Lenovo K9

Lenovo is looking to capture the market in their favour with the new and capable Lenovo K9.  Priced at Rs. 8,999, Lenovo K9 is acting as a notable fighter, standing out in the budget market with some of its special features.

Lenovo K9 looks brilliant and has a special camera setup of four cameras – two on back and two on the front. It delivers on photography, and it does not falter in performance or battery when put in a battle with other flagship phones. It is a capable handset for an affordable price.

Lenovo K9 comes with a glossy body and a glass rear –  a premium look that is not always found in the budget market. The reflective back can catch light from any angle, making it shiny. However, the glass back makes it very slippery. That is a double downside since the phone is not very sturdy and prone to scratches as well. The front and back glasses have rounded edges to make it grippy and comfortable to hold. On the back, it has a camera bump and a sunken fingerprint sensor. On the front, the design is quite minimalist, coming with thin side border and thick bottom and top bezels. One of the best additions on this set is the USB Type-C port, a fantastic feature since most budget phones and many premium ones continue to stick to the dated Micro-USB standard.

Lenovo K9 has a 5.7-inch screen with a resolution of 720×1440. The display is bright and crisp, but it is not as bright as many of its flagship rivals. As a result, sunlight legibility is quite low, and you get reflections on the glass surface outdoors. While HD resolution is good, even budget handsets are moving for 1080p, making the 720p of this phone quite dated when you place it within the budget competition. Colour accuracy is great, but it won’t excite you. Plus, it comes with chunky top and bottom bezels that limit your screen space. On the whole, it is not an exciting feature.

Lenovo is equipped with the MediaTek Helio P22 processor – the same model used in Xiaomi Redmi 6 and Nokia 3.1 Plus. It is twinned with a 3GB RAM, which helps with the use of different apps at the same time. Daily work would be smooth and lag free, but heavy tasks may get the phone to slow down. Simple 3D games will experience frame drops and are not recommended on this set. It is best suitable for watching videos and doing essential work, without pushing its limits. Benchmark scores placed it at a reasonably decent 78,460 which is what many budget phones score.

Lenovo K9 has a pair of a 13MP and 5MP camera on the rear and the same setup on the front. The four-camera setup has been its selling point, though it produces mixed results. The focus is not always accurate and can result in some shots to get blurry, especially in harsh sunlight. Contrast is also a problem since it can be difficult to differentiate between light and dark areas. Colours are not always accurate and can turn out to be washed out in certain places. The Bokeh mode is not that good, as it delivers an artificial blurring. Portraits could be used with the front camera too, but the image quality on the whole drops. Shots taken in low light has visible details, but there can be some noise, especially when the pictures are zoomed in. However, as a budget phone, Lenovo K9 delivers excellent quality of low-light photos.

Videos are by default 1280×720 and can go to 1920×1080. They are, however, quite grainy and due to lack of stabilisation, can get jerky. The camera app does not come with many features except the common ones like Panorama mode and beautification.

Lenovo K9 arrives with a generous 3000 mAh battery, It is satisfactory and can get a user through the whole day with regular use. Heavy use might find the drainage to be more, but that is expected from any phone. An HD video loop test made the phone last for about 11 hours, 22 minutes, which is decent for a budget phone. However, when the bundled 10W charger is used, the charging of the phone is quite slow, taking about an hour to reach 40% from 0.

The selling point of Lenovo K9 is its camera – but it did not turn out to be the phone’s most robust feature, especially, with the poor quality of image reproduction. Oddly enough, it is one of the extremely rare handsets where daylight photographs turned out to be worse than the performance of low-light photography. However, the phone will attract you with its design and will keep your trust when it comes to performance and battery. It is a recommendation for any budget user looking for a good amount of budget power for their handsets. A worthy alternative to this phone is the budget market ruler, Xiaomi Redmi 6.