Coolpad Note 5 lite review: Good looks, average performance

We have mostly liked Coolpad smartphones launched in the past. In fact, we found the Note 5 to be quite an all-rounder when we reviewed it. So when its stripped-down variant -- Note 5 Lite -- hit the market, we were even more excited to review it With the Coolpad Note 5 Lite  the Chinese company has managed to offer features such as metal body design and fingerprint sensor, all at an affordable price of Rs 8,199. But is the Coolpad Note 5 Lite really as good as it sounds? Read the rest of our review to find out.




Design



As far as the design goes, the Coolpad Note 5 Lite doesn’t look like a budget smartphone at all. It comes with rounded corners and the 2.5 curved glass makes it stand out from other smartphones in the same segment.

The front remains dominated by a 5-inch HD display of 720x1280 pixel resolution, with capacitive keys below it and an 8MP selfie camera with earpiece above it. Flipping it over, you’ll see the non-removable back panel which has two parallel metallic strips running close to the top and bottom edges of the smartphone. A 13MP primary camera, along with LED flash and fingerprint scanner are at the back as well.

Metallic rims run along the edges of the smartphone. While the right edge has the Power button and SIM tray, the left edge is where the volume rocker is. A 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the top edge and the microUSB charging port is on the bottom.

Overall, we liked the design of CoolPad Note 5 Lite. We think it looks better than an average budget smartphone. The fact that its design doesn’t resemble that of an Apple iPhone is also something we definitely like.

Coming to the display, we found it to be decent. But don’t expect it to be too impressive because at the end of the day, this is a budget smartphone. There wasn’t any noticeable distortion in the content displayed on the screen and images shown looked clear. We did find the display to be a little reflective, and this made sun readability a bit tough. Viewing angles could’ve been improved as well.



Performance



Coolpad Note 5 Lite is powered by 1GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6735 processor coupled with 3GB of RAM. The smartphone comes with 16GB of internal storage and supports microSD cards of up to 64GB in size. Running Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Cool UI baked on top, the Note 5 Lite has a 2,500mAh battery. Connectivity options include 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and USB OTG.

Speaking about the software, it comes with the same set of tweaks that we’ve seen in other Coolpad smartphones. The app drawer is integrated with the homescreen and quick settings appear from the bottom of the screen. Even tools like flashlight, calculator and camera appear along with the quick settings menu, and not on the notification panel.We have loved the Rock Wallpaper app in Coolpad’s smartphones and the Note 5 Lite was no exception. Tapping on the app changes the smartphone’s wallpaper automatically.


During our testing, we didn’t find any major lags in the smartphone. It’s not like we were expecting much from a device in this price range, but we were certainly not disappointed with its features.

As is standard in our reviews, we launched various apps on the Note 5 Lite and switched between them randomly. We also used multiple tabs of Chrome to see if it they slow down the Note 5 Lite. However, the phone handled everything without any issues.

Call quality on the smartphone was good and we never encountered any problems with it.
However, what we didn’t like was the phone’s navigation feature. When we used Google Maps for turn-by-turn navigation, the device started heating up.

The battery wasn’t that impressive either. Even with moderate usage, the smartphone ran out of battery before the end of the day.

Furthermore, we tried playing a few YouTube videos on the device, and unlike navigation and battery, the result impressed us. Videos looked clear and the device didn’t face any problems streaming even high-resolution ones. Even the sound output was really good.
Speaking of the cameras, they were overall decent during our usage.

The 13MP rear camera of the Coolpad Note 5 Lite clicks good pictures in bright conditions, but its performance falls in dimly-lit areas. Also, images clicked in low-light conditions look distorted when viewed on a computer.

The selfie camera does a decent job as well. We tried using all the beauty features in the app, and they did make our selfies look a lot better.

When we ran benchmark tests on our device, it scored 29,697 in Antutu benchmark test and 516 in single core and 1419 in multi core score of Geekbench 4.

Verdict

We’ll say that there are a few good aspects and a few not-so-good things about the smartphone, We liked the build quality and design and found the performance to be mostly smooth. However, heating issues (during navigation) and bad battery life are downers. But at a price of Rs 8,199, you can’t expect a smartphone to be flawless. We would suggest spending some more money and buying 

Coolpad Note 5

 instead, however, if you are too tight on budget then Coolpad Note 5 Lite is not a bad option either.