Nokia 5.3 Review: Cheap and Great

Nokia 5.3 Design and Screen

The Nokia 5.3 has a 6.55-inch LCD display with a 720×1600 pixel resolution. While it isn’t a Full HD display, the quality is surprisingly good. It has a decent level of contrast, and it doesn’t look too pixel-y when displaying videos. However, like most LCD displays, it struggles in direct sunlight.

Away from the screen, the overall design is stylish, and the phone is built well. Very few people believed us when we told them that the 5.3 cost less than $200. We’d rather it didn’t have “Nokia” scrawled below the screen, but sadly, you can’t have it all.

The 5.3 comes with a headphone jack, space for a micro SD card, and a USB-C port. The port in particular isn’t something we always see at this price point. It also has a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, which is snappy and easy to reach. However, we did find that the 5.3’s fingerprint sensor could be activated while it was in our pocket. Naturally, the phone didn’t unlock, but we did have to re-enter our passcode almost every time we took it out – which almost defeated the point of having the fingerprint sensor.

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Oddly, the Nokia 5.3 has some of the worst speakers we’ve ever seen, or rather heard, on a phone. It has a single, downward-firing speaker that is poor, to say the least. It doesn’t get loud enough and, even at full volume, there’s precious little clarity or bass to the sound it produces. At lower volumes, however, the 5.3’s speaker sounds like it’s actually underwater. The sound is muffled and becomes hard to hear – particularly if you’re listening to speech. The 5.3 does come with some headphones but, to be honest, you’re better off bringing your own.