Well it was nice to see Huawei launching the Honor 5X months ago, I really had the short desire inside of getting my hands on this phone. For those who don’t know this phone, its a sub $200 phone which sports a premium metal body with a fingerprint sensor on the cheap. Recently, I had the chance to get my hands on it! So today here’s the Huawei Honor 5X review! Let’s begin!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60IGFLVo_DY
Okay so now that Huawei has touted “No Nonsense” and you got a good trailer of the phone. Let’s see is it talk? Or is it only for the shop? Let’s begin!
01| The Unboxing and Showoff!
Okay just to make it clear, in the box you’ll find some S/N stickers, a charger, a USB cable, a warranty card, a User Manual and lastly the smartphone itself. Please all manufacturers, if you are touting about Quick Charge on your smartphone please included a charger too instead of us relying to buy it separately. Okay let’s continue with the……..
02| Design and Build Quality
I guess this is what Huawei really wanted to showoff about this phone by touting “No Nonsense”. To be honest, I really like the premium build materials used on this device, but this isn’t new, even for this price category. The phone sports a premium metal body covering the bad and the sides of the phone with the exception of the top and bottom portions towards the rear of the phone which are plastic which never took away from the experience.
Now that we you have got a good overview of the phone, let’s talk about build quality! TBH this thing is built very well but you should have an eye out for scratches on this device. The Honor 5X comes pre-installed with a screen protector which I am very very happy to see allowing the user to dive-in immediately. After using this phone for quite a few weeks I found that the back of the phone is indeed able to be scratched. I had my keys in my pocket when I found a scratch. The scratch is so light that is barely noticeable. So you can rest assured that this phone will last you. Oh did I forget to mention that the camera lens couldn’t be scratched as well? Yes that’s true, the phone lens on the back cannot be scratched in daily use unless you wanna go crazy abusing it. KUDOS to Huawei for the protection policy! (Okay, the policy was just a joke).
03| Display and Audio
The Huawei Honor 5X sports a 5.5 inch IPS Full HD 1080p display which accounts for a PPI of 401PPI. The display is quite sharp and has a good amount of saturation, brightness and contrast. No complaints here, but I would have loved Huawei to include a display tweaker app which would tune the colors to my liking just like how Lenovo and Asus have implemented. Anyways, that’s just a personal opinion.
Coming onto the speakers of this phone, one of those grills is a speaker while the second is a microphone. Not bad. One may think that putting their finger on it may block it. But I tested how to block its speaker, but thanks to its large grills its pretty unusual to block it. At normal volumes its really a good audio experience, bumping up the volume higher and this thing gets very loud for a smartphone. But at loud volumes it starts taking away from that awesome experience that I was having a few moments ago! Come on Huawei, you were doing so well, why this? Well yes I understand how Huawei made the small cuts to achieve this price point.
Having a good display and audio is one of they factors of the smartphone experience and in my opinion Huawei has nailed this category for a smartphone under RM900/US$200.
