ZUK Z1 by Lenovo Review - The second cousin

Introduction

  Creating sub-brands has been one of the preferred strategies used by Chinese manufacturers lately and in today's case ZUK has been backed by none other than the Chinese giant Lenovo with their logo proudly sitting on the ZUK Z1 box.

  Indeed, smartphones have complicated family trees these days. In the case of the ZUK Z1, the company would be quick to testify that even though the technological heritage is there, having a new company run things promises a fresh take on things in a market where new models are barely different from the last. Most importantly, the new tech economy demands a shift in focus towards some unconventional sales channels.

  As part of a general push towards Western markets, the number of available Chinese brands of smartphones making their way to Europe and the Americas has been slowly but steadily on the rise. Buying a Chinese brand smartphone no longer means you’re shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to warranty servicing and aftersales support.

  The influx of Chinese brands has slowly changed our perceptions and high-profile products have helped change the image of Chinese technological products in the eyes of the conservative European user. So the door is wide open for adventurous undertakings such as OnePlus and ZUK and they are not wasting any time.

Key features

• Machined aluminium frame
• Dual-SIM dual-standby capability
• 5.5" 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 401ppi
• Quad-core Krait 400 CPU at 2.5GHz, Adreno 330 GPU, 3GB of RAM, Snapdragon 801 chipset
• 64GB of built-in storage
• International version: Cyanogen OS 12.1 based on Android 5.1 Lollipop; Chinese version: ZUI (5.1-based)
• 13MP camera with OIS (Sony IMX 214 sensor), f/2.2 aperture
• 1080p@30fps video capture
• 8MP front camera, 1080p video recording
• Cat. 4 LTE (150/50Mbps); dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, hotspot, Wi-Fi direct; Bluetooth 4.0; GPS/GLONASS; USB 3.0 Type C
• 4,100mAh battery capacity
• 3.5mm headphone jack, active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
• Fingerprint sensor

Main disadvantages

• No NFC
• No microSD card (but 64GB base storage sounds great)
• Non-removable battery (but 4,100mAh capacity is plenty)
• No fast battery charging tech

  While Lenovo serves as the parent company its plan is to let ZUK be its own brand. And ZUK is certainly doing its own thing, the Z1 is based on reliable, proven technology instead of trying to reinvent the wheel for the sake of flashy marketing.

  What the ZUK Z1 lacks in buzzwords it makes up for with trusty workhorses. The Snapdragon 801 chipset was chosen as the heart, and Cyanogen OS as the brain.

  Cyanogen OS is still making its first steps but those are promising and the company has been pretty active and ambitious with its own fork of Android AOSP. The chipset used is well proven and an excellent performer.

  The old-but-gold theme continues with the camera - Sony's IMX 214 sensor is already used by pretty much every self-respecting mid-ranger, but the ZUK Z1 boasts optical image stabilization to make its camera stand out.

  The ZUK Z1 is not afraid to experiment too, and the company has been quick to jump on the USB Type C bandwagon that has been picking up speed lately.

  It's rare to see so many caveats in the disadvantages section. No microSD slot is an automatic point against, but we felt a little bad putting it on the list. It's greedy to want more from a $300 phone with 64GB storage. Same for the battery - it's non-removable, but makes up for it with capacity.

  Now that we've properly introduced our guest with a strangely sounding name,we should waste no more time but check up what it has to offer.

  Note: we're reviewing the international version of the ZUK Z1, which runs Cyanogen OS. In China, the Z1 will be sold with ZUK's custom ZUI software, which includes a different software package.

   

Display

  The ZUK Z1 has a 5.5" 1080p screen, which under Chinese influence has been turning into the the new golden midrange standard. At 401ppi the screen is sharp and doesn't tax the chipset or the battery like QHD would have.

  Resolution aside, ZUK did plenty to optimize image quality. We measured the screen at 396 nits and a contrast of about 1,000:1, which is average.

  Color rendering is fairly accurate (Avg deltaE 5.2 for the primary colors plus black and white), with white being not as accurate as we would expect. With a deltaE of 9.9, it's on the colder bluish side, but you would hardly notice that unless you get some sort of a reference to compare it side by side.

  As usual, display colors are a matter of personal taste and perception so if you don't need calibrated color output, you will probably be quite happy with the color rendition on the Z1.

  If you are not happy, Cyanogen OS offers plenty of ways to adjust the screen output. We managed to improve substantially the accuracy of the color rendition by adjusting the color temperature via the LiveDisplay feature from 6500K to 5200K. With this adjustment Avg deltaE went down to 3.8 and the rendition of white became almost perfect. The screen however loses some of its maximum brightness in the process and would only go as high as 383nits with this adjustment.

  LiveDisplay lets you create two presets for color temperature - one for use during the day and one for night time. You can switch between day/night manually or have the phone do it automatically.

  If you're wondering why, it's medical reports claim looking at blue light in the evening can affect your sleeping cycle. Several studies have confirmed that it reduces melatonin - the hormone responsible for sleep. So you might want to use a warmer light setting (i.e. less blue or smaller temperature reading) at night.

Connectivity

  The ZUK Z1 is a dual-SIM, dual-standby phone that can freely roam the globe. It has basic GSM and CDMA connectivity, along with 3G data (again GSM and CDMA) and two flavors of LTE (international and Chinese).

  Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac is supported as is Bluetooth 4.1, however there's no NFC or ANT+. This precludes easy pairing and certain sports trackers. Positioning is handled by a GPS and GLONASS receiver.

  The wired connectivity is the more interesting part. USB 3.1 Type C promises up to 5Gbps transfers, up from around 0.5Gbps for USB 2.0. While microUSB 3.0 did not last on mobile devices, Type C is building up popularity.

  It doesn't look like ZUK has implemented some of the more advanced features of the standard - e.g. DisplayPort TV out and the 100W power delivery spec - but it definitely has the speed. We ran a couple of benchmarks with the Z1 connected to a USB 2.0 port and a USB 3.1 port and copied over a large file from the SSD on one of our office PCs.

  We copied the file over several times to the ZUK Z1, first through a USB 2.0 port and then through a USB 3.0 port. The phone didn't max out either standard, but it ran noticeably faster on USB 3.0, especially when copying from the phone to the computer.

Battery life

  The ZUK Z1 has a huge 4,100mAh Li-Ion battery. It's made up of two rectangular batteries stacked on top of each other to better fill in the curved shape of the back. Note that you don't get any special fast-charging solutions, the included 5V/2A charger is fast but will still take a while to fill up the battery.

  With such a big battery, the big results come as no surprise. Talk time hovers around 25 hours, an excellent result (even if we expected more). In the browser test the Z1 came 15 minute short of 11 hours, again a good result without being the best. It lasted longer when playing videos, over 14 hours, which too falls in the great, but not perfect category.

  Our proprietary score also includes a standby battery draw test, which is not featured in our test scorecard but is calculated in the total endurance rating.

  The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritties. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

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Lenovo K3 Note review

Introduction

  How times have changed - it was not that long ago that you could hardly get a feature phone for $150, and these days this amount gets you a ridiculously good smartphone like the Lenovo K3 Note. It's an affordable large-screen phablet with little compromise on the important stuff.

  Starting with the 5.5-inch FullHD display, the K3 Note doesn't sacrifice resolution for display diagonal. It's the diagonal that makes the buzz, but you're staring at those pixels all day, so there better be enough of them, that you can't see individual ones.

  A Mediatek chipset in the Snapdragon 615 class, 2GB of RAM, and Lollipop have you well-covered and future-proofed for a while. Add to that a 13MP primary camera with a dual LED flash and a 5MP front snapper, and there's nothing to leave you wanting.

  Build isn't top-shelf grade, but the plastics used are soft and pleasant to touch, and the Laser Yellow color scheme is as fresh as they come. The best part is that the battery is removable, a feature we're still trying to advocate, though manufacturers see things differently.

Key features

• Dual SIM (Micro-SIM, dual stand-by)
• 5.5-inch FullHD IPS LCD display, 401ppi density, 5-point multi-touch support
• Mediatek MT6752 chipset: Octa-core 1.7GHz Cortex-A53 CPU, Mali-T760 MP2 GPU, 2GB of RAM
• 16GB of built-in storage, dedicated microSD slot
• 13MP primary camera with f/2.0 lens, dual-LED flash; 1080p@30fps video recording
• 5MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording
• Android 5.0 Lollipop with Vibe UI 2.0
• Cat. 4 LTE, Wi-Fi b/g/n with hotspot, Bluetooth v4.1, GPS with A-GPA and GLONASS, FM radio
• 3,000mAh user-replaceable battery

  It's a very competitive segment the Lenovo K3 Note is forced to fight in. The large-screen device on a budget has turned into a lucrative niche for many manufacturers and solid offerings with increasingly better hardware have been put out by big-name Chinese manufacturers, not to mention the countless other makers most of us haven't heard of.

  The Xiaomi Redmi Note was among the pioneers in the category and was recently inherited by the Redmi Note 2 with even more powerful innards. Meanwhile, the m2 note is Meizu's second iteration on the subject of the affordable phablet and it too poses philosophical questions as to what is the point of owning a flagship smartphone costing hundreds of dollars.

     

Lenovo K3 press images

  Those two are the K3 Note's main rivals, though admittedly it does have a head start on them by a couple of months. The established players outside of China are hard pressed to offer true competitors at this price point and are forced to sacrifice a thing or two (or several), be it display resolution, processing power, camera, or build.

  But let's not get ahead of ourselves and leave comparisons for when we've acquainted ourselves better with the Lenovo K3 Note. Join us on the next page for the unboxing and hardware overview.

Sharp and high-contrast 5.5-inch LCD, a bit dim though

  A key feature for the K3 Note's breed is the FullHD 5.5-inch display. Sure, there are plenty of inexpensive large-screen smartphones, but resolution is typically the first victim to budget cuts. The K3 Note, along with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 and Meizu m2 note (the m1 note, too) are the most prominent of the select few, which prove that it doesn't have to be so.

  It's an IPS panel with 401ppi density and a standard RGB arrangement, as our microscope shot reveals.

  Color rendering is fairly accurate (Avg deltaE 6.2 for the primary colors plus black and white), with white being not as accurate as we would expect. With a deltaE of 11.4, it's on the colder bluish side, but you would hardly notice that unless you get some sort of a reference to compare it side by side.

  As usual, display colors are a matter of personal taste and perception so if you don't need calibrated color output, you will probably be quite happy with the color rendition on the Lenovo K3 Note.

  There are no options for fine tuning the color rendering or the white point temperature.

  The maximum display brightness of the Lenovo K3 Note may not turn any heads (432nits), but you'd be surprised that when it comes to contrast ratio, it scored the second highest contrast ratio we've ever measured on a phone (1793:1). In case you're curious, the highest contrast ratio belongs to the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact (1819:1). The amazing result can be attributed to the deep black levels, which are frankly, class leading for an LCD unit.

Connectivity

  The Lenovo K3 Note is not particularly rich in connectivity options, but it has all the basics covered. It's a dual-SIM dual-standby device, and one card gets the complete 2G/3G/4G treatment, while the other is limited to 2G. Both slots take microSIM cards.

  There's Wi-Fi b/g/n in the 2.4GHz spectrum only, with hotspot support. Bluetooth comes in version 4.1, where LTE interference issues have been dealt with. There's also GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS support. An FM radio receiver is also on board, though it lacks RDS.

  Wired connectivity is handled by the microUSB 2.0 port, and USB OTG is supported so you can attach storage or peripherals.

  The standard 3.5mm jack lets you attach headphones of your choice (which you'd need to buy separately anyway, in most cases).

Lenovo K3 Note battery life

  The Lenovo K3 Note comes with a 3,000mAh battery, and as we've already established it's removable. The capacity is marginally smaller than what the m2 note (3,100mAh) and Redmi Note 2 (3,060mAh) are packing, but the difference is too small to really matter.

  What does matter is test results and the unfortunate reality is that the K3 Note's aren't impressive. Around 6 hours of web browsing is a mediocre result, and an hour more of video playback doesn't help. The 17 hours of 3G calls are an okay result, but with such an ample battery, you'd expect more.

  All that adds up to an endurance rating of 53 hours, which is on the short side. At least with the K3 Note you can have a spare battery on hand for instant 100%, if that's any consolation.

  For comparison sake, the Meizu m2 note does 21 hours of calls and 10 full hours on the web, though it does score poorly in the video playback department.

  Our proprietary score also includes a standby battery draw test, which is not featured in our test scorecard but is calculated in the total endurance rating.

  The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritties. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

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Lenovo's ZUK Z1 ships in mid-October, to cost about $330

  Yesterday we reported about the partnership between Lenovo's ZUK subsidiary and Cyanogen. ZUK's first smartphone - the Z1 - will be going international thanks to Cyanogen OS later this year. As promised, the international availability was detailed today.

  So, until the recently China exclusive, the ZUK Z1 will be going on sale internationally in mid-October. The smartphone costs about $280 in China, but its international price will be a bit higher, most probably around $330.

  As of today the retailer Gearbest has the ZUK Z1 in stock. It costs $340 in there and can be purchased in both white and gray flavors. Judging by the video, the Cyanogen OS running on the unit was a Preview version. This means either the retail OS will be seeded later with an update, or it's just an issue with the demo unit.

  Please note that Gearbest's warehouses are located in China and the US, so make sure you check any customs charges that may be due when shipping outside of those countries.

  The ZUK Z1 packs a 5.5" 1080p display and runs on the Snapdragon 801 chipset with 3GB of RAM. The rest of its specs include a 13MP main cam, an 8MP selfie snapper, 64GB storage, LTE connectivity, a fingerprint scanner and a beefy 4,100 mAh battery. There is also a USB Type-C port.

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