Samsung Galaxy J7 Max detailed review

As a reviewer, I've stood witness to Samsung's evolution in the smartphone market. From low-end devices like the Galaxy Y to the class-leading Galaxy S8, Samsung has done a lot. It's rise to a market leading position came somewhat easily, but remaining there has proved to be quite difficult. Believe it or not, a large number of consumers trust Samsung, even after the Note 7 debacle. But while devices like the Galaxy S8 and Note series may make sense overseas, India is a different monster altogether, and the Galaxy J series is arguably more important, including the Samsung Galaxy J7 Max.

In a lot of ways, the Galaxy J7 Max is the epitomy of Samsung's evolution, while retaining some of the things the company isn't liked for. It doesn't bring you class-leading specifications, but it's evidently a result of extensive market research. It will do best in retail stores, where you touch and feel the device, you take it for a short spin even, and make your decision on the spot. And if you indeed do that, the Galaxy J7 Max would convince you against many other devices. Of course, that doesn't meant Samsung isn't selling the Galaxy J7 Max online, which is probably why you're reading this review.

Build and Design

As mentioned above, Samsung is playing the consumer's emotion here. The J7 Max is about how the phone feels, rather than what it is on paper. To that end, it has a unibody metallic design, rounded near the corners, but more or less slab-like. It "feels" premium, more so than the Moto G5 Plus, it's chief competitor. It's built solidly with no creaks or crevices to speak of. As far as the sub-20k market is concerned, the Galaxy J7 Max is up to industry standards today.

On the other hand, it has a large footprint and is meant for big phone lovers. You will also need large pockets to carry it around, while your grip will have to shift often when using the phone with one hand. From a build and design purview, the Samsung Galaxy J7 Max is no better than the best in this range, but no worse either. I personally find the looks plain, which isn't necessarily bad.

The power button is on the left and falls below your thumb, as long you have medium to large hands. You will be shifting your grip to reach the volume rocket, that lies on the upper half of the right. The phone is slightly curved near the rear edges, with stylised plastic strips on the top and bottom. Samsung's oval fingerprint sensor-cum home button is on the front, with touch-based back and recents keys on either side.

Display

The slightly more expensive Galaxy J7 Pro has an AMOLED display panel, which makes one wonder why Samsung couldn't do the same on the J7 Max. That said, the company is using one of its other technologies for the 5.7 inch panel on this device. It's a TFT display, using Samsung's PLS technology.

Plane-Line Switching (PLS) follows almost the same principles as IPS panels, which allows Samsung to avoid the viewing angle issues commonly associated with TFT displays. Black levels are up to IPS standards, although they're far behind AMOLED panels. The Galaxy J7 Max's display looks very slightly washed out, with decent colour saturation and black levels. The glass feels premium to touch, but you could indeed get a much better display, on phones like the Moto G5 Plus, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 and many others.

Also, I faced some touch issues with the Galaxy J7 Max, similar to what we noticed on the Galaxy A5 earlier. The phone sometimes doesn't respond to touches, requiring you to tap an app/button repeatedly. While the display isn't the J7 Max's strong suit, it's actually better than every TFT panel I've tested recently.

UI

Spec-to-spec the Galaxy J7 Max would fall behind almost every phone in this price range. But even so, it has a huge advantage over phones produced by Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo and almost all others, barring Motorola. The Galaxy J7 Max runs on Android Nougat out-of-the-box, and is one of the few phones in this price, that runs on Nougat. Samsung's history with updates on its budget devices isn't great, but by the looks of it, no one in this price range is interested in giving consumers an up to date operating system. The fact that the Galaxy J7 Max at least runs on Nougat makes it more trustworthy than any phone, except the Moto G5 Plus.

The Galaxy J7 Max also has the same UI as on the Galaxy S8, minus the capacitive navigation keys and edge functions of course. The UI looks and feels good and premium, but it has a sluggish feel to it. That's possibly because of a weaker chipset than the Snapdragon 625, and one does wish Samsung could have done better here.

The Galaxy J7 Max also has Samsung Pay Mini, a stripped down version of Samsung Pay, running on the Galaxy A and S series. You can link your PayTM and UPI accounts to this, and make payments at places that support the same. Samsung Pay still has a ways to go before it's adopted in India, but it's good to see Samsung provide such a service in its cheaper phones.

The social camera feature gives you access to some filters and allows instant sharing via Facebook and WhatsApp. It's a gimmick that some may like, but truthfully, don't we have enough filters everywhere already?

Performance

For me, the Samsung Galaxy J7 Max's downfall is thanks to the MediaTek Helio P20. The chipset is simply not powerful enough to take on the Snapdragon 625 or its more powerful counterparts. The Galaxy J7 Max is a slow phone and it doesn’t feel as snappy as phones today should. At nearly Rs. 18,000, you should be able buy something faster.

App load times are high and the phone doesn’t feel responsive enough on regular usage. Apps like Facebook, Twitter and many others feel slow. Games run at playable frame rates, but in-game menus and loading times will be higher than reasonable. Games like Injustice 2 are frustrating because of how often you have to wait at a loading screen.

While there are no heating issues on the device, you don’t expect excessive heating on such performance any way. The Galaxy J7 Max is an Android phone after all, so you can expect it to keep getting slower over time. 

Camera

If performance is its downfall, the camera is where the Galaxy J7 Max redeems itself. It’s got a 13MP rear camera on the back and f/1.7 aperture. The UI remains the same as other Samsung phones running on Nougat, and image quality is amongst the best in this price range.

The Galaxy J7 Max takes great photos regardless of how the light conditions are. White balance is good for the most part, and the Galaxy J7 Max produces well detailed photos as well. You see shades of Samsung’s low light algorithms (from the Galaxy S8) here, with brighter than usual photos under low light.

Comparing to the Moto G5 Plus (our top camera in this price range), the Galaxy J7 Max fares very well. It’s actually better in low light at times, producing slightly brighter photos. The two phones are mostly at par in most other cases. The Moto G5 Plus (review) tends to produce slightly warmer photos, whereas the Galaxy J7 Max is more towards the cooler side. 

100% crop: Samsung Galaxy J7 Max (Left) vs Moto G5 Plus (Right)

Low Light: Samsung Galaxy J7 Max (Left) vs Moto G5 Plus (Right)

The Galaxy J7 Max has issues focusing on subjects when they’re too close to the camera, so the Moto G5 Plus is often the pick for this. But other than that, the two cameras are essentially of the same quality. They even have some of the same issues, with slow focus speeds in low light. The Galaxy J7 Max is the faster one at processing though. It’s also better at video stabilisation than the G5 Plus.

Samsung Galaxy J7 Max Camera Samples

Battery

Given the phone’s large footprint, a 3300 mAh battery seems little by today’s standards. Our regular battery test wasn’t compatible with this device, but regular usage tests suggest that the phone will easily last a full work-day. I could stream HD video on the J7 Max for over 7 hours at a time, while gaming didn’t drain the battery very easily either. You can expect 14-16 hours worth of battery life from the Galaxy J7 Max.

How it stacks up against competition

The Moto G5 Plus is indeed the chief competitor for the Samsung Galaxy J7 Max, and compared to that device, the phone is indeed inferior. While the two phones have similar cameras, the Moto phone is faster, has a smoother stock Android Nougat software and better display.

The Galaxy J7 Max has a better camera than most other smartphones in this range, but the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (review), Coolpad Cool 1 (review) and Honor 6X (review) are considerably faster than this device. That leads us to the conclusion for this review.

Bottomline

There are two reasons to buy the Galaxy J7 Max — a great camera and Android Nougat. Unfortunately for Samsung, those are also the reasons for purchasing the Moto G5 Plus. Motorola’s phone is also faster and a few thousand bucks cheaper. So, while the Moto G5 Plus is indeed the best buy in this price range, the Samsung Galaxy J7 Max is worth considering if updated software and a great camera are your priorities.

Dell Inspiron 13 7373 2-in-1 detailed review

Dell's laptop lineup is very straightforward. You have the XPS lineup, which is regarded one of the best Windows-powered laptop lineups today and then you move down to the Inspiron series with the 7000 at the top and the 3000 series at the bottom. There is a 5000 series as well, but in this review, we are taking a look at the Dell Inspiron 7373, which is part of the 7000 series. The 7373 by virtue of hierarchy is the next best thin and light notebook you can buy from Dell after the XPS. On paper, it offers slightly inferior specifications as compared to he XPS 13, underlined by the latest Intel processor, but is that enough to justify its Rs. 96190 price tag?  Well, we used the machine for well over a week to find out.

Build and Design
The 7000 series is renowned for its build quality. The Inspiron 7373 here offers an all-aluminum shell both front and back which is premium to touch and seems quite robust. It is easily one of the better-built laptops at its price. That said, don't expect the build quality to be at par with Dell’s XPS lineup, which is still a grade above. An aluminum shell also reduces the possibility of flex, so if you are a heavy-handed typist, you will be happy to know there is no flex on the keyboard deck. Same goes for the display which besides having an aluminum lid is also protected by glass front and has no flex whatsoever under normal torsional stress. However, we do feel that Dell could have stretched the bottom bezels all the way to the hinges, which would have looked better. Also, the edges around the keyboard deck are somewhat sharp and dig into your wrists after long typing hauls. All-in-all we are quite satisfied with the build quality of the laptop and the battery indicator on the lid is a really nice touch.

Opening the back cover reveals the system layout which packs a 38Wh battery, which is only big in size, not in capacity. The two speakers are on either side of the battery and as you can see, the processor is being cooled by a single blower style cooler. The RAM is soldered to the motherboard and only the 512GB SSD SATA drive is user replaceable. Then again, it is not that easy to open this laptop in the first place and even if you do, you will void its warranty. 

Display and I/O
The 13.3-inch display offers the standard 1920 x 1080p resolution and uses an IPS LCD panel. The display has good colour fidelity and the viewing angles are also satisfactory. The glossy touchscreen display does get a bit reflective under bright light but is not really a deal breaker. The panel is made by Sharp and is just as bright as other laptops in the category and offers touch support using Entry’s touch technology. You can use an active stylus with the display, but unfortunately Dell doesn’t provide one with the laptop and needs to be purchased separately.

While the display is just good enough, we are happy to report that the 13-inch thin and light notebook has one of the best I/O selection we have seen at this price in a while. It features two standard USB 3.0 Type-A ports on either side. There is one USB 3.0 Type-C Gen 1 port, HDMI Out, headphone/microphone 3.5mm jack and an SD card slot. This is more than what its competitors have to offer. Dell has, however, held back on the Thunderbolt port which is there on the Dell XPS 13 and other machines such as the Yoga 720. Also, the laptop is still using the standard barrel charger and Dell could have easily replaced it with a future-proof USB Type-C port.

Keyboard and touchpad
The keyboard, on the other hand, might not be winning awards, but it is reliable. Don’t set your expectations too high, though. You will be disappointed if you are looking for a  similar typing experience as the Dell XPS 13. The keyboard on this machine has a short travel and the keys are a little stiff. So, we started to get a jarring feeling in the fingers after just couple of hours of typing, but your mileage may vary. All keys press down with an equal amount of force and go down with a small audible sound. It features a two-stage white backlighting, but the toggle for that is on the F10 key which is not easy to find in the dark.

The touchpad is also not as good as the one found on its expensive sibling. You are getting a plastic matte finish touchpad, which is not as smooth as some of its rivals. It has an odd ‘grainy’ feel to it, which seems a bit too rough. That said, it was accurate and once you get over the roughness,  it allows for all kinds of Windows gestures. The Windows precision drivers are easy to use and can be further calibrated to your needs. As for the left click and right click keys, they go down with a short click and offer a subtle audible noise.

Performance
Inside you are getting the latest Intel Core i7-8550U processor. This is the latest top of the line 8th gen Intel processor for non-gaming laptops at the moment. Till the 7th gen, all processors were dual-core parts, but with 8th gen, Intel is finally bringing a quad-core setup in its U-series product lineup. This gives these new gen processors and the machines they power a huge boost in performance over its predecessors. This powerhouse chip is paired with a dual channel 16GB RAM kit, which is enough for almost all tasks this processor can handle. The 512GB M.2 SSD storage is only a SATA drive and hence you will get much lower speeds compared to PCIe based SSDs which are fast becoming common specification among thin and light laptops. In Fact, this SK Hynix made SSD is one of the slowest we have seen in recent times on a thin and light.

There is no heating issue as such if you are just using the machine for just office work or browsing the web, but it does get a little warm above the keyboard. It was only when we pushed the machine to its limit, via Prime95, we saw the heat on the bottom panel becoming unbearable. The num key area also gets hot, but if you are working on a desk, all this should not be a problem. That said, we would advise against using the machine on your lap while doing any processor intensive work.

The audio output via the twin speakers is quite loud but does crack at higher volumes. The audio quality seemed decent and though it will lack a proper bass, you can still listen to some music.

Besides that, the Inspiron 7373 misses out on a fingerprint scanner and instead offers a Windows Hello enabled camera, which only works randomly and only in good lighting conditions. 

Battery life
The worst part however about this laptop is the battery life, which at just 3-4 hours is abysmal for a laptop this size. In comparison, most thin and light laptops offer almost double the battery life. We find it quite baffling that at one end the Dell XPS line offers one of the best battery life in this category and then there is this Inspiron 7373 which is unable to match even some mainstream laptops. Even the more gaming-focused Dell Inspiron 7000 gaming laptop offers a better battery life. We are not sure about you, but this might be a deal breaker for some, we included.

Bottomline
The Dell Inspiron 7373 might be next in line to the much superior XPS line, but it seems like a far more compromised machine than it is on paper. The performance is excellent, the build quality is good, the display is usable, but beyond that, things start going downhill. The keyboard is not particularly great, it misses out on a fingerprint scanner and then there is the appalling battery life. The subpar battery life completely annuls the point of this being an ultraportable. To be fair, even at 96K no other thin and light laptop offers the same performance or ports. However, unless you are happy sitting near to a power plug, you should skip the Dell Inspiron 7373 completely.

Alternatively, we would suggest you to spend some more and get the Dell XPS 13 in the first place, or you can also opt for the older but still powerful enough Lenovo Yoga 720, which for the price is a good machine. Even the Asus Zenbook flip is a considerable option.

OnePlus 5 detailed review

I’d like to start this review of the OnePlus 5 with the bottom-line right at the top. If you are looking for pure performance (speed), a near-stock Android experience and bang for the buck in a flagship Android smartphone, there’s nothing better than the OnePlus 5. But hey, that just sounds like the bottom line for OnePlus 3/3T! Doesn’t it? 

Not much has changed in terms of the overall promise, and while that might just be the right approach for OnePlus, consumers do expect more.

Looks, design and build quality: A good looking look-a-like

Open the box, and you are greeted with a very familiar front, the OnePlus 5 looks almost the same as the OnePlus 3T (review). Turn it around and reminds you of the iPhone 7 Plus(review), hold the iPhone 7 Plus next to it and it starts looking like its twin brother. But that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that the OnePlus 5 is a good-looking smartphone that does feel premium and well-crafted in every sense. With a slim 7.25mm waist line (thickness), the OnePlus 5 feels reasonably ergonomic and easy to manage for a smartphone with 5.5-inch display. The overall length and width of the device is almost same as the OnePlus 3T, so it doesn’t hold any surprises as far as ergonomics is concerned. The OnePlus 3T felt a lot more modern looking and competitive in terms of design when it was launched, but come 2017 and the goal post has clearly shifted. The Samsung Galaxy S8 (review)and the LG G6 (review) make the OnePlus 5 look a little dated in the looks and design department. So, a Samsung Galaxy S8 aspirant is very unlikely to be swayed by the lower price tag of the OnePlus 5. When it comes to build quality, design and overall finish, the OnePlus 5 leaves you with very little room for complaints. The camera lens bump at the back, perhaps could have been avoided. In fact, a flush camera at the back would have given OnePlus 5 an excellent opportunity to swing back at everyone (including us), accusing OnePlus of copying the iPhone 7 Plus design – “Hey, we bettered the design, this is how you make your first dual camera flagship”.

As it stands, the OnePlus 5 does feel premium and well made for its price point. It went with a rather safe design, robbing itself the chance to create a unique identity in the crowded flagship market.

To see more shots of the device, scroll down to the bottom of the review.

5.5-inch 1080P AMOLED: A tried and tested approach, nothing to complain or celebrate about
The display on the OnePlus 5 is almost the same as the OnePlus 3T. It’s sufficiently bright, clocking 750 lux of brightness as per our tests, comfortably putting it in the flagship league. It is an AMOLED panel, so you get awesome contrast along with slightly oversaturated (some call it vivid) colors. Thankfully, OnePlus has done a wonderful job of offering a choice to select display profiles. Switching the color profile from “Default” to “sRGB” was the first thing that I did after entering the settings menu. When testing outdoor visibility under direct sunlight, I did occasionally find the brightness to be inadequate. But, nothing that can pose issues or hamper usability. The OnePlus 5 ships with a pre-applied screen guard, and it really sucks. It’s anything but scratch resistant, attracts a lot of finger prints and steals the thunder away from the AMOLED display. I strongly recommend you get rid of the screen guard immediately, almost like a ritual once you unbox the phone. As much as I’d want it, I can’t simply ignore and brush the screen pixel density topic under the carpet. Yes, the 5.5-inch screen is still at 1080p, while flagships have moved on to QHD displays. For me, on a 5.5-inch screen, QHD is clearly an overkill. It delivers far lesser benefits in comparisons to the potential drawbacks it poses. The PenTile RGBG display on the OnePlus 5 treads on the borderline of adequate sharpness needed for a 5.5-inch device. The 5.5-inch IPS RGBW display on the iPhone 7 Plus feels visibly sharper at the same 1080p resolution. Overall, the display sharpness on the OnePlus 5 is absolutely fine and does not leave you wanting. It’s only when you hold a QHD screen based phone next to it, that you start discerning and realizing the difference.

Performance: This thing is fast, really fast!
Plonk the fastest available SoC on a 1080p device, layer it with stock Android goodness and optimize the living daylights out of it. What you get is a OnePlus 5. If I was to draw a parallel, it’s like how they tune rally cars. Fit it with a performance engine, strip the car of all possible weight and optimize the suspension for speed and handling to tackle the most ridiculous of corners. The OnePlus 5 is built like one. Sure, they went a wee bit too far ahead on the optimizing bit, making the phone perform at break neck speeds on benchmarks when it is supposed to behave closer to real world performance. But, that by no means can take away the fact that the OnePlus 5 is the fastest Android phone in the market today, not just in terms of synthetic benchmarks but how it feels and performs on regular usage. From app load times, to multitasking, browsing and heavy gaming, the OnePlus 5 makes light of everything you throw at it. And yes, we never encountered any serious heat issues with the device. Upon prolonged gaming sessions, the device goes get a bit warm (understandably so with the metal back dissipating heat), but it never comes anywhere close to being uncomfortable or alarming. We didn’t expect any different either, the 10nm Snapdragon 835 is quite a cool cucumber.

During benchmarking as well as real world testing, we struggled to find any noticeable difference between the 6GB and 8GB variants of the OnePlus 5. In fact, in some of the synthetic benchmarks, the 6GB variant managed to nose ahead of the 8GB model. You’d buy the expensive 8GB/128GB variant for the extra 64GB storage rather than 2 gigs of additional RAM. With Android being increasingly optimized for performance and memory usage, it's highly unlikely that you would need more than 6GB of RAM for at least the next 2 years. Especially when you are on a close-to-stock Android build, like the OnePlus 5 is and will stay so for foreseeable future.

And, last but not the least, the finger print sensor at the front, which now wears a shiny new ceramic coat is blazing fast, blazing fast and accurate would be the right way to put it. Not sure if I can call it the fastest finger print sensor in the business today, simply because I haven’t rested my fingers on all of them. But, what I surely say is that it takes the speed and response out of the equation. I never faced a noticeable delay or rejection across the entire review period.

The OnePlus 5 Camera: Dual camera, clearer photos; but we expect more
OnePlus flagships have never managed to lead and set an example on the imaging front. The OnePlus One perhaps came very close to making a statement with its very capable imaging system that was heavily riding on the software and image processing engine that came with the 13MP shooter. The OnePlus 5 camera is surely an upgrade to the OnePlus 3T in terms of overall shooting prowess. At 1/2.8” (6.4mm), the 16MP Sony IMX398 sensor powering the main camera is no cigar in terms of sheer sensor size or even the pixel size (1.12 μm). It is however, a dual-pixel sensor, making it a lot more capable in terms of focusing speed and accuracy (more on this later). OnePlus has put more focus on the lens than the sensor, with a large f/1.7 aperture, the OnePlus 5 is evidently better equipped to deal with low light situations in comparison to the OnePlus 3T, or for that matter many of the previous gen flagships. But, the biggest win for OnePlus 5 camera, in my books, would be the speed of capture, the focusing system, scene evaluation algorithms and image processing engine. All of which seem to work in perfect harmony to dish out a mighty fast camera that excels in focusing accuracy, speed and accurate white balance. As a result, the camera seldom suffers from delay in capturing that magic moment. Despite lacking an OIS, the OnePlus 5 camera served us with blur free low-light images. If I were to choose between pixel-level image quality versus immediate (and accurate) focusing coupled with blazing fast capture, I’d do with the latter. No, I am not comparing the OnePlus 5 with the Google Pixel here, no play of words. The Google Pixel is a far better camera in every department. Arriving on the pure image quality front, the OnePlus 5 is neither the sharpest nor the most detail oriented shooter, pixel peepers looking for clean images with minimal loss of detail and razor-sharp quality at 100% crop will not be satisfied with the OnePlus 5. The overall image output of the main 16MP camera on the OnePlus 5 is on the softer side. The OnePlus 5 will give you ultra-fast focusing and capture time, immediate image processing, good low-light performance and accurate light metering. But, it won’t bowl you over with its dynamic range, detail levels and noise control.

Here are some resized camera samples, followed by a comparison of the camera against the Apple iPhone 7 Plus and the Google Pixel XL. More such shots are at the bottom of the review.

1.6x Optical Zoom: Brings you closer, but what’s with the mush?
Heading to the second telephoto unit (the dual camera bit), the 20MP secondary camera on the OnePlus 5 brings in 1.6x optical zoom to the OnePlus 5, the same way the iPhone 7 Plus offers 2x zoom with its telephoto secondary camera. With as many as 20 megapixels crammed on 1/2.8-inch sensor with 1.0 μm pixel size, the telephoto performance is somewhat similar to the main camera. Fast and accurate focusing, instant capture and accurate white balance performance. However, the 20MP shots are on the softer side, even more than the results from the 16MP main camera. The f/2.6 lens doesn’t help proceedings either, low-light shooting is certainly not its forte and you’d often find excessive noise creeping in. In its defense, OnePlus might contest the need to use 1.6X optical zoom in low-light scenarios. And I do agree to an extent, the need to go closer to the subject might arise more often when you are trying to capture a distant object, something that you would encounter when on a vacation or a trek. And more often, those captures are done in adequate lighting conditions. Having said that, perhaps OnePlus could have been wiser on the choice of sensor, a larger sensor with healthy pixel size rather than the pixel count would have certainly made the telephoto performance a lot better. Sure, at that focal length, you can only do so much on the lens side, can’t expect wide apertures on a telephoto lens that’s tucked inside a 7.25mm smartphone casing.

It’s got the modes: Portrait and Pro modes is a nice touch
The modes I like the most: HQ in default shooting and the Pro Mode when you want to experiment. The “HQ” mode which stands for High Quality (I assume), in my experience, the HQ mode keeps a tight watch on the ISO levels, trying hard to keep it as low as possible. It tries to compensate the lower ISO with lower shutter speed to maintain the same exposure levels. As long as you have good or even adequate light, the HQ mode delivers slightly better details, lesser noise and crisper images. Having said that, you can’t go HDR in the HQ mode. On the topic of HDR, the OnePlus does a fine job with HDR shots, It exhibits same speed of capture and processing when shooting in HDR. The Pro mode is another favorite of mine, though there’s only so much that you can achieve with the sensor on the OnePlus 5, it’s a nice option to tinker around and pursue that perfect shot. And, the intuitive interface really helps in ensuring you don’t spend too much time mastering it. The portrait mode comes in handy when you want to capture, well, portraits. It uses software-based image separation to blur out (soften) the background, offering the much sought after “bokeh” in portraits. When compared to the same mode in the iPhone 7 Plus, the OnePlus 5 did perform well, though the separation wasn’t as accurate. OnePlus 5 seems to soften the edges.

The video capture performance of the OnePlus 5 does deserve a special mention here. The Snapdragon 835 brings in Qualcomm EIS 3.0 to the OnePlus 5. Though, OnePlus does mention EIS as a key video feature, we recon it’s the Snapdragon 835 platform that should take due credit for the Electronic Image Stabilization tech on the OnePlus 5. Videos appear smoother and less jerky, and EIS stays in action even when you switch to 4K resolution. The OnePlus 5 offers a maximum of 10 minutes of 4K/UHD video capture in one go.

The Oxygen OS: That’s where it’s at. Totally!
The OnePlus philosophy of keeping Android as pure as possible with just a few minor tweaks that strictly add value and not bloat forms a huge part of its secret recipe. A recipe which is no longer a secret, and is also being practiced by Motorola and the upcoming Android smartphones from Nokia. Sure, the space for near stock Android phones is going to get tighter in terms of competition and I am sure OnePlus is aware of that. Not just aware, OnePlus seems to be working hard to stay as close to stock Android as possible, almost occupy the Nexus space that’s been there for the taking after Google dropped the ball on Nexus devices. And so far, OnePlus seems to be have achieved success.

Based on Android Nougat (7.1.1), Oxygen OS stays very true to the Android Nougat experience while adding a few nifty features that enhance the functioning of the device. For instance, the app drawer icon is gone, swipe up to bring the app drawer on screen, OnePlus has added translucency to the app drawer, it does sort of make the overall interface feel more connected and seamless.   

The OnePlus 5 gets a new “Reading Mode”. It essentially filters out the blue light and adjusts the sharpness and brightness of the display by using the ambient light sensor. The reading mode basically tries to simulate the reading experience delivered by e-ink readers, and it works well. Comes in handy, especially on AMOLED displays. You can either control the reading mode via display settings or program it to trigger when using specific apps. Under Advanced settings, you also get a “Gaming Do Not Disturb Mode”, quite a mouthful, that mode. But, it does come in handy when you don’t want to be disturbed by those pesky notifications and WhatsApp forwards. You can again select the apps that will trigger the DND mode automatically, saving the hassle of switching it on manually.

While the OnePlus 5 brings some nifty features, it offers a robust and bug free stock Android experience, which is more important in my book. Second only to the Google Pixel in terms of how an Android device should feel and function like. Besides Motorola, the real big threat to its “pure Android” promise will come from Nokia’s flagship Android smartphones. Nokia is said to be readying quite an arsenal and it’s been built on the same premise of “pure Android” experience. I wish Google would wake up and throw a spanner in the works by bringing back the Nexus. Whoa, that’d be the day! Yes, I miss Nexus. I still have 3 of them.

Battery life: All good, no surprises
At 3300 mAh, the battery capacity on the OnePlus 5 hasn’t changed at all, what has though is the SoC. The 10nm based Snapdragon 835 sips lesser battery juice, while running faster and cooler. All of which adds to the overall battery efficiency of the device. Moderate to occasional heavy usage will get you through the day without setting any alarm bells. In all likely hood, you’d be left with roughly 15% battery life towards the end of the day, assuming you started the day with a full charge. And, just in case you feel the need for a quick dash of extra juice, the Dash charge tech will ensure you get done with refueling in almost no time. However, OnePlus should seriously consider working on the weight and ergonomics of the charger (yeah, why not?). It’s block-like and at 105 grams, it does compete for the title of the heaviest smartphone charger in the world.

Decision time: So, should you buy the OnePlus 5?
At Rs. 38,000 for the 8GB/128GB variant, the OnePlus 5 starts nearing the flagships from Samsung and LG. And these competing flagships do sport some headline features that the OnePlus 5 misses out on. Evidently premium and differentiating bezel-less designs, high density displays, water proof certification and wireless charging, to name a few. Add the wider sales and support network along with the ability to check-out the phones to get a first-hand experience at nearest local stores, and it starts to look like a tall order for the OnePlus 5. Add the upcoming flagships on Snapdragon 835, the Moto Z and Nokia 9 (if that's what they’re calling it) to the mix, and you are looking at two very capable options from top brands that will carry a similar promise of pure Android and latest hardware. Yup, all you Android fans and enthusiasts, you’re being spoilt for choice!

For OnePlus loyalists and users, the OnePlus 5 is almost a no brainer for anyone using the OnePlus 3 (review) or an older gen OnePlus device. Just buy it, the extra premium is worth it. OnePlus 3T users should ideally wait it out for the OnePlus 6, since they’d have invested in a new smartphone barely 6 months ago.

For the rest, OnePlus 5 is the right buy if pure performance and stock Android experience clearly carries 80% of the overall weightage in terms of what you want from your next premium smartphone. If looks, modern bezel-less design, top quality camera and an exhaustive feature set is what you seek in a flagship, the OnePlus 5 will struggle to convince you.

As promised, here are a few other shots of the OnePlus 5 as well as some more camera samples.

 

LG Nexus 5X 32GB detailed review

NEXUS 5 INTRODUCTION
With smartphones launching practically every minute nowadays, it’s difficult for companies to make its phones stand out among the crowd. In such a world, when the Nexus 5X was announced, there was something about it, a reminiscence of quiet brilliance, that had me upbeat about experiencing it for myself. After all, as Google put it, this is Android the way they meant it to be.

Straight out of its neat, white packaging with the engraved ‘X’, the first thing that will strike you is the neat, no-frills build. The Nexus 5X is not one that will try to impress you with its looks. And yet, there is this lingering something that tells you that you are about to witness something epic. Here’s how my story with the Nexus 5X unfolded.

BUILD and DESIGN
The Nexus 5X is very passive in terms of looks. Neatly liveried in black, matte plastic, it is no beauty pageant, and while the Nexus logo on the back makes it stand out among the sea of other similar Androids, maybe LG could have designed it that much better.

The plastic used in the build is of very good quality, and it somewhat makes up the complete absence of any trace of metal in its build. While this does not perturb me, many others might find ‘metal’ synonymous with ‘premium flagship smartphone build’. But, try finding a single flaw in the finesse of the material used in its build, and you will find none. The Nexus 5X is light, compact, and durable enough to fall down a flight of concrete steps but not sustain even a single scratch. However, I sincerely hope that this does not encourage you to fling it down staircases. After all, isolated incidents do keep occurring. Every edge of the plastic is tucked in seamlessly with the front glass panel. The top edge houses a secondary audio receptor microphone, the SIM tray to the left, the USB C port, primary microphone and a 3.5mm audio jack at the bottom, and neatly spaced power/unlock key and volume rocker to the right.

Despite the amount of plastic, the Nexus 5X is a very well-built device

The top glass panel houses the front-facing camera, the earpiece and the regular sensor array in the upper half, while the bottom houses the speaker grille. There is a lot of space left around the 5.2-inch display – relatively broad bezels that LG might have chosen to cut down on, which would have made the device even smaller and compact. Like mentioned before, while the design is neat and uncluttered, it could have been even better. Build-wise, it is good enough. The screen is ever-so-slightly concave, something that will not affect you at all in daily usage, but is a point worth noting, anyway. You will only get to notice this if you view a reflection of a long source of light (like a fluorescent tube) on it – you will notice the slightly broadened edges of the reflected tube on the display. Keep the device on a flat surface and look at the glass surface narrowly, and you will notice it. Whether this was a deliberate decision or is simply a manufacturing incident, is not known, but devices like the iPhone 5s and the new Sony Xperia Z5 do not happen to have such a curve.

The camera is placed on a slightly raised platform

Design-wise, the raised camera platform gives a slight definition to an otherwise bland back panel. The Nexus Imprint sensor (the best fingerprint sensor that I have used till date – more on this later) is very well placed. The distinct Nexus logo is something that I am personally fond of, and I’m sure, every Nexus lover out there will agree. The Nexus 5X has neatly rounded edges – a little too rounded for my choice, but it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the device. Following the massive success of the grand old Nexus 5, what LG has given you here is a device that is simplistic in design, and built very well. The absolute absence of metallic glimmer did not bother me, and once you get to using the Nexus 5X, it will not bother you, either.

DISPLAY and UI
The 5.2-inch, IPS panel LCD display, at a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels, is just the right balance of brightness, contrast, sharpness and colour. The Nexus 5X has a bright, clear display, which also happens to be one of the most balanced displays that I have seen, of late. The whites on the Nexus 5X are marginally on the warmer side by default, and that is what made me love this display even more.

Colours produced by the display on the Nexus 5X are as true to source as it can get, and watching movies on this display is an absolute delight. There is no colour shift at very acute angles, the hues are optimum, and the colour saturation is bumped up just the right amount for you to feel the vibrancy of the red roses and the blue violets. I watched a number of short films via YouTube, streamed at Full HD resolution, and each of them looked amazing on this display.

The display is sharp, crisp and bright

The interface of Android Marshmallow is something that started defining the Nexus 5X. Swipe to your right for Google Now’s newsfeed, and the rest of the swipes are reserved for home screens. The app drawer, as has been spoken before, is now a vertical scroll (rather than the horizontal scroll that was, until now), which also shows four of your most-used applications, and a search bar. The search bar is a particularly useful addition to the Android ecosystem, and you can now simply type in what you are looking for, instead of having to swipe through pages of different apps to locate your requirement.

Simply put, the sheer fluidity and ease of Android Marshmallow makes the Nexus 5X an amazing experience. Everything is neatly arranged around you, to make your life easier. It is here that you note what Android was really meant to be – a smooth-flowing operating system with support for over 1.5 million applications of every different possible genre. With Android Marshmallow, you get more control over which applications get access to your contacts, dialer and messages, and you can simply choose to not grant access to something, if you feel that your privacy is being breached.

Viewing angles on the Nexus 5X is excellent

Additionally, the Doze mode is an excellent addition to save battery. Raise the Nexus 5X from its dormant position, and it shows you a grayscale view of the incoming notifications. This keeps your battery on reserve, and also makes operation intuitive. The only aspect that I possibly did not like on the Nexus 5X is the ambient light sensor, which was too aberrant. For the most part, I ended up manually controlling the device brightness, which is a disturbance at times. Apart from this, the Nexus 5X is a delight to use, and the excellent display coupled with the simple yet efficient Android Marshmallow massively adds to the experience.

PERFORMANCE
The Nexus 5X may not run on the beastly flagship, the octa-core Snapdragon 810, neither may it house extreme quantities of memory. In fact, its benchmark scores are lower than many other devices. But, its real life performance simply amplifies the fact that synthetic benchmarks can never emulate real life usage scenarios.

The Nexus 5X is an embodiment of performance prowess, and brings out the very best out of the Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor. Additionally, it houses ‘only’ 2GB of RAM (smartphones priced at less than half of the Nexus 5X houses more RAM nowadays). However, the efficient management of processes and applications leads to uninterrupted usage, even in hardcore games. The Adreno 418 GPU renders good graphics, and the performance is streamlined for high octane games like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to perform without glitches. Even games like Marvel: Contest of Champions, that constantly use data, work without any stutter. You can continuously edit images via applications like Google Snapseed, and performance response is excellent. With the Nexus 5X, Android is as close as it can get to seamless performance, that iOS has been renowned for. The Nexus 5X is not about the amount of RAM that it contains, or the number of cores that the processor comprises – it is all about optimising available resources to give the best possible performance, and it does so with competence of a true flagship smartphone.

"The Nexus 5X is all about optimising performance"

Call performance and quality, as expected, is as good as you will ever need. The earpiece is loud and clear, and network retention is strong, meaning that there is no aberrations in call quality, unless your network operator’s signal strength is faltering. The dialer application integrates the primary dialer, call log and contacts into a shell, meaning that you will not need to access contacts separately. Browsing and messaging on the Nexus 5X is a breeze too, and multi-application browsing and messaging here is a delight. Switch across multiple messaging applications, social media feeds, and tabs open on your browser, and the Nexus 5X still does not show any sign of faltering. Additionally, with the integration of the updated Google Photos, sharing is now easier, and even more convenient. Like stated before, the Nexus 5X optimises its available resources and content to the fullest, to bring everything nearer to you in a jiffy.

The audio from the front-firing speakers is very sub-par

The Nexus 5X integrates Qualcomm WCD9330 audio codec driver, giving excellent audio quality via headphones, although volume levels are a tad on the lower side. One negative aspect here is the barely average audio quality via the in-device speakers. The trebles are somewhat muted, leading to completely hollow bass lines and completely absent mid frequencies, meaning that the Nexus 5X is not ideal for playing songs out loud. The default speaker, at best, is good enough for loud ringtones and alarms to wake you up in the morning, but it is not one for prolonged music listening. While the audio codec is an intrinsic part of Snapdragon 810’s elements, the Nexus 5X here sticks to delivering good audio only via headphones.

Another impressive aspect of the Nexus 5X is its fingerprint sensor, the Nexus Imprint. It is, to sum up, the best fingerprint sensor that I have used till date, and this is putting the Nexus ahead of Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Apple iPhone 6s. The Nexus Imprint is the fastest and the most accurate, and apart from the only time when it took me two taps to unlock the device from sleep, it has been flawless. Google has claimed that the Nexus Imprint can unlock your device in less than 600ms, and this pretty much seems to be the truth. The Nexus 5X wakes up from Doze and unlocks itself as soon as you touch your registered finger on the metallic ring that forms the fingerprint sensor. At present, Nexus Imprint is the fastest and most accurate fingerprint sensor out there, and its ergonomic placement adds to its excellent performance.

Among all the good performance, the Nexus 5X manages to stay away from the myriad heating issues plaguing devices everywhere. Even after prolonged usage, the device does not really ‘heat up’, that is to say that while there is obviously a certain amount of heat generated owing to the processor cores working at full clock, it is not a major element to be called an ‘issue’. While I’ve been completely enamoured by the performance masterclass of the Nexus 5X, the absence of any heating issue happened to be a further encouragement to note that this, indeed, is Android at its full glory.

Attached below are referential performance graphs for benchmark score comparisons.

 

 

CAMERA
The camera application, to note first, is generally light and fast. The laser-assisted autofocus mechanism on the Nexus 5X does well to lock on to objects really fast, and shifting objects while shooting, or shooting moving objects, is particularly aided because of this. Add to that the usually fast shutter, and the Nexus 5X has one of the fastest-performing camera applications out there today.

The 11.9-megapixel Sony IMX377 image sensor renders sharp, clear images under well-lit conditions, and even in relatively dark ambience, it performs decently well, although low light imaging is clearly not its strongest aspect. In well-lit conditions, though, the Nexus 5X manages to produce distinct images with ample clarity and true-to-source colours, although high colour temperature ambience like dusk appear slightly oversaturated. Automatic exposure adjustment is also quite fast, although you might find yourself reaching out for its HDR mode, owing to the by-default restricted dynamic range of the camera.

The camera is one of the fastest in present day

It is here that the Nexus 5X falters, slightly. While the HDR mode is not exactly slow, there is a 1-2 second lag in HDR shooting, which leads to a lag time in processing the photograph. The HDR mode, however, is good in itself, and the images produced by it are worth the split-second delay. Another aspect that goes amiss in the Nexus 5X is any kind of image stabilisation, optical or electronical. While the fast shutter coupled with the efficient focusing makes the Nexus 5X ideal for shooting in situations with fast moving objects, the lack of image stabilisation means that you will find a number of blurred shots, if your hand happens to have shaken in process of capturing images, or if the object is moving too fast. Despite the device being compact and reasonably ergonomic, it is not ideal for one-handed shooting, and that led to a number of blurred images being produced.

The 5-megapixel front camera, with an f/2.0 lens, is decent, and produces pristine self portraits in well-lit conditions. In badly lit conditions, it does render a bit of noise, although the photographs taken cannot be termed ‘bad’. Additionally, it also happens to record 720p HD videos for all video calls and Dubsmash reasons. Fair enough, it seems.

The attached image gallery below will give you a fair clue of how good the camera of the Nexus 5X is.

View post on imgur.com

BATTERY REVIEW
The 2700mAh battery packs stands for good usage and standby time. In our tests, it returned a battery life of 9 hours and 6 minutes. The Nexus 5X will easily take you through an entire day of calling, messaging, browsing, streaming music, clicking photographs and about 30 minutes of light gaming, all this time being connected to WiFi, and still have about 20% charge left at the end of the day. With most of us being used to daily charge cycles, the Nexus 5X provides some additional juice for you, so that you would not hesitate to record videos at impromptu parties or navigate your way through unknown, narrow alleys. While you could have done this anyway, the Nexus 5X does all of this without any need of portable chargers. Streaming ‘Friends’ online for an hour led to a battery drop of 13%, which is quite good. In short, the Nexus 5X is all of your essentials, packed neatly into one.

BOTTOMLINE
The Nexus 5X is a delightful device. It does not overawe you with highly saturated images, power-packed specifications, or any of that. This year, the Nexus is all about taming the power, and using available resources in full glory. Priced at Rs. 31,900, the Nexus 5X beats all other similarly-priced devices like the OnePlus 2, Samsung Galaxy A8, Honor 7 and HTC One E9+, not only in terms of brilliance in performance, but also in streamlining the entire device. The Nexus 5X, truly, is Android in all of its glory.

Weston 55 inch Ultra HD 4K LED Smart TV detailed review

There are a good number of 55-inch 4K HDR TVs available in the market today. For a budget of Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000, you can get a number of TV brands offering 4K and HDR capabilities. We have brands like Xiaomi, Shinco, Kodak, TCL, iFFALCON, Cloudwalker and more fighting for your attention in this space. Each TV brings with it some distinguishing feature to offer you a bang for your buck. For example, Shinco TV has a good panel for consuming content but the Xiaomi has better smart TV capabilities, so on and so forth. Today we have with us a TV from Weston. The 55-inch variant of the is priced at Rs 59,990. This puts it in the mid-range where you can get TVs from brands like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG and more. The TV has features which we have seen on other TVs in the past. Does it deserve your attention?

Key specifications at a glance

Panel Size: 55-inches 
Panel Type: VA
Panel Resolution: 3840 x 2160 - 4K
Panel Refresh Rate: 60Hz
HDR 10 support: Yes
Dolby Vision Support: No
HDMI Ports: 3
USB Ports: 2
Bluetooth: No
Wi-Fi: Yes
Ethernet: Yes
Speakers: 2 x 8W
CPU: Cortex A53 Quad Core 1.5GHz
GPU: Mali450 Penta Core 750MHz
RAM: 1GB
Built-in storage: 8GB
OS: Android 7 (AOSP)
Price: Rs 59,990

Build and Design

The build and design of the TV are all too familiar to what we have seen in 35k to 40k price range. In fact, some design elements, like the metal feet are identical to the Shinco and Daiwa TV we tested in the recent past. The only difference is that the feet have a gunmetal grey finish. A very interesting feature about the TV is that it has two placement options for the feet at the bottom. One is the standard placement close to the two ends and the other is slightly closer. So, if your entertainment system or tabletop where you'd like to place the TV is smaller, you may just be able to fit it there because of the narrow feet placement option on the TV. 

The TV has a gunmetal grey finish on the bezels surrounding the panel giving it a premium look. It's a nice change from the black borders we have seen on so many TVs. The rear panel of the TV, however, is all black, generic and what we’ve seen in this price range. 

When kept on a tabletop, there is enough place to keep your gaming console below the TV comfortable, something that has been an issue in a lot of TVs we have reviewed recently. 

There is really nothing to complain about in the build of the TV. The gunmetal grey finish on the bezels and feet is a welcome change from the standard black and the TV has an overall functional design which is nice.

Ports and connectivity

When it comes to connectivity, the Weston 55-inch 4K TV has three HDMI ports of which one is ARC enabled. On the side, the TV has two USB ports, an SD card slot, 3.5mm port, the HDMI 3 port and an optical port. At the back, you have the antenna port, 2 HDMI ports, 2 AV ports and the ethernet port. The power cable is not user removable. On the right of the TV, you have the physical controls. The TV supports Wi-Fi but sadly, no Bluetooth. 

The connectivity options are standard with what we have seen in TVs that cost a lot less than the Weston TV. 

Display and Picture Quality

The Weston 55-inch 4K TV has a 10-bit VA panel that is made by Samsung. Thanks to the 10-bit panel, the TV boasts of 4K capabilities along with HDR 10 support. We believe the panel has a brightness of 350 nits (Weston couldn’t confirm the brightness nits to us) but in our testing, we found that the TV is ample bright for content consumption. There was one problem with the TV though. There was a lack of uniformity in backlighting and in some sequences, this is visible if you know where to look. We will talk more about this in the picture performance breakup below. Below we will highlight the performance of the TV using three types of content - 4K and HDR, 1080p and gaming content. 

4K and HDR playback

Starting with 4K and HDR content, there is a very intense slow-motion fight sequence in the Netflix show Altered Carbon Season One Episode 7. The sequence starts out with a bunch of soldiers dressed in camouflage and proceed to a well lit abandoned warehouse. The slow-motion action soon becomes a fast-paced sequence leading to a lot of bloodshed. On the TV, the performance of the sequence is clean and honestly, quite enjoyable. In some of the dark sections, the panel does get reflective but not more than what we’ve seen with competing TVs. 

The Netflix film Polar which is also in HDR has a fight sequence towards the end where Mads Mikkelsen escapes. The antagonist has a bright red suit and most of the fight takes place in a dimly lit corridor with few light sources and a lot of fast-paced action. This is where you will notice a little bit of the uneven backlighting that we spoke about. A normal viewer may not be able to notice it but if you have seen this movie on a more expensive 4K HDR TV, you will be able to tell the difference. 

1080p content

Moving over to 1080p content, we played the opening sequence of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It has a nice lush green environment and the movie streams in FHD on Netflix. For some reason, the colours looked inaccurate on the display. The greens of the leaves looked dull and the overall image looked a little soft. 

We tried to tweak the picture mode, but the lack of detailed manual controls for basic things like Brightness, Contrast, Colour, etc. left us with precious few options to tinker with. We could only change the HDR, 4K and picture preset and after much tinkering, we realized that the Vivid setting worked best for FHD and 4K HDR content. The other settings like standard made the blacks appear grey in dark sequences. 
 
In Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, another HD movie on Netflix, the motorcycle chase sequence had an interesting take on the preset colours. The skin tones of the actors looked more accurate in the Dynamic preset but the chase sequence looked more vibrant in Vivid. The Standard mode, in this case, is the one to go for as it tries to maintain the natural skin colour along without making the desert and highway look slightly vivid. It essentially ensures colours don’t pop too much. 

Gaming

When it comes to gaming, we played Doom in 4K SDR and Gears of War 4 for 4K HDR evaluation. In Doom, for indoors sequences, the visuals of the game look detailed and the grey and silver interiors mixed with the demonic presence is immersive. The outdoors look a little oversaturated even when shifting to the Standard preset and it was in the soft preset that the wastelands of Doom looked playable. However, move to the indoors, and you will have to change to the standard preset to enjoy the game. 

Gears of War, on the other hand, is best played in the Vivid preset. The game gives you the option to see how it looks in HDR and SDR in split screen and there are some sequences where the SDR performance makes the image look brighter and somewhere the HDR brings with it more details. Since the game has some sequences set in the dark, it is one where you will notice the uneven LED backlighting as well

Audio

This is where things get a little interesting. The Flipkart listing page for the TV says that the TV has 20W audio output but the official website says that the TV has 2 x 12W speakers (24W Output). So which one is correct? Well, we reached out to Weston and they told us that “The TV has speakers 2 x 12W and audio output is 2 x 8W. It’s a marketing gimmick.” So we know that the TV has an overall of 16W output similar to what we saw on the Mi TV 4 (read our review here). It is bewildering why the company wouldn't go for the full 2 X 10W output considering that's the industry standard for these TVs and the TV isn't slim like the Mi TV so space clearly isn't an issue.

The speakers are down firing, standard to what we’ve seen on other TVs. They get the job done if you will watch News or TV shows like Young Sheldon where the vocals are more pronounced. But switch to shows like Altered Carbon or movies like Mission Impossible, then you will feel the need for a soundbar at the least. When it comes to movies, not one preset worked well. In Altered Carbon, the dialogue sounded slightly muffled and sequences, where there was a sombre tune, was completely missed out on. Even the bangs and thuds of weapons and explosions in movies lacked bass. 

If you will use this TV to watch regular TV first and the occasional movie, you should be fine. But for an immersive movie viewing experience, you need to invest in a pair of speakers or a soundbar

UI & Remote ccontrol

The Weston 55-inch 4K TV runs on Android 7 out of the box but this isn’t an Android TV. Here’s the thing - Android TV as the name suggests, allows apps to take advantage of the TV's screen and form factor. AOSP, on the other hand,  makes the content look bad on a big screen since it is running only mobile apps. Sadly, the Weston TV runs on AOSP and brings with it similar problems we’ve seen in the past. One more thing to note is that the UI is the same that we saw on the Shinco 55-inch TV. Place the two TVs side by side and hide the logo and you’d be hard pressed to identify one from the other. Identical twins with the UI is the best way to describe them. 

The AOSP UI on the Weston TV, streaming apps like Netflix and Prime Videos are only able to run their mobile versions and not the proper Android TV version. This makes navigating the UI of the app more cumbersome and also reduces the quality of the content playback. At least on the remote control of the Shinco TV, you get a QWERTY keyboard on the remote control, but here, you don't get that and are left with a frustrating navigation experience. 

Overall, the UI is the weakest aspect of the TV. To make the most of it, you should use it with a 4K capable streaming stick.

Remote Control

The remote control of the TV has an all too familiar form factor and design. It looks a lot like the Kodak 50-inch TV's remote we reviewed earlier and you can check out our review here. It has a traditional rectangular design with some smart functions right on top, the number pad below it, navigation and settings in the middle and playback controls at the bottom. The buttons on the remote control are rubbery and clicky and the power button lights up every time you hit any button on the remote. There is little to say about the remote apart from the fact that it is functional, needs to be pointed directly at the TV, has a traditional layout and gets the job done. There is a “mouse” control as well on the remote control and this is a God seed for navigating the UI at times but unlike the Daiwa or Shinco TV we reviewed, it doesn't work like a want. You have to use the directional buttons to control it and that is a bummer.

Bottom Line

The Shinco 55-inch 4K HDR TV with the same UI, front firing speakers and a good 4K HDR display is priced at Rs 36,990. The Weston brings with all the same features and is priced at Rs 59,990. So I wonder why would someone pay Rs 23,000 more for a homogenous product. For around 35k, you can get TVs from brands like TCL, iFFALCON, Xiaomi, Thomson and more. So if the screen size is something you want, you can get similar performance from a much cheaper TV like the Shinco 55-inch 4K HDR TV we reviewed earlier. You could use the extra cash to get a 4K streaming stick like the Fire TV stick 4K to enjoy a better smart TV experience and even a soundbar to enhance the audio from the TV. Under 60k you can get 50-inch 4K TVs from the likes of LG, Panasonic, Samsung and more, bringing you a better panel. In short, there are better value for money TVs to choose at the 60k price point.