Lenovo Z5 Pro

Following the modern push towards bezel-free design, Lenovo has put its bezel-free, sliding flagship Z5 Pro into the market. Priced at Rs. 21,190, the Z5 Pro is looking to prove its mettle to flagships like Mi Mix 3 and Oppo Find X.

While Lenovo Z5 Pro does try to bring itself into the flagship market with its design, it fails to astonish with its dated internals. Despite having an old processor and capable cameras, it is a decent phone and can get your work done with sufficient speed and efficiency.

Lenovo Z5 Pro arrives with the new sliding mechanism making it a futuristic handset. It is a bit chunky at 9.5mm which makes it thicker than Honor Magic 2 and Mi Mix 3. However, the extra width makes the phone robust and steady in hand. The glossy surface is a bit slippery, but that is a common flaw in most present-day flagships. However, the groove where the glass panel meets the aluminium frame is noticeable, which is a design that is not carried in current flagships. In line with the current trend, the phone does not arrive with a headphone jack. The slider works well, and fast without any wobble effect.

Lenovo Z5 Pro has a 6.39-inch screen with a Super AMOLED display of 19.5:9 aspect ratio. Lenovo also does a great job at reducing the bezels to 2.07mm giving an amazing body-to-screen ratio promising an immersive experience of the user. The gorgeous screen brings up bright colours with the AMOLED deep blacks and brilliant whites offering a fantastic contrast. It is brighter than both its flagship rivals, Mi Mix 3 and Honor Magic 2. It has outstanding viewing angles as well, and the brightness outside will not create any visibility issues.

Lenovo Z5 Pro arrives with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor, which is a mid-range chip. While it is faster than the Snapdragon 660 processor present in Mi 8, it is not a high-end processor that you find in Mi Mix 3. It is partnered with a 6GB which tries to help in multitasking. The Snapdragon 710 arrives with Adreno 616 GPU which is one the best, and together they show a 20-40% reduction in power consumption while streaming videos or playing games. Apps also launch 15% faster, and it offers smooth gaming experience making it a capable hardware. Benchmark tests put it at around 5,500 points, which is quite low when put in a battle with Mi Mix 3’s 9,000 points but is still capable.

Lenovo Z5 Pro has four cameras, with two at the front and two at the rear. The primary 16MP camera has an f/1.8 aperture and is paired with a 24MP camera with an f/1.8 aperture. It can hold larger 1.8um pixels, thereby having a better quality of low-light photography. In daylight, Leno Z5 produced beautiful pictures with realistic colours and capturing enough details. However, when the photos were viewed at full screen, over-smoothening and lack of details were detected. Low-light photography, however, was not as good as claimed. Visual noise was captured, and the photos appear blurred when zoomed in. The camera focus also struggled when the light was down.Lenovo Z5 Pro has a 16MP front camera with an f/2.2 aperture and an 8MP dual-lens selfie camera, which offers Dual, Best, Photo and Video modes but not AI and panorama modes. The filters are good and the selfies produced are decent, however, in low-light, the selfies struggle too.

Lenovo Z5 arrives with a 3,500 mAh battery. It can last for the entire day, but of course, it depends on your usage. A light to moderate use of little gaming, web browsing and social media found it running for 10 hours, which is quite amazing. QuickCharge is also supported and can get the phone from 20% to 100% in under 1 and a half hours. The USB-C port can be used to juice up the phone. However, there is no wireless charging like top-end phones.

Lenovo Z5 Pro has the fantastic futuristic design, and it comes with a capable battery and processor to keep up with the premium phones that it tries to beat. However, the camera is not as good as claimed, and the audio is inferior. The performance is decent for the phone, but it lags unlike its rival flagships like Mi Mix 3. On the whole, the phone is a decent one and can be recommended for people who have a tight budget but wants to have a phone with a 4-camera setup with a slider design. However, Mi Mix 3 is a better choice with a great camera, head-turning design and incredible performance.