Nokia 5.1 Plus review: Sweet blend of price, performance and looks
It was in 2017 when the first Nokia branded phones from the stables of HMD Global started to flood the Indian markets. Back then, Nokia was nothing more than a forgotten giant, tentatively attempting to find its feet in the world's second-biggest market for smartphones.
Over the next few months, it launched a few more smartphones – many of which were received quite positively by the buyers. But it wasn't until the end of February 2018 that the company really started to make its presence felt.
In the Nokia 7 Plus, Nokia 6 (2018) and the Nokia 8 Sirocco, the Finnish conglomerate announced three phones that paired above-par hardware with stock Android for the promise of buttery smooth performance. Of the three, the 8 Sirocco as a special edition phone even attempted to set a benchmark for design and looks for the industry to follow.
Though the phone failed to really set the market on fire, its curved glass and steel design helped set itself apart from its siblings – the Nokia 6 and 7 Plus – and create a clear distinction between HMD Global's lineup of phones. On the one hand, you had the premium (read: expensive) sleek glass and metal 8 Sirocco, while on the other, every other HMD Global created budget Nokia smartphone machined out of a metal slab built to fight the daily grind.
But it appears market realities have pushed Nokia into a rethink and forced it to bring with the 5.1 Plus and 6.1 Plus with the polished 8 Sirocco design DNA to price points that target the masses.
As we have explained earlier in our review of the 6.1 Plus, it is a really good phone that brings premium looks at an affordable price of Rs 15,999. However, its biggest flaw is the competition it faces in the particular price segment.
Although a great smartphone in its own right, the competition from the likes of Redmi Note 5 Pro, Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 and Xiaomi's Android One offering, Mi A2, end up making the 6.1 Plus look like not so convincing a buy.
However, these are problems Nokia's 5.1 Plus cleverly sidesteps with its much more attractive price tag of Rs 10,999.
But what’s interesting is that it does so without compromising on the build quality, looks and even the performance.
Design and display
In terms of design, the 5.1 Plus brings to the table a glass and metal design which features a 5.8-inch edge-to-edge display on the front. Even though it looks the same as the 6.1 Plus on the first look, there are marked differences here.
For instance, the notch here is much wider, and the highest resolution the 5.1 Plus’ display can render is HD+ (720x1520) as opposed to Full HD+ on the 6.1 Plus. But apart from the lack of pixels, the display on the phone excels every other step of the way.
The display is plenty bright and the viewing angles here are quite good too. However, as opposed to the 6.1 Plus, the panel here is calibrated for cooler tones, and the colours as such don’t pop as much. Having said that, these are not crippling flaws and as such, are more than expected from a device in the price range.
Apart from this, the design is pleasant in look and feel, and with the phone coming in at 151gms, the device feels light to use and carry. The back panel, which is heavily inspired by the 8 Sirocco, also houses a vertically placed dual camera setup and a round fingerprint scanner which affords the phone a touch of premium.
The phone’s aluminium frame houses power and volume buttons on the right. The hybrid SIM card tray is on the left, while the USB-Type-C charging port as well as the mono speaker are at the bottom. The device also comes with the 3.5mm headphone jack that is placed at the top of the device.
Performance and specifications
Another major point of difference between the Nokia 6.1 Plus and the more affordable 5.1 Plus is Nokia’s choice of SoC for the devices.
While the former was more conventional in this regard and sported a Snapdragon 636 SoC, the 5.1 Plus goes down a slightly less traversed path and comes packing a MediaTek Helio P60 SoC, paired with 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM running at 1800Mhz and 32GB of flash storage.
On paper, this setup may not inspire much confidence — but the fact remains that the P60 is one of the better mid-range chipsets available in the market that offers a pretty good balance between performance and power efficiency.
This processor, which made its official debut at MWC 2018 and was created using a 12nm FinFet process powers a number of more expensive phones by Oppo, Vivo and Realme, and employs a cluster of 4x Cortex A73 'performance' cores and 4x Cortex A53 'efficiency' cores running at 2.0GHz.
This essentially means that the phone turns out to be more than capable of handling most tasks you throw at it, as multi-tasking and day to day tasks are efficiently handled by the 5.1 Plus without breaking a sweat.
During our time reviewing the device, we were pleasantly surprised with the performance output – which, to be honest, was also down to the fact that the SoC on board has been paired with a bloatware free copy of stock Android (8.1 Oreo promised to be upgraded to Pie in the coming weeks).
Graphics intensive tasks, however, proved to be a different beast as the 5.1 Plus proved to be average at it.
The Mali G-72 MP3 GPU on board in our time with the phone proved to be good for casual gaming — but started to show signs of stress when faced with demanding titles such as PUBG or Tekken Mobile, for that matter. The performance here ranged between satisfactory to below par, depending on the image being rendered on screen.
But again, in terms of the price that’s being asked for it, there isn’t much to complain about here.
Camera
As far as the cameras go, the Nokia 5.1 Plus’ camera set-up does enough to justify its place on the phone.
The set-up is comprised of two lenses – a 13-megapixel primary sensor with PDAF and f/2.0 aperture and a 5-megapixel secondary sensor for depth of field photos – which, more or less, bring with them the same problems that we faced with the 6.1 Plus.
Though shots clicked under adequate light impressed with their colour reproduction and detail, it was again low light shots that disappointed as they more often than not turned out to be a little too grainy and lacking colour accuracy for our taste.
However, this is a problem not specific to 5.1 Plus and is an issue that pretty much all Nokia devices this year have faced.
Battery
Now, this is one area where the 5.1 Plus definitely excels.
And understandably so.
The battery on board is the same 3060Mah pack that was seen on the 6.1 Plus. However, since it’s paired with the 12nm P60 Helio, stock Android and an energy-efficient HD+ panel, the phone manages to provide above par battery life.
We easily got more than a day’s usage on a single charge and the standby time too proved to be really great. Overall, apart from putting in a bigger battery pack for improving numbers on synthetic benchmarks, there isn’t anything more that Nokia could have done here for the average power/moderate user.
Should you buy it?
We vote for yes.
The fact of the matter is at the price point, the Nokia 5.1 Plus is one of the more rounded devices currently available in the market, and is also faced with very little real competition.
Granted, there are big names like the Redmi 6, 6 Pro and Realme in the mix here. Yet, none of these devices offer the all-around package that the 5.1 Plus does, and none of them can definitely match the looks of the device that HMD Global has created.
The 5.1 Plus brings to the table a sweet blend of looks and performance in a price bracket dominated by similar looking phones that, at best, only impress with the performance they offer.
And that’s where it takes a march ahead of the competition.