Sony Xperia XZ Premium review - the best flagship of 2020?

Technical specifications Sony Xperia XZ Premium

Display: IPS, 5.5-inch with 4K Ultra HD resolution (3840 x 2160 pixels), 806 ppi pixel density, HDR support
Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 8 cores (Kryo 280 Performance 2450 MHz + Kryo 280 Efficiency 1900 MHz), 10 nm, Adreno 540 video accelerator
RAM: 4 GB LPDDR4
Built-in memory: 64 GB UFS 2.1
Main camera: 19 MP, 1/2.3″ Exmor RS, 25mm G Lens, F2.0 aperture, physical pixel size 1.22 microns, Motion Eye technology, three-layer image sensor with built-in DRAM memory
Front camera: 13 MP, 22mm lens, 1/3.06″ Exmor RS
Connectivity: 4G LTE, 3G, 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 5.0
Connectors: USB Type-C 3.1, 3.5 mm mini-jack
Battery: 3230 mAh
Case material: glass, metal, plastic
Colours: Luminous Chrome, Deepsea Black, Bronze Pink
Operating system: Android 7.1.1 Nougat with Xperia UI shell
Dimensions: 156 x 77 x 7.9 mm, weight - 195 grams
Features: IP65/68 waterproof, fast fingerprint sensor in power button, Google Assistant support

Sony Xperia XZ Premium Smartphone: Review

Dimensions and design - 3.8

Sony Xperia XZ Premium looks recognizable and moderately original. While many competitors are experimenting with additional or edge-to-edge screens, Sony continues to stick to its style.

The first thing that catches your eye is the angular shape of the body, the semicircular side ends, which become flat at the top and bottom. It is impossible not to note the huge frames around the screen, but this has already become a kind of calling card of the Xperia flagships since the days of the Sony Xperia Z. It is only a pity that the touch buttons were placed not on them, but on the display, which is why the latter becomes somewhat smaller. stereo speakers are comfortably placed within the frame, but the feeling of unused space still lingers.

The back of the smartphone is fascinating. In Shiny Chrome, it looks like a shiny, mirror-like surface that you can look into to fix your hair or makeup. But this is not so practical - the phone attracts not only attention, but also small scratches.

On the left side you can see a cover under which the card slots are hidden. On the right there are three buttons at once - the volume rocker, the power key and the shutter button, classic for Sony smartphones. In portrait mode, pressing it is not very comfortable, but it is useful in horizontal orientation of the phone. There is a fingerprint scanner hidden in the power key. This arrangement can be called convenient - it’s good that it is combined with the button that is used to unlock. I’m also glad that the 3.5 mm headphone jack has not disappeared anywhere and remains with the phone.

Dimensions Sony Xperia XZ Premium: 156x77x8.1 mm, weight - 190 grams. As you can see, the smartphone is very large and is quite comparable to the 5.9-inch Huawei Mate 9 phablet. It is slightly larger in height and width than the iPhone 7 Plus, but noticeably thicker and weighs about the same. The phone fits well in the palm, but its corners dig into the skin slightly. You can control your smartphone with one hand, but it’s not very convenient.

The build quality of the Xperia XZ Premium is high. It is made of metal and protected by Gorilla Glass 5 on both sides. True, the glass gets dirty and slips easily, and due to the convex ends, the phone is not very convenient to take from the table.

One of the main features of the line is protection from water, and it hasn’t gone away this time either. The Xperia XZ Premium is submersion-resistant and can handle accidental spills or talking on your phone in the rain. But you shouldn’t specifically bathe your smartphone—the manufacturer prohibits doing so under threat of voiding the warranty.

The Sony Xperia XZ Premium is available in three colours: Radiant Chrome, Deep Black and Rose Bronze.

Screen - 4.6

Sony Xperia XZ Premium has a 5.46-inch ultra-clear high-quality screen. Last year, the Xperia Z5 Premium was the first phone with a 4K screen, and this year the XZ Premium became the first smartphone to support HDR video. But as in the case of its predecessor, this “pioneering” includes many reservations and formalities.

The display resolution is 3840x2160 pixels, the pixel density is simply fantastic - 807 per inch, which is even too much. True, the trick is that the phone interface and most third-party software are rendered in Full HD resolution. Full 4K is used only in the branded album, video player and only some applications. The company may have set its sights on virtual reality, but the problem is that most VR headsets do not support 4K yet.

The situation with support for the HDR standard HDR10 is also complicated. HDR10 support is expressed in high screen brightness (up to 547 nits), wide color gamut (up to 99% of Adobe RGB) and a matrix with a color depth of 10 bits, and not the usual 8. But HDR10 requires suitable video content, which is not easy to find . But if you have a Sony Playstation 4 Pro, then HDR support will come in handy - thanks to it, you can broadcast gameplay from the console to the smartphone screen.

As for the image quality, it is quite high. There is a wide range of brightness, from 5 to 547 nits, and a high contrast ratio of 1040:1. There are three color modes to choose from: Professional, Extreme Brightness and Standard. With the former, you get a fairly narrow color gamut of 97% of sRGB and very accurate color reproduction. This is perhaps the most practical option, since most content is created to this standard. If you want to see unusually saturated colors, go to maximum brightness mode. It expands the coverage to 99% of Adobe RGB, but at the same time the color accuracy drops slightly. This option is suitable for viewing HDR content or if you are a designer who works with an expanded color space. The “standard” option is something in between. By the way, in all three modes the color temperature turned out to be slightly too high, which is why the screen gets a slight blue tint. Fortunately, this can be corrected manually in the settings. Separately, we note the sensitive operating mode with gloves, which will be useful in winter.

Finally, let's talk about a small drawback - the screen does not display dynamic scenes very smoothly, which is why the image flickers a little. Perhaps this is due to the non-switchable dynamic backlight system. To check this by eye, just look through the desktops. If at the same time you do not notice how the icons flicker, then this will not be a problem for you.

Cameras - 4.7

Sony Xperia XZ Premium received top-end cameras of 19 and 13 MP, as well as the ability to shoot slow-motion video at 960 frames per second. The smartphone takes excellent pictures during the day, but in poor lighting it begins to give way to its competitors.

The device received the latest IMX400 module, which has a maximum resolution of 19 MP, an f/2.0 aperture, electronic optical stabilization, as well as phase tracking autofocus, supplemented by laser. When there is insufficient lighting, the LED flash comes to the rescue. Compared to the Sony Xperia X Performance, the number of megapixels has decreased, but the physical size of the matrix remains the same (1/2.3"), the pixel size is 1.22 microns. You can complain about the lack of optical stabilization and, as always, flirting with a large number of pixels. It is curious that almost all competitors have gone the route of dual cameras (Huawei P10, Xiaomi Mi6, and so on), but not Sony. The company went its own way and added its own memory to the IMX400 module, which increased the shooting speed up to an incredible 960 frames per second. By comparison, the iPhone 7 can only slow down to 240 frames per second.

As for the photo quality, during the day it is at a high level - with good color rendition, correct and fast focusing, and high detail. It seems that the company has even coped with the previously inherent unevenness in personnel. Sometimes only some of the colors look a little more saturated than in real life. But the camera doesn't handle low-light photography very well. Apparently, the lack of optical stabilization and the large number of pixels have an effect - noise immediately appears.

The camera interface itself seemed awkward to us. Switching between modes occurs either by pressing small icons at the top of the screen, or by swiping to the side. The first is inconvenient, and the second leads to the fact that sometimes an accidental press changes the shooting of a photo to a video recording or vice versa. In “Super Auto Mode” there have long been no restrictions on resolution or any parameters, but there is no separate icon for shooting HDR frames. HDR should turn on itself when necessary, but during tests of the Sony Xperia XZ Premium this did not always happen. As a result, in such cases, overexposed or dark frames are created.

Video shooting is possible both in 4K (3840×2160) at 30 frames per second, and in HD (1280×720) at 960 frames per second. This is truly impressive. The only problem is that you will need good lighting, because even in a fairly bright room these videos turn out to be “noisy”. It's better to shoot outside on a sunny day. There is also a time limit - you choose which part of the video will be slow-motion, but it will be literally a split second. You cannot extend the fragment, and the camera will need a timeout for a few seconds so that it can “recover” and be able to shoot another slow-motion fragment again.

The front camera of the phone can be called excellent; it is good for selfies. It has a high resolution of 13 MP, a good f/2.0 aperture and 1.12 micron pixels. The maximum resolution for video recording is 1920×1080 pixels. But most importantly, there is autofocus, which will always allow you to take clear selfies. Add here beautifying filters, a simple manual mode and HDR shooting, and we will see that the front camera of the Sony Xperia XZ Premium is quite comparable to the main cameras of mid-price smartphones.

Photos from Sony Xperia XZ Premium camera - 4.7

Sony Xperia XZ Premium, HDR photo comparison

Photos from the front camera of Sony Xperia XZ Premium - 4.7

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Working with text - 5.0

The phone comes with a SwiftKey keyboard out of the box. It offers many themes and supports continuous input (Swype), and there is also markup of additional characters. In addition, you can adjust the size of the keyboard, change the layout, or even move it entirely across the screen.

Internet - 3.0

The Google Chrome browser is pre-installed on the phone. It can be called the standard option for many Android devices. Its main feature is synchronization with the desktop version. But mobile Chrome does not have a full reading mode or automatic adjustment of text to the width of the screen.

Communications - 5.0

Sony Xperia XZ Premium has a large number of communication capabilities and support for the latest technologies. The smartphone received the following features:

Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA
LTE, up to 1 Gbit/150 Mbit
Bluetooth 5.0 LE, A2DP, aptX HD
GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou
NFC chip.

At the bottom end there is a USB v3.1 Type-C connector with USB On-The-Go support for connecting peripheral devices such as mice and keyboards. It would be possible to add only FM radio and an infrared port, which are not here.

Two modifications of the device will go on sale: version G8141 with the ability to install one nanoSIM and Xperia XZ Premium Dual (G8142) with support for two nanoSIM cards. However, in the second case, the slot for the second one will be combined with a memory card. Moreover, every time you open the tray cover, the phone goes into a time-consuming reboot.

Multimedia - 4.4

The smartphone can well be called a multimedia one. According to the test results, it turned out to be not the most “omnivorous”, but it provides high sound quality.

In terms of music, the phone did not want to be friends with AC3; in terms of video, it did not want to be friends with RMVB, TS and some WMV videos. As for the sound, the phone does not have a very large volume reserve, but it sounds high quality. The most interesting thing is that the smartphone has support for Hi-Res audio. Moreover, the audio player itself sees the tracks in “high resolution” and marks them with the letters HR. The sound quality for them becomes noticeably higher. So, for regular audio, the dynamic range was 85.5 dB, something around the average value. But in the case of Hi-Res audio, it jumps to 90.5 dB, and this already makes it one of the leaders in this parameter among the tested smartphones.

The proprietary music player offers not only an equalizer with the ability to add bass, but also a number of sound effects such as surround sound in headphones or from speakers, as well as a normalizer for equalizing the volume of different songs.

The video player has an interesting feature - it allows you to enlarge the image directly while watching a video. This looks especially impressive when watching 4K videos, when you start zooming in on the picture several times, and it still looks clear. It can also work with subtitles and play videos in the background when working with other applications.

Performance - 4.9

The performance of the Sony Xperia XZ Premium can be called flagship high. Any games and applications are no problem for it.

Xperia XZ Premium is one of the first smartphones with a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset (four cores at 2.45 GHz and four at 1.9 GHz) and Adreno 540 graphics. The amount of RAM is 4 GB. During the tests, the phone worked smoothly and easily carried out any tasks and applications. The only thing I didn’t like was the long loading time of the device itself when turned on, up to 50 seconds. The same last year's Galaxy S7 starts up almost twice as fast. In addition, we checked whether the device body does not heat up during operation. It turned out that no - only up to 40.6 degrees on the display after half an hour in games. Warm, but not hot.

In benchmarks, the Sony Xperia XZ Premium received the following results:

Geekbench 4 (processor test) - 6152 points, about twice as high as Huawei Nova;
Ice Storm Unlimited from 3DMark (graphics) - 39717, a very high result, can only be compared with Xiaomi Mi6 on the same platform;
AnTuTu 6 (mixed test) - 162729 points, almost a third higher than Huawei P10.

Battery - 3.6

The autonomy of the Xperia XZ Premium can be called mediocre. We only had enough smartphone for a day of active use. This is normal, but you always expect more from a flagship.

The manufacturer equipped the smartphone with a 3230 mAh non-removable battery. For comparison, OnePlus 3T has 3400 mAh, and Meizu MX6 has 3060 mAh. In battery tests, the phone showed the following results:

Only 5 hours of video viewing at maximum brightness and up to 7.5 hours if you reduce it to 200 nits. Even the iPhone 7 with a small battery lasted longer.
127 hours of music listening, comparable to Motorola Moto Z Play. It's a good time, the screen off does its job.
About 4 hours of gaming, slightly better than average.
Half an hour of shooting Full HD video consumes 15% of the battery.

In general, if you don’t play a lot and don’t get carried away with watching multimedia content, then the phone can last for a longer time, especially in tandem with the energy-efficient Stamina mode.

Note that the Xperia XZ Premium supports QuickCharge 3.0 fast charging, but it does not come with a suitable charger. And it’s unclear whether they forgot to put it in, or saved on an important feature. By the way, the smartphone is fully charged in just over 2.5 hours.

Memory - 5.0

With super slow motion video shooting, the Xperia XZ Premium requires fast storage. Therefore, the device is equipped with 64 GB of internal memory with a write speed of up to 1.5 GB per second. Of these, about 50 GB are available to the user. In fact, video shooters will easily fill this volume. In this case, you can add up to 256 GB using a microSD card. It's funny, but the smartphone does not support hot-swapping of cards - as soon as you open the tray slightly, the phone goes into reboot. There is no provision for installing applications on external memory. You are only asked to transfer music, videos and photos to the card.

Peculiarities

The smartphone case is protected from moisture and dust according to the IP68 standard. Thanks to this, the Xperia XZ Premium can spend up to half an hour underwater at a depth of 1.5 meters. The phone can also shoot super slow-motion video at 960 frames per second. Another important feature is the 4K display with HDR video support. Fans of the PlayStation 4 game console will appreciate Remote Play - the ability to play the console remotely from a smartphone.

The software part is handled by Android 7.1 with a proprietary interface from Sony, which offers you your own keyboard, players, album and even the Xperia Store.

Design, ergonomics

The Xperia XZ Premium is an incredibly beautiful and at the same time strange smartphone. The Japanese here went against market trends and the aspirations of ordinary people who dream of curved screens covering the entire front panel, and at a lower price.

The Xperia XZ Premium is based on the Glass Loop Surface design concept, which continues the ideas of past flagships. Closed surfaces and shapes reign here, everything is symbolized by a rectangle without edges, this can be seen everywhere - in the design of the ends, USB Type-C, and even the sensor block near the camera.

Sony designers were able to do the incredible - show that an “old-fashioned” smartphone can attract the eye more than new-fashioned curved screens. I haven’t held such a unique and harmonious smartphone in my hands for a long time. It's good to see that not all companies blindly follow trends.

Essentially, we have a candy bar consisting of two Gorilla Glass 5 glasses and a plastic frame with metal lower and upper ends. Sony could not or did not want to make the entire frame aluminum (apparently for good cellular signal reception), but they did not spare metal on the bottom and top edges. There really is a lot of it there.

The version in Luminous Chrome color came to me for review, which, in my opinion, is the most successful and brightest. Perfect for both boys and girls.

Now let's quickly go over the buttons. Sony Mobile engineers are conservative on this issue, but there are significant changes here too.

On the right side there are all control elements, including the power button with a fingerprint scanner, as well as the camera shutter buttons. Special thanks for it; in many scenarios, pressing this button is faster and more convenient than tapping on the screen.

I'm also pleased with the new location of the volume rocker. It was moved above the power button, which immediately increased ease of use. Most users of the Xperia XZ and older Sony Xperia flagships were unhappy with the volume being shoved between the power button and the camera button. The Xperia XZ Premium has finally listened to user demands.

Xperia XZ Premium protective glass has a 2.5D effect, which is especially pronounced on the side edges. For some reason, many people believe that Gorilla Glass 5 does not scratch or that this version of glass scratches much less than previous versions, but this is not the case. During everyday use without a case, scratches are simply inevitable. Please take this into account.

Ease of use

No matter how much I admire the original design of the Xperia XZ Premium, it is stupid to deny that this smartphone has problems with ergonomics.

Not even that, this smartphone lacks ergonomics. It simply does not exist, it is an angular, glossy block with a 5.5-inch screen, which is larger in size than my Huawei Mate 9 (review).

You must hold the Xperia XZ Premium in your hands carefully; it does not forgive mistakes with an incorrect grip. Slippery guy.