LG Stylo 5 Smartphone with Built-In Stylus Review – Inexpensive Galaxy Note Alternative?
We get you in some lower cost smartphones and we got one in the other day through the Amazon vine program that I thought you all might find of interest. This is the LG stylo 5. It sells for about two hundred and twenty dollars to Amazon members, and you get a bunch of Amazon stuff pre installed, and the cool thing with this phone, for the price point is that it has an integrated stylus and some apps that work specifically with the stylus, Which we’ll explore here in a few minutes, but I do want to let you know in the interest of full disclosure at this – did come in free of charge through the Amazon vine program. However, all the opinions you’re about to hear are my own. Nobody is paying for this review, nor is anyone reviewed or approved what you’re about to see before it was uploaded, so let’s get to it now and see what this phone is all about. So let’s take a closer look now at the hardware. This phone is unlocked, and here in the US it will work with every major wireless carrier, so that includes ATampT t mobile, Sprint and Verizon, and it will also work with the services that work off of those main carriers, the MB and O’s that are out there. So you should have very broad compatibility here in the US and that’s. One of the things that I often caution. People about is that when you buy phones from overseas, they often don’t work with all the carriers.
Here. This one does so that was good to see. 6.2 inch display on this one. It is 2160 by 1080. It has three gigabytes of RAM and 32 gigabytes of integrated storage, but note only fifteen point: seven gigs were really available to us. When we got everything installed and running, you can install an SD card on it up to two terabytes, which we will show you in a few minutes here it is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon, 450 processor. We typically see these on low cost phones. It is not all that fast; it will certainly feel a bit sluggish compared to some of the flagship phones out there, but I think for a lot of consumers. This might do just fine it’s, not all that heavy. It weighs about six point: three ounces or 179 grams it’s got a glass front here on the begun on the front of the screen. It looks like it’s plastic here on the back, doesn’t feel like glass to me and, as you can see, it picks up fingerprints. Very very easily: this is only after a couple of days of handling it so I’m constantly rubbing it off to get the fingerprints and grease off the back of it. So that’s one thing, you’ll experience here, both on the front of the display and the back of it. It does have face detection built in which you saw there. They warn you that it’s, not something you’ll want to use.
If you want to keep the phone very secure, so the other option is just to use the fingerprint sensor here on the back, which is more secure than the facial detection. It is running Android 9.0. You don’t have much reports on here. There is a charging port here at the bottom, which is a USBC port. This is only used for charging and data transfer. It doesn’t support displays so some of the higher end smartphones now can output to an external display. This won’t be able to do that through the port here at the bottom, but you can fast charge via USB see and they include a fast charging adapter here in the box. You also have a headphone jack, which is lacking on a lot of smartphones these days, but I was not very impressed with the speaker here at the bottom. It is not very loud. It really sounds a bit distorted, very lousy, speakerphone thing here. So if you spend a lot of time on the speakerphone, this is probably not going to be the phone for you. I will get to the stylus and some of the things you can do with that in a few minutes here. On the other side, here you’ve got a volume rocker up and down on the top. You have nothing. It looks like just a microphone here and, of course, you’ve got some room for the antennas. This, in addition to supporting cellular networks, the 4G LTE networks also works with wireless AC when you’re at home and, of course, has bluetooth built in for connecting up other peripherals and whatnot over here you’ve got your power switch, and that is pretty much it now.
The phone only supports one SIM card at a time. So, if you are traveling a lot and switching networks, frequently you’ll need to pop out the tray here and swap the cards. The larger slot here is for the microSD card that you can install to augment the onboard storage. I did notice, though, that there’s a rubber gasket around the SIM tray, so although the phone is not being advertised as waterproof I’m guessing, this will provide a little bit of protection from splashes and rain and stuff, but you’ll probably want to put a case around it. Anyhow, just to protect your investment here, there are two cameras on it: you’ve got one here on the back. This is a 13 megapixel camera. The photo quality, as you can see here, is not spectacular, but it’s passable, so you can at least get a couple of pictures taken with it without too many issues it does support video but 1080p at 30 frames per second. Only video quality is not spectacular, although it does attempt to do some digital stabilization of the video while you’re walking around so not a very good video shooter kind of a passable photo device, and you also have a 5 megapixel selfie camera there with a pretty nice Wide angle to it, as you can see here, pictures are okay coming out of it, but not spectacular again. It will, though, shoot 1080p video out of that front facing camera, but again not a very good video shooter out of either lens, but overall, a passable camera system for a low price phone.
Now the standout feature of this phone, though, is its integrated stylus. When you pull it out, you will feel the phone vibrate a bit and then you’ve got a few different apps that you can load up. So we have one here called pop memo which will overlay a writing surface on top of whatever you’re doing and, as you can see, as I write here, it’s, not picking up my hand resting against the screen, but it is picking up the stylus as I’m. Drawing on it, so that was good feels pretty responsive, there’s, no smart stuff going on with the stylus, though it is strictly a capacitive surface. It might be hard to see here on screen so will give you a better b roll shot of it, but it’s a rounded nub at the end of the stylus, which will make it very difficult to get fine details done here. But I think it’s good enough for doing quick notes and that sort of thing in addition to getting that pop memo thing, you have a few other things that you can play around with as well, including a coloring book. So you can pull up a drawing here and color it in if you want with different colors and everything, they also have a few other things like a drawing chat where you can chat with other people just by drawing on screen with some funky effects to the Writing here so pretty cool little stylus and it will work outside of just these apps is a capacitive thing.
After all, so I can load up other applications, for example, and get around that way with it. So a nice little feature to have on an inexpensive phone. Just make sure you don’t lose it because I don’t think they sell replacements for this, so you’ll want to make sure it stays securely in there. It does snap in pretty securely and then you do have to give it a little bit of a tug to pull it out now, because this phone is being sold through Amazon. It does integrate the Amazon voice system with it, otherwise known as the a word, and what you can do here, rather than issuing a voice command, is just double tap on the power button. Let show me the weather in New York City today and then that will go out and pull up the the weather information there and you can hear just how lousy that speaker is on this phone. So you can get all of your Amazon echo functionality. Out of the phone here, however, I could not figure out a way to get it to work with just a trigger word. It looks like it has to be done with the power button here. When you get the phone, they advise you to update all of the Amazon apps on it, so you can get that functionality working, and you also have to set the a word as the default voice assistant but again, I’m. Finding it doesn’t seem to respond to just the command by itself, so you’ll definitely need to be pushing that button every time you want to get it, but if you have a lot of other things going on in the Amazon ecosystem, this will certainly do well for That the performance of the phone overall is not bad, like I said, it’s going to feel a little sluggish compared to some other stuff out there.
But if we go over to the nasa.gov website here you can see things spring up pretty quickly. The display looks nice it’s, very sharp, it’s nice to have a 1080p display in something this small, so things are really sharp and colors are very well balanced here. A very nice display, LG does put together some nice displays because they manufacture them themselves and they’re, putting them into their phones here so overall from the look and feel it’s pretty good and if you’re watching a lot of videos on your phone. They’Ll look nice on here because again it is a 1080p display, nice and sharp. The colors are very well balanced and overall I found it to be a very good movie watching experience for a low cost phone. You will see that when I switch orientations here will it’ll kind of pause for a second before it read, draws everything so having the slower processor will be noticed in some areas, but really it’s, not a bad experience, and video playback on here is quite nice. Now, due to its slower processor, this is not going to be a gaming powerhouse, but most of the games that are written for smartphones target these low end devices, so things like goat simulator here actually run pretty nicely on this device again. You’Ll feel a little sluggishness when things first load up, but once you get into the game, it seems to go pretty well here. So I think, if you’re looking for some casual game play on your phone every once in a while, this will probably be just as good as the phone you’re currently using.
If you typically buy phones at around this price point it’s. Definitely an improvement over where the 200 phones were two years ago, but again not where the flagships are, but the screen is nice, as you can see here. This game is running quite well very decent frame rate here, and I think from that standpoint, it’s going to be a good experience a little bit earlier. We loaded up the dolphin emulator that did not run very well on here at all, so I think you could probably emulate some of the 8 and 16 bit consoles from the 80s and 90s. But if you get into some of the higher end stuff, like the Dreamcast or the Gamecube, those things will not play as well on this device. Now the 3dmark sling shot benchmark test. We got a score of 811. That puts it definitely on the low end of the scale when looking at similar phones, we tested the honor eight about a year or two ago, and that one did better than this one did, and you can see also how it stacks up against the iPhone 6s From a couple of years, back as well so again, not a spectacular performer here, but I think good enough for a bulk of the Android gaming library. Now battery life out of the phone isn’t too bad it’s got a 3500 milliamp hour battery inside. We left it on standby all weekend that it was able to maintain a good level of charge throughout that weekend of not being used.
I would say that if you are using the phone during the day rather frequently, you should be able to get through the entire day before you need to charge it again. So that was good to see, but everyone’s battery life is going to vary based on usage. If you’re playing games on the phone all day long, that is going to pack the battery more significantly than maybe picking it up every 20 or 30 minutes to check email or a website or something so your usage is going to have an impact here. Also, the distance that you are from your nearby cellular towers will also have an impact, but overall, I think for most folks. They’Ll get a full day of use out of this thing before they have to charge it again and you’ll probably get even more time out of it. If you’re not picking it up all that much and leaving it mostly in standby mode. So that was good to see. Another cool thing I discovered when I was plugging some things into the USBC port is that the phone can actually act as a power bank. So you have the option to send power to another device if you want, so that was pretty cool. I just note, though, that it does not support wireless charging, even though it looks like it might with that shiny back on here. It can only charge through its USB C port, so overall I’m pleased with this phone it’s amazing what you can get for 220 bucks these days and I think you’re going to love the display on it.
It’S, nice and big, very bright, good resolution on it. All in a fantastic display, the stylus here is probably the killer feature of this phone, and I think a lot of people who prefer to take quick notes by hand are really going to love having this with them all the time so that’s a kind of a Standout feature in this price range. I don’t, though, like the speakerphone, the speaker here is terrible and if you are someone that does a lot with your speaker phone, this is not going to be the phone for you, the Bluetooth and the headphone jack work. Fine. So those are workarounds, but the speaker itself here is just lousy. The handset speaker isn’t bad. So if you’re holding the phone up to your ear, that will be okay, but by and large they could have done a lot better. I think on the speaker here, the facial recognition and the fingerprint worked great on this and all together, not bad for the price point. Don’T expect a lot, but I think you’ll like what you see here, given how little you’ll pay for it it’s great to see. Also that it’s got a universal carrier compatibility here in the US as well. You will scratch up the back here, because it is plastic. It attracts a lot of fingerprints as you can see. So there are some things that will give you some indicator as to what its price point is, but overall, I think they’ve packed a lot of value into this low cost device until next time.
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Watching this on my new Stylo 5X. Very happy with my purchase. Best $120 ever spent.
Oh no! My Stylo 5 won't outperform my son's new iphone. Whatever shall I do?! π
I bought mine factory unlocked at Best Buy to prevent all the bloatware & have all the ROM as I want it, not how someone else thinks it should be.
Hi Lon, this helps m w the phone… I know so little! For example, I do zero gaming..yet, game launcher app is put in a box for "essentials" on my LG style 5 screen, & that app uses a lot of data. I've forced stop, cleared the cache, & tried to uninstall by sliding the app off screen.
App hopped right back into its on screen box.
I'm an almost total beginner, lol for years, fumbling w phones. What videos or whatever else would you recommend that I can do, to know how to do best by my phone & me? TY Lon.
I recently bought the LG STYLO 5 international model with the Metro By T Mobile carrier, but it can be used with any GSM carrier. My question is about my battery, the status says +13 hrs and 8 mins but it lasts me all day at 100 percent unless I start using it. Is this normal for my phone?
I am looking around phone once my stylo 4 stop working I was thinking about a71 Samsung galaxy i really like the a71 Samsung galaxy. i will not going to buy stylo 5 i glad I not going to buy it I am so glad I looking on the reviews before I buy it that phone isn't for me then thank you telling me about the speakers not good.
just got this phone for 129 at wally world
I love my stylo 5……cant wait for the 6 in June I hear…
Who actualy gives a crap about fingerprints? Like seriously!!! If this makes a difference in your buying decision …. your priorities are very questionable.
Im actually watching on a stylo 5 and im very happy with it.
I got mine for $130 on straight talk . But I don't get the NFC on it . But it fine . Most place I shop at in my town . Is Walmart . You can only use Walmart pay there . I'm not missing out on that . It's the cheap man note . That can't offer a arm and leg for the samsung note . Work smooth to me.
I just bought this and I've very happy with it. Who needs to spend $600 or more for a flagship when $150-$200 for a mid range will do.
The speaker plays pretty good on mines. Idk if his phone has a defect or what???
Paid only 100 usd from ebay
My LG G4 died so bought one of these cheap on eBay. This phone gets a lot of hate I see. Will it still be better or as good as my older LG G4?
I have stylo 5 through google. And it takes some doing but I got ok g$!#gle to work just fine with voice command
Good review
Watching this on my note 10 plus lol
Does anyone know how to swap apps and pictures from the internal storage to a SDS card? I already unlocked the developer's options and activated the ability to swap apps to a SD card. But not finding how to get pictures or apps to transfer over to the SD card.
For old people like me how do I increase font size in areas such as Google Chrome. I found the settings and display but that did not help with the internet apps.
This device can charge another phone? I think I may have found my next 2nd phone
One thing u didn't mention about the charger port is otg support
About to go back to my stylo 4. It's louder and better.
Can't comprehend after buying 2 LG Stylo 5 LM-Q 720MS cases, glass protection screens, micro SD cards to loading up apps only to find out that no matter what you do you cannot migrate apps from internal to external only files.
Micro SD cards I've tried authentic micro SD 200 GB down to 64 GB are all recognized butt not adoptable as in the Stylo 4.
Does anybody know if you can play Mario Kart on here?
Nice review thnxπ
For the money, am thinking this is one of the worst deals out there ….unless you get it for free, much better unlocked Chinese phones out there, for about the same price or cheaper …..which have all the U.S. bands….and much better spec's…..an example of this is the umidigi F2…got that phone for about $180 and its a much better buy compared to this LG phone ….
unless youre a phone snob this is a fantastic phone. im shocked by this review. if youre in a position that you would by one of these look for reviews by other people who would actually use it not get it free from amazon for a review.
appreciate the thorough reviews as always π This seems like an interesting option for the seemingly rare phone category that have built in stylus. I found the boostmobile stylo 5 for $130 on walmart site with free delivery, and currently unlocked stylo 5 on amazon $160. I also found spare stylus for stylo 5 are on ebay for about ~$8
Nice video. I got this phone (Nov 2019) for net $170, thanks to price match by my carrier. My old Moto Z was fine except that the battery died and I didn't want to experiment with a heat gun and risk spending over $100 if I trashed the screen. This phone for $170 is worth the upgrade- it's faster, bigger, LCD screen isn't quite as nice as the Moto AMOLED but it's good enough, especially in dark mode.
**MANUFACTURERS: I would buy your flagship phones if you went back to replaceable batteries- I'm never going to drop a grand on a phone with a 3 year lifespan! If I ever do need to replace the battery on this phone, it's done from the back cover, so maybe I'll do that for this phone someday.
I started my business with my stylo 4 until i could upgrade to a Note. I use it as a business phone which the LED notification light is a benefit, and also as a secondary editing tablet. honestly dont even feel the need to upgrade to a $1000 device because the stylo does everything i need it to do perfectly fine. Im a photo and video editor so when im on the go and i dont have my laptop, i can take my sd card out my camera and throw it into my stylo and use mobile photoshop or powerdirector. The big screen and stylus comes in handy for artists and creators on the go. I absolutely love my Stylo no hate on my end ever towards this lineup of budget phones.
For $79 on Cricket's black Friday deal, and $10 a month Unlimited as a fourth phone on the 4 for a Hundred deal, it's not a bad phone.
Would u recommend this phone for 100.00. as an s5 replacement
So much better than the 4
Can you be on the internet while you're on a call? Does it have Hotspot? Thanks in advance!
Is it mhl compatible??
I have a dashcam with a micro SD card in it for recording, is there an adapter that I can plug into my stylo 5 to view the dashcam recordings?
Just for the record you can order a replacement stylus from LG.
Wound up buying this phone for Boost Mobile through Walmart for $129! Another great feature not mentioned here is that you can pull out the stylus while the phone is locked and take a note on the lock screen without unlocking the phone! Really handy!
Help I bought a Boost stylo 5 (with boost packaging) from walmart I noticed there was a Sprint sim card in it so I took it out and put my boost sim card in but it says my stylo 5 is sim locked to Sprint. what can I do. How can I buy a clearly packaged Boost phone only for it to have a different carrier locked on it, is this even legal.
I understand where Lon is coming from, he addressed it on the weekly wrap up… chinese cheap phones don't work very nicely with US networks.
But I just broke my phone and was wondering what to get on the budget while I can't fix it.
I'm in between Pocophone F1 and Mi A3. Pocophone is still a whole lot of horsepower for a very cheap price, but will require a whole lot of work because I want a mostly stock Android experience… last time I tried rooting a phone it didn't go well, but I'm willing to try it again.
The Mi Mix A3 on the other hand already comes with Android One, so it gets waaay easier. I just don't like the 720p screen much, Snapdragon 635 would hardly be an upgrade to my currently diseased phone, and I actually did not want to go again with an AMOLED screen.
AMOLED screens are great, don't get me wrong, but it's already the second time a small crack on it (my current phone has AMOLED) ended up screwing and blackening out the entire screen rendering it completely useless. I'm quite frankly traumatized by this. You end up with just a few hours of being able to use the phone until all pixels turn black.
I was hoping for a tutorial about how to use the stylus.
Can you recommend something to help me learn about that?
Phone gets a lot of hate no idea why. For basic usage: phone calls, texting, watching videos, listening to music it's great. I can watch full HD 1080p movies. I will admit two things which could have made this phone a lot better. 4 gigs of RAM and a Snapdragon 625.
Buy a $50 Bluetooth speaker way better than phone speakers.
you just don't like the phone if you don't like it that's fine and dandy but don't be hating on it. The main purpose of the phone and a focus is the stylus. If you want a phone takes great pictures go buy an S7 or s8.
This reminds me of Charles in charge for some reason
It's good to see the SD450 getting to be more common. It is basically the popular SD625 rebranded and slightly down clocked. It's a good step forward for the lower market segments with eight cores at 14nm. I have a phone with an SD425 and the battery life on it is quite good and the performance is good enough for my needs. These chips won't suit everyone, but the SD450 should be surprisingly capable.
I am happy with mine