Wednesday 1 March 2017

Vivo V5 Plus Review



FEATURE
  • The V5 Plus features dual front-facing cameras for better selfies
  • Build quality and performance are good, but the pricing seems off
  • The Vivo V5 Plus is priced at Rs. 27,980










Display and Design: 

The first thing in Vivo V5 Plus which grabs the attention is its stylish looks and rich feel. However, the front, especially at the bottom, is similar to OnePlus 3. It has sleek form factor having a 7.3 mm slim body with curved edges and rose color antenna strips at the back side looks stunning. The front panel of Vivo V5 Plus has a 5.5 inch 1080p Full HD and using Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for security. The display also supports an ‘Eye Protection Mode’ feature that filters out the blue light to protect vision and prevents eye strain. The display is clearly visible under direct sunlight without any struggling one can read the text easily. The front facing cameras are at the left side of the earpiece and the Moonlight flash is on the right side, above the screen. The Micro USB port, mic, 3.5mm audio jack and speaker grills are elegantly carved out at the bottom. The fingerprint sensor is placed under the pressable home button on the front side flanked between navigation button. 

The power button and volume rocker are placed ergonomically on the right side whereas the left side has a hybrid sim tray that can hold two Nano SIM cards.

Camera: 

The V5 Plus has added this additional effect to its front camera, where you can adjust the aperture after clicking the image to blur the required area. For example while clicking selfies at crowded place, you can add more focus on your face and blur the background completely or the other way round. Apart from Bokeh, the front camera also comes with other modes like HDR, beautification, and different filters. Just like its predecessor the V5, this device also has "moonlight glow", which unlike a flash doesn’t splash light on your face and instead lights it up and gives better focus on your face during night or low light-conditions. We went on a selfie spree with this device for few days and liked that it could capture our images with finer details and good exposure. We really enjoyed the Bokeh effect that gave much more importance to our face. Definitely for the selfie addict! When compared to the intensive features of the front camera, the rear camera of 16MP seems just a little humble. The flashlight allows you to take selfie shots with natural colors even when the lighting condition is not good. The front camera also has Face Beauty mode to soften the skin tone while you take selfie shots.

The selfie camera shoots 1080p videos and is quite good. The audio captured are also quite consumable. We tried it with some skype calls and the callers on the other side were quick to recognize the change in the quality of video they were getting and many even asked if we got some high-end webcams  guess that should say it all!

Battery:

The Vivo V5 Plus got a time of 8 hours and 32 minutes on PCMark’s Work 2.0 Battery Benchmarks and our real world test backs it up. On a full charge, we were able to go through a full day with more to spare when we got home. The 3160mAh does support fast charging, so if you do need a bit of a top up, 30 minutes of wall hugging before leaving you the office should give you enough juice to get through hellish EDSA traffic. The most we’ve gotten out of the battery was about a day and a half; that’s with our mobile data on for the greater part of the day, with us shooting a lot of photos, and catching a YouTube video here and there during downtime. Not bad at all.

Performance:

    The Vivo V5 and V5 Plus share the same sized screen but, thankfully, the V5 Plus gets a resolution upgrade to full HD; giving it a pixel density of 401 pixels per inch. While watching videos and general use on the V5’s 5.5-inch display was perfectly acceptable, our experience with V5 Plus was definitely more enjoyable. Colors have the same pop, but the details are crisper. It has decent viewing angles and sunlight legibility gets a pass but could be a bit better. In terms of audio, the speaker pumps out a lot of volume with decent quality, but we do suggest that you keep it at about 75% just to keep things on the safe side. The V5 Plus is also equipped with a AK4376 Hi-Fi audio chip.

Vivo has used Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 625 octa-core chip to drive the phone and has paired it with 4GB RAM. It isn’t the most impressive hardware combo at this price point (OnePlus 3T offers a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 821quad-core chip and 6GB RAM), but is powerful enough to handle most mainstream tasks and games with ease. Even with multiple apps open in the background, the phone didn’t stutter with any of the tasks at any point. The phone has 64GB internal storage which is what most of its rivals including the OnePlus 3T offer. The V5 packs in a 3,160mAh battery, which barely lasted a whole day on one charge. The Vivo V5 Plus home cum fingerprint scanner works better than expected and actually unlocks the device instantly in about 0.2 sec. You can add multiple fingerprints if your device is being used by more than one person. Moreover, the fingerprint sensor is water Resistant that means you do not have to worry about your wet fingers while using the sensor. 

Vivo V5 Plus also has a split-screen feature like the other Vivo’s phones that allows you to use different apps simultaneously by splitting the screen. This feature works fine without any glitches but it does not seem much beneficial to us. The UI offers smart gesture features such as smart wake where you can type letters on display to open predefined apps like ‘c’ for dialer, ‘m’ to play music, ‘w’ to open WhatsApp, etc. Also if you can off/on the display by double tapping on it to have a quick glance of notifications.

The Vivo V5 Plus home cum fingerprint scanner works better than expected and actually unlocks the device instantly in about 0.2 sec. You can add multiple fingerprints if your device is being used by more than one person. Moreover, the fingerprint sensor is water Resistant that means you do not have to worry about your wet fingers while using the sensor.

With the AK4376 dedicated Hi-Fi audio chip, it gives you clear and boosted audio in both headphones and speakers. The inbuilt speaker was really enough loud to enjoy the music. With a 3,055mAh battery, we able to get one and half day backup on normal usage. However, the smartphone technology is moving towards the USB C type port whereas Vivo V5 Plus still has the microUSB port which disappoints us little bit. But you don’t worry about the fast charging as it has dual fast charging technology called Dual-engine quick Charging. We really impress with fast charging, it charged our device from 1% to 25% in near about 15 minutes. In our battery test, we ran a 720p video and it provides us 7 hours & 15 minutes at full volume & brightness.

Pros and cons:
Pros:
  • Bright display
  • Premium Build
  • Fast performance
  • Online and offline availability
  • Dual lens selfie camera
Cons:
  • Disappointing battery backup
  • Average camera
Verdict:

Vivo V5 Plus offers some every unique features such as the dual front camera. Though it doesn’t have the makings of a flagship killer, it impresses with classy looks, rich display and smooth performance. If you are looking for a more value for money phone, go for the OnePlus 3T. If the front camera matters more, the V5 Plus has more to offer.If you love selfies, this is a phone you may consider. If you prefer shopping offline, this phone should be on your list. But beyond that, the grass is greener on the other side. OnePlus 3T offers a better processor – Snapdragon 821 and more RAM – 6GB, in a similar price band.

Coming to the OnePlus 3, it has almost similar specs, if you compared it with Vivo V5 Plus. But design and performance wise the OnePlus 3 can easily take over the VivoV5Plus due to a better processor and extra RAM. And if you come to the selfie then the V5Plus will beat the OnePlus 3. 

So, in the online space, the OnePlus still dominate the V5Plus but offline the VIVO will win the game. However, if you are a selfie freak and want to capture always good selfies the Vivo V5Plus is should be your preferable choice but if you want extra RAM and sleek looking design then you can move towards the Oneplus 3. Also, the Oneplus is selling their phones only online but VIVO’s is available both online and offline. The offline marketing of VIVO is very strong which gives it an extra benefit because most of the peoples apart from metro cities in India still prefer to buy a smartphone from their local dealer. Also the service wise the VIVO is much better than OnePlus 3 because you can get the VIVO service center easily even if you are not residing in the metros.

Vivo is also very thoughtful to have added a case and a screen protector (one sheet is already attached while one can be kept as an extra). It's a small gesture but it gives you the sense that Vivo is intent on doing a little extra just to please the consumer.


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