Lava Blaze X 5G: Can It Hold Its Ground Against a New Competitor?

The Lava Blaze series has seen a couple of decent additions in the recent past and while continuing that trend, Lava introduced the Blaze X 5G smartphone in July. To find out whether it’s worth the starting price of Rs 14,999, we used the Lava Blaze X for over three weeks with our observations mentioned below.

Design & Display

The Lava Blaze X sports a huge circular camera array on the back that protrudes quite a bit. However, it does look appealing and doesn’t hamper the in-hand feel. Talking of the feel, the device is made of all plastic, from the frame to the back panel and you’d definitely know it’s plastic once you hold the device.

Fortunately, the back panel is given a matte finish that helps subside the cheapness one might feel while holding devices that are in the budget segment. Because of the plastic build, the device is lightweight and as the rear panel is also curved like the front display, you get a good grip in the hand. Lava also offers a transparent TPU case inside the box itself, and that’s a welcome move where players like CMF aren’t even given a charger in the box.

The buttons on the right feel fine when clicked, while the in-display fingerprint sensor is slightly slow but works as it should in terms of accuracy. The single-bottom firing speaker is nothing extraordinary when it comes to sound but cannot be complained about due to the device’s price point. The loudness and sound quality match the phone’s price point, and that’s low. However, it’s still enough for ringtones and notification sounds.

While the design is a subjective choice, the CMF Phone 1 has a better build quality, especially the models with a leather-finish back panel. 

The display on the front is a 6.67-inch FHD+ screen with a 120 Hz Refresh Rate. The display comes with 1.07 billion colour depth and supports HDR. It can reach up to 800 nits peak brightness and has 394 PPI.

For the price, I’d say this is an excellent panel, especially for those who like curved screens. It’s sharp, vibrant, bright enough outdoors, responsive, and smooth. The viewing angles are also impressive. The display is more than likable in this price segment with only one minor flaw: the glitchy auto-brightness feature, which doesn’t aptly adjust the brightness level indoors and makes the panel too dark.

Software & Performance

The Lava Blaze X 5G is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 6300 SoC, coupled with up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.2 onboard storage. It runs on Android 14 OS out of the box.

The Blaze X 5G runs decently in daily use but doesn’t come without its drawbacks. For obvious reasons, you cannot expect it to handle demanding tasks easily but even in regular use, such as while opening apps like WhatsApp, YouTube, Chrome, etc., I could see choppy animations and lags across the system.

The device did receive an update that contained fixes for the lag issues and improved fingerprint detection accuracy. Fortunately, it improved things overall, but I still encountered occasional lags in certain situations, such as opening Settings from the Quick Settings shade.

As for features, Lava has added ones that are essential, such as flip to silence, smart answer for calls, App cloning, double tap to wake or lock screen, side app bar, anti-theft alarm, smart touch, and anti-peeping. All these features work well and don’t really feel unnecessary or out of place.

On the 8GB RAM model we got, one can expand RAM virtually up to another 8 gigs. RAM management was fine for the most part on Blaze X. There’s another feature related to performance improvement called DuraSpeed that can help restrict background apps and boost foreground apps for better performance. You also do not get a lot of bloatware, which is also something to appreciate. Apps like Sound Recorder, FM radio, Outdoor toolbox, Game Booster, and Lava Care are the only ones preinstalled apart from Google Apps.

For customization, you get options like a bunch of Always-on display styles, EDGE lighting, lock screen clock styles, and various charging and fingerprint animations. However, despite being a feature made available in stock Android, you do not get wallpaper-based coloured themes for the system.

In comparison to its major competitor, the CMF Phone 1, the Lava Blaze X lacks not only software but also performance. The CMF Phone 1 performs much better in all scenarios and offers a much more polished software experience. 

The Lava Blaze X got the June 2024 security patch after an OTA update. For comparison, the CMF Phone 1 is running the latest August 2024 security patch. Connectivity performance of the handset remained decent.

At its price, the Lava Blaze X offers a ton of features but lacks proper optimization for smooth performance. We hope Lava will fix this further with more software updates.

Battery backup

The 5000mAh battery in the Lava Blaze X 5G easily lasted more than a day, and my usage pattern included social media browsing, watching YouTube videos, scrolling Reels, and chatting on WhatsApp. The device can further provide a screen-on time of 7 to 8 hours. However, with power-heavy tasks, such as navigation, AOD enabled, etc., the battery can drain a bit quicker.

The Lava Blaze X took about 1 hour 15 minutes to charge from 8% to 100% at full 33 watt speeds. Considering the competition, you do get faster speeds on some devices, but there isn’t a drastic difference.

Cameras

For optics, the Lava Blaze X 5G packs a dual rear camera unit, headlined by a 64-megapixel Sony primary lens, accompanied by 2-megapixel macro sensor. For selfies, it features a 16-megapixel sensor at the front.

The main sensor shoots detailed photos that are also usable on social media but with inconsistent colours. While they looked faded at times, turning on the AI in the camera helped to some extent, as it would boost the colours based on the scene being shot, such as Greenery, which would have a more vibrant green colour. Overall, the camera retained a natural colour tone for photos, but the dynamic range was on the poor side.

The macro sensor then clicks average shots, both in terms of sharpness and colour. It’s basically a sensor present for its own sake, and it is quite forgettable.

Portrait shots had impressive edge detection and detailing, even if you zoomed into the shot after shooting. The colours were good, and the overall shot was impressive, too.

Selfies were a major issue with the Lava Blaze X. The photos lacked clarity, and the skin tones appeared pink, which was far from natural. The background would often get overexposed due to poor dynamic range. The selfies from the device were quite disappointing.

Indoor shots were good with detailing, but again, the phone could not handle a bright background and would blow it out.

In low-lighting shots, the camera completely fails, making the shots barely usable if you happen to use the device in such a scenario. The shots lack detailing and noise, and the device struggles to focus on the subject, too.

When turning on night mode, the exposure in such conditions gets better, but the mode does nothing to detail the issues and the noise these photos have.