We’re always up for a party here, but have been known to lose handsets while we’re having a merry time. Tesco comes to the rescue with the VX1i Party Phone, a very small, very basic handset costing less than £20. Just the thing to slip in your pocket or bag for a night on the town.

Style and handling on the Tesco VX1i Party Phone

The VX1i really is titchy: it’s smaller than a credit card and fitted into the watch pocket of our jeans. The screen is tiny – about the size of two fingernails – to give the keypad space to be useable. The keys are raised and far enough apart to make sure you hit the right button, although a little creaky.

The call and call end keys sit above the number pad, alongside two hard keys which correspond to the digital wording above them. In the centre is a D-pad for accessing your inbox, alarms, call list, and bolt-ons/directories. For the menu, press the centre of the D-pad.

Call quality on the Tesco VX1i Party Phone

Call quality left a lot to be desired on both ends of the call. Both caller and receiver had slight static, and the person we were calling said we sounded like we were calling from inside a lift. We understand that this is a very cheap, no-frills handset, but as far as we’re concerned, decent call quality is the least we should expect.

Text messaging on the Tesco VX1i Party Phone

While you can send text messages from the Party Phone, it takes a while to get the hang of. Instead of a space key on the numeric keypad, you have to press the left hard key between each word, which takes some getting used to.

Predictive text works as usual, with a list of possible words appearing that you can scroll down to find the right one. But with the screen only large enough to display two lines of text, that’s a lot of scrolling, and barely saves time at all. If you do send texts, they’re likely to be very short.

The verdict on the Tesco VX1i Party Phone

The biggest advantage of the VX1i is undoubtedly the price; it’s probably the only handset available for less than £20 new. Of course, it’s nice to have all the features of higher-end phones, but there’s definitely a place for a cheap handset for calls and text only. We can see it being a success not just with regular ravers, but also with visitors to the UK who need a phone for a short time, especially as it’s compatible with all SIM card except 3’s. Better call quality would have been preferable, but at a cost of £18.99, we can’t really moan.