Recently Lenovo launched the K6 Power, which is one of the most affordable and yet power packed device in the sub 10k price segment in India. Soon after that, the company also announced the latest device in the Note series, the K6 Note with upgraded specs. The K6 Note has 5.5 inch Full HD display and is powered by Snapdragon 430 Octa core processor with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. The device is priced Rs 13999 and in this detailed review, let’s find out how does it match up with the competitors in this price segment.
Related Reading: Lenovo K6 Power Review
Design and build:
When you first see the Lenovo K6 Note you can see the striking similarity with the Redmi Note 3 with curved rear panel and metal unibody design. The rear panel has the 16MP camera unit placed at the center along with dual LED flash. There is a slight projection for the camera unit. The fingerprint scanner sits below the camera and there is also Lenovo branding.
The right side houses the power and volume keys while the SIM tray is on the left side. The 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the top portion while the micro USB charging slot and speaker units are at the bottom. The front panel of the K6 Note has the 5.5-inch HD display, with capacitive navigation buttons below, but unfortunately they are not backlit.
Overall, the K6 Note feels premium and easy to use even though there is nothing stand out in terms of the design. The build quality of the device is also very good.
Display:
Lenovo has included a 5.5 inch Full HD display with a resolution of 1920 X 1080p. The display quality on the K6 Note looks quite good with good colors and sharpness levels. The viewing angles are also good. The phone also comes with options to change the display color temperature, so you can play with it to get the best display color temperature. Unlike the touch response on K6 Power, the K6 Note has very good touch response and it was very smooth. The display brightness is also quite good, so you don’t have any issues reading the text in bright sunlight. There is no protection offered on the display. So it is always advisable to use a screen guard with the device.
Software:
Lenovo K6 Note ships with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Vibe UI. While Lenovo improved the Vibe UI and now comes with UI similar to stock Android although you can also switch the UI. The Vibe UI comes with app drawer and also do a bit of customizations in the UI. The notification panel is again a custom one and you also have the option to customize the quick toggles.
The Vibe UI on K6 Note also comes with additional features like gestures. The settings panel also has Android Marshmallow look and feel. 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.
The phone also comes with theme center, where you can do a bit of customization with themes, lock screens and also multitasking style. Overall, the Vibe UI feels good to use especially for people who love near stock like experience. But it is no where close to MIUI in terms of the features offered.
Performance:
Lenovo K6 Note is powered by the Snapdragon 430 Octa core processor with Adreno 505 GPU coupled with 3GB RAM. It supports 4G LTE along with dual SIM cards. There is 32GB onboard storage out of which around 24GB is available to the user. It comes with hybrid SIM card and supports micro SD card up to 128GB. There is also a 4GB RAM variant priced 1k higher but with the same storage option.
Talking about the performance of the device, the phone performed quite well in day to day tasks like browsing, calls, social networking, camera usage etc., as it has plenty of RAM. The gaming performance of the device was quite decent. Although there was no major lag, there were quite a lot of frame skips in the gaming test. We tested high graphic rich games like Asphalt 8 Airborne and the overall performance was quite decent. The phone also did get warm while playing games and reached around 45 degrees after half an hour of gaming.
Related Watching: Lenovo K6 Note Gaming Review
The call quality on the phone was quite good. If you are a person who loves music, Lenovo K6 Note is the device for you as the phone has DOLBY Atmos supports, the speaker performance was very good and this is one of the those devices for people who consume a lot of multimedia content. The phone packs Wi-Fi, Bluetooth while NFC is missing on this device. The fingerprint sensor is located on the rear panel and it works very well. You can add multiple fingerprints to unlock the device. There is also VR support similar to other Lenovo devices.
Camera:
Lenovo K6 Note packs a 16MP rear camera with LED flash and PDAF (Phase detection auto focus) and a front facing 8MP camera for selfies. The interface is the Snapit camera app from Lenovo and comes with the Smart mode we first saw on Lenovo Vibe Shot. The Smart mode can automatically detect the mode based on light conditions and subject being shot. The camera samples taken with the rear 16MP camera came out good in daylight with good details and sharpness levels. If you enable Smart mode, some outdoor photos have slightly saturated colors, but overall quality looks good. Even for close up shots, the detailing is good. Unlike the K6 Power, the K6 Not performed well in low light conditions and the overall clarity looked good for a phone priced in this segment.
The K6 Note can record videos at full-HD resolution and the quality was again good in daylight. The front camera can take decent selfies in well-lit situations and good for social shares. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Related Watching: Lenovo K6 Note Camera Review
Battery Life:
Lenovo K6 Note as the name indicates comes with a massive 4000mAh battery similar to the K6 Power. The battery performance of the device is very good and with moderate usage you can easily get 1.5 days of battery life. Even with heavy usage, you can easily get over a day of battery life. Overall, if you are looking for a device with great battery life, K6 Note won’t disappoint you. There is also a power manager in the settings to optimize the battery performance.
Verdict:
Lenovo has been one of those companies which has focused on online only sales for most of their phones, but with the K6 Note, Lenovo has gone back to brick and mortar stores. K6 Note is available offline only for a starting price of Rs 13,999 for the 3GB RAM variant. While there aren’t any major issues to point out in the K6 Note, it is a good balanced phone which does the job pretty well in every aspect. It will be competing with the Redmi note 3, Coolpad Cool 1 and also the Moto G4 plus (all of which are online only)
