Review of Lenovo K3 Note : Truly a Great Phone

A couple of weeks ago the Chinese Tech Titan -Lenovo announced a mid-ranger note that was touted to be the game changer .Dubbed as the Killer Note, the Note k3 became the first to flaunt a FHD display in under 10k price segment. The device packs some nifty features for the price it asks and this caught our attention. So here’s our first 48h review of the Killer Note (Note K3).

Unboxing

Box content

• Lenovo K3 Note
• Screen Guard
• Data Cable
• Travel Adaptor
• Lenovo Warranty book
• Lenovo Quick Start Guide
• Lenovo Service Book

Build Quality

The first thing you notice when you pick up the Note K3 in the hand is, being  150g in weight it feels light, yet it packs a full HD display and also a high capacity battery .The Rear part of the phone features the same feel like the Yureka did. It’s made of polycarbonate and feels smooth although it’s prone to smudges. On the back houses the 13mp shooter with dual LED flash, a mic at the right followed by a small yet powerful speaker featuring Dolby Atmos. At the bottom you will see the Lenovo branding. The panel is user replaceable and houses a 2900mAh battery (which is the slimmest one I’ve seen so far) .It has dual sim capability both being micro.

Another mic at the bottom end of the phone. The phone is 8mm thick.

To the left you find the Volume rocker along with the Power key. The Power button is pretty much at the mid-way of the device thus its easy accessible .The buttons have a metallic finish which you don’t notice unless you look closely. The note is 152.6mm in length.

The right side is left blank.

The top part houses the usb mini port along with the 3.5mm jack. It’s a best placement for the usb mini port as this makes more convenient for us to use the phone while charging (Note the usb cable is less than a meter). The device is 76.2mm in breadth.

To the front lies the 5MP shooter with ear piece on the top and a gigantic LED light. On the bottom the touch capacitive keys are not backlight, it might take a while to get used to it .The screen is 5.5 inch FHD and looks clear and sharp with 401 ppi. However the color output could have been better.
Overall the device feels light and a little cheap. The rear and the front part is no design marvel .The phone looks boring and is not an eye catcher but at 10k no one  expects a Full metal phone .

 

Hardware

Lenovo uses a Mediatek MT6752 Octa core Chipset for the Note. Clocked at 1.7 GHz Cortex A53 the 64 bit SoC is one of the latest powerhouse from mediatek. For the graphics we have the Mali – T760 MP2   clocked at 700 MHz. This chipset enables the phone to support 4G/3G/2G on both the SIM card slot . There is 2GB of RAM which the Vibe UI does tend to eat up quite quickly. Most often there is anywhere between 500MB to 800MB of free memory and you can free up the memory pretty easily with the built-in UI functionality. Note has 16Gb internal storage , it also supports micro SD card up to 32 Gb. Sporting a mediatek the phone didn’t get warm during some heavy performance mode. The phone has a 13 MP rear camera with dual LED and a 5MP front camera. The juice is provide by a 2900mAh battery. The sound output is loud when dolby enhancement is turned on, the speaker volume cuts down to 40% when the speakers gets blocked or when it is placed in bed. Coming to the SAR ratings , the note just manages to cut in it’s value being 1.590 W/kg (Note 1.600 W/Kg Is the standard limit in India)

 

Software

Note K3 runs on the latest Vibe UI 2.5 which is based on android 5.0.2 lollipop. The UI eats a lot of ram like the Xiaomi’s MIUI but unlike the MIUI it’s not a visual treat. Vibe UI feels unfinished and has bugs .We found device lagging quite often. Be it opening new apps or browsing YouTube the Vibe UI made the device lag. Moreover the Lenovo launcher stopped working on a regular basis on one of the two device we had. We were pretty much disappointed by the software side of the phone. On the bright side Lenovo had a minor 17 Mb update already available for download which promised bug fix. We hope Lenovo constantly provides updates to rectify the issue.
Some screen shots below will help you understand better.

Camera

Camera failed to impress us , sometimes the 13MP feels disoriented. Then again Vibe UI lags while clicking in low light. The camera UI is not very impressive and lacks a Pro mode. However Daylight images are good compared to Yureka. Coming to the front, the selfie camera is also average with camera UI not failing to lag every time .

Random Snap

HDR ON

HDR OFF

FLASH OFF

FLASH ON
The contrast ratio gets altered resulting in different colors .
Benchmark (Antutu only)

It reaches close to One plus One’s scores which is 47246 and surpasses Mi 4 which marks at 43542.
Battery

The 2900 mAh juice bag gets drained faster by the FHD 5.5 inch display .The Note gave a rough 3.5 ~ 4h of “On Screen time “. Charging it completely took little more than 2h. The phone also features an Ultra power saving mode which turns everything to grey scale and drops net connection to save maximum juice .

Conclusion

You might find a lot of bitter words and disappointments in the review but that’s how it is, The Note is a value for money / Budget offering and like all the devices in its category it has its own share of pros and cons. The camera was on the lower side and the heavy Vibe UI which even made a powerful SoC lag. What we feel is a software update can rectify the bugs and improve the camera performance to some extent. However the display is amazing, FHD is a real treat. The SoC is a quiet powerful, top end games ran smoothly. Moreover the best part was that the device didn’t heat. To our surprise the heating was way below 45 degree Celsius during antutu benchmark. However at the price of Rs 9999 it still offers more than what the competitors does. If you are in the market for a reliable Android 4G smartphone and can manage UI then the Killer K3 Note is probably one of the best phones you can buy right now for under Rs.10,000 and if you travel a lot ,then the K3 note with a Dual SIM 4G is hard not to recommend.

      Good

• Affordable at Rs 9999
• 4g with Dual sim
• FHD 5.5’ display
• 2900mAh battery
• Android 5.0.2
• Dolby Atmos
• 64 Bit Soc and Octa core
• SD card slot

      Bad

• Laggy Camera
• Buggy Vibe UI
• Less Ram Space on boot
• No Gorilla Glass