When I first received this phone a month ago, I was very excited. The build quality and the spec sheet was way above the competition with less than Php 8,000.00 price tag. It has been a month and let's see what we have to say about this budget marvel.
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| Lenovo A7000 Review Part 2 |
To check our review part 1: Click Here!
Display Quality
Fitted with a 5.5 inch screen that pushes 720x1280 pixels (267 PPI) that brings sharp pictures with wonderful color reproduction that registers Five (5) point multi-touch detection. The only downside is the less than average brightness that is lacking under direct sunlight.
Battery Life
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| micro USB port and 3.5 mm jack on top |
Packing a 2900 mAh Li-Po battery powering the 5.5 inch screen with an Octa-core processor can take its toll what happened as I used the A7000 as my main phone for a month with a daily usage of several calls, texts and emails with around two to three hours worth of social media, youtube and web browsing on Google Chrome. At the end of the working day I would on most days have 20% to 25% left on my battery. There were days where I had to top it off with a couple of minutes of charging to make sure I could go through the day. The story is no different from other phones with this screen size, it is at its best average.
Audio, Microphone and Call Quality
The phone is marketed with the Dolby Atmos that promises to improve audio performance against the competition. In real world utility it is basically a general equalizer for all the audio coming out of the phone, and it does the equalizing quite well but does not much else. The speaker itself isn't quiet but it is loud enough to hear your notifications from across the room.
The Call quality on the other hand is on a brighter note with almost all of my calls are clear and mostly uninterrupted. The person I am talking to usually had no complaints and we were able to have a wonderful conversation. If you're looking for a better Lenovo Music phone, I suggest you to check out the K3 Note, the audio performance is unreal for the price. Check it out: Click Here!
Camera
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| The camera |
The A7000 8 MP camera takes okay pictures with the best lighting conditions with the softness and grain to be truly noticeable at full size view. The same could be said for the secondary camera for video calls and selfies. Both cameras struggled with low light where the softness and grain are significantly more noticeable but some pictures could still be used.
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| Low light shots are soft upon close up with huge signs of struggle from the camera |
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| Under better lighting conditions the it performs with little noticeable grain and softness at the darker parts of the picture |
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| At full zoom the secondary camera is grainy and soft even under better lighting conditions |
The Image quality of the video remains the same but the audio recording is surprisingly better than most phones in its category. We could hear the main subject clearly with some background noise but it is serviceable.
Performance
Most daily apps like messenger, gmail, chrome, dialer, facebook, instagram, youtube, calendar ran well with the A7000 with barely any frame rate drops. I never noticed it stutter.
Noticeably after using either chrome, youtube or any power extensive app for an extended period the phone would get warm which surprised me because the processor is mediatek. I hope Lenovo is able to fix this with an OTA or at least avoid it on their future phones.
The Lenovo UI performed is vastly improved from the last phone I reviewed (Lenovo Vibe Z2). I have yet to experience any performance drops or any force closures with the Lenovo home-brewed apps.
Bluetooth, Wifi and NFC worked quickly and hassle free.
Benchmarks
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| The benchmarks |
See for yourself, this phone is a monster. It can compete with the flagship phones of 2014 at the price of less than PHP 8,000.
Pro's
- Unbelievably Cheap for it's Spec sheet and real world Performance
- Performance can compete with 2014's flagships
- Great build quality for its price
- Easy to hold and very light
Con's
- Average Camera
- Heating Issues when using very intensive applications
- Battery life could be better
Verdict
If you are looking for a phone and you have less than Php 8,000, you should buy it. That is all you need to know. We love it so much we could care less about the cons we wrote above! We congratulate Lenovo for bringing a game changing phone at this price range!
