Lenovo A6000 review – 4G and Dolby at an affordable price

Lenovo A6000 is another 64 bit 4G supported smartphone that is available in India with a budget friendly price tag. The main attraction is the 64 bit quad core processor, 4G support and Dolby sound. The A6000 is available for Rs. 6,999.

Box Packing
The box pack contains the handset, battery of 2300 mAh capacity, screen guard, travel charger, data cable, user guide, product info, warranty card and standard quality earphone. The SAR value as mentioned on the box – 0.939 W/kg @ 1g head and 0.822 W/kg @1g body.

Design, Display and OS
Lenovo A6000 has got a plastic body, it’s light weight (130 grams) and easy to carry (dimensions – 71.04 x 140.87 x 8.07 mm). Build quality and finishing is very good, it looks like a premium handset. Rear cover is with matte finish.

Power button and volume rocker are on the right side and micro USB port and 3.5mm audio jack are placed on the top. There are dual Mics for noise cancellation. This is a dual SIM handset, two micro SIM slots. SIM slot 1 supports 4G, 3G and 2G whereas the SIM slot 2 supports 2G. There is no LED notification and the dedicated navigation buttons do not light up.

A6000 sports a 5 inch IPS screen with HD resolution (1280 x 720 pixels). Colour reproduction and viewing angles are pretty good. Touch is smooth and responsive. There are 3 sensors – accelerometer, light and proximity.

This handset is running Android 4.4.4 out of the box with Vibe UI.

Memory and Storage
Handset come packed with 1GB RAM, 8GB storage and 32GB external card support. You will get about 4.3GB space for apps and about 415MB free RAM on the first boot. OTG is not supported but you can install / move apps to the external storage.

Performance
The handset performance is pretty good it is powered by 1.2GHz 64 bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 MSM8916 quad core cortex A53 chipset coupled with Adreno 306 GPU.

Benchmark

App Result
Quadrant 11543
Antutu 20288 / 19592
Vellamo Metal (788) Multi core (1201) Browser (1893)
Nenamark 2 53.6 fps
Multi Touch 5 point

Gaming
I played Asphalt 8 in highest visual quality mode, the game was playable. Check the video review. This game got installed on the external storage.

Camera
For the price the camera quality is good. There is 8MP AF camera on rear with flash and a 2MP on the front. Check the sample images and videos at the end of this review. Sometime it gets difficult focusing close up objects.Though the rear camera can shoot max up to 720p resolution, the handset can play full HD videos.

Other
The first time I switched on the handset I got the welcome screen in Chinese, but managed to switch to English. I also got a notification in Chinese. Fortunately there was an OTA update available. After the update I did a factory reset and when the phone restarted I got the English welcome screen. Probably the update was rolled out to fix this issue.

Sound is loud (a little more than what I have experienced on other handsets). Dolby is another unique feature and plus point of this handset. There are indeed dual speaker on the rear. You will also find the Dolby app that can be customized as per your needs. You can also play the Dolby Demo. Sound output is awesome in Dolby mode – output from loud speaker, the same can be experienced on earphone too. It would be better to buy a good quality earphone as the one provided is not that great.

No issues found with 3G (4G is not available in my area), Wi-Fi, GPS (got instant lock) and Bluetooth.

Battery
The A6000 gets power from a removable battery of 2300 mAh capacity. Battery backup is very good.

Task Time Battery drop (%) (max temp)
Running Benchmark apps 29 minutes 4% (35)
HD video playback with Wi-Fi on + full brightness 27 minutes 8% (37)
Asphalt 8 Game Play 16 minutes 6% (38)
Full Wall Charge Under 3 hours 18% to 100%

You can expect about 4 to 6 hours of continuous moderate to heavy usage. Handset doesn’t heat up much.

Verdict
It is the best you can get for the price of Rs. 6,999. There is 4G support however the icing on the cake is the Dolby feature. If you are a music lover, this one is the best for the price. Overall performance is good (smooth / lag free) and camera quality is average. Battery backup is very good.

There are a lot of differences between Lenovo A6000 and the YU Yureka in terms of design / hardware. Both these handsets are price just right as per their features. You can choose any one (or both) as per your budget and most importantly whichever you can get hold of (flash sales, remember).

Lenovo A6000 is available on Flipkart for Rs. 6,999.

Image Gallery

Rear camera sample images

Front camera sample images