Salora Arya Z3 review – budget friendly octa core smartphone

The Salora Arya Z3 is a low cost octa core powered smartphone available for Rs. 6,999. This dual SIM handset houses the MediaTek 1.4GHz octa core chipset running Android KitKat with 1GB RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Is it worth the price? Find out.

Box Pack
Inside you will find the handset, 2200 mAh battery, user manual, warranty card, data cable, standard quality earphone and travel charger. The SAR value is mentioned on the box : 0.401 W/kg head and 0.891 W/kg body.

Design, Display and OS
The Arya Z3 looks good with black and silver combination. It is a plastic body and sides are silver coloured with metallic finishing. Build quality and finishing is good, could have been a little better but for the price it is good enough.

Z3 weights with battery is 154 grams – the handset is 8.55mm thick. It is comfortable to hold. The rear side has got textures, its black coloured with matte finish. It feels a bit odd when you touch the back panel (cause of the textures), but it does give a very good grip.

Volume rocker is placed on the left side, power button is on the right and 3.5mm audio jack and micro USB port is placed on the top. There is a single mic at the bottom. This is a dual SIM handset and both the SIM slots support 3G. SIM slot 1 is normal SIM slot and SIM 2 is micro SIM.

This handset sports a 5 inch IPS screen supporting 1280 x 720 pixels resolution. Colour reproduction and viewing angles are good. Touch is smooth and responsive. There was a factory fitted film on the screen, you will need to remove that, make sure to clean the screen with a soft cloth to remove the sticky residue left by the film.

There is no LED notification. Z3 comes loaded with 3 sensors – accelerometer, light and proximity.

Salora Arya Z3 is running Android KitKat 4.4.2, I don’t think this handset will get software updates.

Memory and Storage
The Z3 is packed with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. There is micro SD card slot to add additional storage. Of the 1GB RAM you will get about 526MB free on the first boot and of the 8GB storage you will get about 6GB free for apps / personal storage.

OTG is supported and you can install apps on the external storage.

Performance and Benchmark
Arya Z3 is powered by MediaTek 1.4GHz Cortex A7 octa core chipset MT6592 coupled with Mali 450 MP GPU. Performance is very smooth and lag free.

Gaming
I played Asphalt 8, it got installed on internal storage. Game play was very smooth – no issues found. The hardware is powerful enough to play many high end games.

Camera and Entertainment
On the box it is mentioned that the rear camera is 8MP resolution and the front camera is 2MP resolution. But you can shoot in 13MP resolution (Image interpolation) using the rear camera and in 5MP resolution using the front camera.

Camera quality is above average. The rear camera can shoot full HD videos. Check the sample images and video at the end.

Z3 can play FHD videos, I tried 4K videos but it was not smooth audio / video out of sync.

Others
GPS lock was fast, no issues with 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Sound is loud and clear, in call quality is also decent enough. With heavy usage the handset does not heat up much.

Battery
There is 2200 mAh battery. Here is the battery performance. You can expect about 3 to 5 hours of continuous moderate to heavy usage.

Verdict
Salora Arya Z3 is octa core smartphone with dual SIM (3G + 3G) support. It is available for Rs. 6,999. Camera quality is very good (above average) and overall performance is also impressive. A very good option for this price tag.

Unfortunately this handset has been launched at a time when big well known brands have already launched they respective smartphone and some with the same price tag. The Lenovo A6000 for example, though quad core (64 Bit with 4G) is a better option.

If brand does not matter then the Arya Z3 is worth considering.

[Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Arya Z3 is available on Amazon.in for Rs. 6,999.

Image Gallery

Rear camera sample

Front camera sample