Lenovo Vibe Shot review: Shoot to thrill

Display

The Lenovo Vibe Shot comes with an impressive IPS LCD. It's not impressive for its size or resolution - 5" 1080p is pretty common in the midrange - but the image quality is better than expected. The colors pop, the contrast is huge, viewing angles are as wide as it gets.

We actually had to double-check that it's not an AMOLED unit. The reason is the surprisingly high contrast - we measured it at over 1,700:1. At maximum brightness whites topped 500nits while the black levels remained pleasingly low. Bringing the brightness slider lower makes for even darker blacks though the contrast becomes slightly lower (still an excellent 1,300:1 at 50% brightness).

The maximum brightness level can go even higher (629nits) in the Super bright mode, which however should be activated manually.

The default color setup isn't very accurate (with an average deltaE of 5.6) and even our best attempts of tweaking the available screen temperature controls didn't get it perfect, though we achieved a much better average deltaE of 3.9 with a warmer setting than the default and this sort of a result is almost perfect. This improvement in color rendition, however, comes at the expense of a hit in the maximum brightness (470nits).

At any rate, the colors are rich and the high contrast makes viewing photos on the Vibe Shot screen a pleasure.

The high contrast and high maximum brightness brought the sunlight legibility to an excellent 3.1, which is Super AMOLED or iPhone territory. Great job, Lenovo.

Sunlight contrast ratio

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  4.615
• HTC One A9
  4.274
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  4.124
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  4.124
• Samsung Galaxy Note5
  4.09
• OnePlus X
  3.983
• Oppo R7s
  3.964
• Samsung Galaxy J7 outdoor
  3.879
• Samsung Galaxy J2 outdoor
  3.873
• Samsung Galaxy A8
  3.859
• Apple iPhone 6
  3.838
• Microsoft Lumia 950XL
  3.837
• Motorola Moto X (2014)
  3.816
• Apple iPhone 6s
  3.783
• Meizu Pro 5
  3.781
• Vivo X5Pro
  3.706
• BlackBerry Priv
  3.645
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  3.53
• Microsoft Lumia 950
  3.512
• Oppo R7 Plus
  3.499
• Samsung Galaxy J7
  3.422
• Meizu MX5
  3.416
• Oppo R7
  3.32
• Samsung Galaxy J2
  3.235
• Motorola Moto X Play
  3.222
• Lenovo Vibe Shot
  3.113
• LG Nexus 5X
  3.092
• Huawei Mate S
  3.073
• Microsoft Lumia 640 XL
  3.065
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  3.023
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.97
• HTC One S
  2.901
• Sony Xperia Z5
  2.876
• Microsoft Lumia 550
  2.851
• Sony Xperia Z5 compact
  2.784
• LG V10
  2.744
• Sony Xperia M5
  2.69
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  2.641
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  2.574
• Microsoft Lumia 640
  2.563
• Motorola Moto G 4G
  2.546
• Sony Xperia Z5 Premium
  2.525
• HTC One
  2.504
• Sony Xperia M4 Aqua
  2.503
• Motorola Moto G
  2.477
• Huawei G8
  2.471
• Sony Xperia Z
  2.462
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  2.424
• Huawei Honor 7
  2.406
• ZUK Z1 by Lenovo
  2.382
• HTC One E9+
  2.305
• Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
  2.253
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3
  2.249
• Sony Xperia C4 Dual
  2.235
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  2.233
• LG Nexus 5
  2.228
• Huawei P8
  2.196
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  2.166
• OnePlus Two
  2.165
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Archos 50 Diamond
  2.134
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  2.119
• Huawei P8lite
  2.078
• Moto G 3rd gen max manual
  2.026
• Sony Xperia E4g
  1.972
• OnePlus One
  1.961
• BlackBerry Leap
  1.892
• Meizu m2 note
  1.892
• HTC Butterfly
  1.873
• ZTE Nubia Z9 mini
  1.759
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• Asus Zenfone Selfie
  1.68
• Motorola Moto E (2nd Gen)
  1.675
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  1.659
• Motorola Moto E
  1.545
• Sony Xperia M
  1.473
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  1.311
• Sony Xperia C
  1.283
• Meizu MX
  1.221

As we already mentioned, you can tweak the default image settings, you can manually adjust the tone (cool-warm) and the saturation (pastel-bright). Comfort mode strongly reduces blue light to help you sleep while Super bright mode to help visibility. Smart brightness detects bright light environments and gives the screen an extra push.

The Super bright mode boosts the white brightness to 630nits though the contrast dips to around 1,300:1 again. Still, on very sunny days this mode can help you get a much clearer picture.

Connectivity

The Lenovo Vibe Shot is a dual-SIM phone with dual-standby. The chipset supports 4G LTE up to Cat. 4 (150Mbps down, 50Mbps up) and 3G HSPA+ (42Mpbs down, 5.76Mbps up). The microSIM cards have their own tray, so you don't have to go without a microSD card should you choose to use two SIM cards.

Locally, you have dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (no 802.11ac) and Bluetooth 4.1 with A2DP. There's no NFC though.

The microUSB 2.0 port supports USB On-The-Go, so you can plug in USB gadgets. Many thumb drives already come with a microUSB plug on one end. There's no word on wired TV-out, but Google's Cast protocol is fully supported.

Battery life

The Lenovo Vibe Shot packs a 3,000mAh Li-Po battery that is sealed inside the chassis. That capacity is pretty good for the 5" class and the modern Snapdragon 615 chipset should offer good performance.

The Vibe Shot has extensive power-saving features. The basic battery saver can turn on automatically at 15% or 5%, you can also limit which apps are allowed to run in the background. Then there's the Ultimate Power Saver mode, which is even stricter and can be enabled for a given time period (e.g. overnight).

An interesting option allows you to limit the power consumption of the screen and the GPU.

The final score, however, isn't that great - the Vibe Shot managed 54 hour endurance rating with one SIM and 52h with both SIM slots occupied. The big issue proved to be the video playback - it stopped short of 6 hours, which is quite low. The 8 hour web browsing time is good (though behind the leaders), same goes for the 16 hour talk time.