Skip to content

Nexus 5X Review – Great Software, Average Battery, Awesome Performance

The latest Nexus 5X is out for quite long now, we were really excited about the release and we exclusively received aa review unit of the handset. After Camera, Gaming and battery reviews we have brought a full review after getting into thr roots of this device. This Nexus comes with plenty of changes over its predecessor, which includes all new camera, fingerprint senor, design, and an all new chipset.

Nexus 5X

Design and Display

The design on Nexus 5 has nothing much to boast of, there is a heavy use of plastic around the phone but it looks pleasant and feels comfortable to hold, thanks to the light weight design. The dual –coloured body is backed with fine quality plastic and comes in White, Black and Mint green with black coloured sides and front, the black is common in all. But if we look at the other smartphones of this range, most of the designs are crafted in metal, because looks matter a lot.

If we look at the face of the phone, the bezels on the sides are thin but the one on the forehead and chin are slightly broad.

Nexus 5X (9)

It has a front camera, dual speakers and a notification LED blinking in between the speaker grille on the bottom.

Nexus 5X (4)

On the back, there is a slight camera bulge with a dual-tone LED flash with the laser auto focus sensor on the left. Under the camera, lies the fingerprint sensor which fits perfectly under the index finger when you hold the phone. The White variant may turn yellow in sometime, as it catches dirt very easily.

Nexus 5X (3)

The nano SIM slot is on the left side of the phone,

Nexus 5X (11)

The volume rocker and lock/power keys are located on the right, which are also made with good quality plastic.

Nexus 5X (10)

At the bottom, it has a USB 2.0 Type-C port, 3.5 mm audio jack port and a dedicated mic.

Nexus 5X (12)

The Nexus 5x comes with a 5.2 inch 1080p display which is good, but does not impress much if we compare it with the recently released phones of its range. The viewing angles and colour reproduction was fine but when we switched to a totally white screen, we noticed a brownish tint over the white.

LG Nexus 5X Photo Gallery

User Interface

The best thing that I love about the Nexus is the user interface, 5X comes with the pure and unskinned Android Marshmallow. The selling point of most Nexus phones is the authenticity of the software; it is free from irrelevant and useless apps and bloatware. Stock Android lovers would love the interface on this phone; it is quick, snappy and easy to use.

There are a lot of things that work great, and look amazing thanks to Marshmallow’s fresh animations. The menu icons are placed vertically and the settings menu has got a new search bar on the top to reach the desired setting without getting lost.

Nexus devices are the first to get the latest Android updates. But still the interface looks half-baked in some areas and it seems there’s still some work to be done. Hope Google makes it better with future fixes.

Camera

Most of the OEMs have understood the value of a good shutter; a lot of devices were released with amazing camera in last one year. The new Nexus 5X phone comes with a 12.3 MP sensor and unlike the previously released Nexus phones, this time Google has impressed us with the camera. The camera UI is dead simple; it is free from excessive modes, filters and settings, though it offers you nice editing options to touch up your pictures.

We clicked a few shots with the Nexus 5X camera and got impressive results, it captures great colours and details. The autofocus works really well, most of the times it focuses on the objects very swiftly by itself. As far as I believe, this device has the best low-light capturing ability so far, it can obtain light out of nothing. I just loved the camera to the core.

The front camera is also amazing in terms of clarity and colours, Google did not put any beauty enhancing features in the camera by default which is a good thing, the pictures look real and the details are sharp.

 [stbpro id=”info”]Also See: Nexus 5X Camera Review[/stbpro]

LG Nexus 5X Camera Samples

Performance

I was eagerly looking for something great in Nexus 5X as I genuinely adore the Nexus 5 released earlier. The Nexus 5X comes with a Qualcomm MSM8992 Snapdragon 808 chipset, and Quad-core 1.44 GHz Cortex-A53 & dual-core 1.82 GHz Cortex-A57 CPU with 2 GB of RAM and Adreno 418 for better graphic perfomarnce. Storage choices for the phones take the form of 16 GB and 32 GB varieties.

These are impressive set of specs for the price it comes for, and let me tell you that I am using the Nexus 5X from more than a week now. I am a heavy user of phones and I love to take the best out of them, and this phone was a charm to use. I tried to bully it with every possible way I could, but it didn’t lose a single breath. I didn’t get a chance to see the Nexus 5X struggling at any point of time.

I ran multiple apps, browsed heavy web content, ran high end games like Asphalt 8 and NOVA 3 did long camera sessions. It was fast, snappy and lag-free almost all the time I used it. There were minute glitches in some cases but they were so tiny that it goes unnoticeable most of the times.

Battery

There is a lot to love about the Nexus 5X, but there are things that let down the other great features in the device, and the battery is one of them. I won’t say that the battery is horrible but we expected a lot better battery performance than this. It is incapable of keeping the phone alive from breakfast to dinner with a moderate usage.

The Nexus comes with a USB Type-C fast charger, and as claimed by Google, it gets charged pretty quickly. We did a gaming and battery backup test with this device and came up good results while gaming, browsing and video playback but it has a power hungry screen and OS which eats up most of the battery.

 [stbpro id=”alert”]Also see: Nexus 5X Full Gaming, Battery Life Review[/stbpro]

Conclusion

At the price of INR 36,900 (for 32 GB) Nexus 5 is a solid phone. It has a really impressive camera, authentic Android Marshmallow with quick updates, awesome fingerprint sensor and great performance. This phone has all the qualities to make you happy after buying this but I am not sure if the battery and the plastic design will work for you.

But again if we look at the phones in the same price segment, the Moto X Pure Edition is undoubtedly a better bet. If you are not looking for a smaller phone and need much more premium hardware and design, then you can switch your choices between the Moto X Pure and Nexus 5X. If you love Nexus and can afford to put a little more load on your pockets, then you can blindly go for the elder brother Nexus 6P.

nv-author-image

Abhishek Bhatnagar

Abhishek Bhatnagar, a known technology blogger & YouTuber from India. A Software Engineer by qualification, now he works as the editor-In-Chief, Webmaster, & Managing Director at Gadgets To Use. He runs a number of other technology websites as well.