Lenovo A6000 Smartphone Review

Lenovo unveiled their new 4G enabled budget smartphone A6000 at CES this year, followed by the launch of Lenovo A6000 in India. The A6000 is Lenovo's trump card in mid-budget smartphone field, and believe me they've done a great job. Lenovo A6000 really is a nice budget phone with amazing hardware and software combination. Recently I got a chance to test and review the device and here I am with the detailed review of Lenovo A6000 smartphone.


lenovo-a6000-smartphone

Unboxing

The phones houses in a decent yet compact box which contains a picture of the device at the top and a bright red colored bottom. On opening the box, you'll find the device itself resting on it. Under it you'll find the accessories; Charger, USB cable, Battery, Earphones, Booklets & manuals and a Screen Protector.

Built Quality & Looks

Lenovo A6000 feels fantastic in hands, the phone has rounded edges, a thin profile and comfy back panel which seems rubberized plastic. The phone is 8.2 mm thick and weighs 128 grams which is quite light as compared to other phones in same price range. The back panel is replaceable and Lenovo promised replaceable rear covers in different colors in near future, the default one is black which comes with the device. On removing the back panel, you'll see two MicroSIM slots and a MicroSD card slot. On the right side you'll find the Volume rockers along with the Power button. The MicroUSB slot and 3.5 mm audio jack are located at the top, whilst the microphone is at the bottom. Under the Display, you'll find three touch sensitive buttons for navigation and operation of device. On the back, there is the Camera along with the LED Flash and an additional microphone. The speakers are also located at the back, along with Dolby logo.

Display

Lenovo A6000 packs a 5" Inch IPS LCD Display with the resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. The pixel density is ~294 ppi and supports 16 million colors. The display supports multitouch but unfortunately there is no Corning Gorilla Glass protection on A6000. The sunlight legibility is average and viewing angles are also average. The touch feels good as compared to Karbonn Mach One Smartphone which comes in same price range. The screen do looks very good with the Lenovo Vibe UI but still it is not as good as Xiaomi Redmi 1S display.

Hardware & Performance

When it comes to Hardware, Lenovo A6000 packs the latest 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC chip with 1.2 GHz Quad-Core processor and Adreno 306 GPU.  The RAM onboard Lenovo A6000 is 1GB and has the internal storage of 8GB which is expandable upto 32GB using microSD card. Gaming on Lenovo A6000 is pretty good, the hardware performance is slightly better than Karbonn Mach One but slightly on the lower side as compared to Redmi 1S smartphone. Lenovo A6000 sometimes drains battery faster when you are playing games continuously for long periods and you'll feel it getting heated up after 20 minutes of gaming on it. Overall the hardware performance is nice as compared to other devices in same price range, maybe its because of the 64-bit processor. The speaker sound of Lenovo A6000 is amazing, the Dolby branded speakers does their job with perfection. There is a Dolby app pre-installed which can be used for adjusting the sound as per the media.

Software

Lenovo A6000 uses Vibe UI on top of the Android v4.4.4 KitKat, the UI lacks an App drawer which means all the Apps will appear on the home screen in a grid position. The UI looks quite similar to MIUI, but its more colorful and fun to look around. Vibe UI allows you to change themes by going to theme section, by default there is only one extra theme which is againg quite colorful. An interesting thing about Vibe UI is that you can change wallpapers by swapping the homescreen, this features seems fresh but most of the time you'll end up accidentally opening an app. Overall Vibe UI is something interesting and looks quite nice on Lenovo A6000.


lenovo-a6000-homescreen

Camera

Lenovo A6000 has a decent camera but I'm very much impressed with it. On the backside it has an 8 Megapixel camera with LED Flash, the front contains 2 Megapixel shooter. The camera is capable of shooting 720p HD videos which is disappointing because Xiaomi Redmi 1S which is priced lower than A6000, can shoot Full HD 1080p videos. The Overall camera performance pf Lenovo A6000 was average, the low light photography without flash is very poor, flash somewhat solves it but still the photos lack quality. Video quality of A6000 is again a nightmare, while testing the camera, the sample videos froze in between a couple of times and had some screen tear issues as well. The front camera is somewhat nice but not as I expected. You also get features like HDR, Time Lapse etc.

Connectivity & Battery

Lenovo A6000 is a Dual SIM phone with 4G Support in India. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth v4.0, GPS etc. There is also a microUSB port which can be used for connecting the device to computer and also for charging. Lenovo A6000 packs a 2300 mAh which can easily last a day or more. In our tests, the battery lasted for 29 hours with moderate usage. According to Lenovo, A6000 has a standby time of 260+ hours which is amazing. 

Benchmarks

During the testing period, we ran a couple of benchmarks on Lenovo A6000. Below are the results we got when we ran AnTuTu benchmark.


Lenovo-a6000-benchmarks

On comparing the A6000 score with Karbonn Machone, we found that Lenovo A6000 gets a little bit higher score despite of same hardware specifications. However the difference is small but every point matters.

Verdict

Lenovo A6000 definitely feels good in hands and does a great job if seen from the price point. The main high points of the device are Vibe UI, Decent hardware, Long Battery life, Dolby Speakers and 4G support. A6000 is among the cheapest 4G smartphones in India and after using this device for almost a month, I can say that Lenovo did a great job in making this budget smartphone. Currently it is priced at Rs.6,999 and is exclusively available at Flipkart in India. The Alternatives of Lenovo A6000; Xiaomi Redmi 1S, Asus Zenfone 5, Karbonn Machone, Motorola Moto E and Huawei Honor Holly.


Update: Lenovo A6000 Plus is now available, its is priced at Rs.7,499 and comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage, read review here.


If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I'll get back to you asap!

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About Jimmie Luthra

Jimmie Luthra is a Mariner, Tech enthusiast, Blogger and Gadget reviewer. He is fond of technology and is usually found playing with some piece of tech. He is also a Guitarist, Music lover & fitness freak.
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