Panasonic Eluga Ray X Review: Budget Smartphone with Artificial Assistant- Arbo

Panasonic forayed the mobile artificial intelligence with its two new launched smartphones- Eluga Ray Max and Eluga Ray X. Both phones come with an Artificial Assistant called ARBO.  It is companies first in-house developed Artificial virtual assistant and helps the Panasonic to take on other available mobile virtual assistants such as Google Assitant, Apple' Siri, Microsoft Cortana and upcoming Samsung’s Bixby. We got Eluga Ray X for review which is available exclusively on Flipkart and gives competition to other Chinese and Indian budget smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Honor, Lenovo, Coolpad and Lava, Intex, Micromax respectively.  The Eluga Ray X price in India is Rs.8,999.

The AI-powered assistant takes care of all the daily tasks and activities like calls and messages that need to be framed and sent out on a regular basis. It also keeps a detailed list of all the applications functioning on the smartphone, gathers detailed information on their habits and informs them about it accordingly.

Note: We are not able to test the ARBO - the virtual assistant software because it will be made available through an OTA (over-the-air) update on or before the 10th of May 2017.

Key Specifications of Panasonic Eluga Ray X

Display Size, Type & Resolution: 5.5 IPS(13.97cm) HD (1280×720 pixels), IPS-Glass
Processor: 1.3GHz Quad Core MTK MT6737
Operating System: Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Memory: 3GB RAM with 32GB and Internal memory upgradable up to 64GBREAR

Camera: 16MP Rear camera and 5 MP Front camera
Battery: 4000mAh
Dimensions: 153.4*77*10.5mm
Connectivity: 4G, LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Global Positioning System (A-GPS), FM with RDS
Inbox Accessories: Handset (Inclusive of Battery), Indian Charger, Data Cable, Ear Phone, Screen Guard, SIM Insert Pin and Quick Start Guide

Design: Unibody Metal Designs

Panasonic offering a uni design metal body which gives durability and premium look at a budget price.  The phone is quite sturdy to handle the daily usage. The phone feels a little bit bulky maybe it is due to its 4000mAh battery. The handset has a compact form factor and can be easily used with one hand.

The Eluga Ray X has rounded edges and curved panels that offer god grip in hands. On the right side of the phone, it has the volume rocker and power button, while the left side is blank because you can open the back cover of the phone.

Yes, the phone offer the Dual SIM card supports dedicated microSD card slot both are situated beneath the removable back cover.

The bottom has the MicroUSB 2.0 port with a microphone and the 3.5mm headphone jack is positioned on top.  The Eluga Ray X measures 10.5 mm at its thinnest point. The rear camera and flash are encircled by chrome finished metallic lines.

The fingerprint sensor is placed at the front side, while the upper part comprises front LED & camera, and earpiece speaker.

Display

The ELuga Ray X offers a 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen with 720p resolution. The display is quite responsive with 5 touch point, and color tones also seemed quite natural in outdoor conditions. For screen protection, it offers Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The viewing angles of the phone are enough good that three persons can easily share the screen to watch videos. It has onscreen navigation buttons. So, overall the display is enough sharp and bright to enjoy the content both outdoor and indoor.

Camera

At the rear side, it features a 16 MP rear camera with LED flash light while at the front the 5MP camera is placed. The front camera is also paired with LED flashlight to allow you to capture selfies in low-light conditions. Eluga Ray X comes with a professional mode and can record videos in 720P format. The 16MP rear camera quite average in terms of picture quality. The daylight images it captures still good but in the low light, its performance is below an average. The camera app comes with lots of features including pro or manual mode.

The front camera of the handset come with 'Beauty' modes to brighten up the selfies you capture. However, the 5MP selfie camera on Eluga Ray X seems to be very decent and offer good selfie images.

Panasonic Eluga Ray X Camera Samples

Camera selfies

Performance:

The interface is quick with no discernible lag creeping in. The screen is responsive and the front fingerprint sensor is too. The thing which we liked personally is that the Panasonic hasn't added any extra software layer that most of the times hamper the user experience. The handsets run on stock Android to give smooth lag free mobile user experience. We used the phone for more than three weeks and enjoy several games and did multitasking as well. We played several high-graphics intensive games on it including WWE, NFS, Asphalt 8 Airborne and Mortal combat, etc. The phone manages all the games easily without any visible performance lag. Even while switching between them there was no glitch. 

Good battery

The phone is backed by a 4,000m mAh battery that can easily run for more than one day with moderate usage like calls, internet surfing etc. On the other hand, watching videos or playing games on it will stand for a day easily. In our battery loop test, it lasted for 7 hours 8 minutes while playing video over Wifi with full brightness and volume.

Overall, in the Eluga Ray X, there's nothing unique as compared to the other smartphone available at this price range. The only thing which differentiates it is it's Arbo smart assistant, but still it will face tough competition from the other budget smartphone makers selling their handsets under Rs. 10,000.