Honor 5X Real Life Usage Review

Honor has already impressed us with its Honor 7 earlier in 2015, it became one of the best smartphone in its price range defeating the mighty flagships. Once again, Honor has taken out a stunner from its bag, names as the Honor 5X. Honor 5X is also the first Honor device to debut in USA. It comes at a very affordable price and offers a lot of amazing features which are found in phones costing a lot more than this.

Honor 5X was announced in CES 2016 in Las Vegas and it is priced at just INR 12,999 in India. During my review, I found that the smartphone is priced similar to Moto G and performs similar to Moto X Play.

Honor 5X Coverage

Honor 5X Full Specs

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Honor 5X Unboxing, Quick Review, Pros and Cons [Video]

What are Usage Review, Tests and Opinion?

This review is based on our quick tests and usage done with the phone, we try to push the device to its limits and find out the results which will matter if you plan to buy this phone. We hope this review helps you to get your queries answered about the device.

Performance

Honor 5X is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 clocked at 1.5 GHz and backed by optional 2/3 GB of RAM, which is more often used in phones costing more than 15K. The Honor 5X has a solid specification sheet and the real life performance justifies the set of hardware used in the phone.

App Launch Speed

App launch speed is very quick; it launches apps like Facebook and camera in a single go. I did not face any lag or delay in opening of apps during 4-5 days of regular usage.

Multitasking and RAM Management

Out of 2 GB RAM, 1.1 GB was free on the first boot. RAM management on this device is really impressive, it can handle multiple running apps in the background without a hiccup but we did notice minor lags while switching from one app to other.

Scrolling Speed

Scrolling speed is smooth while browsing through messages, emails, Youtube and Facebook but scrolling some WebPages with a lot of media and content was not as smooth as it should be.

Heating

This device gets did not get unusually hot during our testing. Continuous gaming may heat it up to some level but it is pretty normal in almost every smartphone with such hardware.

Benchmark Scores

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Camera

Honor 5X comes with a 13 MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and 28mm wide-angle lens, along with a blue glass filter and Huawei’s SmartImage 3.0 image processor for better shots in dim light. Up front there is a 5 MP sensor with f/2.4 aperture, 22 mm wide-angle lens and an 88 degree viewing angle for wider selfies. Looking at the price and features that this smartphone packs inside, we have no complaints about the camera. It’s very common to have a 13 MP rear shooter on the but when it comes to delivering more than just the megapixel, Honor 5x proves to be fair in most of the aspects.

Camera UI

The camera UI on this phone is pretty easy to use and neatly designed. It looks a lot like the iPhone camera app and shares a lot of button placements. Users can swipe left or right to access various shooting modes, with a filters option in the bottom right just like the iPhone. There are a lot of options and modes to enhance your creativity and make photography more fun.

Day Light Photo Quality

We are fully satisfied with the day light performance of the rear camera. The autofocus is quick and very accurate, and there was no visible shutter delay as well. Colour production was great for the price, and it also captures good amount of details. The auto-exposure struggles in bright light but it can be improved over time with the future updates.

Low Light Photo Quality

In Low Lighting condition, the phone again performs on an average, which is pretty common in most of the smartphones of any range. We could notice the shutter speed slowing down and there were also some stabilization issues.

Selfie Quality

The front camera also performed impressive in day light, the details were crisp and clear and the colours were also nicely produced. In low light or artificial, the camera is an average performer and loses some marks in colour production and details.

Honor 5X Camera Samples

: with flash

: hdr

Video Quality

It can record video up to 1080p resolution from the rear and 720p from the front camera, and the video quality from both the camera in day light was very impressive. It is also capable of recording slow motion videos.

Battery Performance

It packs in a 3,000-mAh non-removable battery, which is a good capacity for a smartphone with such hardware features. If we look at our usage, the battery life on this device is much better than its competitors. I used the Honor 5X for entire day with frequent WhatsApping and emails, number of phone calls, 30 minutes watching videos and playing games, but the battery level was still sufficient to run for another 3-4 hours.

Charging Time

It takes around 2.5 hours to recharge the battery from 0-100%.

Screen on Time

6 hours of screen on time was noticed during our usage which involved a lot of gaming and taking pictures.

Battery Drop Rate Table

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Looks and Design

Honor 5x is mainly made up of metal on the body and glass on the display. The metallic back comes with a brushed metal finish that looks pretty premium. This is one of the best looking smartphones with a solid and premium built under INR 15K. It has thin bezels with black border around the screen, and it makes the display look broader. Camera, speakers, SIM tray and button placements are also done intelligently. Overall, it has a simple yet premium look and feel.

Honor 5X Photo Gallery

Quality of material

The back and sides are made up of metal but the top and bottom edges of the back are made up of plastic, may be for better signal reception. The front is made up of glass but it is not the protected by Gorilla Glass, but it still looks like a scratchproof display. Volume rocker and power/lock key is made up of good quality plastic, which feels a lot like metal. Overall, it is made up of durable material and does stand out of the phones from its league.

Ergonomics

The display size is 5 inches, for which the 5X weighs 158 grams, which is pretty good looking at the heavy battery and metal body. It measures 151.3 x 76.3 x 8.2 mm, which is quite normal for a 5.5 inch display phone. Despite of the big screen, it is quite easy to use with one hand.

Display Clarity, Colors & Viewing Angles

The display size is 5.5 inches with FHD resolution (1920 x 1080 p) and pixel density of 401 ppi, and it looks great. Colour production is great, and display is easily viewable at extreme angles.

Outdoor Visibility (Max brightness)

Visibility in outdoors is good and another good thing about the Honor 5X is that it has a very subtle display that is not unpleasant to eyes at any point of time.

Custom User Interface

It is powered by the EMUI based on Android 5.1.1, and it is customized by Honor itself. It is the same UI Honor uses in its phones. It is a highly modified custom UI and offers different features and experience from the one found in stock Android. It looks inspired from the iOS in a lot of areas. The icons have a different look, it has a lot of theme options, and tweaked status bar, controls, navigations bar, wallpapers, fonts, boot animations and sound packs.

The UI is smooth; we didn’t experience lags or any other issues during the experience.

Sound Quality

The sound quality from the speaker is very good, watching movies or listening to music without a speaker can be considered. I was able to get good output in a big room and even outdoors.

Call Quality

Call quality was quite good and we had no issues placing calls, with the caller on the other end being able to hear us clearly.

Gaming Performance

Honor 5X comes with Adreno 405 GPU to improve the graphic performance, and I am very satisfied with its performance. I played two games the usual Modern Combat 5 and the Dead Trigger 2 on the Honor 5x. Both these games got installed on the internal storage. Dead Trigger 2 was playable in high visual quality mode. Modern Combat 5 played better in auto mode when we switched to High graphics mode, we noticed a minor lag. The overall gaming experience on this phone was good, it can handle games with medium level graphics with an ease. Games like Nova 3 may feel a bit sluggish in the game-play.

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Game Lag & Heating

There was no sign of lags while playing the Dead Trigger 2 but you can expect some frame drops and lags while playing games like Nova 3 or GTA. As far as heating is concerned, slight amount of heating was noticed but I was not troubled by that level of heating at any point of time.

Conclusion

Honor 5x is a very genuine smartphone in terms of usability and quality of features. It ticks all the right boxes with its smooth performance, premium build, great display and fair camera. There is not something that we can complain about; there is no other phone that comes with such a complete setup at such low price. Honor 5x is surely worth considering if you plan to buy a phone of this range. It has a very good value for money and reliability is also not an issue.