BLU Win HD Now Available on Amazon.com for $179

My review won't be available for a while yet—and, yes, I'll be comparing it to the Nokia Lumia 830, 635 and other devices—but you can purchase the recently announced BLU Win HD on Amazon.com right now for just $179. That is not a bad deal at all for this mid-level smart phone handset, especially since it's unlocked.

If you've not done so, check out my BLU Win HD First Impressions for a quick rundown of the device's specifications and some photos. You can find the device now on Amazon.com for $179 in yellow, which is the version I'm reviewing. (In anticipation of doing so, I swapped the SIM out of my Samsung Galaxy S5 the other day and added a 32 GB microSD card.)

The trick here is figuring out where the BLU Win HD falls in the scheme of things, and whether this unlocked device is a unique value. I suspect it may be.

From a build quality perspective, I will say that it's not quite up to Nokia levels. It looks very nice, but is quite definitely plastic. The thin back cover pops off easily so you can access the innards—two SIM slots, which is interesting, the microSD slot and of course the battery—which I like. The camera is 8 megapixels, but I've not tested it yet, sorry.

The Snapdragon 200 that sits at the core of this device is the big question mark. The Lumia 635 uses a presumably higher-end Snapdragon 400, but the Lumia 530 has the same Snapdragon 200 and I've not tested it. On the good news front, the 200 is a quad-core part and it does run at the same 1.2 GHz as the Lumia devices.

The thing is, the BLU Win HD you see on Amazon today is actually unlocked. That is, it will work with whatever (GSM-based) wireless carrier(s) you prefer. (Remember, you can actually use two SIMs if you want and connect to two networks simultaneously.) So you can use this device with either AT&T or T-Mobile, or the third-party networks (like Cricket) that work off those networks. To be clear, you will get 4G HSPA speeds, not LTE. But still ... $179.

So you can buy the BLU Win HD on Amazon.com now for $179. Or you can wait on my review, plus my review of potential competitors like the Lumia 830 and 73x. I'll try to step it up.