Lenovo Phab Plus Phablet Review

Since the introductions of phablets, the line between smartphones and tablets has become thin. Last year Google unveiled Nexus 6 and this year Lenovo marks its move on the same by launching PHAB Plus. Despite packing 6.8 inches form factor display, Lenovo is presenting this as phone + tablet and is pretty useful by not being extra wide. Bezels are thin and the slimness of device surely meets the purpose.

At first impression it does look like big brother of iPhone 6 plus in Gold color featuring aluminium unibody design with standard sturdiness. Sides are curved and bottom houses USB port with two screws in close vicinity that completes the inspired design.

It sports a 13MP primary (rear) camera with Dual LED flash and a 5MP front camera. Piecing together all these elements, Lenovo Phab Plus does screams of a premium tablet and feels light in hand as comparison to other 7" tablets.

The PHAB Plus addresses consumers’ 24/7 connectivity needs with its Dual SIM and 4G LTE fast connectivity, ensuring a reliable and fast connection. The onboard 32GB storage expanded upto 64GB gives user ample amount of storage making it perfect fit for storing music, videos, games and other multimedia stuff.

Apart from Honey Gold, the Phab Plus is also available in Gunmetal Grey, Titanium Silver.

Performance

We used the phablet review unit for over 15 days and we have very few things to complain. The In-Plane Switching technology delivers good color reproduction and wide viewing angles. The Full HD resolution offers great movie watching and game playing experience. It even works well under direct sunlight although you need to set the brightness levels to above 75%.

The 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor coupled with 2GB RAM delivered smooth performance. We also played various high end games and it all worked fine. However at times we did notice slight lag when jumping from one heavy app to another. The device worked well under normal usage and we did not find anything negative.

Lenovo has also packed some tricks too. Type C onto the screen and the whole user interface changes into a micro screen mode which can be easily used by one hand and comes out as a handy feature.

The 13MP rear camera shoots good images but misses out finer details and shots captured looked great on device. The front 5MP shooter is good for selfie lovers. The Auto-Focus works well most of the time and when capturing in low light, the LED flash does helps in locating the object. The camera app is easy to use and allows easy transition in modes like HDR, and various other modes. If you are pro editor, the app also offers customization of images and you can choose from variety of scene selection options. However if you are a beginner tap the Auto mode, wherein it automatically sets brightness, saturation, contrast levels and works great.

McAfee Security, SHAREit, SYNCit are the only bloatware packed into the OS. We did not find Lenovo Theme Center that comes pre-installed with most of Lenovo devices.  Other than this it is all stock android phablet running on Lollipop. Consumers already using Android devices will not find any difficulty using this device.

Call quality was good and we did not face any issues. The speakers placed at bottom are loud enough to watch movies, play games.

Lenovo Phab Plus is backed by 3500mAH battery to make it last long. In our battery test wherein we looped a video under full brightness it lasted for approx 5 hours 30 minutes. To juice it up full down from 1%-2% it takes almost 3 hours, which is pretty decent considering the size.