Lenovo had great success in the budget segment (sub 10k) with A6000, A6000 Plus and the A7000. All these devices were performing devices offered at very low and competitive pricing. After the success of these devices, Lenovo announced their new phablet, the K3 Note in India last month at Rs 9999 and the device is basically an upgrade to the A7000.
The K3 Note comes with a full HD display (1080p) and one of the few devices to come with 1080p display below 10k price. It runs on Mediatek Tru Octa Core 64bit processor with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. On the imaging front, the K3 Note has an upgraded 13MP rear camera and 5MP front camera. The phone has Android 5.0 Lollipop and packs a 2900mAh battery. So is the device value for money at Rs 9999? Lets find out in this review.
Related Reading: Lenovo K3 Note Unboxing
Design and Build:
Design wise, the Lenovo K3 Note is very similar to the A7000 (review) and follows the same design aspects. The phone has matte finish rear panel and pretty slim (8mm) for a budget phone. The rear panel has slightly curved edges on the sides while the top and bottom has flat edges. The rear panel has the 13MP camera with the chrome finishing around it along with the dual LED flash, the Lenovo branding and the speaker located near logo. The power and volume keys are on the right side and 3.5mm audio jack along with micro USB charging slot is on the top. The front panel has the 5MP camera, usual set of sensors (Ambient, Accelerometer and Proximity) and the three capacitive buttons. The touch buttons are not backlit but there is notification light on the device.
Overall, the design and build quality of the device is pretty good and the device is light weight for a 5.5 inch phablet. The phone comes in dual SIM card support and there is also support for 4G LTE in India for both SIM cards.
Display:
The display on the Lenovo K3 Note is a Full HD (1920 X 1080p) IPS LCD display, which is an upgrade from the HD display on A7000. The 5.5 inch display has 1920 X 1080p resolution and 401ppi. The display is pretty vibrant and sharp and has good viewing angles too.
The brightness levels are also very good on the device and there is smart brightness option to enhance the brightness in hard light environments like sunlight. The touch response on the display is also good. While the display quality is good, but it does match up to the display standards on Meizu M1 Note or Xiaomi Mi4i. The display does not offer any additional protection like Corning Gorilla Glass, so you need to be careful while handling the device inside the pocket. Lenovo has included a screen protector with the device.
Related Reading: Lenovo K3 Note vs Meizu M1 Note vs Xiaomi Mi4i vs ASUS Zenfone 2- Battle of the Mid range
Software:
Lenovo K3 Note runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop with the company’s custom UI called Vibe UI. There are lots of similarities between the Vibe UI on Vibe X2 and K3 Note, with Vibe X2 getting the Lollipop update. The notification center is also a custom one with almost all quick toggles. The Vibe UI brings in lot of customized options and looks different from the stock Android.
The UI does not come with app drawer and has multiple home screen which you can customize. The notification center has almost all useful quick toggles but they are not customizable.
Unlike the MIUI or the Cyanogen OS which offer themes and customization options, Vibe UI offers only couple of themes and there is no option to download more themes. The phone comes with 6 themes included and also offers some basic customization options.
Lenovo has also included some useful tools like recorder, radio and compass.
One of the interesting aspects of the device is that it comes with Dolby Atmos feature which we saw on A7000, so if you are a music buff, this should provide great experience. The phone has rear speakers and the output is also pretty decent. The Dolby Atmos feature is available only if you listen via earphones. There is a dedicated app to enable different modes for Dolby.
The phone also offers additional options like gesture control and secure zone. But the security app available on KitKat Lenovo phones is now removed. The gestures supported include double tap to wake, screen off, quick snap and more.
While there are decent amount of features included in the UI, Lenovo has to do some major work with the UI as it looks a bit dated now especially with most Chinese OEMs improving on UI with custom ROMs.
Performance:
The Lenovo K3 Note runs on MeditTek MT6752 Tru Octa 64 bit processor with 2GB RAM and Mali T760 GPU. While the benchmark scores of the device is very good and even beats other flagship devices, the performance was not the best. We could experience occasional lags when opening and switching apps. The gaming performance of the device was also poor and we encountered lag and frame drops when playing graphic rich games. The heat generated while playing games was considerably low, we are assuming Lenovo is throttling the CPU to compensate for the heating and hence the performance drop.
Related Video: Lenovo K3 Note Gaming Review
Multi tasking was decent on the phone, we ran multiple apps in the background including games and there was close to 750MB of RAM available.
The phone supports 4G LTE, but we could not test it as our region does not have 4G. The call quality on the phone was decent and we didn’t notice any issues with calls. The speaker output was decent for a mid range phone.
The phone comes with 16GB of internal storage and out of which close to 10GB was available in first boot which is kind of low considering most devices have close to 12GB. You can expand the storage via micro SD card and also install apps directly on the SD card which is an useful feature.
Camera:
The Lenovo K3 Note features a 13MP rear camera and a front facing 5MP camera, an upgrade from 8MP shooter on A7000. There is also a dual LED flash included. The K3 Note camera interface is similar to what is offered on Lenovo Vibe X2. The interface is pretty good and has a uncluttered UI. The camera offers almost all features and options you would want on a camera including HDR, Panorama, Face detect, color effects and more. The camera interface is good for the pricing and also easy to use.
Related Watching: Lenovo K3 Note Camera Review
The camera allows capture in 16:9, 4:3 and 1:1 aspect ratio and also supports 1080p recording. The capture mode can be set a s normal, touch, timer and also voice mode. You can also taken photos with effects which are included in the mode.
For the images taken in daylight, there is decent amount of detailing available in the photo. The colors look pretty decent and much better than A7000, but again it is not really consistent. A lot of photos taken in bright sunlight have a haze effect making the photo sharpness low. This happens especially when you are taking photos in sunlight. The macro captures have come really good and the detailing is very good, but again colors does not look promising especially when you compare it with Xiaomi Mi4i or Meizu M1 Note.
The low light photography is also decent on the K3 Note and the lens brings in adqueate light making the photo look good, but again the sharpness was not great and there was noise in the photos. With adequate lighting, the shots came pretty good. The dual LED flash is pretty powerful and lights up the objects well in low light. While the camera might not be the best in this price category, it is definitely a decent camera.
The front 5MP camera is good for selfies and video calls and also features the beautify mode. The full HD video recording was again average with poor color quality and sharpness in the video.
Here are some of the samples from the camera.
Battery:
The K3 Note packs the same 2900mAh battery found on the A7000, but it has to power a full HD display. We tested the battery performance of the device for an average user. With moderate usage, which includes couple of hours on call, browsing, social networking, taking few photos, listening to music and causal gaming along with 3G, you can get a day of usage easily. We could get around 3.5 hours of on screen time and we could squeeze in a day of usage. Although we expected more than a day, the battery performance is still pretty decent for the device.
The phone also comes with battery saver and ultimate power saver modes to get more battery performance.
Verdict:
Priced at Rs 9999, Lenovo K3 Note is probably the first phone to offer amazing specs at very low price. With a Full HD Display, Octa Core processor, 16GB storage, 13MP camera and Android 5.0, K3 Note packs everything you want on a mid range phone. The K3 Note is definitely one of the best value for money devices priced below 10k with dual 4G LTE support. But having said that the K3 Note also has its own issues, the gaming performance was not great and also the camera performance was not at par with the competition.
Lenovo K3 Note can still be used as you daily driver if you are not into heavy usage and gaming. Overall, for the specs it offers at amazingly low price, K3 Note is good value for money. The Lenovo K3 Note is a jack of all trades, but master of none!
