Lava Blaze X One-Month Review: A Surprisingly Good Budget Smartphone with Some Tough Competition

There is one company that is, quietly behind the scenes, becoming a powerhouse in the budget segment. Yes, it’s coming up against some big competition, but it’s improving its products year-on-year and creating fuss-free smartphones with clean software.

I’ve been using the Blaze X, a smartphone with a good combination of software and hardware, from the Indian multinational technology company Lava. The company recently completed 15 years of existence and, after many sluggish years, is seeing a resurgence of sorts.

The Lava Blaze X, at Rs 14,999, goes up directly against the CMF Phone 1 by Nothing, the Redmi 13 5G, and a few other smartphones from the likes of Motorola and Realme.

Also read: Vivo V40 Pro review: The best mid-range smartphone for its camera chops?

What is the Lava Blaze X?

The Blaze X has the segment’s first curved AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. That’s a bold move for the company. But yes, the Blaze X is packed to the brim with top-notch specifications for this segment.

Front and centre is the gorgeous 6.67-inch Full HD+ curved AMOLED screen. It has a 2400x1080 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and 800 nits of peak brightness.

The MediaTek Dimensity 6300 SoC powers the Blaze X. It comes with up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM (with 8GB of virtual RAM) and 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage.

It comes with stock-like Android OS and is based on Android 14. The company promises one OS upgrade and two years of security updates. There’s an in-display fingerprint sensor and a Dual SIM slot. Yes, this is a 5G smartphone. There’s a 5,000mAh battery with 33W fast charging.

The smartphone comes in at 8.45mm thick and weighs just 183g.

As for the camera specifications, the Blaze X packs a 64MP main camera, a 2MP secondary camera and a 16MP front-facing camera.

The smartphone comes in Starlight Purple and Titanium Grey colourways.

Yes, the Lava Blaze X will surprise you

It’s been a month since I unboxed the Blaze X, and I’m still surprised to date as to how good of a performer it is. Frankly, I’ve rarely been bullish on Lava, as they haven’t had any products of note recently.

The Blaze X has an unassuming, minimalistic and quite refined design. The rear panel has a matte finish with curved edges. The curved edges help elevate the grip levels of the smartphones. It’s comfortable and relatively lightweight. There is a huge circular camera module on the rear of the smartphone, and frankly, it does nothing to add to the design.

Still, that isn’t taking away from how good the smartphone feels. But, nothing matters if the display, the part of the smartphone you’ll be interacting with the most, fails to get even the basics right. I’m happy to report that after binge-ing on the Olympics, cricket matches, and random YouTube videos, the 6.67-inch 3D curved AMOLED display is the star of the show here. It’s got vibrant and punchy colours, deep blacks, smooth animations and is good even under direct sunlight.

The 6.67-inch 3D curved AMOLED display may be one of this segment's best. It has an FHD+ resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and 800 nits peak brightness. With punchy colours and smooth scrolling, the display is a winner. Take it outside and legibility isn’t a problem. There’s an in-display fingerprint sensor that works as advertised.

Are the cameras any good?

Frankly, the answer is a mixed bag. The dual rear camera setup - 64MP primary camera and 2MP macro camera - works decently in good daylight scenarios but falls flat when the light isn’t favourable. That’s the best I can say about it.

There’s a decent amount of detail in daylight shots, Some of the photos are oversaturated. Portraits are just about okay for Instagram but nothing else.

Sadly, the Blaze X falls behind its rivals - Redmi 13 5G and CMF Phone 1 - in the camera department.

How’s the performance and software?

This isn’t a gaming smartphone. Neither is this a smartphone to push to its limits. The Dimensity 6300 chip from MediaTek, along with 8GB of RAM, is good for daily tasks. YouTube, WhatsApp, and Google Chrome, work like a charm. The rest? Don’t even bother. It’s great for the price point, and that’s it.

The good thing is that the Blaze X is faster than the Redmi 13 5G. For instance, with the Redmi 13 5G, I noticed a crazy amount of lag with just 5-10 Google Chrome tabs open. That wasn’t the case with the Blaze X. Thankfully, there is stock Android (based on Android 14) for a clean and bloatware-free experience. The only drawback is the single OS upgrade and 2 years of security updates that Lava has promised.

How’s the battery?

Thanks to a 5,000mAh battery, and a smartphone that can’t be pushed to the limits, I got over 8 hours of screen-on-time (SoT) which is pretty good. There is support for 33W fast charging, and in just 90 minutes the smartphone can be completely juiced from 0-100 percent.

Verdict

Is this a good smartphone in the under Rs 15,000 segment? The answer is yes. It’s a worthy purchase and a smartphone that has surprised me during my usage. The problem is that the competition is fierce. Just look at the CMF Phone 1 by Nothing. That phone has a more exciting design, is faster in many areas, and comes with better cameras. In fact, Nothing OS is a refreshing take on Android.

With the Lava Blaze X - priced at Rs 14,999 (4GB+12GB) and Rs 16,999 (8GB+128GB) you get a beautiful AMOLED display, performance good enough for daily tasks, and a good grippy smartphone.

The Lava Blaze X doesn’t stand out in any one area but is a good package overall.