lot of them.
Calibration
The auto-bed-leveling system is easy to use. Anycubic recommends that you check the x- and the y-axes to make sure they don’t wobble. If they do, you can adjust the eccentric nuts until the wobbling stops. There was no wobble on our printer, so we didn’t have to do anything.
Additionally, the x- and y-axes have belt tensioners. We needed to slightly tighten the x-axis on ours. The tensioners are easy to use and are features a lot of other printers lack. Who wants to take apart the extruder assembly just to tighten the belts? Not us, and probably not you.
Build Quality of the Kobra Max
Due to the addition of the diagonal braces, the frame is really stiff. The dual z-axis screws are an improvement over the smaller Kobra. They virtually eliminated sagging of the x-axis assembly.
The spool holder sits on the base of the printer, reducing wobbling when printing tall items. It’s better than having the spool on the top like on the Kobra.
This printer is built with aluminum extrusions with aesthetically-pleasing plastic covers for the hotend and the tenionsers. It’s got an optical z endstop. The x and y endstops are mechanical. The whole thing feels solid.
First Print
For the first print, we used the test file provided by Anycubic. Appropriately, the owl is about twice the print volume of the owl test print that comes with the smaller Kobra. Given the bowden setup (which makes sense for a printer this size), we were surprised that the ears on the owl turned out so well.
The ears look better than they did on the owl printed on the Kobra which has a direct drive extruder system. We suspect that’s due to the slower print speed. Many times, retractions on bowden extruders will create artifacts, but we didn’t notice any blobs or stringing. It approaches the quality you’d expect from a direct-drive.
Next, we printed a vase with a large, flat base with a 0.2mm layer height. Removing prints from the glass bed is certainly not as easy as removing prints from smaller, flexible beds, but it’s not a deal-breaker either. We didn’t have any adhesion problems. The prints didn’t release when the glass bed cooled, which is what we expected and hoped for.
Curious what the power requirements would be for a printer this size, we were worried we wouldn’t be able to run multiple printers on the same circuit. We measured the power usage while the Kobra Max was printing, and, as expected, power usage is highest while the printer is warming up. Ours topped out at 473 watts. While printing, it was a more manageable 200-300 watts. We thought it would be more than that. You could probably run three of these printers on a 20 amp circuit.
Cut to the Chase
To drive home just how big the Kobra Max is, we put the Kobra on the bed of the Kobra Max. Insane. (We do not recommend you try this.)
A small printer is limiting, so if you find yourself printing large objects in small pieces and assembling them, consider buying a Kobra Max. If you’re new to 3D printing, keep in mind that it takes a long time to print big objects—potentially days and days. Typically, we’d recommend a smaller printer to beginners, but at the price point of $569.00 if you purchase on the Anycubic site, it’s worth considering as an entry-level printer.
One downside is that smaller prints will take a little longer than they would on a smaller, faster printer. That’s just physics. Bigger printers have more inertia to overcome and take longer to move. For example, the print time for our vase was thirteen hours. On our Prusa MK 2.5 with similar settings, it would have taken about twelve hours—not a huge difference.
*Special thanks to FormerLurker for help in reviewing AnyCubic’s Kobra Max 3D printer.
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Maggie Marystone is a freelance technology writer, human rights worker, and storyteller based in Chicago. Read Maggie’s Full Bio
