Lenovo K8 Note review: The hard-hitter in the budget segment
The K8 Note comes as a direct successor to the K6 Note launched in India last year. The smartphone is better in almost all aspects as it stuffs inside an improved camera, better processor, more battery and an above-average display. It is priced at Rs 12,999 (base model), which makes the device fall in the lower-mid range segment, a favourite segment with Motorola smartphones as well.
So, what makes K8 Note ahead of the curve? Will the specification bump alone make the handset stand apart from the already saturated market or will it prove to be a unique value-for-money package? We have been using the Lenovo K8 Note since couple of weeks now and this is what we make of it.
Design
While most smartphone makers focus solely on adding a ‘Premium’ element to their budget and mid-range smartphones, Lenovo seems to be unaffected with such strategy. Don’t expect the K8 Note to be a premium-looking device, given its price bracket and the placement in the market. However, what you can expect from it at least, like with other K-series Lenovo smartphones, is that it is heavy and gives a certain sense of sturdiness as well.
It is not slippery, even if your palms are sweaty. The smartphone is thick, heavy and build out of Series 5000 Aluminium, as revealed by Lenovo at the time of the launch. The unit we reviewed was the Fine Gold colour variant but we found the Venom Black version much premium and visually appealing.
The K8 Note comes with shining rims running across the sides, on the rear camera enclosure, fingerprint sensor and even the antennas on top and bottom at the back, making it visually appealing to some extent.
The typical bar-shaped Lenovo K8 Note has ample bezels on top and bottom at the front. Above the display you get a speaker grille, LED flash, a camera, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor and a LED notification indicator as well. Below the screen are three capacitive touch buttons. On the right, there are the volume and power buttons, all placed within your thumb’s reach, while on the left you have the SIM card and microSD card slots along with a refreshing change - a dedicated Music Key.The Music Key is something that was missing from the previous K-series smartphones and will be much appreciated by music lovers as they now have a shortcut to control the music playback. You can long press on it to start or stop a music, double press to skip a track and triple press to jump to a previous track. The best part about it is the ability to customise the key to perform other actions as well such as taking screenshots, opening apps or firing up the torch light.
What, however, could come as a disappointment is the smartphone’s speaker, which was barely loud enough in our tests. The speakers are placed at the bottom but unfortunately, only one of them works at a time, while the other one resonates the primary speaker. Holding the smartphone in landscape mode and blocking the audio from your hands could become a regular phenomenon.
Above the Music Key are the three slots that hold two SIM cards (Micro+Nano) and a microSD card (upto 128GB). At no point, you will feel the design of the smartphone deviating or mundane.
The back panel is decorated with a vertical dual camera setup in a pill-shaped enclosure. The LED flash is placed on one side while the fingerprint sensor is seen just below the cameras. Towards the bottom you see the company logo. At the top and bottom, where the shining rims run through, are the smartphone antennas.
Lenovo K8 Note’s display is decent enough and users shelling Rs 12,999 should have absolutely no issues in day- to- day usage. The smartphone rocks an IPS 5.5-inch screen with full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) resolution, giving an approximate pixel density of 400ppi. The display is bright but sunlight legibility is still not the best. And since it's an IPS display, prepare yourselves for some extra reflections.
The K8 Note’s screen is nonetheless vibrant and pretty much what you expect from a budget smartphone. The colour tones are decent and hardly any colour changes are visible when viewing the screen from acute angles. On the software front you get the usual options to change the size of the font and the on-screen content. You can also choose between viewing in ‘Standard’ more or ‘Vivid’ mode. Unfortunately, there is no Blue Light filter.Overall, the viewing experience is good and shouldn’t be an issue for users. What might become a topic for concern could be the smartphone’s performance.
Performance
If you are all hyped-up learning about the Lenovo K8 Note’s design, its performance section too won’t disappoint you. Although the smartphone blazes across apps, it did show slight lag once in a while. This is negligible but it is something we don’t expect from a company which, at the time of teasing the K8 Note, focused on powerful processing. Powering the K8 Note is a deca-core MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797) processor. As Lenovo mentioned during the launch, the smartphone has four cores clocked at 1.4GHz, another four at 1.8GHz and the remaining two cores at 2.3GHz, all of which work flawlessly.
Further fuelling the power is 4GB RAM (the variant we reviewed). There is also a variant that comes with 3GB RAM. As for the graphics, Mali T880 takes the charge and handles games and app animations without slouching.
If you haven’t noticed it yet, the Lenovo K8 Note also is one of the few smartphones to sport deca-core processor at such a price tag. Accessing apps, including heavy ones from the multi-window or working on them simultaneously using the split-screen functionality are smooth as silk. Clubbing the performance with an impressive fingerprint sensor lets you reach the home screen within no time.Based on the specifications the K8 Note can be compared with some of the well performing smartphones in the given price range. On Antutu, the device scored 86405, which varies from time to time and is a little less than what Lenovo claimed at the launch event. Nonetheless, the score is decent considering the specifications. As for Geekbench, the smartphone scored 1641 in single core tests and 4364 in multi-score tests, which too are what we expected from the device.
While the processing power sounds great on the K8 Note, one factor that let us down was the heating issue. Charging the phone for longer durations or using it heavily raises the temperature of the K8 Note. It doesn’t go alarmingly hot though but is noticeable enough.
Software too plays a vital part in how a smartphone performs and here we have absolutely no complaints from Lenovo. At the time when Android OEMs are trying to perfect their smartphone user interfaces, Lenovo has completely changed its course from Vibe UI to stock Android. Few days before the announcement of the K8 Note, Lenovo announced that it is ditching the Vibe UI completely and is using stock Android moving forward. The K8 Note is the one that leads the pack. This move was pretty much expected given its subsidiary Motorola too uses near stock Android in its smartphones.
It is understood that if you are shifting from a Samsung smartphone, a Huawei handset or any other OEM, you may find stock Android dull and lacking certain features. But it drastically shrinks the amount of bloatware on the handset. However, you will find a couple of pre-installed Lenovo apps onboard such as File Manager, Lenovo Help, a bunch of Microsoft apps and Dolby Atmos. Microsoft apps include Powerpoint, Word, Excel, OneNote, Outlook and more.
Dolby Atmos plays a vital role in how the device performs when it comes to audio output. The K8 Note is not as loud as other smartphones in the price segment. The device, although have two speaker grilles on either side of the charging port, throws audio only from one speaker. Using the Dolby Atmos audio app you can play around with the equalizer, bass enhancer, volume leveler, and more.
What we found impressive is the app’s ability to save different audio profiles for music, games, voice and movies. Dolby’s icon is also there in the extended notifications tray for easy one-touch enabling and disabling.
On the storage front, the Lenovo K8 Note comes in two variants - 32GB and 64GB. The unit we received was the 64GB version. Out of the 64GB the smartphone will reserve around 12GB for the system files, leaving around 52GB for apps and other media contents. While this is enough for a general user, Lenovo has also taken care of those who like to store multiple movies and several heavy games as well by giving an option for a microSD card, which can support up to 128GB of storage.
Lenovo is betting big on the camera department of the K8 Note. The company, for the first time, has jumped onto the dual rear camera bandwagon. The Chinese tech firm has gone ahead with the regular+depth sensor combination instead of the wide angle+telephoto zoom or colour+monochrome combination. Powering the cameras are a 13MP Purecell sensor and a 5MP Samsung BSI sensor. Both, when clubbed together, deliver decent bokeh effect in images. Inside the ‘Depth Enabled’ mode users can change the aperture (from F1.2 to F2.8), which decides how much blurred the background will be.
While all this sounds impressive, we didn’t find the mode reliable enough. In tricky light situations, the camera fails to capture a perfect bokeh image. At times, we were easily able to see the edges being blurred and left sharpened in one image. Taking images a couple of times will get you the results. Until now, one of the best smartphones we found for bokeh effect is the Honor 8 Pro, which costs Rs 29,999.
Daylight shots from the K8 Note were crisp and saturated. We did find the device struggling to search for a subject to bring in focus at times. But this was something that rarely happened. As for low light shots, the K8 Note could prove to be a bit disappointing. The smartphone captures colours with great accuracy when using Auto HDR mode but it also brings a jelly effect when zoomed in.
There is a 13MP front-facing camera as well, which performed well. Shooting selfie shots in low light is also not an issue considering that the K8 Note comes with a dedicated front-facing flash as well. The camera is good enough to make video calls. The images taken are sharp and well balanced in terms of colour capturing.
Lenovo has a decent track record in terms of battery performances and the K8 Note keeps the performance results intact, if not better. The smartphone’s 4000mAh battery can easily run for 12 hours, given it has an efficient processor and a full-HD display to take care of. We were left with around 20% battery life by the end of the day before plugging the smartphone back. Light users will easily be able to stretch the handset for over 12 hours while the heavy users may have to carry around a charger.
Like the case with every other smartphone these days, the Lenovo K8 Note also boasts of a ‘Battery Saver’ mode that can be set to turn on automatically at 15% or 5%. The mode limits the device’s vibration, location services and background data. If this was not enough to convince you, Lenovo has also thrown in TurboCharging fast charging tech. Using this, the K8 Note can hit the 50% mark in around 30 minutes. However, it takes a couple of hours to reach 100% battery level.
verdict
With the K8 Note, Lenovo has tried hard to satisfy those who need a bit of everything ranging from a decent display, impressive processor, great camera performance and a considerable battery life. The smartphone could be a go-to device for those who want a multimedia device in at a budget price tag. The 3GB RAM+32GB version is priced at Rs 12,999, while the 4GB RAM+64GB storage version is priced at Rs 13,999.
The Lenovo K8 Note surpasses the K6 Note in almost every possible sphere. The only possible competitors falling in the Rs 13,000 segment are the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 and possibly the Asus Zenfone 3S Max. While these two rank above the K8 Note in some aspects, they fail to deliver a stock Android UI, dual rear cameras and a decent processor in a single package.
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