Looks like the phablet is the flavor of the season, with its gorgeously huge screen, and consumers are getting more options to choose from. Now it’s not always been a great idea (remember the case of the unfortunate Dell Streak), but with the success of Samsung’s Galaxy Note devices, every manufacturer wants to jump on the phablet bandwagon. The latest entry in this range is the Zync Cloud Z5, and its biggest USP has got to be its price tag. But, for its low cost, does it compromise on quality?
Looks: At first glance, it does resemble the very first Samsung Galaxy Note, the N7000, which we guess is a good thing. With a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen and one physical button, we like its minimalistic front. The rear of this device sports a matte-textured black finish, giving it a solid and strong look.
On the inside: The Zync Cloud Z5 has a 5-inch TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480X800 pixels. We would have loved the screen to have a better resolution, but at Rs 9,000, it’s a lot more than we could have bargained for. Powered by a single-core 1 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM, it isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but manages to run apps pretty well. The Zync Cloud C5 comes with Android ICS and gives a pure vanilla experience of the OS with no customized skin overlays.
It has 4 GB of internal storage space, which can be further expanded thanks to the microSD card slot. It is fitted with an 8 MP camera on the rear with an LED flash, and a 0.3 MP front-facing camera for making video calls. A 2500 mAh battery gives this device about 5 hours of continuous video playback, so it can last an entire day on a single charge quite comfortably. The best part about the Zync Cloud C5 is that it can fit in two SIM cards.
Performance: Even though the resolution does seem on the lower side, this phablet managed to reproduce color quite well on its 5-inch screen. SD video files too played comfortably. But for some reason, it was unable to play HD videos, even those at 720p resolution. The sound could have had a little better finish as music played in the maximum volume came out loud, but noisy.
It does manage to be your work/fun companion, quite like the Galaxy Note, but of course, the quality just isn’t the same – obviously. However, if you’re low on budget, but still looking for a phablet experience, the Zync Cloud C5 does handle browsing, gaming, watching videos, working on documents, all quite well.
