Archos, often thought of for its lower end gadgets, has made a big impression at MWC 2016 with its new smartphone. The Archos Diamond 2 Note offers some serious specs while sticking to the Archos affordable pricing.

Our quick take

For the money Archos has done really well here. This is a top-end phone when it comes to specs and somehow the company has even managed to design it well so it looks good and feels premium encased in Gorilla Glass 3.

Running pure Android 6.0 Marshmallow is also a real draw. That £250 price really is low for what you get.

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The Diamond 2 Plus and Diamond 2 Note were both shown off at MWC 2016, looking like high end devices.

The Diamond 2 Note offers a near edge-to-edge display, which is pretty eye catching, especially for that £250 price.

Look closer and the specs keep on impressing. We went hands-on.

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Archos Diamond 2 Note: Design and build

The display of the mighty Note is one that stands out. Not only is the bezel very minimal but also the glass has a 2.5D curve so it appears to blend into the phone. It's not quite the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge but it does have that sort of effect. Even the top and bottom edge of the phone's front are very minimal, with no buttons taking up room.

The back of the handset is finished in metal, the front has Gorilla Glass 3, thanks to a full lamination process even the back is protected by a layer of this, apparently although we couldn't feel it. This feel really premium.

The side buttons are metal with a solid click finish that give the handset a premium feel.

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Archos Diamond 2 Note: Display

The screen itself is a 6-inch IPS QHD 2560 x 1440 unit meaning the resolution is plenty high at 490ppi but also the brightness and colours are decent. It's still an LCD so the colour isn't OLED level punchy and we imagine power consumption may be high on a screen this size.

Thanks to the Gorilla Glass 3 encasing there shouldn't be any issues with scratching and, hopefully, it'll be able to take a knock and a drop or two. On the rear is apparently a fingerprint reader although it was covered on the model we saw.

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Archos Diamond 2 Note: Cameras

The camera on the Diamond 2 Note sits flush on the back of the handset to give the phone a nice finish. There is also a dual flash that sits below the camera lens. It's a 16-megapixel unit that focuses plenty fast and in our limited use of it appeared to produce well-defined shots.

The front-facing selfie camera is even an impressive 8-megapixel shooter with f.2.2 aperture.

Archos Diamond 2 Note: Power and specs

To call the phone fast might be a bit of a stretch, but there was very little lag. We only noticed a bit of a wait when loading larger games. The chip is a MediaTek MT6795 Helio X10 64-bit octa-core processor running at 2GHz backed by 3GB of RAM.

That said this is fairly normal so we can't really complain. We were just aware that with more apps running and a fuller phone memory thing might not run so smoothly.

Powering everything is a 3610mAh battery with fast charging capabilities. Well needed with that large, high-res screen. But it'll likely last well thanks to an octa-core processor.

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Archos Diamond 2 Note: Extras

Under the hood you get cat.4 LTE 4G, Bluetooth 4.1 and AGPS location sensors. It'll support micro SIM and nano SIM or micro SIM and microSD combinations.

We notice it doesn't support 802.11ac Wi-Fi though.

Running the handset is full Android 6.0 Marshmallow in its pure form. The unit we tried was not updated though.