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LG PM-225

 & Sascha Segan Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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 - LG PM-225
2.5 Fair

The Bottom Line

An excellent little voice phone with a very basic camera tacked on.

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Pros & Cons

    • Small and light.
    • Excellent ergonomics and call quality.
    • Lousy camera.
    • Short on memory.

LG PM-225 Specs

802.11x/Band(s): No
Bands: 1900
Bands: 850
Bands: Analog
Bluetooth: No
Camera Flash: No
Camera: Yes
Form Factor: Flip Phone
High-Speed Data: 1xRTT
Megapixels: .3 MP
Phone Capability / Network: CDMA
Physical Keyboard: No
Screen Size: 1.7 inches
Service Provider: Sprint

The LG PM-225, an ever-so-slight upgrade to the excellent VI-125 voice phone, adds a very basic camera and a color external screen for a little extra money. It should satisfy entry-level camera-phone users who don't want to spend a lot.

The tiny, rounded PM-225 feels great in your hand and shares its small size, as well as very good battery life (4 hours 21 minutes of talk time), with its cheaper sibling. At 3.4 ounces, it's heavier than the 3.1-oz VI-125, but not noticeably so. Sound quality and reception are both very good, and we especially appreciate the prominently marked speakerphone button.

The camera may be one feature the PM-225 has over the VI-125, but it's not very good. This basic VGA camera has only enough built-in memory to hold a mere 20 photos before you have to send them to yourself through Sprint's network, but it's still better than nothing. In our testing, low-light shots were blown-out, blurry, and noisy, and our simulated-daylight still life came out muddy and grayish.

Still, the camera is no worse than we expected at this very low price, and it's no worse than what we saw on camera phones a year or two ago. There's no flash, but there are brightness and white-balance settings, and you can use the external display as a viewfinder for self-portraits when the phone's flip is closed.

Otherwise, the PM-225's features are pretty basic. It can send and receive text and picture messages, surf WAP sites (rather slowly), and play games. It tries valiantly to stream video, but lacks Sprint's new satellite-radio-over-cellular service.

We're rating the PM-225 pretty low because it's at the very low end of the feature-phone market. If you're serious about taking photos with your Sprint phone, pick up a higher-end model, such as the LG MM-535. But if you are looking at voice-only phones and wouldn't mind a camera as a frill, the PM-225 adds that frisson to one of the best voice-only models out there.

To view the features of several available Sprint phones in a side by side table, click here.

Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 4 hours 21 minutes
Jbenchmark 1.1.1: 394

More PC Magazine cell phone reviews:

Final Thoughts

 - LG PM-225

LG PM-225

2.5 Fair

An excellent little voice phone with a very basic camera tacked on.

Get It Now

Buy It Now

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

  • US and Canadian mobile networks
  • Mobile phones released in the US
  • iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
  • Mobile hotspots
  • Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services. 

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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