Lenovo had announced the Vibe K5 Plus at the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona and in few weeks time they announced the device in India. After the huge success of their recent budget phones, Lenovo plans to tap the sub 10k price point with the new Vibe K5 Plus.
The Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus comes with a 5-inch Full HD (1920 X 1080p) display and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 616 Octa-core processor coupled with 2GB of RAM, and 16GB internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 32GB using a microSD card.
Here is the detailed review of the phone.
Here is the video review.
Design and Build:
Not too many OEMs offer metallic build in the sub 10k price point and Lenovo has managed to make a metallic build for the Vibe K5 Plus. While most of the metal body phones have unibody construction, Lenovo has made it 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 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.
Display:
The phone has a 5 inch Full HD display (1920 X 1080p) with 441ppi. 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 do not have too many phones offering full HD display below Rs 10,000 price point.
Overall, the display is one of the strong aspects of the phone.
Software:
Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus ships with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with Vibe UI. While Lenovo improved the Vibe UI on K4 Note and Vibe X3, the company has gone back to older Vibe UI on the K5 Plus. This is quite similar to what was offered on A6000. It comes with multiple home screens devoid of an app drawer. 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 Plus 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 Plus is powered by an Octa-Core Snapdragon 616 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 and it was even better than the Vibe K4 Note. The Snapdragon 616 chipset performance well without any major lags.
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. The call quality on the phone was good and we never experienced dropped calls. The speaker performance was also decent for a budget phone.
Camera:
While the Lenovo A600, A6000 Plus, and Vibe P1m came with an 8MP camera, Lenovo has upgraded the camera on Vibe K5 Plus 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. But the contrast was slightly on the higher side, but it is still 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 Plus packs a 2750mAh battery. While the battery capacity looks decent for a 5-inch phone, it has to power a full HD display and the battery performance is just average. 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.
We would have liked a 3000mAh capacity on this device which would have made it better in this segment.
Verdict:
Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus is a good all-round device with a metallic build, good display, decent performance, and camera. The software is something which the company should work on and bring consistency among the device. The battery capacity is also not the best. Another aspect which is missing is the fingerprint scanner. Although the fingerprint scanner is not very popular in the budget segment, Lenovo could have included making it a real winner. Priced at Rs 8499, the Vibe K5 Plus is a good buy for people looking for an all round device. Other alternatives in this segment are the Coolpad Note 3 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 3.
