Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus falls short of expectations

After launching the K5 Note and flagship Vibe X3, Lenovo is now looking at the budget smartphone market with the Vibe K5 Plus. Pegged to be the successor to the company's own A6000, the Vibe K5 Plus isn't alone and faces tough competition.

The Lenovo K5 Plus has a decent build and design. It has a lightweight aluminium casing with the back trying the mimic metal finish. It is 8 mm thick and has round edges on the corners. The front is dominated with a 5-inch full-HD display with three capacitive touch keys. Rear is basically neat with the camera module, Lenovo branding and speaker grills. Power key and volume key are placed on the right edge and the 3.5-mm jack and charging port on the top. The rear panel is removable, housing the battery and dual SIM card slots. Overall, the K5 Plus has a neat design, making it comfortable to hold.

Running on Android 5.1.1, the Vibe K5 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor and is paired with 2 GB of RAM. It doesn't have the vanilla Android user interface. There isn't any app tray and all the apps are placed on the home screen. Being a budget phone, it comes with 16 GB of internal storage with support for expandable memory. It is LTE enabled and other connectivity options onboard include WiFi and Bluetooth. Overall, the experience of using the K5 Plus was a pleasant one. The call clarity was good. It was able to handle YouTube video streaming and app downloads without any lag. Multi-tab browsing on the Chorme browser was smooth. It handled casual games such as Candy Crush, Temple Run, etc. without any lag but at times, it lost a few frames. The device started heating up after long sessions of streaming or gaming. It comes pre-loaded with apps such as Syncit app for backing up contacts, SMS and call logs; Shareit app for sharing files; Lenovo's companion app, Theme center and more. It also support Theatre Max technology for ANT Virtual Reality headset.

Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus packs in a 13-MP rear camera and a 5-MP front facing camera. The camera performance is just about average as it captures decent images but nothing extra-ordinary. The camera takes time to process an image and get ready for next shot. It isn't a great performer in low light either. The sound output on the K5 Plus is loud and clear, especially for its price. It is equipped with Dolby Atoms, which offers controls too in selected apps.

With a 2,750-mAh battery onboard, the Vibe K5 Plus managed to last a day with average usage.

Bag it or Junk it: Spend a bit more and get Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 for Rs 9,999

Rating: 3/5

Plus: Display, Sound

Minus: Camera