[Review] Panasonic Eluga Ray X; Rough And Tough All Day Running Smartphone

As a regular reader of GadgetGuide4U, in past, we share the information with you that Panasonic has launched the two new smartphone – Eluga Ray X & Eluga Ray Max in India. Both the smartphone available on Flipkart starting from April 17th, 2017. Last week we received the smartphone and based on the usage, shared the first impressions with you. Now after using the smartphone for over 7 days, sharing a detailed review of the smartphone with you. Before starting the detailed review, I would like to share that the smartphone comes with an AI-based virtual assistant – Arbo. As of now, the Arbo is now available but later on, it will be rolled out via OTA update. Now, after a wait, let’s see how the smartphone plays in real life.

Inside Panasonic Eluga Ray X Box (Box Contents)

• Panasonic Eluga Ray X Handset
• Charger
• Data Cable
• 3.5 mm Headphone
• User Guide
• Warranty Card
• Screen Guard

Image Gallery:

Build Quality and Design:

Talking about the build quality, the smartphone sports a metal curved body and offers a firm grip. It measures 153.4 x 77 x 10.5mm and weighs 193 grams including the battery.

On the design front, the smartphone offers a premium feel and looks impressive. The smartphone has rounded edges and curved rear panels which offer a good grip, as said above. On the right-hand side, you’ll find volume rockers and power button. Removing the back panel gives you access to the dual-SIM card slot, microSD card slot, and non-removable 4000mAh battery.

On the front, there is a 5.5-inch display, above the display, you will find 5-megapixel front camera with LED flash, speaker grille and below the display, you will find fingerprint sensor that is embedded into the home button. There are on-screen navigation keys.

On the rear side, there is a 13MP rear camera with LED flash, a mic, Panasonic branding, and speaker.

At the top, you will find 3.5mm headphone jack while at the bottom you will find charging port.

Display:

The smartphone features 5.5-inch HD 2.5D curved glass IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen which is capable of displaying 16.7M colors at ~267 ppi Pixel Density. The display resolution of this smartphone is 1280 x 720 pixels and to protect it from scratches it comes with 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The display of this phone has pretty good viewing angles and you really like watching multimedia content on this smartphone.

Hardware:

Under the hood, the smartphone is powered by 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6737 processor which is paired with Mali-T720 GPU. The processor is good enough for multitasking and switching between the apps. In addition to this, you can play high-end games on this phone but for a shorter duration. The smartphone comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage which can be expanded further via microSD card. For your information, the smartphone comes with a dedicated microSD card slot to expand the memory up to 128GB.

Audio and Video:

The Panasonic Eluga Ray X smartphone supports major audio formats like WAV, AAC, AMR, MP3, WMA, MIDI, FLAC, OGG, AAC+, eAAC+, AVI and video formats 3GP, MP4, FLV, WMV, XviD, AVI, DivX, MKV, H.264, H.263. The smartphone has 3.5mm headphone jack and supports Stereo FM Radio along with FM Recording feature.

Operating System:

The smartphone runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system out of the box and if you want to run a newer version of OS, then you can upgrade the firmware too. When compared with Chinese smartphones, the Panasonic Eluga Ray X doesn’t have a customized skin & bloatware.

The main highlight of the smartphone is that it comes with AI-powered virtual assistant Arbo. Arbo understands your behaviour and learns from your daily activities. If you do not like it, you can deactivate it. Sadly, no Arbo is present in my test unit and it will be available via OTA update later. The Panasonic Arbo virtual assistant will compete with Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana and the recently launched Samsung Bixby.

Camera:

The Panasonic Eluga Ray X comes with 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and the photo output that comes at 13MP is of 4128 x 3096 pixels resolution in size. In addition to this, there is a 5-megapixel selfie camera that comes with flash, which is another cool thing. The camera comes with several features such as Autofocus, touch focus, self-timer, face detection, smile detection, burst mode, face beauty, voice capture, gesture shot, panorama, HDR, professional, nightstand more. Talking about the rear-camera, it has a powerful 4X digital zoom that helps us to focus on objects pretty easy and the clicked photo includes the information like date tagging and GPS based Geo Tagging. Video Recording at 720P 30FPS quality.

During my usage, captured few images with Normal mode and the results are quite impressive which you can see below.

Connectivity:

The Panasonic Eluga Ray X has dedicated dual-SIM card slot and microSD card slot at the back. The smartphone supports all GSM based network providers like it supports 2G Band Frequency at GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, High-Speed 3G Network Band at HSDPA 900, HSDPA 21000, and the smartphone also support LTE-based 4G Networks support at Frequency level LTE 1800, LTE 850, LTE 2300.

The smartphone has standard connectivity features like 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth v4.2, GPS/ A-GPS, FM radio with RDS, and Micro-USB with OTG support. The smartphone has all the necessary sensors like proximity sensor, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, barometer, and gyroscope. The smartphone supports messaging features like SMS, MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, Hangouts.

The call quality (both incoming and outgoing) on this phone is pretty good and it has good audio output too.

Fingerprint Sensor:

The smartphone comes with the fingerprint sensor that is embedded into the home button and it helps you to unlock the smartphone in no time.

Battery:

The smartphone packs 4,000mAh non-removable battery and last for more than a day, rest depends on your usage. The device has the power to playback music up to 28 hrs through standard Media Player able to play videos up to 7 hrs.

Verdict:

Overall, the Panasonic Eluga Ray X is value for money smartphone. It has everything that you are looking into a mid-range or high-end smartphone. The smartphone has 4000mAh battery, front camera with flash, stock Android experience and above all, it comes with Arbo, available sooner via OTA update.