Wednesday 22 February 2017

Lenovo K6 Review





      FEATURE 

  • The Lenovo K6 Power has been priced at Rs. 9,999
  • It is available exclusively on Flipkart
  • My rate fo the phone 8 out of 10




LEnovo K6 Power smartphone flaunts a 5.0-inch full HD (1080p) IPS display, and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz paired with 3GB of RAM, and a 32GB internal storage, which can be expanded using a 128GB microSD card. On the photography front sport a 13-megapixel Sony IMX258 sensor rear camera and 8-megapixel Sony IMX219 front facing camera. The K6 Power also comes with Dolby ATMOS support. On the software front, it runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow based on Vibe UI. Other connectivity options include 4G with VoLTE support, fingerprint sensor, dual Nano-SIM card, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB OTG support and GPS support. The Lenovo K6 Power is available in dark grey, gold, and silver color variants.

Specification:

5-inch full HD IPS display Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core 1.4 Ghz processor | 3GB RAM+32GB storage (expandable to 128GB) | 13MP rear camera + 8MP front camera | Android 6.0 with Pure UI | 4000 mAh battery

Design:

Even though the popular trend is to have a big screen smartphone, Lenovo believes smaller is better. Having spent quality time with the smartphone, I believe Lenovo has gotten it mostly right. Let’s begin with what’s good. Since it is a 5-inch smartphone, it has that compact look and feel. Keeping up with the trend, the Lenovo smartphone has a metal body with gently curved corners, and thin antenna lines at the back. Following the design language of the Vibe K5 Note, the Lenovo K6 Power too has a symmetrical design with the camera lens, flash and fingerprint scanner followed by Lenovo branding at the bottom falling in one line.

The front is dominated by the display, front camera and LED notification light on top whereas the capacitive touch buttons for navigation are at the bottom. The volume and power buttons are located on the right while the left side houses the hybrid slot for the microSD and SIM cards. Oddly enough, the 3.5mm audio jack and micro-USB ports are located at the top while the base is plain. The smartphone easily fits in your palms with the volume and power buttons at the side, and fingerprint sensor at the back within easy reach. You can comfortably perform single-handed tasks on this phone. But then there some low points as well. Besides a compact screen size, the Lenovo K6 Power doesn’t really look very different from a lot of Chinese smartphones featuring metal bodies. Also, at 144 grams, the smartphone feels pretty heavy and is actually fairly thick at 9.3mm.

Display:

Lenovo K6 Power aims to woo users who like to extensively consume multimedia on the go. The 5-inch full HD display has a pixel density of 441ppi, 450-nit brightness, and 178-degree viewing angles. All of this in a smaller screen gives fairly a better experience while watching high resolution videos or even playing graphic intensive games. However, the experience is best when you are indoors. Under direct sunlight, you may struggle to see the content on device as the display gets a bit reflective and you may need to manually increase brightness. The auto-brightness doesn’t quickly adapt itself to the light conditions you are in. Fortunately, these are not issues grave enough to mar the overall experience. Speaking of experience, one of the biggest strengths of the smartphone is the bouquet of features that let you further personalize the experience. The Lenovo K6 Power runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow-based Pure UI. The interface is plain cold stock Android with some added customizations. It’s fluid and easy to get familiar with.

While it retains Marshmallow’s core feature likes Google Now on Tap, it comes with a slew of custom features like knock to light, which lets you double tap while the screen is off to light up the screen. It has a Smart Scene mode, which lets you customize volume and other features such as GPS and Bluetooth according to the place you are in. For example, you can customize it to Office mode, selecting weekdays and a time period between 9am to 10pm, where it will keep all settings tuned to suit the office environment. This could include keeping your phone on silent, or turning off the GPS inside the office where you’re unlikely to need it.

Camera:

The Lenovo K6 Power comes with a 13-megapixel Sony IMX258 sensor camera with LED flash, Pro-mode, PDAF support, slow motion and time lapse. The smartphone does take pretty decent photos outdoors when you have ample of light, say in morning or afternoons. Image processing is pretty fast when not using any specific mode. The camera did take some interesting macro shots as well. Though the colors and white balance are pretty underwhelming, but looking at the price point, it can be forgiven. The smartphone does come with a few customization features to help you take photos according to your preferences.
The 8-megapixel front camera is pretty satisfactory and gives you Instagram-worthy selfies. Like other smartphones in this category, it comes with a beautification mode. For low-light selfies, it has a fill light feature that brightens up the screen with white light when taking selfies, to provide some amount of illumination. The experience isn’t what I would call ‘awesome’ and could have been much better. Overall, the camera quality on Lenovo K6 Power is pretty average, and you have to be quite meticulous and careful to get the photos right if lighting conditions aren’t ideal. But again, don’t forget that this is just a Rs 9,999 smartphone. 

Performance:

The Lenovo K6 Note has a 5.5 inch screen and a bigger screen-to-body ratio than the K5 Note. Upon holding, this all-metal smartphone does give a solid and premium feelIt sports a unibody design and has a hybrid sim card slot on its left. It looks a lot like the Redmi Note 3 albeit the placement of speaker grilles on the bottom of the device. The volume rockers and the power button is placed on the right.The rear snapper a 16 megapixel camera sits in the middle of the phone and under the protruding camera lens lies dual LED Flash. Both the cameras, front and back, come with phase detection A/F.The standard 3.5-mm headphone jack and a second microphone are placed at the top of the phone. The phone is available in Dark grey, Silver and Gold colour variants..
Given that the 4000 mAh battery is the USP of this phone, let’s start with this. I setup the phone with under 50 per cent battery and this includes close to 20 apps, all of which were downloaded on 4G, and the battery 
levels didn’t budge. Most phones start to get warm when you are downloading a flurry of apps, but the K6 Power handled the task easily. If you’re looking for a phone that won’t die, Lenovo K6 Power is a solid bet. Even with heavy usage like gaming and watching a lot of videos, this phone lasts a day. If your usage is moderate, which is just basic browsing, etc, you can go without charging this one for two days. At this price-point, a long lasting battery life is a crucial need for many users, and K6 Power easily nails the brief.

Lenovo K6 Power comes with a full HD display which is crisp and vibrant. Watching videos, using the phone in sunlight is not a problem. Add to this, the 5-inch form factor means this is a much more manageable device, especially for those who love smaller phones. Lenovo K6 Power has a 13MP rear camera, which I had say is a notch above competition. In bright daylight, pictures come out nice, and there’s no tendency for the colours to look unnatural. However, there are some issues in low-light performance, which I will discuss next. On the performance front. there’s 3GB RAM and 32GB storage on board which is expandable. The phone comes with Snapdragon 430 and multitasking is not an issue especially if your main use case is browsing the Internet, watching videos. But heavy games like Asphalt 8 do tend to lag.

Lenovo’s Pure UI is pretty much like stock Android, and that’s a good thing. It’s clean, swift, and comes with settings you’d get on a pure Android phone, and at this price point this is a win in my opinion. Most phones from other companies come with customised UIs at this price range, and these have some issue or the other. Finally, this is a 4G VOLTE phone.I set it up exclusively via the Jio SIM, and faced no troubles with downloads or connectivity, and even calls.

Pros :
  • Dual SIM Support (Shared). 
  • LED notification light on top. 
  • OTG Cable is supported. 
  • FM Radio is available by default 
  • 5.0 inches Full HD neat and clean Display. 
  • Dolby Atmos Sound. 
  • Phone also supports Reverse charging 
  • Dual Apps mode, Ultimate Power Saver and Dual speakers with decent audio quality 
Cons:
  • Low-light shots tended to have a lot of noise. 
  • Hybrid SIM Slot. 
  • Primary camera is below average, helpless for night shots. 
  • Gallery App is not preloaded. 
  • No Quick charge support, taking at least 3 hours to charge fully. 
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 plusThere are hundreds of budget phones available today, but most of them aren't worth your time. The K6 Power is one of few handsets that is. For ₹9,999, you're getting a phone that offers a lot for its asking price. If you're looking for a well-rounded phone for consuming videos on the go, look no further.

If camera quality is the primary consideration, then you should take a look at the Redmi 3S Prime. It has a better camera and is available for ₹8,999, but you'll have to settle for a 720p display and put up with the vagaries of MIUI 8. For gaming, the Redmi Note 3 is a better choice, although the variant with 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage will run up to ₹11,999. For its price, the Lenovo K6 Power is a great choice.








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