Lava Agni 4 Review in Five Minutes: A Serious Contender in the Sub-25K Segment

Lava has officially introduced the Agni 4 in India, marking its most premium smartphone launch to date. While the Agni 2 focused on elegant design and the Agni 3 experimented with a secondary display, the Agni 4 takes a more refined approach.

This year, Lava blends a premium build and ergonomic aesthetics with robust hardware upgrades, aiming to deliver a flagship-class experience that feels both polished and powerful. Now, let's find out how the Lava Agni 4 fared in real-world scenarios.

Premium, Durable, and Thoughtfully Crafted

Straight off the bat, the Lava Agni 4 embraces an iPhone-esque aesthetic with its flat display, rounded edges, and boxy frame. The dual rear cameras are neatly aligned, adding to its symmetry. But the Lava Agni 4 doesn't just look premium, it feels premium too. Its precision-engineered aluminium alloy frame, a level of craftsmanship typically reserved for phones twice its price, gives it a solid, luxurious in-hand feel.

The device uses a super anti-drop diamond frame structure for all-angle protection, is reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass, and carries an IP64 rating for dust and splash resistance. Add to that ultra-slim 1.7 mm bezels, a smooth Matte AG Glass back, and wet-touch controls that work even with damp hands, and the Agni 4 confidently blends durability with flagship-grade refinement.

All the buttons on the Agni 4 are positioned to the right of the device, although I found the placement of the volume buttons at the top a little inconvenient. The power button sits right under the volume controls, while a customizable Action button is placed at the bottom right. The customizable Action Key puts instant control at your fingertips with 100 + shortcut combinations. Dual-stereo speakers mean there a grille on the top and bottom. The SIM tray and charging port are also located at the bottom of the phone.

Overall, the design feels clean, minimal, and undeniably premium. Additionally, the case inside does offer a better grip, if you don't mind sacrificing on looks.

Bright, Sharp, and Easy on the Eyes

For the display, Lava have opted for a 6.67-inch 1.5K 10-bit AMOLED display, which doesn't feel too big or too small. The screen is quite sharp with a pixel density of 446 PPI and can achieve a peak brightness of 2,400 nits. The display reproduces vibrant colours and is easily visible under any lighting. The panel also has a 120Hz refresh rate making it a solid choice for gamers.

Fast, Cool, and Consistently Reliable

Equipped with the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 chipset, the Agni 4 handles most tasks you throw at it effortlessly. I briefly tested Call of Duty: Mobile and Raid: Shadow Legends on maximum settings without any lag or slowdowns. In Geekbench 6, the Agni 4 managed a single-core score of 1413 points and a multi-core score of 4428 points.

Beyond raw processing power, the Agni 4 benefits from fast LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage, delivering noticeably quicker app loading and smoother multitasking compared to previous LPDDR4X-based devices. With 8GB of RAM - expandable virtually up to 16GB - and 256GB of onboard storage, the phone maintains consistent responsiveness even during heavy-duty tasks.

Lava has also equipped the Agni 4 with a large 4,300mm² VC liquid cooling system and a dedicated Game Booster Mode, ensuring temperature stability and sustained performance during extended gaming sessions, even in India's demanding climate conditions.

Reliable, Feature-Rich Optics With Few Limitations

The Agni 4 has two cameras on the back, a 50MP primary sensor (f/1.88, 1/1.55" sensor, 1.0 μm) with OIS and an 8MP ultrawide lens (112° FOV). Up front, there's a high res 50MP selfie camera that supports EIS. Additionally, both the main and selfie cameras can shoot 4K video at 60fps, which is a standout advantage in this price segment.

The Lava Agni 4 delivers solid overall camera performance for its segment, led by a capable 50MP main sensor that captures excellent detail, vibrant yet accurate colours, and well-balanced sharpness. The primary camera also performs surprisingly well at night, with its Night Mode and ambient-light optimisation maintaining clarity and contrast in low-light scenes. The 8MP ultrawide lens offers consistent colour output with minimal edge distortion, though its images appear softer and lose noticeable detail at night.

On the front, the 50MP selfie camera shines in daylight with crisp, natural-looking shots but struggles indoors and in low light, often producing noisy or soft results. While both the main and selfie cameras can record 4K 60fps video - rare at this price - stability takes a hit at higher frame rates despite accurate colour reproduction.

Overall, the Agni 4's camera setup performs reliably, with its main sensor being the clear standout.

Decent Endurance, Solid Charging Bump

Since the Lava Agni 4 avoids a silicon-carbon battery, it tops out at 5,000mAh. It's a solid capacity, though it may seem underwhelming next to the oversized batteries offered by many Chinese competitors.

I haven't fully stress-tested the battery yet, but the Agni 4 comfortably lasts a full day on a single charge with average use. While the battery capacity itself hasn't seen a major upgrade, the charging speed certainly has. The bundled 66W fast charger can take the phone from 0 to 50 percent in under 20 minutes, and a full charge takes less than 50 minutes, a welcome boost for users who are always on the go.

Clean, Minimal, and Bloat-Free

The Lava Agni 4 runs a near-stock version of Android 15 out of the box. The UI feels lightweight, intuitive, and free from intrusive ads or unnecessary system apps. Lava also provides thoughtful touches like useful customization options and helpful utilities without overwhelming the user. The Agni 4 also comes with a whole host of AI features courtesy of the Expert AI Agent, although we'll deep dive into them during our full review.

Lava's clean and minimalist approach is a breath of fresh air in a segment dominated by bloat-heavy interfaces.

First Impressions: Lava's Most Refined Smartphone Yet

With a starting price of Rs 24,999, the Lava Agni 4 leaves a strong first impression, especially with its premium design, sturdy build quality, smooth performance, and an excellent main camera that consistently delivers. It feels like Lava's most refined smartphone yet. That said, the ultrawide lens and selfie camera fall short in low light, the battery capacity feels standard for 2025, and video stability at 4K 60fps needs work.

Still, if early impressions are anything to go by, the Agni 4 shapes up to be one of Lava's most compelling offerings to date and will be hard to pass up in the sub-25K segment.