Anyone who’s familiar with Sony Xperia like of devices will undoubtedly find themselves right at home with the Xperia X Performance. It’s a good time to highlight that the Canadian variant is also the same as the world edition which is different than what you’ll find in the United States. However, like many have noted, the $699,99 price tag isn’t justified.
Canada’s Sony Xperia X Performance shines through!
You can take a look at my first 24 hours hands-on with Sony’s Xperia X Performance. Link 1, Link 2, Link 3 & Link 4.
Many other reviews have noted issues with screen responsiveness, poor battery performance, weird button positioning. All right, those are some great pointers, but from the device I tested myself as my daily driver for my day to day activities, I have suffered no issues with the screen responsiveness, no problems with the battery and the button positioning although awkward, didn’t bother me.
At the time of the review, the device was running Android 6.0.1 with April 1st, 2016 security patch, which made me wonder what was Sony’s commitment to keeping things updated? (At the time of my review, I still haven’t received a reply back from Sony).
The Good:
| The Bad:
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| Dimensions | 143.7 x 70.4 x 8.7 mm (5.66 x 2.77 x 0.34 in) |
| Weight | 164.4 g (5.78 oz) |
| SIM | Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) |
| – IP68 certified – dust proof and water resistant over 1.5 meters and 30 minutes |
| Resolution | 1080 x 1920 pixels (~441 PPI pixel density) |
| Multitouch | Yes, up to 10 fingers |
| Protection | Scratch-resistant glass, oleophobic coating |
| – Triluminos display – X-Reality Engine |
| Chipset | Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 820 |
| CPU | Dual-core 2.15 GHz Kryo & dual-core 1.6 GHz Kryo |
| GPU | Adreno 530 |
| Card slot | microSD, up to 256 GB (dedicated slot) |
| Internal | 32 GB, 3 GB RAM |
| Primary | 23 MP, f/2.0, 24mm, phase detection autofocus, LED flash |
| Features | 1/2.3″ sensor size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama |
| Video | 1080p@30fps, 1080p@60fps |
| Secondary | 13 MP, f/2.0, 22mm, 1/3″ sensor size, 1080p, HDR |
The Xperia X Performance comes with a nice aluminium body while having a compact figure at just 5-inches, it almost feels natural. Keeping in line with Sony’s promises to bring you something different, we sure got that hint with 2700 mAh battery, but that left plenty of room for Sony include a really nice pair of front-facing stereo speakers.
The added fingerprint scanner in the power button the side made for a joy to operate. The responsiveness of the button made for unlocking the phone just as fast as any of the other devices I’ve tested.
There’s some aspect of the previous generation that Sony should have brought and kept from the Z-series.
The IPS display of the Xperia X Performance will provide anyone with a 1080P experience that some of us haven’t seen in a while. The crisp images, vivid colours and amazing video display does make use of the X-Reality engine that Sony is famous for at 441ppi, what could you ask more?
While many have critic the phone’s touch sensor, I can’t embark with them in saying so, I had no issues with the sensor at any given time, day, night, wet or dry.
When it was time to take the camera for a spin, the Xperia X Performance camera left me underwhelmed. I don’t take a lot of pictures to start with. For the few pictures I did take, I wasn’t left satisfied with the result. I needed to take several and try different settings, method, lights, no lights and the likes. The sensor used in the current Xperia X isn’t the latest that Sony produces and that left me wondering why?
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Users looking at getting the most power out of their device will be happy with the Snapdragon 820 from Qualcomm. It delivers impressive performance for the multitasker in all of us. I threw a large load at it and it flew through it fabulously.
The device comes preloaded with man applications that Sony thinks most of us will use. Unfortunately, I personally disabled and removed plenty when I was testing the device. Even after doing so, I was still using 9.8GB worth of space. I’d like to see future devices with fewer apps and more choices for users. Instead of having them pre-install, Sony’s should offer a selection.
Sony’s default launcher has gone through a large update on this device, I didn’t feel as if I needed to replace it. I could use it as is. The theme engine now provided in Sony’s smartphone allowed me to customise my experience to my needed and resulted in almost “heavy custom themes”.
The upside of having features is finding excellent additions like the DSEE HX and the enhance ClearAudio+ that made listening to music enjoyable with any price range pair of headphones I through at it.
Juiced up with 2700 mAh of power, I tested the device performance non-stop for a period of 7+ hours of continuous usage this resulted in about the same amount of screen on time. This led me to continue testing as an average user and I could easily get 24 hours + of usage. Even with less battery capacity than the predecessor, Sony has been able to deliver. Even if you were a power hungry shark, you’d be ok, since the device does make use of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 standard allowing to quickly charge up.
This is where I am with the Sony’s Xperia X Performance; Would I buy it? Yes & No. This device performs well, it runs everything you’ll need and it’s perfect for the average user if you can get passed the $699,99 price point, then by all means GO! I feel that $499,99 is a fair price for a mid-range device. You have better options on the market right now. You may want to explore them. If the price came down, I’d be happy getting one, but not at its current price.
