Lenovo's smartphones business is a bit hit in the Indian markets, no matter what specifications the company is offering people are in cue to get their hands-on. Lenovo's K3 note sales being the best example for the above statement. A6000 smartphone was the first to change the game for Lenovo and then came the A7000 which is still considered as the best smartphones to buy under 10k price range. Then comes the K3 note smartphone after being launched a couple of months backs in China. So how well can the K3 note perform? There is no perfect answer for that as we proceed with the review you will find out why.
Lenovo K3 Note Display: The smartphone sports 5.5-inches FHD(1980*1080p) IPS display skipping the Corning Gorilla Glass protection but still the display is strong enough to survive uncalled falls and scratches to a certain extent. The Display is the one of the major bump from the A7000 smartphone which had a 720p display. as far I am concerned I feel the A7000 had the better display when compared with the K3 note, despite being an FHD display it looks dull in indoor lighting and don't even bother asking about the daylight. The viewing angles are decent, the colors look sharp and we didn't notice any pixelation over the time we tested the device. To frame the review of K3 note's display, we feel it can be better.
Lenovo K3 Note Design: Now if you have knowledge or seen Lenovo A7000 you don't need to read the design part, you can safely skip it. In case you need me to remind, The design of the smartphone is decent enough with a plastic build. On front, you have the huge yet comfortable to hold 5.5-inches FHD display with three touch type capacitive button which do no light up as they are just painted with white colour, 5-megapixel front camera accompanied with usual set of sensors. On top, the 3.5MM audio jack, MicroUSB port. On the bottom, primary Mic and nothing else. Back has the 13-megapixel autofocus primary camera with Dual LED flash and the secondary mic for noise cancellation, speaker grills, and Lenovo branding. Stripping the back panel reveals the SIM card slots, MicroSD card slot, and massive 2.900mAh battery. So to sum up the design there is no major design change over the A7000 smartphone so its good and decent enough. We must have appreciated of Lenovo had changed the design and materials.
Lenovo K3 Note Performance: Powered by MediaTek 1.7GHz Octa-Core processor with Mali T760GPU coupled with 2GB Ram and 16GB internal storage that can be expanded with an SD card slot furthermore. Now having such a powerful CPU and sufficient amount of Ram we would expect the performance to be lag-free and decent enough but to our very surprise the performance of the device is not up to our expectations, there is lag in the U.I as the transitions are not fluid, switching between the apps was never smooth. Although the device has 2GB of Ram by default we rarely saw 1GB of Ram free in the background we are left with around 800-900MB of free Ram even if there are no apps running in the background. And Yes we do feel it's weird. We don't want to blame certain departments of the smartphone, but we do feel the 1080p panel might be the reason for the Avg performance of the smartphone.
We did play games like Modern Combat 5, Asphalt 8, FiFa 15, and Leo's fortune and for the most part, the games ran pretty smooth, but there is lag while steering, shooting, and the frame drops are clearly visible when there is action in the games. Do note we are not saying it's completely bad, it's decent enough but not the best among the competition. Thanks to MediaTek Soc the device didn't heat that much while playing games or using it casually.
Lenovo K3 Note Battery: K3 note houses a 2,900mAh battery which is pretty much sufficient for a single day usage and to our expectations the battery performance was decent enough similar to any other Lenovo smartphone. But things won't work out that simple, The battery takes a lot of time to charge completely. It almost took me around 3 hours of time to reach 100% from 5%. But for the constellation part the battery performed decently we used to get around 4 hours of screen on time while the time we tested and 4 hours isn't that bad at all.
Lenovo K3 Note Camera: There is 13-megapixel autofocus primary camera with Dual LED flash and a 5-megapixel front camera which is fixed focus. Camera performance shouldn't be judged based on the megapixels count the same rule applies t0 K3 note as well. The primary camera can capture good shots in the broad daylight with the good amount of details and fewer grains in the picture.
The focussing is quick enough and for the most part there the focused shots turn out to be decent. The primary camera gets in trouble when you want to capture images in low-light conditions, the images turn out to be faded and washed out with lot of noise in them, flash helps in most cases and it is powerful. The selfie camera can take the good picture in outdoor conditions and in indoor and low-light the camera isn't that good. The camera app is simple with decent customization options and a good number of filters to set the mood.
Other Features: The device supports 4G LTE for both the SIM's. The device runs on Android 5.0.2 lollipop out of the box and there was an update to fix the performance issues with the smartphone. WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 are built-in. USB OTG is supported out of the box. The vibe U.I 2.0 can be used to customize the device according to the self-references.
Conclusion: On the whole the Lenovo K3 Note is a smartphone with mixed opinion. The performance of the smartphone could have better where the A7000 smartphone outperforms K3 note in certain scenarios. On the whole K3 note is a smartphone which has its ups and down. The below-listed pro's and con's will help you judge the smartphone.
Pro's
Light-weight
Dual 4G Support
Decent Cameras
Storage and Removable Battery
Con's
Display(reflective/no protection)
Avg Performer
Battery life can be better
Camera in low-light
Our SCORE: 75/100
