Test: Lenovo Vibe K4 Note

To stand out in the crowded smartphone market, a device needs to have a compelling feature. One that’ll make you salivate or obsess over it until you get your hands on it. Looking at the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note, it set out to become an affordable entertainment device. Does it have enough to make you want to covet it?

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• Taking on VR. The biggest selling point of the Vibe K4 Note is it brings virtual reality technology to a much affordable handset. The smartphone comes bundled with an ANT VR headset, which is as basic as Google Cardboard gets, and possibly more since it even lacks physical buttons. It’s mostly a placeholder for the phone as you explore what VR can give you. It can mainly be used for watching videos you’ve stored on your phone. Sure, you can attempt to play games or use other apps but you’d need things like Bluetooth controllers to make the most of it. It’s not as intuitive for anything other than passive consumption. But it does work with some Google Cardboard apps, which at least expands the capability of the phone in terms of VR.

• Tackling the headset. As mentioned in the point above, the ANT VR is an entry-level VR headset with a few holes that needs patching, quite literally. The panels on the side are open. You’re not enclosed as you would be with Google Cardboard or Samsung’s Gear VR so if you’re in a lit room, you’ll see light and movement from your sides. The display isn’t high definition and it isn’t widescreen like its competitors. The headset with its leatherette cushions placed above and below the eye gets pretty uncomfortable after some time. But then again, it’s free, so there’s that to think about.

• Nice and light. Looking at the handset itself, the Vibe K4 Note is light yet solid in hand. I like the matte feel of its back panel, too. It’s okay for one-handed use.

• Decent display and audio. For a device geared towards entertainment, video and sound quality are equally important. The Vibe K4 Note, thankfully, as a sharp and detailed display with excellent viewing angles. However, it does suffer a bit under direct sunlight when it comes to brightness and readability. Having front-facing speakers mean the sound fires in your direction, which is again another good thing. But if you expect this to delivering booming audio, you might be a bit disappointed. It’s not that loud. But quality is good if you use headphones with it.

• Benchmarks and the real thing. You can’t expect a midrange device to outperform the flagships of its competitors. The Vibe K4 Note sits comfortably at 15th spot with 37809 score from AnTuTu and 4179 from PCMark. If you compare that with the Huawei Mate 8 one of the top devices on both benchmarking apps, that one scores 91157 on AnTuTu and 6630 on PCMark. Yes, it’s way off but in actual use, the Vibe K4 Note is a pleasant device to use. App switching isn’t an issue. And I didn’t experience any app crashing when I used it. It’s scored on the higher end when it comes to battery life at seven hours and 22 minutes on PCMark’s test. But actual use isn’t far off even with Wi-Fi or data on. You can get through at least a movie or two with this.

• Extra security. One of the great features the Vibe K4 Note has is its fingerprint sensor. It’s one of the first midrange devices to get it. And it’s hardly a hit-or-miss affair. The sensor on this smartphone is very accurate. It can recognize up to two stored fingerprints, which you can use to unlock the phone or do things like bring you to the home screen, recent apps window, or to take a photo. The last feature, though, isn’t as intuitive. With the fingerprint sensor under the camera, this means you usually run the risk of taking a photo with a bit of your finger in the shot. It’s nice in theory but it’s counterintuitive in actual use.

• Snap away. Content creation isn’t a strong suit of the Vibe K4 Note. The camera on this smartphone isn’t exactly bad but it isn’t entirely good either. Color reproduction is great in bright environments but photos get grainy quick when you’re indoors and are a bit dull, too. It leans towards overexposing shots at times as well. When it gets it right, the shots come out rather detailed. The built-in camera app is basic though. If you’re looking for manual controls, you won’t find that with this app.

• Customize it. I’m not a big fan of the VibeUI launcher. I like having an app drawer and keeping things off the home screen. Thankfully, the Vibe K4 Note will let you choose between VibeUI and default Android launcher. While the Android launcher isn’t up to par yet with Android Marshmallow’s launcher, it’s still sleek. Of course, if you prefer VibeUI, you can continue to use that as well. There are a lot of customization options in the setting to tweak the phone to your liking. You can do things like double tap the screen to wake it up, flip it over to unlock it, and a lot more. Just spend some time tinkering with the phone. There isn’t much in terms of bloatware and some you can easily do away by uninstalling the apps.

• Extra storage, please. One limiting factor for the Vibe K4 Note to knock it out of the park is its 16GB internal storage. Yes, you can expand externally but sometimes you can’t move apps to your microSD card. If this gets an Android Marshmalllow update, then that version’s Adoptable Storage will make this more compelling. That feature basically expands internal storage by treating microSD card as part of the built-in storage.

VERDICT
While there are kinks that need to be worked on, the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note shows us that a device geared toward entertainment and consumption doesn’t have to be top of the line to be good.

PRICE
P10,699

SPECIFICATIONS
DISPLAY 5.5” Full HD IPS (1,920 x 1,080 resolution); Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection
SIM Dual (micro)
OPERATING SYSTEM Android 5.1
PROCESSOR MediaTek MT6753 64-bit octa-core
GPU Mali-T720MP3 (up to 450MHz 3D graphics accelerator)
MEMORY 3GB LP DDR3
STORAGE 16GB eMMC internal storage, up to 128GB via microSD
CAMERAS 13MP PDAF with dual-color LED flash rear, 5MP fixed-focus front
AUDIO Dolby Atmos virtual surround sound; front ported 2 x 1.5w stereo speakers
CONNECTIVITY OPTIONS LTE CAT4, 3G (850/900/1900/2100MHz), Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac), Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, A-GPS, FM radio, NFC
SECURITY Fingerprint reader with gesture support
BATTERY Embedded Lithium-Ion 3,300mAh
DIMENSIONS & WEIGHT 153.6 x 76.5 x 9.2mm, 158g