The Monte Carlo, which is a re-branded ZTE Skate, is a budget-esque handset to be released by UK network Orange. It's got Android 2.3, a large display and is fairly lightweight.

But is it any good? We investigate.

The body and back panel is made from quite cheap shiny plastic, which shows up fingerprints like you wouldn’t believe. When you take the back panel off it’s very wobbly and feels like it would snap easily, but overall the phone seems quite solid when it’s all put together.

The fit and finish is good enough that you can’t really see where one panel ends and the other begins – it took us a little while to figure out how to get into it, for instance.

The trio of physical keys on the bottom of the handset are worth a mention, yes they’re the same questionable plastic as the rest of the phone but they feel comfortable and are nicely sized and spaced.

At 120g the Monte Carlo has a reasonable heft to it. It’s not going to blow away in the wind any time soon and certainly it’s a phone which has presence, measuring 125.9mm tall and 67.8mm across.

It’s quite big really, but it needs to be in order accommodate that 4.3-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen. The resolution isn’t too shabby at 480 x 800 pixels either, but the really impressive thing is the pixel density, which at 217 pixels-per-inch (ppi) is pretty premium-grade.

Picture clarity is very sharp and the phone has no problems with HD images at 1080p. Sadly video quality is not so hot, but for high quality photo viewing and crystal clear web browsing you could do a lot worse than this handset.

When it comes to running apps, games and video the Monte Carlo is no slouch thanks to a Qualcomm MSM7227T 800Mhz processor.

That T on the end stands for Turbo – the chipset is based on the ARMv6 architecture and this setup uses an OpenGL ES 2.0 engine and an Adreno 200 graphics processing unit (GPU).

On top of this you’ve got 512MB of RAM. Onboard storage capacity is through in-built ROM but there’s only 150MB accessible and this is probably one of the phone’s weaker areas.

It makes up for this with external storage though, the standard 32GB microSD capability is present and correct.

The camera is a nice enough piece of kit at 5-megapixels and with a resolution of 2592 x 1944, it’s capable of some pretty sharp snaps.

Autofocus and a handy LED flash make a noticeable difference and there’s also a welcome digital zoom feature up to 1.6 times magnification. A useful white balance mode is included to help in a variety of lighting conditions.

Our main gripe would be the lack of a physical camera button for easier use. Video capture is okay but not something to write home about.

We were particularly impressed with the handset speakers which offer very clear and high quality audio.

There wasn’t even a hint of tin to the sound on the YouTube videos we watched and the lowest volume setting was still loud enough to draw attention from bystanders – definitely a phone for people who like to sit at the back of the bus and show off their rubbish music collection.

The Monte Carlo runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread but it’s overlaid with Orange’s own interface and app suite.

Gingerbread generally gives pretty good performance on the whole, but we found it was a little sluggish in places. Adding a third party UI such as Launcher Pro made a noticeable difference to navigation speeds and frees up plenty more customisation options, generally offering a truer and more satisfying Android experience.

This isn't a complaint, but we found the performance traded off slower load times for faster app running speeds, it’ll take a few seconds to load up the browser or a game but once you’re in everything is very slick.

It’s not the phone’s fault. It's the native Android browser, on Gingerbread at least, which is somewhat lacking with some slow load speeds, chuggy scroll and zoom functions and no tabs. Again a third party browser makes a world of difference here.

Under Orange’s default settings there are two particular in-built apps which are worth discussing here.

The first is Orange Gestures which, as you might expect, lets you assign certain gestures to different apps, menu screens and phone functions. It works very smoothly but if we’re honest it’s not useful enough to warrant regular usage.

The other app of note is Kineto Wireless' Signal Boost, which uses a local Wi-Fi connection to supplement your phone signal if it’s found wanting. And the best thing is that it works exceptionally well. 

We took the Monte Carlo deep into the dungeons below KYM towers and using this app were still able to have a very clear conversation. How it works is simple: once your signal is gone, the Kineto applications kicks in and your call is conducted over Wi-Fi – not bad, indeed.

The 1400 mAh Lithium Ion battery handles mild use quite well and lasts over several days but we think it would suffer under more intensive use. If you like to put handsets through their paces and the idea of a daily charge doesn’t sit well you might want to look elsewhere.

So what do we think then? Of course it’s not going to topple any of the big players such as the iPhone 4 or Galaxy S2 anytime soon. Orange-branded phones are only going to be good up to a point.

This is certainly one of the better ones, however, and overall we were left quite impressed by the Monte Carlo.

There are a few areas where this phone excels.

Apps and gaming on the go are well-handled and the speakers mean it makes an excellent portable music player.

The camera and screen are both very competent enabling you to take snaps on the go and view images in high quality.

The main thing we took away though is that with the right browser installed the Monte Carlo is fantastic for browsing the web.

All in all, it's a step in the right direction. And at just £149.99, the Monte Carlo is exceedingly cheap!