Leagoo M5 Review – The First Shockproof Pure Metal Phone under $90!

Even Samsung hasn’t come with the all-metal design like that of Leagoo M5!

by Roman.T Nov 3, 2016, 9:56 pm 302 Views

Who says that rugged phones are the toughest smartphones on the planet? Are metal and glass smartphones that much fragile that they tear into pieces right after the fall? Well, all non-rugged smartphones can be like that but not our today’s protagonist ‘Leagoo M5 Review’. It’s the world first pure metal phone that is SHOCKPROOF. Hammer nails, break walnuts with it or drive a car over it, the underdog won’t quit. In short, it’s totally indestructible. Don’t believe us? The video shown below demonstrates the never-ending toughness of Leagoo M5.

Without further wasting our readers precious time, let’s dive into the details in Leagoo M5 Review:

Leagoo M5 Review – A Sturdy Underdog At Its Best!

Unboxing

Leagoo M5 is sealed inside the green box, illustrated with its diagram. However, the box is simply of low-quality but like one said “Never judge a book by its cover”, similarly never underestimate M5 with the packaging it comes in. Leagoo is more lavish in giving the accessories:

M5 Smartphone
Earphones
Charger
USB cable
Warranty Card
User Manual

Design & Appearance

Speaking the truth, we haven’t seen a non-rugged phone which is as much robust as Leagoo M5. No doubt, the design is the sole selling point of the smartphone. I mean, how frequent do we see a real metal phone capable of delivering limitless strength and breathtaking charms. A particular word for M5 would be ‘Beauty and the Beast’ as much as it is hard from outside, it’s also that much soft from inside. That’s why a damage in the circuit could ruin the phone functionality.

It has the world’s first chassis to forge from nano ‘all-metal’ probably Aluminium alloy. That’s the only reason for the phone to weigh 179 grams, somewhat heavier than the average phones. We’ll see some plastic antennas section in almost every phone including Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7, but when it comes to Leagoo M5, it’s just complete metal.

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Moreover, the nano-scaling allow the premium feeling and the utmost comfortability while holding. It never loses the grip with the hand, and if this happens then no worry, it won’t break after striking with the floor.

Regarding dimensions, Leagoo M5 occupies 14.17 x 7.13 mm. Another factor which adds weight to the terminal is the 8.7mm. So, what do you think, whether a lightweight phone is better or a bulky one for shock resistance? Indeed the heavy one, remember the vintage Nokia phones.

On the back, we witness the fingerprint reader, and the camera positioned vertically along the LED Flash separating them. If we look more closely, we can see the rear patterns visible with the company’s name. There’s no ambiguity that the phone is all metal, but the back is covered with leather to exaggerate its beauty and sturdiness further.

Leagoo M5 is distinguishing more than any phone in the world. For example, the head touch-based buttons layout seems to be a unique approach with the circle as home button, three dots as menu and an arrow head as back. Sadly, those buttons have a weak backlight, and it will be practically difficult for the user to locate them in poor light. But luckily the color is also changeable from white.

The top front design seems to be a standard one with the earpiece and the front camera. Luckily, we also have the notification LED.

In short, it’s hard to believe what you see: An invulnerable body with an elegant appearance. And we can say it looks identical in comparison to the Leagoo M5 Plus launched recently. The only difference is dimensions.

Screen & Display

Leagoo is always generous to its customer. That’s why they have integrated a large 5.0-inch, high-definition (720p) screen in Leagoo M5. But, just mentioning is not our purpose for making Leagoo M5 review, but explaining it is the sole aim.

Now, there are many phones will Full-HD, 2K and even 4K resolution in the market. But, you can’t expect any of those resolutions under $80. That’s why 720p seems to be the best option. But, what differ M5 display from the rest of the smartphones. The answer is the impressive 900:1 contrast ratio which yields some true-to-life colors and avoids oversaturation. It looks like the screen is Full-HD with that combination. With pixels easily differentiable in less than 40 cm away, it has a pixel density of 294 PPI.

Under sunlight, the screen is vivid and easy to use. The sunlight intensity can’t withstand the screen intensity and gets canceled; that’s why we see no reflection in the display at maximum screen brightness. No change, no blackness, can be viewed on the screen when viewed from the side. The credit goes to the IPS display. With the 2.5D glass and Gorilla Glass 4, we bet you won’t even see a scratch.

With that blend of features, it’s arduous to notice whether the screen it’s a 720p screen or 1080p.

Hardware & Performance

If you are a Snapdragon 820 or Helio X25 lover, Leagoo M5 review might disappoint you. The phone was never meant to be a high-end device crushing its opponents and hitting high at the benchmarks (around 25000). Especially a $90 budget friendly smartphone. That’s why under the hood, we find an old, energy efficient MediaTek MTK6580 Soc with an ARM Cortex-A7 MPcore processor (4 x 1.3GHz). Still, the manufacturer is generous regarding 2GB RAM and 16GB storage with the option of expanding it via MicroSD card (up to 128GB). It was better to have anything rather than having nothing.

Here are some benchmarks are shown below assessing M5 performance. Not bad for a low-tier bidder!

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Even the Mali-400 MP GPU gives damn good upshots, nearly 50 fps on the 1280 x 720 pixels.

Here is a speed test on the RAM (copying 2157.42 MB/s) and storage (read 95.83 MB/s, write 22.16 MB/s) which seems to be desirable in Leagoo M5 review.

Camera & Sound

Like the hardware, we can’t expect something big like a 21 MP or a Dual camera from M5 but what it features is worth to be stated. It has a unique rear camera (GalaxyCore GC5005) sensor which is present in only a few smartphones. The rear camera shoots a picture of 5MP and interpolates it to 8MP. It’s a CMOS type sensor with f/ 2.0 aperture means better focusing and 4P lens. There’s nothing attractive about the camera. No laser focus, no sapphire glass, nothing at all. Despite these, it captures some stunning photos. Thanks to that interpolating technique. Don’t believe us? See the samples yourself.

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Click to enlarge

Meanwhile, the front camera is not worth to be explained as it’s only 2.0 MP (interpolated to 5MP) and has no beauty modes at all.

It’s too rare that we elaborate the sound of a smartphone that much and put it under a category. Well, the sound of Leagoo M5 is worth it. What not, when you have a rich and bass sound with the Awinic K7 speakers. You can just feel every beat and dance with the rhythm.

Connectivity

Sadly, you can’t enjoy the fast internet streaming with the latest 4G network as the phone doesn’t sport it. But let’s talk about what’s in it. You can relish the 3G network along with the option of dual-SIM support. Other connectivity features include 5G band WiFi support, FM radio, Bluetooth 4.0, OTG and so on. Even the reception of the network and Wifi is appreciatable. Still, I think how they got that much strong receptions even the plastic antennas section was switched to all-metal.

Finally, as for GPS, the Leagoo M5 uses GPS satellite navigation with an accuracy of 3 meters (~11 ft) outdoors. No that much precise but still appreciatable. However, the tracking is not possible indoors.

Battery

The Leagoo M5 sports a 2300mAh battery. It doesn’t support Quick Charge technology, that’s why charging takes about 2.5 hours. However, the Freeme OS has a special ultra-saving mode that blocks many apps running background to help the phone stay alive longer. But if you do not want to use this feature, the phone can serve you about 6 hours and 45 minutes in a normal usage.

At last, as we are dealing with a metal housing smartphone, it’s been quite expected this phone will get warmer during a heavy usage. Sometimes it can reach up to 48 °C (~118 °F), which is too high. It refers to the back, while the front side can reach up to 39.7 °C (~103 °F) that is more or less acceptable. And what’s interesting – the upper part of the phone heats up more than the rest of the device. So when playing heavy games do not try to use the fingerprint scanner.

OS & Features

Surprisingly, the Leagoo M5 runs on Freeme OS 6.0 based on Android 6.0. This means we will see many standard Android features as well as many custom-made features due to custom ROM provided by the company. The first feature is the smart scrolling, allowing us to control the home screen from the rear fingerprint reader. It’s a lot more like a rear back panel but one with a limited area. The other feature is the smart gesture so we can use some gestures (double tap to wake up, three fingers swipe to take a screenshot, and any alphabet to make a hotkey like C for Camera).

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Click to enlarge

The Freeme OS 6.0 is way better than the stock Android as it’s stable, fast, and smooth. Even though the SoC is energy efficient and old but the OS optimizes it in the way that the phone never lags or freeze. Freeme OS is indeed a fun to use.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Toughness with Elegance (Shockproof)
Numerous Features
Almost invulnerable
Nice display
Smooth and fast OS

Cons

No 4G network means no fast internet streaming
5 MP and 2 MP are the worst
Mediocre Battery Life

Our Verdict

Obviously, we are dealing with a budget-friendly smartphone with its advantages and disadvantages; well everything has pros and cons. As you can see above, the Leagoo M5 is an entry-level device that can be easily put into the category of rugged devices. But unlike many other similar handsets such as the Leagoo T1, it comes with a removable back cover as well as removable battery. So this phone can be a rival to the Uhans A101 rather than other unibody rugged handsets.

On the other hand, the Leagoo M5 is the first shockproof smartphone available for a penny. Besides this key feature it also comes with Gorilla Glass 4, which means the screen will resist all kinds of scratches. Leagoo M5 is really something to put your hands on but I don’t recommend to test the Leagoo M5 in all tests because it is not a unibody device.

Price & Availability

If you are interested in buying Leagoo M5 smartphone, you can purchase it from Gearbest for a discounted price around $74.89 (China stock) to $85.88 (HK-2 stock) from Gearbest or Everbuying.

Buy Leagoo M5 Shockproof Phone from GearbestBest deal via XiaomiToday

Buy Leagoo M5 Shockproof Phone from EverbuyingBest deal via XiaomiToday

Rating Leagoo M5

Design - 8/108/10
Durability - 10/1010/10
Hardware - 5/105/10
OS - 8/108/10
Camera - 5/105/10
Connectivity - 6/106/10
Battery - 5/105/10
Price - 10/1010/10

Summary

Leagoo M5 is the first all-metal shockproof phone under $90 which is not bad at all. We think that you must give it a try for a fun OS, almost invincible chassis and nice screen.

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