Nexus 5X review: great value, quick and accurate fingerprint sensor, but mediocre battery, and no microSD card slot
Nexus 5X review: Google's triumphant return to smaller, cheaper phones — While the Nexus 6 received plenty of praise when it debuted last year, it also got its fair share of flack.
Context & Ripple Effects
After last year's Nexus 6 drew praise for power but criticism for its size and price, Google splits the line in two: the LG-built 5X returns to the smaller, cheaper formula while Huawei's Nexus 6P takes the premium slot with USB Type-C and the stronger camera. Ars Technica's verdict that both are true flagships with little-to-no compromise frames this Engadget review as the value-end check on that claim.
This piece lands mid-sweep of reviews: AnandTech's later teardown confirms the 5X is a true successor to the Nexus 5 but flags SoC and NAND performance that belie the two-year gap since the original — so the battery and storage omissions here sit on top of an already-questionable generational speedup.
First-order effects
- Budget-conscious Nexus buyers get a quick, accurate fingerprint reader and great value today, but must live with a mediocre battery and fixed internal storage since there is no microSD slot to expand it.
- The 6P now has a clearer sales pitch against its sibling: reviewers credit it with the best camera and best Snapdragon 810 implementation, making the 5X the price-driven choice rather than the outright pick.
Second-order effects
- Omitting expandable storage on a marquee Google device normalizes the cut for rivals — OnePlus repeats the same no-microSD tradeoff three years later in its own value-focused OnePlus 6, showing the compromise migrating down-market.
- Google's hardware strategy absorbs the lesson on battery life: by the Pixel generation the company markets long endurance explicitly, with the 2020 Pixel 5 review citing long battery life as a headline strength rather than an afterthought.
Third-order effects
- If sealed storage and value-tier fingerprint sensors become table stakes across Android, differentiation shifts entirely to cameras, batteries, and silicon — exactly the axes where AnandTech found the 5X lagging its own predecessor.
- The Nexus program's two-phone structure — cheap LG model plus premium Huawei model — prefigures Google's eventual single-branded Pixel lineup, where the company controls both tiers itself instead of outsourcing each to a different manufacturer.
The trend: Android flagships are converging on sealed storage and software-defined value, pushing competition toward batteries, cameras, and in-house silicon rather than expandable hardware.