Experts working in the field of mobile technology have long recognized the fact that vendors from the Middle Kingdom are becoming such legislators of fashion, and most importantly - of prices. It is the Chinese who produce interesting and really beautiful gadgets, moreover with more than affordable price tags. In fact, they also set standards for the budget mid-price sector. Almost all the venerable brands from the "major league" have hit in innovation, and there is no need to talk about the local fashion.
The brand new smartphone Huawei Honor 5X Gold (KIW L21) is the result of fierce competition among "their". Lenovo, Xiaomi, Meizu and other brands are rapidly conquering the budget segment, offering consumers beautiful gadgets with lots of features and a very good set of chipsets.
Due to such a heated struggle, Huawei Honor 5X Gold (KIW L21) turned out to have a high-quality component, comparable to devices of the mid-price and even top-end segments. And this at its low cost. In stores, the basic model KIW L21 can be purchased for less than 10 thousand rubles, and if you get under the shares (quite frequent), the device will cost no more than 8 thousand. So there is something to understand here.
So, we present to your attention a review of the smartphone - Honor 5X Gold. Consider the main characteristics of the gadget, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as the appropriateness of the purchase. We take into account user reviews and expert opinion in this area.
Equipment
The device comes in a box of cardboard in blue. There are no beautiful girls or attractive cars on the package, even the name of the model is not indicated - only the brand and the Honor series. The back is also empty: there are no specifications, icons, or other identifiers. All you see is a manufacturerās marker with an address.
The design of the box is slightly diluted by distribution labels and stickers, but otherwise we have the usual monotonous ābrickā. Itās difficult to find fault with the interior, because the gadget, along with accessories, are competently settled in their places and ādo not swearā with each other.
Contents of delivery:
- Honor 5X Gold KIW L21 itself;
- USB cable for charging and synchronizing with a PC;
- mains charger;
- clip for removing a SIM card;
- user's manual;
- warranty obligations.
The equipment is poor, but you canāt expect more from the budget segment. Judging by the reviews on the smartphone Huawei Honor 5X Gold, the owners are not at all embarrassed by such modesty. Any additional accessory adds value to the device, and for the domestic consumer this is one of the most critical moments. Moreover, it is impossible to please everyone with the color of the cover or the length of the stylus, and similar things can be bought separately to your taste and color, and much cheaper than if they were included.
Appearance
In general, the model arrived in Russia in three color options: dark gray, silver and gold. The latter will be discussed. The design of the Honor 5X Gold smartphone immediately recognizes the signature notes of the Huawei, where both simplicity and originality are competently combined.
The back of the gadget is entirely made of metal, with the exception of the upper and lower plastic inserts. Signals from antennas quietly pass through the latter, so aluminum or another noble alloy is not needed there.
Judging by the reviews on the cell phone Huawei Honor 5X Gold, the owners put it on a par with the venerable Galaxy A Series from Samsung. They apply a similar solution and almost the same materials. Of course, Honor does not reach the A-segment, the plastic is bigger, but the gadget looks noticeably more expensive than it actually is.
Assembly
Users have no complaints about the build quality in their reviews on the Honor 5X Gold smartphone. The design turned out to be surprisingly reliable and really high quality assembled. There is simply nowhere for squeaks to come from, and there is nothing to creak in the trays for SIM and SD cards.
Function keys sit in their places like a glove and do not hang out, as in most budget gadgets. So there is simply nothing to blame the manufacturer here.
Dimensions
In size, this is a typical 5.5-inch device with all the consequences. The case is a bit wide for ordinary hands, but this is offset by the lightness and "thinness" of the gadget. Judging by the reviews on the Honor 5X Gold, the smartphone fits well and there is no discomfort when using it, especially if you have previously worked with a similar form factor.
Comparing with competitors, we can say that our respondent is similar in size to iPhone 6S, LG G4 series, Galaxy A7 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. As such, comfort here depends more on habit than on the device itself.
Interfaces
In terms of interface layout, the Huawei Honor 5X Gold is a typical Android smartphone. Here we have the usual hardware keys and touch buttons located above the screen. Mechanical controls are located on the right side: the power button and a little higher - the volume rocker.
On the left side there is a pair of slots for SIM cards: one under the nano, the other under the micro. A separate place was given to the interface for external SD-carriers. Users in their reviews of Huawei Honor 5X Gold have repeatedly thanked the manufacturer for such a solution. Similar models are equipped, as a rule, with an all-in-one interface, where you have to constantly fiddle with all the elements if you need to replace just one.
At the bottom of the Honor 5X Gold is a micro-USB interface designed to recharge the device and synchronize with a personal computer. There is also a main microphone and speaker. On the upper edge you can see the familiar 3.5 mm mini-jack and a backup microphone. The front face of the panel is occupied by the front camera eye and proximity sensors with light.
The touch function buttons located above the screen can be configured: swap them or add, for example, a call to the notification panel. Users have repeatedly thanked the brand for such a decision in their reviews on Honor 5X Gold.
The fingerprint sensor is in the usual place for many - just below the rear camera eye and the flash. There are no critical claims to it: it works as it should - it determines the fingers well and accurately. If you start working with the phone through the fingerprint scanner, then you immediately get to the main desktop, bypassing the lock screen.
Honor 5X Gold Screen
The matrix characteristics of the smartphone are clearly higher than the budget level: a 5.5-inch display on the IPS module, a spread - 1920 by 1080 pixels and a pixel density of 403 ppi. The front part is protected by a very good glass, which, among other things, has an excellent oleophobic coating.
The viewing angles of Honor 5X Gold are at a level quite acceptable for the IPS matrix, and even with a strong change in degree, the image does not merge into one color and does not distort, and this is observed on all planes. So on your smartphone you can safely browse through the pictures or watch a video with one or two friends.
As for purely technical parameters, everything here is also not bad: brightness with a good margin and quite acceptable contrast limits. Some users in their reviews of Honor 5X Gold complain about the lack of richness of the picture, but this is mostly nitpicking, because for a budget gadget the matrix characteristics are at more than a good level. So in general, the deviceās screen was a success.
Cameras
The Honor 5X Gold smartphone received the main rear camera with a 13-megapixel sensor and f / 2.0 aperture, as well as automatic phase focusing and five lenses. The presence of LED flashes allows you to safely shoot with two tones in dark rooms. The matrix of the front camera is naturally more modest, but still better than most budget models - 5 MP and f / 2.4.
The camera control interface of the Honor 5X Gold can be called familiar. Similar solutions could be seen not only in the previous series of āHuaweiā, but also in other brands from the Middle Kingdom. A close examination recognizes the āappleā trail, but the Chinese are not surprised at the plagiarism. Moreover, reviews about the Honor 5X Gold regarding the camera interface are completely positive, because they ripped off only the best, leaving critical shortcomings for iPhones.
There is no full-fledged manual mode, but it seems like it is not needed. One is quite in demand on matrices for 20 or more megapixels, and in our case it is practically useless. Moreover, automation works as it should and does not slow down on every occasion.
As for the quality of pictures, it directly depends on the environment. On a fine sunny day, the output image is very decent. The same applies to indoor shooting. Problems begin to appear at night: noises, artifacts, reduced detail and other troubles.
But again, for its price category, the smartphone shoots very well and sometimes even better than premium devices from the same NTS or Sony. This fact is confirmed by numerous reviews on Honor 5X Gold about this.
Nothing bad can be said about the video stream either. The camera shoots video in high resolution (Full HD) at 30 frames per second. The quality of the series is average and not much different from the total mass of other state employees.
The front camera, although it has very modest characteristics, but reveals them completely. If the front matrices of a good half of budget models are suitable only for making avatars, then here we have a good tool for communicating by video messengers and middle-aged āgagsā.
Performance
The device originally came with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 series quad-core chipset (KIW L21), but after all the presentations and the start of sales, after about six months, a modified version appeared with the 616 chip on eight cores and with 3 GB of RAM. The modification, as they say, did not take root, so with rare exceptions it can be found at the official distributors of the brand.
Yes, the gadget noticeably added speed and performance in general, but got out of the budget segment, and this, of course, was not appreciated by the domestic consumer.
The graphic part of the smartphone fell on the shoulders of the well-proven Adreno accelerator of the 405 series. 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal memory are quite enough for ordinary needs, as well as launching not very demanding applications.
Judging by user reviews, there are no complaints about the speed of the interface: all the tables switch smoothly, the icons respond quickly, and the control itself is very responsive. There are also no problems with the multimedia part: the video shows without delays, and plays tracks directly from the cache.
Troubles begin when serious and āheavyā games are launched. Although a small, but still some half of modern applications are not going too smoothly. Therefore, you have to reset the graphics settings to medium, or even low values. But if you are not a fan of shooters and rpg games with dynamic training grounds, but a fan of dropping balls or cubes on the board, then there are no problems with this - everything works as it should, without friezes and brakes.
Communications
The device copes well with the usual GSM, HSDPA and LTE networks in Russia. Users have not noted any problems with individual mobile operators in their reviews. If troubles arise, it is only from the poor quality of communication, and not from the phone itself.
The gadget fully supports the Bluetooth wireless protocols of the latest version (4.1) and holds Wi-Fi well in the usual 802.11 b / g / n points. It is also possible to work with DLNA and Direct standards.
For navigation, there is a GPS module with support for GLONASS and Beidou. The smartphone finds satellites in a matter of seconds, so there are also no complaints.
Platform
The device runs on the Android operating system version 5.1. As a working shell, proprietary software Emotion UI version 3.1 is used. The latest version has a visual and functional analogue of MIUI and Flyme. But if you dig deep at all, then all this looks a lot like the old and good iOS platform.
The user has several predefined themes, but if there are few of them, then on the official resources of the shell developer you can find more exotic modifications. It makes no sense to describe all the available functionality, because it is huge and offers the owner a lot of settings and presets "for themselves". So the abyss in the design section can be for the whole day.
Judging by user reviews, I was especially pleased with a very modest set of pre-installed and wired applications. Therefore, you donāt need to spend an entire hour to delete, or even forcefully cut, programs that you donāt need at all, like it was on the same Galaxy or NTS.
Work with sim cards
The gadget has one radio module and two trays for SIM cards - nano and micro format. In the menu, you can select one of the cards for work "by default", which will go to calls and SMS-ki, and select the second for mobile Internet. In order not to get confused, you can rename your SIM cards as you like and assign them the corresponding status and authority.
If there is such a need, that is, there is an item in the menu about action requests where you need to remove or check the corresponding sections: ask which card to call, send SMS or start Internet traffic.
Standalone time
The device received a 3000 mAh non-removable lithium-ion battery. Almost the entire budget sector is equipped with just such or similar batteries. Here itās worth saying right away that battery life is far from a smartphoneās strength.
Mixed mode, which is about an hour of talking, 10-20 text messages, listening to music and radio for 3 hours, mobile Internet on social networks, a dozen photographs and half an hour of games, drained the battery in a day. After dinner, the gadget begins to "ask" for the outlet. Compared to other budget devices, there is nothing remarkable here, and autonomy like everyone else is neither better nor worse than others.
If you use a smartphone for the most part as a phone and a messenger, then the battery life noticeably increases, almost up to three days. So here it all depends on the specific scenario, as well as on user activity. Almost everything affects this parameter: screen brightness, sound volume and even the quality of cellular network coverage, so itās very difficult to give a real assessment of autonomy.
Competitors
The first one to be noted here is the Galaxy A7 from Samsung. The device has almost identical specifications with our respondent and differs only in the battery capacity (3000 versus 3300 mAh for the A7) and premium design. The last point for many is controversial, and far from in the direction of the Samsung.
Galaxy is three times more expensive, so for most domestic consumers the choice is quite obvious. Yes, the case material of the Samsung gadget is better and ubiquitous metal pleasantly cools the hand, but not everyone can afford to pay such money for it and for the brand.
Meizu M2 Note
āMeiseā with its Note M2 also comes, or rather, stepped on the heels of āHonorā. The model has almost left the market, you can meet it either "on hand" or in the warehouses of distributors. The device has the same characteristics as Honor with the exception of a fingerprint scanner: Meise simply does not have it.
As for the cost, both models are in the same price segment, and there are no strong differences even in the modifications.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3
The last and most important competitor of Honor is Redmi Note 3 from Xiaomi. The gadget is almost an exact copy of 5X, but it has a more capacious battery - 4000 mAh versus 3000 for the model from the Huawei. This also includes the more rigorous and classic design of Note 3: the gadget looks very solid and expensive.
The only thing that distinguished Honor in this case was the presence of an official manufacturer's warranty and proprietary firmware. Alas, the Xiaomi devices cannot offer this. The price bars for both devices are on the same level, and there is no significant difference here.
Summarizing
There are no complaints about the model as a phone. Here we have a medium-strength vibration alert, a relatively loud speaker without cacophony at the maximum level, good cellular signal retention, as well as stable support for LTE protocols. The subscriber is heard well, and at that end there are also no problems.
You can buy a smartphone both at branded points of sale and from more than half of middle-hand distributors, not to mention online shopping anywhere and anytime. The cost of the basic configuration does not exceed the mark of 10 thousand rubles. Modified and supplemented by the seller versions are more expensive, so the most advantageous offer will have to search.
All in all, Huawei has a perfectly balanced gadget. In the public sector, Honor looks like a diamond, and you shouldn't pass by. Of course, he has some shortcomings, but comparing them with a whole bunch of competitors' problems, you simply do not pay attention to such trifles. The device is 100% worth its money and is working it out with interest.