By Jamshed Avari | Updated: 4 April 2016 16:43 IST
Just a few short months after launching the
impressive Vibe K4 Note (Review | Pictures) Lenovo has unveiled another low-cost phone
called the Vibe K5 Plus. The new model, which launched in India before
any other country, does not replace the popular K4 Note. In fact, priced
at just Rs. 8,499, the K5 Plus is below the K4 Note in Lenovo's
hierarchy. This awkwardness is apparently due to internal reshuffling as
the company gears up to integrate Motorola's popular mid-budget
offerings into its lineup.
Naming aside, it's pretty clear where
the new model's aspirations lie. There are a lot of great phones to be
had for Rs. 10,000 or less today, and Lenovo wants in on that action. In
that sense, the K5 Plus is more of an update to the extremely popular
K3 Note (Review | Pictures), bringing a more premium look to an even
lower price point.
Look and feel The Vibe K5 Plus looks
great for a low-cost phone. We received a silver unit for review, but
this phone is also available in gold and grey. There's a front camera
and sensor window above the screen, and capacitive navigation buttons
below. These buttons are sadly not backlit so you might wind up fumbling
a bit in the dark. There isn't much wasted space to the sides of the
screen, which makes this phone pretty easy to use with one hand.
The
rear and sides are formed into a single shell that pops off with
relatively little effort. It might look like there are strips of plastic
on the top and bottom with metal in the middle, but it's only a thin
plate over an all-plastic structural frame. Still, it feels cool to the
touch, which is part of its premium feel.
The camera is in one
corner, with a single LED flash next to it. More interesting are the
twin speaker grilles and Dolby logo lower down - stereo speakers are
rare on phones in general, let alone budget ones. The 3.5mm audio socket and
Micro-USB port are both on the top, and the power and volume buttons are
on the right, leaving the bottom and left blank.
The battery is
removable, and you'll have to pop it out in order to get to the two
Micro-SIM slots and the microSD slot. You get a 1.5A charger, USB cable,
and adhesive screen protector in the box, but no headset.
Specifications and software The
Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus has a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor
running the show. There's 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage along with LTE
support on either SIM. The battery has a capacity of 2750mAh and all the
usual standards, including Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi b/g/n, AGPS, and USB-OTG
are present and accounted for.
The display measures 5 inches
diagonally and has a resolution of 1080x1920 which pretty good for this
price range. The phone also supports Lenovo's AntVR headset for immersive media experiences. The rear camera has a 13 megapixel sensor and the front
camera has a 5 megapixel sensor. Video recording goes up to 1080p.
There's also Dolby audio enhancement, as the logo on the back suggests.
Other
than that, there are no extras such as a fingerprint reader or IR
emitter. Other low-cost phones do offer these as unique selling points,
and it seems that Lenovo is going with the metallic body as the Vibe K5
Plus's main advantage.
Lenovo has decided not to give budget
segment buyers all the benefits of the revamped Vibe UI that shipped
with the premium Vibe X3 earlier this year. There's no dedicated app
drawer or even an option to switch one on. The base OS is Android 5.1.1
but yet again, we see a manufacturer overriding the standard Android
Recents button and turning it into a useless Menu button on a low-end
phone.
There's a Lenovo Companion app which lets you check for
software updates and perform basic subsystem tests, as well as the
familiar SHAREit and SYNCit for transferring files and backing up data
respectively. Theme Center offers six options and a variety of wallpaper
images, but nothing close to stock Android which we would have liked.
You also get an assortment of apps including Game Store, Twitter, Skype,
WeChat, UC Browser, Flipkart, Myntra, Evernote, and Truecaller, which
are thankfully all removable.
Performance We found the Vibe
K5 Plus a pleasant phone to use, on the whole. The screen is sharp and
bright, though colours are just a tiny bit dull. Audio, on the other
hand, is loud and clear. The twin speakers really do make a difference -
we only wish they had been pointing forward. The Dolby Atmos controls do make a difference, but only in supported apps. Our biggest complaint with
this phone was that its upper back got quite hot when doing relatively
simple things such as streaming YouTube videos.
Benchmark tests
showed that performance is on par with other budget phones. We recorded
scores of 35,727 in AnTuTu and 20,227 overall in Quadrant. 3DMark Ice
Storm Extreme gave us 5,596 points and GFXbench ran at 12fps. Curiously
though, these scores are overall lower than what the Lenovo K3 Note
managed.
Photo quality was mostly okay - there's a bit of grain
on anything that isn't right in front of the lens, and only close-up
shots are really good. Focusing was an issue in all kinds of light - we
had to hold very steady when taking shots or the results would be
unpredictable. However, most of these things aren't really problems
unless you're zooming in to photos at full size. You get a small number
of filters, but not much else. Video was smooth at 1080p, but we did
notice the phone heating up again when recording, There's also a
30-minute hard limit on video length, which we found unnecessary.
(Tap to see full-sized images)
Battery
life seemed just about okay in day-to-day use, with the phone making it
through the day if usage was relatively light. Our video loop test went
on for 6 hours, 46 minutes, which is below average. The phone seemed to last well when in
standby, but on the other hand, charging was pretty slow.
Verdict It
seems that Lenovo has the makings of another winner on its hands. It
could be as popular as the K3 Note was, bringing similar features and
even better looks to a lower price level. The only real objections we
have with this phone are its weak battery life and tendency to become
uncomfortably warm when anything serious is running.
In terms of
performance, the Vibe K5 Plus edges out the more expensive Honor
5X (Review | Pictures) and seems like a better deal that similarly priced phones such as the
Karbonn Quattro L50 HD (Review | Pictures). However, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Review | Pictures) is just one
step up in terms of pricing, and you might be a lot happier spending
just a little more.
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