Lenovo had announced the Vibe K5 at the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona along with Vibe K5 Plus. The budget Vibe K5 was released in India last month for a price of Rs 6,999 and it is the successor of the popular A6000 Plus which was announced last year. The Lenovo Vibe K5 comes with a 5-inch HD (1280X 720p) display and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 415 Octa-core processor coupled with 2GB of RAM, and 16GB internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 32GB using a microSD card.
So how does the Vibe K5 perform in the budget segment? Let’s find out in this detailed review.
Here is the video review of the device.
Design and Build:
While there aren’t too many OEMs which are offering metallic build in the sub 7k price point and Lenovo has managed to make a metallic build for the Vibe K5. While most of the metal body phones have unibody construction, Lenovo has made it even better with a removable battery and rear panel. Design-wise, there are a lot of similarities with the previous generation A6000 and A7000 and the front panel sports a similar design. The three capacitive buttons below the display are not backlit. The metal body is made of aircraft grade aluminium.
The power and volume keys are on the right side while the 3.5mm audio jack and micro USB charging slot are on the top. The rear panel houses the 13MP camera, LED flash, Lenovo logo and the Dolby branding along with the speaker unit. Since the rear panel is removable, the SIM cards and micro SD card slot is inside the rear panel.
The phone has a matte finish metallic rear panel with a glossy finish band running around the display. The Vibe K5 Plus is a decent looking device in this segment and comes in three colors- White, Grey, and Gold. One feature which is probably missing on this device is the fingerprint scanner. Although fingerprint scanner has not been a popular feature in sub 7k price, it would have made this device even better.
Display:
The phone has a 5 inch HD display (720) with 294ppi. But sadly there is no protection offered on the display similar to other budget Lenovo phones. Having said that the display has quite good colors and the touch response is very smooth. The viewing angles are also quite good. We would say that there is definitely an upgrade in the display quality when compared to A6000.
Overall, the display is one of the good aspects of the phone.
Software:
Lenovo Vibe K5 ships with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with Vibe UI. Lenovo has improved the Vibe UI on K4 Note and Vibe X3 and it is similar UI on Vibe K5 with Android style launcher with an option to switch to Vibe UI. It comes with an app drawer similar to Android. The notification panel is again a custom one, but there is no option to customize it.
Unlike the Vibe UI on K4 Note, the UI on Vibe K5 does not feature additional features like gestures. There is support for Dolby and VR headset. The phone also comes with a lot of bloatware similar to any other Lenovo phone. There are many core apps included like calculator, recorder, compass, FM radio and more. A hand full of third party apps and games are included which we feel should be avoided.
There is also a custom settings panel and a theme center is included where you can do a bit of customization with themes.
Performance:
Lenovo Vibe K5 is powered by an Octa-Core Snapdragon 415 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. The performance of the device in normal day to day usage is quite good and the device handled all the tasks pretty well. We never experience any issues or lags and we were quite happy with the overall performance. The multitasking on the device was also quite good, but the implementation with the capacitive button was not good.
The gaming performance of the device was also quite good for a budget phone, but few games did have an issue with the new processor as they are not optimized. There was no heating issue on the phone.
The phone comes with 16GB internal storage out of which 10.54 GB is available to the user. You can also expand the storage via micro SD card. There is also an option to make the micro SD card as the default write disk on the phone. The call quality on the phone was good and we never experienced dropped calls. The speaker performance was also decent for a budget phone. It also comes with Dolby Atmos feature, so if you are a person who loves music, this is one budget offering with good multimedia experience.
Camera:
While the Lenovo A6000, A6000 Plus, and Vibe P1m came with an 8MP camera, Lenovo has upgraded the camera on Vibe K5 to 13MP unit. Lenovo has not been a great performer in the camera department especially when it comes to budget phones. The camera interface is a stripped down variant with basic options and modes. There is HDR, Panorama, and few effects included apart from the regular options you would find on a smartphone camera.
Talking about the camera quality, the daylight photos had good colors and also the sharpness levels were quite good. Overall, the quality of photos is acceptable for a budget phone. The close up shots also came quite decent. The low light photos with adequate artificial lighting were decent, but noise levels were higher in extreme low light conditions.
The phone supports Full HD video recording which was quite disappointing with the camera hunting for focus all the time. The quality of the 1080p video was just average. The 5MP front facing camera is quite good for selfies and video calls. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
Lenovo Vibe K5 packs a 2750mAh battery. The battery capacity looks decent for a 5-inch phone and the performance on a day to day basis was quite decent for a budget offering. With normal usage which includes calls, browsing, social networking, using the camera and a bit of gaming, we could a day of battery life which is quite decent.
If you are a moderate user, you can get a day of battery life without any issues.
Verdict:
The A6000 was quite a great seller last year and was one of the first phones in the segment with 4G LTE capabilities. The Vibe K5 is a good all-round device with upgraded design and build, better camera, and a better processor. If you are looking for an all round budget device below Rs 7000, Vibe K5 is worth considering especially if you are a music lover.
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bench-marking and your rating.
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