Lava Blaze Pro 5G review: Is this the best 5G phone under Rs 15K?

Lava Blaze Pro 5G has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD card slot (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G design

The Lava Blaze Pro 5G does not do anything special when it comes to design, at least on the Starry Night variant that I tested. Despite that, it has a distinctive design, featuring a matte finish plastic back casing and frame. With an ever so slightly curved frame (similar to the latest iPhone 15 series), the device feels good in hand, and this is definitely one of the phones that can be flaunted with a case and not worry about accidental damage. However, it is slightly on the heavier side, weighing 203 grams.

Most budget smartphones offer an excellent choice of I/O ports, and the Lava Blaze Pro 5G is no different. A USB-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a dedicated microSD slot along two nano SIM card slots, the phone has everything that one could imagine. On top of that, the power button also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner.

If I have to nitpick, then it is definitely the in-display fingerprint sensor icon displayed on the lock screen, which still confuses me every once in a while and makes me click on it, a UI element that is a bit misleading, which can also be fixed with a software issue, if the company wants to.

The device does not have an in-display fingerprint sensor, instead, it has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G display

The Lava Blaze Pro 5G flaunts a large 6.78-inch IPS screen with FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate with slightly thicker bezels. While it isn’t the best display that I have seen on a phone in this class, it is not bad either. By default, the colour tone is set to vivid, which makes the colours red and green pop and the normal mode makes the screen a bit dull yet natural.

The phone is Widevine L1 certified with support for HD streaming on major OTT platforms, so, binge content streamers can rejoice. However, there is no HDR playback like most phones of this class. Overall, the phone has a good display with a notch cutout on top that’s suited for social media usage, content streaming, and some gaming, thanks to its higher refresh rate.

The phone has a 50 MP primary camera (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G cameras

On the rear panel, the Blaze Pro 5G has two large camera cutouts, one for a 50 MP sensor and one for an AI sensor. There is an 8 MP selfie camera at the front with support for 1080p video recording. The most unique thing about these cameras is the fact that the phone supports up to 2K resolution video recording, which is quite uncommon, as most phones either offer just 1080p or up to 4K video recording.

The primary 50 MP camera and the selfie shooter on the Lava Blaze Pro 5G do a good job of capturing details in daylight situations. What I noticed is the fact that the phone tends to capture pictures with slightly more contrasting tones, especially when shooting flowers and plants. The selfie camera performance is also commendable, and it also enables face unlock.

Check out some of the camera samples of the Lava Blaze Pro 5G:

Lava Blaze Pro 5G camera sample 4 (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G camera sample 3 (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G camera sample 2 (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G camera sample 1 (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G performance

The Mediatek Dimensity 6020 is a good entry-level 5G system-on-a-chip and when paired with up to 8 GB of RAM and a UFS 2.2 storage module, the phone performs well under normal day-to-day usage. I installed my full suite of social media apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Telegram, and Snapchat, and I did not notice any sort of lag or slowdown.

Even when it comes to gaming, I had a pleasant experience on both Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) and COD: Mobile, however, at medium graphics settings. Cranking up the graphics to high or ultra will make the phone feel a bit jittery. For most casual users, the phone is powerful enough. Lastly, the phone ships with clean Android 13 built, with no bloatware like every Lava phone launched in the past year, and the user experience is definitely better than most budget 5G Android phones.

It offers excellent 5G download speeds (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Lava Blaze Pro 5G tests

The Mediatek Dimensity 6020 is a 7nm chip with an integrated 5G modem with support for up to 2.77 Gbps download speed. The Lava Blaze Pro 5G supports all the major 5G bands acquired by Airtel and Jio, which includes n1/n3/n5/n8/n28/n41/n77/n78 and the device is also compatible with both standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) 5G networks. The device also supports next-generation 5G-backed VoRN for high-definitely low latency calls on the Jio network.

I ran a bunch of 5 G-specific tests on the Lava Blaze Pro 5G, where, the phone was able to offer an average 5G download speed of 74 Mbps indoors, and the phone offered a peak 5G download speed of 630 Mbps outdoors with an average latency of around 16ms. These numbers are almost in line with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (review), which costs 10x more than the Lava Blaze Pro 5G.

Similarly, I was able to download a 2.3 GB (FHD resolution) version of the movie ‘Jailer on Amazon Prime Video in just 35 seconds. The phone took just under two minutes to download 2.41 GB COD: Mobile from Google Play Store and it can download simple games like Subway Surfers in under 10 seconds.

5G enables low latency gaming (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Another 5G specific inference that I made during my testing is the network latency (lower the better), on the 5G network, the network latency was around 32ms, similarly, when I switched to the 4G network, the latency would shoot up to 60ms. Overall, the phone passed all my 5G tests with flying colours, and I was really surprised at how a budget phone can almost match the 5G networking performance of a flagship device.

While the 5G network is infamous for heating up the devices and is known as a battery juice guzzler, despite all these tests, the Blaze Pro 5G didn’t even get warm to the touch. I also noted that, with its 5,000 mAh battery, it can easily last for an entire day. The company also includes a 33W fast charging, which fully charges the phone well under one and a half hours.

An excellent budget 5G phone (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)

Verdict: A 5G phone with excellent value for money

Lava has built a pretty robust package and with the Blaze Pro 5G, there aren’t any major drawbacks that could hamper the overall experience. If you are in the market, especially for a budget phone that supports a 5G network, then, at Rs 12,999, the Lava Blaze Pro 5G is an easy pick.