Friends+Design
- Very good build quality, water repellent design
- The metal body feels sturdy to hold and offers a premium feel and a soft touch
- 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass spread across the front edges looks neat
- The K8 Note is also fairly easy to use with just one hand - its rounded edges make it fit well in a palm
- Lenovo has also used an anti-fingerprint coating on the screen which means you shouldn't have to bother cleaning it very often
- The left panel has a dedicated "Music key" which is customisable for any purpose - playing/ pausing audio or video, toggling the flashlight, launching the camera, taking a screenshot, or opening a specific app
- A little bit on the heavy side at 180g (versus 165g for the Redmi Note 4, which is its top competitor)
Display
- Nice, crisp, bright display - viewing angles are good and sunlight legibility is not an issue - good for watching videos and playing games
- The phone also has TheaterMax VR support which was initially introduced with the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note - it works well and lets you enjoy media on a virtual large screen, with a 100-degree field of view and a cinema-like feel
Software
- With the Lenovo K8 Note, the company is also switching to a stock Android experience, ditching Lenevo's Vibe Pure UI entirely - it's a welcome move - both in terms of making the UI simple, and making the future software update cycle faster
- The interface is also slick, and fluid, and you won't feel the device stuttering even when many apps are running - gaming too is smooth, and even heavy games are handled well - benchmark scores are right at the top too for this price bracket
Performance
- Tends to get a little warm - when you are continuously using the camera app, or GPS, or when gaming
Camera
- The dual camera setup at the rear works fairly well - there's a 13-megapixel primary sensor and a 5-megapixel depth sensor for creating a bokeh effect
- Images have good details and natural colours with low noise - the camera is quick to lock focus on a subject, and landscapes and macros are decent too
- The front 13-megapixel camera too is pretty decent, is able to capture colour tones and details well enough, and has its own LED flash
- While the camera is good in daylight, low-light shots tended to have a lot of noise, and the low-light camera results leave a lot to be desired
Audio
- Decent speaker along with the Dolby Atmos app that can be used to tweak audio options
- Decent call quality
Battery
- Good battery life with a 4000mAh battery - lasts a whole day even with heavy use
- Also supports fast charging (about 20 minutes to go from 0 to 40%)
- Battery life is good but not the best in the segment - falling short of what the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 delivers in terms of battery performance
More
- On the whole, the K8 Note is one of the better looking phones in its category, and pretty similar to the well-designed Xiaomi Redmi Note 4
- Has dedicated dual SIM slots (instead of the hybrid setup in lot of the recent phones) which is always a good thing
