The Chinese giant Lenovo lately expanded its budget portfolio with the launch of the Lenovo A6 Note in India. For starters, the phone features a tall display with a waterdrop notch, dual rear cameras, and a massive battery.
Launched for Rs 7,999, it’s now available for a revised price of Rs 6,999 on Flipkart. So, is it really worth the new price tag? And can it compete with smartphones like Redmi 7, and Realme C2? Well, let’s check out the same in our detailed Lenovo A6 Note review.
Before starting with the Lenovo A6 Note review, let’s have a glance at the phone’s specifications, pricing and things we get with the device.
Price: Rs. 6,999 for 3/32GB
Starting off with the design, the Lenovo A6 Note comes with a polycarbonate back panel with a subtle glossy finish on top. The device is available in two colours, including Blue and Black options. While black looks very sober, people who want something flashy can opt for the Blue variant. Although, note that the back is prone to smudges and fingerprints and hence requires frequent cleaning.
As for placements, there’s a vertically stacked pair of dual-cameras at the rear, followed by a fingerprint scanner and Lenovo branding at the left. Furthermore, the power button and volume rockers are given to the right while the left houses a dual sim slot. At the bottom, we have a micro-USB port for charging, alongside speaker and microphone, accompanied by a 3.5mm audio jack which is placed on the top frame.
Flipping over to the front, we have a 6.09-inch HD+ display with a screen resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels and Panda glass protection on top. The display itself is aptly sharp and has excellent viewing angles. However, the colours appear slightly washed out, and the sunlight legibility takes a hit due to lower brightness levels and reflective nature.
Aiding the tall aspect ratio, there’s a water-drop notch upfront followed by side bezels and a significant chin at the bottom. Overall, the phone feels lightweight and comfortable in hands, but we’ve seen better designs in the segment.
Under the hood, the Lenovo A6 Note gets powered by octa-core MediaTek Helio P22 SoC, coupled with PowerVR GE8320, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. One can also expand the storage up to 256GB using the given slot for microSD.
Coming to the software front, the A6 Note runs ZUI based on Android 9 Pie, with almost near-stock experience. The UI feels smooth and optimised, but there is a significant amount of bloatware such as Truecaller, SyncIt, and InfoNews Hub, followed by a bunch of games like Asphalt Nitro and Spiderman.
For photography, the device gets a dual cameras setup at the rear. This comprises of a 13-megapixel primary shooter with f/2.0 aperture and a 2-megapixel depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture. For selfies, there’s a 5-megapixel front camera with 1.12um pixel size.
Now, the camera performs average at its best. The camera is slow to focus, has shutter lag and takes a decent amount of processing time. Pictures clicked in daylight are just passable and lack detail and sharpness that you’d expect. Same is the case with low-light; images are soft and exhibit a lot of noise. The front camera, on the other hand, is bottlenecked by the lack of pixels. Images lack sharpness and are suitable only for occasional selfies, nothing extra-ordinary here.
Battery life is indeed one of the plus points for Lenovo A6 Note. With a 4,000mAh cell inside, the phone easily lasts for more than one day, including listening to music on Bluetooth, streaming videos, using GPS navigation and surfing social media. For juicing up the battery, the company has provided a standard 10W charger which takes a little over 2 hours to completely charge the device from 0 to 100.
Talking of other aspects, the fingerprint scanner works reliably well, and so is the face unlock. Plus, we faced no issues whatsoever with respect to network coverage and call connectivity. Mic quality is good as well while the single bottom-firing speaker sounds a tad tiny. Audio from the 3.5mm jack is passable for the price.
All-inclusive, Lenovo A6 Note is a pretty sub-standard device for a price of Rs. 6,999. Now, it has all the things a basic user will demand, including a modern design, decent performance and good battery life. However, it just fails to impress in the camera and media department.
As a matter of fact, there are better phones available in the market such as Infinix Hot 8, and Redmi 8A. However, if you’re very strict on a budget, and want a basic Android experience or a decent secondary phone, the Lenovo A6 Note will do the job.