- Design
For a budget device, Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus no doubt looks great. The smartphone comes with metallic edges and rounded corners, which impart it a premium finish.
The front is dominated by the 5-inch touchscreen display, and also houses the selfie camera module, the earpiece, as well as the accelerometer and proximity sensors.
The K5 Plus' capacitive navigation buttons are placed below the display. However, they are not backlit, which made using them in dark environments a not-so-pleasant affair.
The volume rocker and power buttons are placed on the right, with the the 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB slot on the top.
The back panel of the Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus has the usual Lenovo branding and the 13 MP primary camera module, along with LED flash. The panel opens up to reveal the removable battery, as well as the dual sim and microSD expansion card slots.
Overall, we were quite pleased with the look and feel of Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus. The smartphone's chassis has an all metal body which looks great, and given the price point of the phone, is certainly a welcome addition
- Display
Speaking about the 5-inch (1080x1920p) IPS display of the smartphone, we were quite happy with it. Colors looked vibrant, and viewing angles were decent as well.
However, using the phone under direct sunlight was a pain because of the slightly reflective screen. But, at this price point, we can't really complain.
- Performance and camera
Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus is powered by a 1.7GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor, paired with 2GB of RAM. It also comes with 16GB of on-board storage, which can be expanded by microSD cards of up to 32GB.
Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, skinned with the company's own Vibe UI. The device has the app drawer integrated with the homescreen, something that is reminiscent of iOS devices. It also has many apps like Evernote, Flipkart, and Truecaller pre-installed on it. However, these can be uninstalled without any issues.
We downloaded quite a few apps on the phone, and it handled them like a champ. Also, it ran pretty smoothly when we launched various apps and switched between them.
Switching between various tabs of Chrome and playing audio files didn't affect the Lenovo K5 Plus' performance either. In a nutshell, the Snapdragon 616 is more than capable of handling the routine tasks that an average smartphone user deals with.
However, there was one problem that we encountered while using the phone, and that was the heating issue. The back panel of the phone started to heat up even during simple tasks such as as playing YouTube videos and light games like Angry Birds 2.
Another aspect of the phone we were disappointed with was the call quality. Considering that's the primary use of any phone is calling, Lenovo really needs to get this fixed.
On the battery front, the Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus' removable 2750mAh battery lasted us an entire day with moderate usage. However, on extensive usage, the battery ran out much quicker. Don't leave home without the charger if you plan using the phone for regular social media, watching YouTube videos and gaming.
Speaking about the cameras of Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus, we found them to be decent.
The 13MP rear camera took decent quality images in well-lit conditions; however, the same wasn't true about images clicked in low light.
But the real problem of the camera was focussing on the objects. It took abnormally long for the camera to focus on objects, and we had to hold the phone really steady to take the pictures.
The 5MP selfie camera was just okay, and could only click decent images with the beauty feature turned on. Don't really expect it to do wonders though.
- Verdict
In summation, we found Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus to be just decent. Lenovo has done a much better job in the past with phones like A6000 and A7000, and obviously this made us raise our expectations. Granted, the display, design, and the hardware specifications are all great, but this is marred by disappointing call quality, average cameras, and heating issues. Overall, the K5 Plus is just an okay device, and certainly not the best bang for your buck.
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