Lava Iris 450 color review – premium looking handset with an affordable price tag

The Lava Iris 450 color is a dual core powered handset running Android 4.2 over a 4.5 inch screen. The handset is stylish and you can change the back panel giving it a completely new look. This premium looking handset is priced at under Rs. 7,000.

450 Box Pack
The box itself is a bit stylish (check review video). Inside the box you will find the handset, screen guard, a single (free) colorful back panel – you might get any color (random) in the box, free flip cover that will surely get damaged easily as it is not of a good quality, user manual, travel charger, data cable, earphone and 1800 mAh Li-ion battery.

Design and Display
The Iris 450 Color is all about looks. When you look at the handset for the first time; it will be impressed. I got the white color handset. The whole body has got a glossy finish giving a more premium look. The build quality and the finishing are very good especially the back panel looks more classy.

Handset weight with battery is 141 grams and it’s 10.63mm thick. I got the blue color back panel that also looked good. There is a factory fitted screen guard apart from the free screen guard included in the box. Power button is on the right, volume rockers on the left, micro USB port and 3.5mm audio jack on the top. This is dual SIM handset (with normal SIM slots). SIM 1 supports 3G/2G and SIM 2 supports 2G.

The IPS screen is 4.5 inches with resolution 850 x 480 pixels. The touch is smooth and responsive. Viewing angles are okay not that great. There are 3 sensors accelerometer, light and proximity.

OS, Memory, Storage
The Iris 450 color sails on Android 4.2.2. There is 512MB RAM of which 217MB is available on first boot and of the 4GB storage 1.2GB is the free space for apps. There is internal phone storage space of 1.2GB and users can also use external micro SD card of up to 32GB.

Apps can be installed on external storage, however OTG is not supported.

Inside the hood, performance and Benchmark
The 450 houses the MediaTek MT6572 cortex A7 dual core processor clocked at 1.3GHz with Mali 400 GPU. Performance is smooth, lag free. There is just 512MB RAM so make sure not to install too many apps as that could slow down the system.

Benchmark scores

Quadrant Standard – 4204.
AnTuTu – 11914.
Vellamo – HTML5 1766, Metal 508.
Nenamark 2 – 39.9fps
Multi touch – 2 points.

Camera
There is a 5MP camera on the rear and a VGA camera on the front. Rear camera is fixed focus with LED flash support. The flash is no good and the still picture quality and the 720p video recording are just okay. For the price you shouldn’t be complaining.

Gaming and Entertainment
I tried both MC4 and Asphalt 8 both the games got installed on external storage and played well. The Asphalt 8 played even better with very low visual quality. Do check the gaming part in the review video.

Others
Sound is a bit low as compared with other handsets. 3G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth worked without any issues. The GPS (with A-GPS) lock is pretty fast. There is Smart Motion and Power saving mode options too.

Battery
The handset comes with 1800 mAh battery. The battery dropped by 9% after using the handset for about 29 minutes running heavy apps. In general you can expect about 4 to 5 hours of heavy usage on a single charge.

Verdict
The Lava Iris 450 color is a decently powered handset that comes in colorful options. Everything is good about the handset, specially the looks. The camera quality is just okay. It is definitely a good option with 3G support for budget conscious users. Lava iris 406q is another exciting low cost handset, I still have to review that.

450 color is available of under Rs. 7,000 (Rs. 6755).