The original LG Spectrum was a high-end smartphone with a high-end price tag. Fast forward less than a year later, and we have the LG Spectrum 2. It's designed to compete with the rest of the heavy hitters in Verizon's lineup, and in most regards, it succeeds. But LG made one key difference this time around: Price. The LG Spectrum 2 is a high-end phone, but at $99.99, it costs half the price as other top choices in Verizon's lineup. That makes it a seriously good buy.

Design, Data Speeds, and Call Quality

Today's high-end smartphones are almost unanimously large, and the Spectrum 2 follows suit. It measures 5.31 by 2.69 by 0.39 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.59 ounces, which is a good deal heavier than the 4.69-ounce Samsung Galaxy S III. Physically, the phone looks a bit rectangular and boxy. The back panel is covered in rubberized black plastic, and there are plastic silver accent panels on the sides and matte black panels on the top and bottom. There's an LED-lit Power button on the top and two Volume buttons on the left. Like all big phones, it's difficult to hold the Spectrum 2 in one hand and pull the notifications bar down with your thumb.

The front of the phone is home to a beautiful 4.7-inch, 1280-by-720-pixel IPS LCD. While that resolution pales in comparison to the insane 5-inch, 1080p display on the new HTC Droid DNA, the Spectrum 2 gets incredibly bright, and text and images look sharp. It also looks better than the Galaxy S III, the Motorola Droid Razr HD, or the Droid Razr Maxx HD, all of which use PenTile panels that can make things look a little fuzzy. Given the size, typing on the onscreen keyboard is easy in both portrait and landscape modes.

The LG Spectrum 2 taps into Verizon's 4G LTE network where it's available, and 3G everywhere else. Verizon's 4G LTE network is very fast, and received top honors in our Fastest Mobile Networks tests earlier this year. The Spectrum 2 has good reception, and averaged 6Mbps down and 4Mbps up in our speed tests, which is consistent with most results we've seen lately. It can also be used as a mobile hotspot to connect up to 10 devices simultaneously with the proper service plan. And if you want to connect to Wi-Fi, the Spectrum 2 supports 802.11 a/b/g/n over the 2.4 and faster 5GHz bands, so wireless performance is solid across the board.

Call quality is average. Volume goes very loud in the phone's earpiece, but voices get reedy, especially at top volume. Transmissions through the mic are a little fuzzy and voices sound a bit muted, but calls are easy to understand overall. Calls sounded fine through a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset and standard Android voice dialing worked well over Bluetooth. The phone's big 2,150mAh battery was good for a solid 12 hours and 42 minutes of talk time. The phone comes with a wireless charging battery cover, and can be charged wirelessly with a separate charging pad.

Hardware, Android, and Apps

The Spectrum 2 is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 processor, which is the same chip you'll find in the Galaxy S III and Droid Razr HDs. It makes for excellent performance and benchmark scores comparable to those phones. We've seen this eclipsed by the emergence of quad-core devices like the Droid DNA, but it's still plenty fast—you'll be able to run all of the 600,000+ apps in the Google Play store without a problem.

(Next page: Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions)