An explosion occurred in the mid-range smartphone market last year, showing all of us that there’s considerable value in price-conscious devices. Huawei, in particular, came swinging out of the gate with its own model in the P8 Lite, a $249.99, ‘lighter’ version of its high-end Huawei P8 smartphone. Despite the low cost, it failed to stand above the other prized devices in the segment at the time.
Fast forward to the present, they have something pretty sweet getting its name from Huawei’s sub-brand. Looking at the honor 5X, it’s hard to fathom that it’s been graced with an outright $200 price, seeing that it comes with a fingerprint sensor and a nice build. Other specs add to its drool worthy stature, but as we know, it takes more than that to be recognized as incredible.
The package contains:
honor 5X
Wall Charger
microUSB cable
SIM ejector tool
User guide
Design
The metal design is appreciable, but there’s a ‘cheapness’ to its feel.
The honor 5X's metal body looks nice from afar, including its chamfered beveled edge, but upon closer inspection, its brushed finish doesn’t seem to have the same level of sturdiness we get in more premium metal phones. In fact, there’s that slightly ‘cheap’ feel to it. Still, it’s a pleasant new direction for its cost and all, which is still better than how the Huawei P8 Lite attempted to look ‘premium’ with its plastic body.
The honor 5X comes with a recessed fingerprint sensor on its back side. It works rather well – it's been fairly responsive and accurate in our testing.
Resolution is great for a phone of this caliber, but colors are still a tad off.
For the price and all, we’re fairly excited to know that the honor 5X is endowed with a healthy 5.5-inch 1080 x 1920 IPS display. Sure enough, we’re satisfied to see 1080p resolution on a phone of this caliber. Details, as expected, are plentiful in providing sufficient sharpness.
Now, while we like that its peak brightness tops out at 585 nits, ensuring that outdoor visibility is not an issue, as well as its okay viewing angles, the other aspects about the display are just unflattering. Firstly, the panel is noticeably cold, so colors have a bluish tone to them, because of the ~8000K color temperature. It’s not necessarily the most color accurate screen: yellows are heavily influenced by green – while magentas favor a bluish hue.
The numbers below represent the amount of deviation in the respective property, observed when a display is viewed from a 45-degree angle as opposed to direct viewing.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set (area) of colors that a display can reproduce, with the sRGB colorspace (the highlighted triangle) serving as reference. The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x: CIE31' and 'y: CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance (balance between red, green and blue) across different levels of grey (from dark to bright). The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones, the better.
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