The Honor 5X is a phone that only comes along every once in a while.
It took me by surprise with how high-spec it has managed to be while
still only coming in at a really low price.
The first time I
picked up the phone I was initially a little let down by what this was,
but then sitting back and taking a few moments to contemplate, I came to
realise that the Honor 5X is incredible for its price.
Honor 5X - Detailed Review
It's
remarkable that Honor is managing to retail this phone for £189.99
(US$199.99, about AU$275). That's without the discount offered by some
retailers at launch, but may continue on in the future.
For the level of spec you're getting here, it's quite impressive how Honor has managed to keep the price so low.
Honor
is an off-shoot of parent company Huawei, which has been producing
phones for years and is starting to become a major contender in Western
markets. Honor is where it plans to release the cheap, yet "cool" phones
with lower price tags, and the 5X is exactly that.
Let's take a look and see what are the highlights and lowlights of the latest cheap, Chinese phone.
Design
Honor
has highlighted the premium aluminium back on the 5X, but when you pick
up this phone you notice right away that it isn't as high-end as you
were hoping.
That's partly down to it being such a light handset.
But it's also partly down to the tacky feeling metal on the back of the
phone. That said, it looks great when you put it down or leave it on the
table in a pub.
It's only when you pick it up that you notice how cheap it feels and when you compare it to the Huawei Mate 8 the weight makes an enormous difference.
The
Honor 5X is made of an aluminium alloy uni-body that looks fantastic,
at a distance, for such a cheap phone. The back of the phone has a
brushed metal effect and the logo at the bottom has been etched in by a
laser.
I feel it's a bit of a shame that's then followed by the
Huawei name and details Honor has to fit on the back of the phone
though.
The edges of the Honor 5X are more premium than the back
and feel like they are able to take the odd knock on without taking any
visible damage.
Even
though the phone is reasonably large, the power button and volume
rocker on the right hand side are still easy to access with your thumb. I
did find the button placing a little too close together, especially
when trying to turn down music through my pocket and trying to judge
where the rocker was sitting through my jeans.
On the left hand side sits the microSD, microSIM and nanoSIM drawers. Yes, this phone comes with all three.
It
means you can up the storage, which you'll likely need to as it's only
16GB, and have two different SIM cards in all at the same time.
Many
other dual-SIM phones have to sacrifice the extra storage for this, so
I'm impressed how Honor has managed to make this possible on the Honor
5X.
The bottom of the phone is home to the speaker grille
surrounding the microUSB slot for charging and data transfer. Personally
I disliked the grille on the Huawei Mate 8, but for me it seems to work
on the Honor 5X
The
slightly more budget feeling design complements the steampunk look of
the speakers and I'm not as opposed to them here than I was on Huawei's
flagship phone.
Some will likely find the Honor 5X a little unwieldy – but it's not going to be such as big problem as it was on the Mate 8.
Housing
a 5.5-inch screen on the 5X, with relatively slim bezels, Honor has
managed to keep this package tight and I feel those with smaller hands
will still be able to control this phablet better than other options
like the iPhone 6S Plus.
The
5X was, according to Honor, inspired by the Guggenheim Museum in Spain.
Personally, I don't see where that has made an impact. A lot of the
design on the Honor 5X is just the Huawei Mate 8 on a budget.
But
that's not a bad thing. More than halving the price of an already cheap
phone is a phenomenal step for Honor and you can't go in expecting
something with a high-end, take-your-breath away design.
Display
With budget smartphones the display is usually one of the first things to suffer. Even options such as the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact only have a 720p display, but Honor has managed to avoid that.
The
specs on the Honor 5X aren't comfortably better than you'd expect, with
a 5.5-inch, 1080p display that is actually a great looking.
I particularly liked the Huawei Mate 8
screen, and while this panel isn't as large or as bright, the Honor 5X
isn't far behind. In fact I've not used a budget phone with a display
this beautiful.
The fact is, you don't need anything more than a
1080p resolution. LG and Samsung are embracing 2K while Sony is jumping
to 4K on the Xperia Z5 Premium, but on such small screens the Honor 5X makes just a good enough picture with a far stricter pixel limit. Turning
down the display brightness it was quite a struggle to see the picture,
so just make sure you don't turn it down all the way. I found auto-mode
was bringing it down a little too low for how I usually like it.
The
size is also worth noting. If you're undecided between this and the
Huawei Mate 8, the Honor 5X is a little smaller but when you're watching
video or playing games it can be difficult to even notice the
difference.
The bezels are another complaint about the Honor 5X screen. A lot of space is wasted on the black bars fixed around the screen. Especially
along the bottom where you'd usually expect to find hardware buttons.
It's a big thick line that feels like you should be able to tap it for
buttons, but instead your only option is on screen buttons.
It's a strange choice, but clearly something Honor had to do to keep that price down.
Fingerprint scanner
One
of the Honor 5X's key features is the fingerprint scanner on the back
of the phone. Putting it on the back is traditional Huawei fashion, and
for some people it works.
It's a rounder sensor than other phones
we've seen from the company and is the first Honor phone to feature a
fingerprint scanner. The
good news is it works well – setting up this fingerprint sensor only
took 6 or 7 presses from each finger making it a simple and fast
process.
Honor claims it can unlock the phone in only 0.5s,
beating a lot of the competition out there. The reality is it's hard to
notice the different anymore.
Compare the Nexus 6P to an iPhone 6S
and the delay is so minimal it doesn't really matter in a day-to-day
scenario. All you need to know is the Honor 5X is fast at registering
your print and it will unlock as soon as you want it to.
An
interesting idea Honor has adapted is that you can use different fingers
to open up different apps. So for example. you could program your left
index finger to open up the Messaging app directly.
It's a smart
idea, but something you need to remember you have switched on. It's so
instinctive to just bring a phone out of your pocket and use the nearest
finger and press the app you're looking for.
After
a week or so, I did get used to the feature though and found myself
opening it up with a lot of different fingers than I do on other
devices.
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