Lenovo K5 Pro

Released earlier this year, the Lenovo K5 pro is a smartphone made for the quintessential middle-class man, who wants the best of both worlds. Top of the line features, at competitive pricing of about INR 12000 makes the Lenovo K5 pro a very nice buy.

With an LCD IPS screen, Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box, and a large 4050 mAh non-removable battery, the K5 pro is sure to be one of the more attractive phones released by Lenovo recently.

The Lenovo K5 pro offers a very basic design, with no extraordinary feature popping out to the eyes. It is available in two color choices, namely black and gold, and weighs about 165 g. The design is such that it will appeal to a majority of buyers in the mid-range smartphone segment. A fingerprint sensor on the back panel is also included, which has become the standard nowadays. The 5.99-inch OGS display is frameless, and is without a cut form, to give the phone a nice looking interior.

It certainly is not capable of competing with flagships in the design segment, but then again, we do not expect it to do so. For the value segment, the handset offers quite a sturdy and attractive design, which is expected to appeal to most buyers.

One of the distinguishing features of this smartphone is its display. This is probably where Lenovo takes the cake, apart from the IPS LCD technology used on the screen. The 5.99-inch display is frameless and has a screen resolution of 2160 by 1080 pixels.

It supports a 10-finger multitouch option, and the frame size is minuscule, standing at just 3.4mm. Absence of the bezel just makes the phone look that much more attractive to the eyes. The screen to body ratio is also very good by industry standards, coming in at an impressive 79.1%.

There is an absence of the more tech-savvy features, however, such as face unlock, and in-display fingerprint, but this is to be expected from phones in the value segment.

The Lenovo K5 pro ships with Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box, with a Snapdragon 636 octa-core processor, and an Adreno 509 GPU. The clock speed of the Snapdragon 636 is 1.8 GHz, with 4 and 6 GB RAM models available. With these specifications, one would expect that the phone would not lag and/or hang in day-to-day use.

Indeed, the phone delivers as expected, the performance is good, with no lag. Games such as PUBG are a breeze to play, with the excellent display further adding to the experience. The firmware of the Lenovo K5 pro can be upgraded to a newer version when it is first unboxed, but there is no further update on support for newer Android versions.

Here comes a department where the phone lags a little bit behind its competitors. On paper, the specs seem impressive, with dual cameras on both the front and rear of the handset. On the back side, there are 16 and 5 MP shooters, whereas you have 8 and 5 MP shooters on the front for those killer selfies.

In well-lit conditions, the phone performs well, as expected. Where the phone is trumped by its competitors is the image quality in low light. The picture quality can be described as satisfactory at best, continuing the reputation of Lenovo to be not such a good player when it comes to the smartphone cameras segment. 

The camera, however, has autofocus and supports 2160p and 1080p video recording at 30 fps.

As mentioned before, the K5 pro packs in a powerful 4050 mAh battery, which is more than enough to give you a day’s power in a single charge. It is a lithium-polymer non-removable battery and is great for heavy usage. The handset also supports fast charging technology, with currents of 2A being supported, 18 W power and 9V voltage.

If you operate the phone under extreme conditions, such as continuous gaming or watching videos, a backup of 9 hours screen time is guaranteed. All in all, the typical phone user should be very happy with the battery backup of this device.

The Lenovo K5 pro certainly goes a long way in rectifying the earlier mistakes with Lenovo handsets. It has added fuel to the almost put-out smartphone segment of Lenovo and is expected to bring the company’s value segment back to life. Even though the camera performance is below par, expect people to pick up this phone owing to the sheer fact that it offers some of the best specs in this price range.