Lenovo ZUK Z1 Smartphone Review with Pros & Cons

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi there this is Fran cheat and in this video we'll be doing the full review for this lenovo zu k z1 and have been testing this device for two weeks now I used it with my primary sim for eight days and thereafter with my secondary sim I won't go in-depth regarding the physical overview or the specs I have covered all those aspects in my unboxing video you can have a look at the specs on this side in this review we are just going to jump directly to the things that I like about this device and the things that I did not like and I have been taking down some notes as you can see quite a bit so I'll be sticking to these notes that I have was noting down for the last two weeks for this review and first let's quickly jump or regarding the things that I liked about this device so the first thing that I really liked about this device is that if you listen to a lot of music then the sound output Y the headphone jack is actually really good I really enjoyed the music coming out from the headphone jack but sadly moving to the speaker it is just having a single speaker so the output is just okay but if you listen to music via the headphone jack the output is actually really good next I got this question also a lot regarding the cellular call quality on this device and the cellular call quality on this device was actually really really good I used it with a TL 4G and the cellular reception was very good I did not have any network issues next moving to the fingerprint scanner it has a fingerprint scanner here on the front and it's the home button is the fingerprint scanner and if you just tap it it works and the fingerprint scanner worked actually really well in my opinion now moving to the camera things get actually really interesting I feel this is the one of those rare devices in this budget range that we get optical image stabilisation the rear facing camera actually is a 13 megapixel shooter and as you can see with these sample shots the camera performance is actually really good thanks to optical image stabilization as you can see the shots that we took outdoors come out to be actually really good but the thing is that even pictures that we take in semi indoor conditions and also in artificial lighting those pictures also actually come out to be really good in fact I Fila the zu kz1 has a very good color accuracy even in indoor lighting conditions which is sort of rare in very low lighting conditions yes there is a bit of noise in the pictures but again I haven't seen anything better at this price point moving to the front-facing camera it's a 8 megapixel shooter and again as you can see from the sample shots the pictures from the front-facing camera were also very good I also shot a video with the front-facing camera again as you can see the video quality was also very good only corners that the audio pickup from the video was a bit low and here are some video samples that I've shot with this device it can record video at 1080p here is a sample my daughter's cat drinking some water recording this sample footage with the zu k s z1 and i'm just walking to give you an idea how will be the stabilization because this one has optical image stabilization so as you can see in terms of camera performance the camera performance was actually very good on this device thanks to that optical image stabilization and as of now considering its price point and india that's thirteen thousand five hundred rupees that's close to about $200 i feel the camera performance is actually really good now moving to battery life it has a sealed battery which is a 4100 milliamp power battery and as you can see from these screenshots the battery life also was very good with my typical days use it over seven eight days I are used to always get over five hours of screen on time and you can also get screen on time as good as about 6.5 hours even if we talk about the standby life the standby life was also very good and with my typical usage I had to charge it once in 1.5 days so even the battery life is actually really good plan it uses this new USBC type port to charge and the charging time is not the quickest considering that it has a 4100 milliamp power battery I did not time it exactly but it was slightly over to us for charging this device with the supplied charger now moving to the general performance the general performance of this device is also very good it's almost close to stock Android I would say it's running on os so there are a lot of customization and the good thing is that the customizations does not slow down this phone so overall the performance of this phone was also very good even in terms of RAM management it has three gigabytes of RAM and I did not have any issues regarding the RAM management also so the overall performance of this device was also very good now moving to gaming I had actually good experience with gaming I played quite a few games and even heavy games like asphalt 8 and even NOAA 3 and it ran all those games without any issues but with the extended gaming yes the temperatures can touch up to about 45 degrees centigrade so you have to be aware about that now moving to storage I really like the fact that it comes with 64 gigabytes of internal storage so you have ample storage to work but but the con is that we do not have any micro SD card slot it's a dual SIM device at its except what do you say nano sim but you can't put a micro SD card so the storage is what you get but I feel transferring that way we get 64 gigabytes of internal storage out of that you get about 55 gigabytes that storage is good enough can shake the price point of this device now moving to a another thing and this might be useful for advanced users you can actually route this device and then also your warranty would be a valid so if you are advanced user who likes to install custom roms and stuff you can actually do on this device without worrying about warranty also some of you have asked about this it has all the important sensors like gyroscope compass proximity sensor etc and I also tested it with YouTube 360 degrees videos and that also worked so it can work with VR apps also lastly I really like the fact that lenovo has priced this device very aggressively in india it's priced at just rupees 13,500 and I have to say you are getting a lot of hardware for that price now let's move to the things that I actually did not like on this device and the first thing that I did not like and that bugged me a lot on this device is the auto brightness sensor the auto brightness sensor is there and it works but I feel it's very slow if you quickly move from a indoor environment to outdoor environment it takes almost three to five seconds to adapt which is actually very slow and most of the time I was just opening a tap and manually adjusting the brightness so the auto brightness sensor though it's there it's very slow to react I also noticed some minor UI lag when I was using this device especially in terms of animations for example and Twitter app we have a lot of animations when we move from one pain to another pain and they were a little bit slow which was very puzzling because in terms of gaming performance it ran all the heavy games also without any issues so I could actually fix that you have to just go to the developer mode and in the animations the default animations is set at 1x where I lowered it to 0.5 X the lag was gone but sadly you have to make that tweak otherwise you might notice some minor UI lag here and there so it's sad to see that we have that animation lag by default but if you go to the developer mode you can fix that also another thing I do not like is that it comes with cyanogen OS by default and still as of now it's running on the Android version 5.1 so again the future Android update will be slow to get yes I know you can flash the Knightley's of cyanogen and get what you say Android marshmallow but again it's not available as a stable build as of now so in terms of Android updates it's not the quickest that we have seen and now I also do not like the fact that it does not have any IR blaster so if you are looking for that that is simply not there also it is running on the Snapdragon 801 chipset which is actually still a very good chipset it ran the phone very well well I would say without any lag and also played games without any issues but still the fact is that it's almost a 2.5 years old chipset so you have to be aware of that also I do not like the default gallery app that they have provided I feel the gallery app is a little bit slow to load images as you can see it's populating the images a little bit so if you can move on quickly it's actually really slow so I don't like the default gallery app that is supplied it's actually really slow also moving to the camera the camera prefer is good but I do not like the default camera app that is supplied on this device I feel the camera app is sort of limited and also when you use the tap to focus functionality it most times actually over exposes so I would say use a third-party camera app if you want to get the best results I had the same problem with even the Nexus 6p if you have watched my Nexus 6p review I suggest that you use third-party apps for the camera that's the same case even with this one I feel so or all these were some of the things that I did not like about this device but overall I feel it's a very good device considering the price point of just around 13,500 I guess I would have complained if the pricing was around 18 to 20,000 for example the oneplus one is almost coming with the same hardware it also comes with 64 gigabytes of internal storage and the oneplus one 64 gigabyte variant still price in India at 20,000 and the oneplus one does not even have a fingerprint scanner or optical image stabilization so considering the price point of about 13,500 I feel the Z UK's z1 is a very good device and again it has very good camera performance the fingerprint scanner actually works very well and also it has very good battery life so overall I feel at the price point of around 13,500 this z UK is z1 is a very good phone again have also posted it's a gaming review in a separate video so you can check out that for more info I hope you found this video review helpful if you found it helpful I'll appreciate if you can click the like button and if you're not subscribed to my youtube channel hit that subscribe button thanks for watching this is Ron cheat and I hope to see you in my next videohi there this is Fran cheat and in this video we'll be doing the full review for this lenovo zu k z1 and have been testing this device for two weeks now I used it with my primary sim for eight days and thereafter with my secondary sim I won't go in-depth regarding the physical overview or the specs I have covered all those aspects in my unboxing video you can have a look at the specs on this side in this review we are just going to jump directly to the things that I like about this device and the things that I did not like and I have been taking down some notes as you can see quite a bit so I'll be sticking to these notes that I have was noting down for the last two weeks for this review and first let's quickly jump or regarding the things that I liked about this device so the first thing that I really liked about this device is that if you listen to a lot of music then the sound output Y the headphone jack is actually really good I really enjoyed the music coming out from the headphone jack but sadly moving to the speaker it is just having a single speaker so the output is just okay but if you listen to music via the headphone jack the output is actually really good next I got this question also a lot regarding the cellular call quality on this device and the cellular call quality on this device was actually really really good I used it with a TL 4G and the cellular reception was very good I did not have any network issues next moving to the fingerprint scanner it has a fingerprint scanner here on the front and it's the home button is the fingerprint scanner and if you just tap it it works and the fingerprint scanner worked actually really well in my opinion now moving to the camera things get actually really interesting I feel this is the one of those rare devices in this budget range that we get optical image stabilisation the rear facing camera actually is a 13 megapixel shooter and as you can see with these sample shots the camera performance is actually really good thanks to optical image stabilization as you can see the shots that we took outdoors come out to be actually really good but the thing is that even pictures that we take in semi indoor conditions and also in artificial lighting those pictures also actually come out to be really good in fact I Fila the zu kz1 has a very good color accuracy even in indoor lighting conditions which is sort of rare in very low lighting conditions yes there is a bit of noise in the pictures but again I haven't seen anything better at this price point moving to the front-facing camera it's a 8 megapixel shooter and again as you can see from the sample shots the pictures from the front-facing camera were also very good I also shot a video with the front-facing camera again as you can see the video quality was also very good only corners that the audio pickup from the video was a bit low and here are some video samples that I've shot with this device it can record video at 1080p here is a sample my daughter's cat drinking some water recording this sample footage with the zu k s z1 and i'm just walking to give you an idea how will be the stabilization because this one has optical image stabilization so as you can see in terms of camera performance the camera performance was actually very good on this device thanks to that optical image stabilization and as of now considering its price point and india that's thirteen thousand five hundred rupees that's close to about $200 i feel the camera performance is actually really good now moving to battery life it has a sealed battery which is a 4100 milliamp power battery and as you can see from these screenshots the battery life also was very good with my typical days use it over seven eight days I are used to always get over five hours of screen on time and you can also get screen on time as good as about 6.5 hours even if we talk about the standby life the standby life was also very good and with my typical usage I had to charge it once in 1.5 days so even the battery life is actually really good plan it uses this new USBC type port to charge and the charging time is not the quickest considering that it has a 4100 milliamp power battery I did not time it exactly but it was slightly over to us for charging this device with the supplied charger now moving to the general performance the general performance of this device is also very good it's almost close to stock Android I would say it's running on os so there are a lot of customization and the good thing is that the customizations does not slow down this phone so overall the performance of this phone was also very good even in terms of RAM management it has three gigabytes of RAM and I did not have any issues regarding the RAM management also so the overall performance of this device was also very good now moving to gaming I had actually good experience with gaming I played quite a few games and even heavy games like asphalt 8 and even NOAA 3 and it ran all those games without any issues but with the extended gaming yes the temperatures can touch up to about 45 degrees centigrade so you have to be aware about that now moving to storage I really like the fact that it comes with 64 gigabytes of internal storage so you have ample storage to work but but the con is that we do not have any micro SD card slot it's a dual SIM device at its except what do you say nano sim but you can't put a micro SD card so the storage is what you get but I feel transferring that way we get 64 gigabytes of internal storage out of that you get about 55 gigabytes that storage is good enough can shake the price point of this device now moving to a another thing and this might be useful for advanced users you can actually route this device and then also your warranty would be a valid so if you are advanced user who likes to install custom roms and stuff you can actually do on this device without worrying about warranty also some of you have asked about this it has all the important sensors like gyroscope compass proximity sensor etc and I also tested it with YouTube 360 degrees videos and that also worked so it can work with VR apps also lastly I really like the fact that lenovo has priced this device very aggressively in india it's priced at just rupees 13,500 and I have to say you are getting a lot of hardware for that price now let's move to the things that I actually did not like on this device and the first thing that I did not like and that bugged me a lot on this device is the auto brightness sensor the auto brightness sensor is there and it works but I feel it's very slow if you quickly move from a indoor environment to outdoor environment it takes almost three to five seconds to adapt which is actually very slow and most of the time I was just opening a tap and manually adjusting the brightness so the auto brightness sensor though it's there it's very slow to react I also noticed some minor UI lag when I was using this device especially in terms of animations for example and Twitter app we have a lot of animations when we move from one pain to another pain and they were a little bit slow which was very puzzling because in terms of gaming performance it ran all the heavy games also without any issues so I could actually fix that you have to just go to the developer mode and in the animations the default animations is set at 1x where I lowered it to 0.5 X the lag was gone but sadly you have to make that tweak otherwise you might notice some minor UI lag here and there so it's sad to see that we have that animation lag by default but if you go to the developer mode you can fix that also another thing I do not like is that it comes with cyanogen OS by default and still as of now it's running on the Android version 5.1 so again the future Android update will be slow to get yes I know you can flash the Knightley's of cyanogen and get what you say Android marshmallow but again it's not available as a stable build as of now so in terms of Android updates it's not the quickest that we have seen and now I also do not like the fact that it does not have any IR blaster so if you are looking for that that is simply not there also it is running on the Snapdragon 801 chipset which is actually still a very good chipset it ran the phone very well well I would say without any lag and also played games without any issues but still the fact is that it's almost a 2.5 years old chipset so you have to be aware of that also I do not like the default gallery app that they have provided I feel the gallery app is a little bit slow to load images as you can see it's populating the images a little bit so if you can move on quickly it's actually really slow so I don't like the default gallery app that is supplied it's actually really slow also moving to the camera the camera prefer is good but I do not like the default camera app that is supplied on this device I feel the camera app is sort of limited and also when you use the tap to focus functionality it most times actually over exposes so I would say use a third-party camera app if you want to get the best results I had the same problem with even the Nexus 6p if you have watched my Nexus 6p review I suggest that you use third-party apps for the camera that's the same case even with this one I feel so or all these were some of the things that I did not like about this device but overall I feel it's a very good device considering the price point of just around 13,500 I guess I would have complained if the pricing was around 18 to 20,000 for example the oneplus one is almost coming with the same hardware it also comes with 64 gigabytes of internal storage and the oneplus one 64 gigabyte variant still price in India at 20,000 and the oneplus one does not even have a fingerprint scanner or optical image stabilization so considering the price point of about 13,500 I feel the Z UK's z1 is a very good device and again it has very good camera performance the fingerprint scanner actually works very well and also it has very good battery life so overall I feel at the price point of around 13,500 this z UK is z1 is a very good phone again have also posted it's a gaming review in a separate video so you can check out that for more info I hope you found this video review helpful if you found it helpful I'll appreciate if you can click the like button and if you're not subscribed to my youtube channel hit that subscribe button thanks for watching this is Ron cheat and I hope to see you in my next video\n"