Doogee X5 Max review $66 ultrabudget mobile

Doogee X5 Max review

The Doogee X5 Max is Doogee’s latest MediaTek MTK budget mobile. X5 Max features Android 6.0 Marshmallow, good battery life, great WiFi range, very good GPS SNR, a great fingerprint Touch-ID implementation and very good looking display at a great price point.

Doogee X5 Max review loudspeaker

In many budget mobiles, loudspeaker volume is lacking. Not so with the X5. The loudspeaker on the X5 is very good– As loud as the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro and with similar level of quality. Watching a movie through YouTube at max volume had me turning the volume down because it was much too loud.

Doogee X5 Max
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From the samples we listened to, including hip hop, techno, and a movie, there was no grossly evident clipping / distortion.

Doogee X5 Max GPS

GPS on the Doogee X5 Max is good– The first cold lock was achieved within 20 seconds, and X5 generally maintains a mid-20’s to high-30’s SNR on up to 9 satellites at once. Accuracy stayed within an excellent 6-10ft and warm locks achieved within several seconds.

Doogee X5 Max review WiFi

WiFi on the X5 Max is excellent, maintaining a very stable and moderately fast throughput at 144ft/44m from our $20 home router, with a cinder block wall between the router and the phone.

Doogee X5 Max review style and build

There’s no way around it, the Doogee X5 Max is a bit of a brick and the bezel is wider than we’re used to, but it does score some interesting style points. Read on.

The sides look very good and feature shimmering plastic that borders on gray / black / silver depending on the angle and light it’s looked at. Unlike many metal surrounds, thus plastic surround is very resistant to scratches; using a fingernail and scratching hard leaves behind no marks. Interestingly, there’s no seams visible from the outside corners of the surround.

The bottom also has two speaker grills which add some class to the phone. Always nice to have bottom-firing speakers as opposed to rear-firing.

The back carries a fingerprint sensor, dual-SIM slots, and a TF SD slot. That’s dual-SIM+TF SD… Something some much more expensive mobiles have been leaving off.

The build is very solid, with no creaks or loose spots. The backpiece snaps on solid. The volume buttons and power button are stable and produce a tactile click when pressed.

Overall we like the style of the Doogee X5 Max; it’s not slim and sleek, but the sides are stylish and slick looking, and it’s nice and square with solid build.

Doogee X5 Max camera picture samples image samples camera

pleasantly surprised by the The Doogee X5 Max camera.

The camera on the Doogee X5 Max is 5MP with software interpolation to 8MP. The default setting on the stock camera is 5MP, but check this when you receive it to make sure you’re not taking at 8MP, as there’s no good reason to shoot with interpolation.

We were pleasantly surprised by the The Doogee X5 Max camera. For a budget mobile, it takes very good looking shots. Crops up to 50% in good light are very usable.

• Colors are natural and often have a bit of good looking pop.
• Dynamic range (DR) is usually quite good, though some of the shots in very bright light you may see a slightly washed out look depending on focus point (see pics 4 and 14). This can be easily fixed by adding a touch of saturation in post processing (PP), or by setting focus on a brighter area of the image so X5 dims the exposure some.
• HDR provides some very pleasing results given the right situation.
• Sharpness is good across the frame.

As always, the pictures are unedited. The crops are from 5MP full scene. All images are saved at 75%. There are two 100% crops, the leaf and house. There are a couple of HDR shots as well, marked at the top of the image “HDR”.

Doogee X5 Max review LCD display

The display on the Doogee X5 Max is 720P. Quality is very good, with no white splotches or pixel light leakage as is sometimes exhibited by cheap mobiles.

Max brightness comes in at a not so bright 255lux, but this is bright enough to be used outdoors in daylight. The display doesn’t appear to be one glass solution (OGS), but the gap between LCD and front glass isn’t wide.

Color and contrast are very good and being IPS, viewing angles are great. The included screen protector doesn’t do the X5 Max justice. Do yourself a big favor and order a glass screen protector along with the X5 Max.

Doogee X5 Max frequency support

According to official Doogee, the X5 Max supports worldwide 2G and 850/1900/2100 WCDMA 3G. This makes it a good choice for most of the world, including the Americas, though some Europeans may be disappointed by lack of 900 WCDMA. If you require 900, consider Doogee X5 Pro (opens in new tab) which is also at a great point and carries 900/2100.

Doogee X5 Max screenon time SOT battery life time

Using our standard test of 140lux with a 720p YouTube video streaming through WiFi, the X5 Max achieved a very good 8 hours.

Doogee X5 Max Marshmallow OS and performance

• Android 6.0 Marshmallow
• Animations are moderately smooth
• Scrolling generally smooth
• Fast quick-flick scrolling works without issue.
• Switching between apps in memory is very quick, as is scrolling through the recent app list.
• Antutu on the Doogee X5 Max scores 26k.
• App loads are quite quick. Not blazing fast as with higher powered SoC, but quick enough for most users.
• Holding 4-5 apps in memory before letting them go to make room for more.
• Google Play Store is downloading and updating apps without issue.
• The OS is stable and without any obvious bugs.
• Deep sleeping without issue.
• FM radio working without issue

Doogee X5 Max review ROM storage

Storage is 8GB. After X5 takes its system chunk we’re left with about 5GB. After installing our test apps, syncing Gmail and taking our test pics, we’re left with about 3GB free space for installing apps. For the typical user this should be plenty of space. Also remember that the Doogee X5 Max is TF SD expandable.

Doogee X5 Max fingerprint Touch-ID

Notably, this phone carries a touch-ID which is something that just a short while back was reserved for much more expensive mobiles.

The touch-ID works great, allowing for moderately sloppy scans from any angle. We can scan-in from deep sleep/display off, which is very nice.

With the screen off, the time from scan-in to in and ready to go is impressively quick and up there with the likes of Redmi Note 3 Pro.

A great job Doogee did with the implementation of touch-ID on the Doogee X5 Max.

Doogee X5 Max review conclusion

It lacks goodies such as a compass, gyro, and NFC; but, includes a couple of things we often don’t see on mobiles costing several times as much: FM radio and more importantly, TF SD+dual-SIM.

The display, loudspeaker, battery life and GPS are very good. WiFi is great and it comes with Marshmallow. loudspeaker is very good. Cherry on top is the excellent implementation of the touch-ID fingerprint sensor.

Doogee X5 [email protected]

If you hadn’t guessed already, we like the Doogee X5 Max. This is a solid budget mobile that you can’t go wrong with for $66.

For those who need WCDMA 900, consider the Doogee X5 Pro with 2GB/16GB and MT6735 for just a few bucks more than Doogee X5 Max. If you can afford a bit more, the Xiaomi Redmi 3 Mini (see review here) has come down in price significantly.