While Lenovo has had great success in India in 2015 with budget phones like A6000, A6000 Plus, A7000 and K3 Note, the company did not have a flagship quality device. The last flagship device from Lenovo in India was the Lenovo Vibe X2 released back in 2014. Now the company is released their flagship phone, the Vibe X3 in India last week.
The Vibe X3 sports 5.5-inch display with Full HD resolution (1920 X 1080p) and runs on Snapdragon 808 Hexa core processor coupled with 3GB of RAM. The device is priced Rs 19,999 and here is our detailed review.
Related Reading: Lenovo Vibe X3 Unboxing
Here is the video review.
Design and Build:
Lenovo Vibe X3 is a premium device with great material quality and finishing. Similar to Vibe K4 Note, the Vibe X3 has a dual front facing speakers. It has a metallic chassis and comes with brushed metal finishing on the sides. The rear panel is made of superior polycarbonate material and feels good. The rear panel has soft finishing which is smudge resistant. The rear panel has 21MP camera, dual LED flash and fingerprint scanner integrated into a single unit. The Lenovo logo sits below it and there is also Dolby logo at the bottom.
The SIM tray is on the left side while the volume and power keys are on the right side. The top panel houses the audio jack and IR blaster and the bottom section has micro USB charging slot.
The front panel has 8MP camera, sensors, the 5.5 inches Full HD display and the three capacitive touch buttons which are not backlit. The phone feels a tab heavy at 175gms, but definitely a premium device. Overall, the device looks premium for the price point and feels good in hands.
Display:
The Vibe X3 sports a 5.5 inch Full HD (1920 X 1080p) IPS display. Quite a lot of flagships are moving to Quad HD display panels, but Lenovo has used the 1080p and it is a treat to use. The Vibe X3 is pretty sharp and the display colors are vivid and viewing angles are great. Lenovo claims this to be one of the best displays with great contrast ratio. True to their claim, the display is very much suited to multimedia experience. There is also Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the display.
While the display is great to use, at times the ambient light sensor took a couple of seconds more to identify the light conditions.
Software
Lenovo Vibe X3 runs on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with the custom Vibe UI. While we have seen the Vibe UI on most Lenovo phones including the recently launched Vibe Shot (review), the company has revamped the UI and they claim it to be the best optimized UI. The new Vibe UI has a lot of resemblance to stock Android with an app drawer. While the redesign is a lot better than the previous UI, we feel the icons could have been a tad better.
Lenovo has removed quite a lot of bloatware from the device and now it comes with minimal apps, although we still feel there are few apps which could have been removed. There are some useful tools like the recorder, calculator, Compass and other apps. It also comes with a file manager app and few other apps like Peel Smart remote, Steps counter, ShareIt and Sync it.
The notification center is typical Lenovo with custom toggles which can also be customized.
There is also a custom settings panel and a theme center is included where you can do a bit of customization with themes and lock styles. But unlike MIUI which offers theme download, Vibe UI does not offer that feature, instead, you can import theme file into the app.
Performance:
Lenovo Vibe X3 Note is powered by a Snapdragon 808 Hexa core processor coupled with 3GB of RAM. The performance of the device in normal day to day usage is very 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.
The benchmark score for Vibe X3 was at 67380 with AnTuTu.
The gaming experience of the device was also very good with no lags or issues. The heating on the device while playing games was also at an acceptable level. The call quality on the device was also good, but at times, we felt the ear piece volume in calls was slightly on the lower side. The speaker output from the device is one of the best we have seen. It also comes with three microphones along with a Wolfson chip that helps filter ambient noise. The phone also supports Sabre ES9018K2M DAC chip which gives you stunning audio quality. There is also support for Dolby Atmos. The dual front facing speakers adds to the great experience for multimedia content.
Related Watching: Lenovo Vibe X3 Gaming Review
The phone comes with hybrid SIM card which means you have to compromise on either dual SIM or a micro SD card for expansion. The device has 32GB storage and out of which around 24GB is available in the first boot. Vibe X3 also supports TheatreMax features similar to K4 Note and you need to buy the VR headset separately. The overall experience is pretty good.
Camera:
The Vibe X3 sports a 21MP rear camera with PDAF, dual tone LED flash and an 8MP front camera for selfies. The camera app on the Vibe X3 is the Snap It app which we saw on the Vibe Shot. The interface is slightly changed and it features multiple modes including the Pro or manual mode where you can control ISO, exposure, white balance, shutter speed, and focus. The focusing on the device is pretty fast and gets the job done quickly.
The interface comes with all the bells and whistles you would want on a flagship camera. The performance of the camera is equally good and it captures almost perfect shots with great colors and contrast. The only other smartphone which matches with the Vibe X3 is the Xioami Mi4. There is plenty of details in the photos and overall clarity is great. While there is slight noise in low light images, there is acceptable quality considering the pricing aspect. The macro shots also have come great with excellent details and color quality.
The phone is also capable of 4k UHD video and the video quality is also impressive, but feature missing is the OIS. Overall, we would say the Vibe X3 is one of the best camera smartphones in this price point. Here are some of the samples taken with the phone.
Battery Life:
The Lenovo Vibe X3 comes with a 3500mAh battery and the performance is really good. We tested the battery with 4G network (dual SIM) along with calls, gaming, social networking apps, browsing and also using the camera. We got almost 22 hours of backup with 5 hours 20 minutes screen on time, which we feel is impressive for a flagship.
If you are a causal user, you are sure to get more than a day of battery life with the device. The battery also supports fast charging.
Verdict:
The Lenovo Vibe X3 is one of the few devices which ticks all the right boxes. With a great design and build, good display, excellent camera and battery life along with decent software and good performance, the Vibe X3 is a device which you can’t wrong with. If you are in the market for a all round device in the sub 20k price point, without doubt the Vibe X3 is the best you can pick. We can easily say this is probably better than the Yu Yutopia or a OnePlus.
