Sony Xperia X review: Is this the Xperia Z6 in disguise?

Phones such as the Sony Xperia X have it tough in today’s competitive landscape. On the one hand, they’re not cheap enough to lure fans of budget handsets such as the Moto G away from their favoured brand, and on the other they’re not quite alluring enough to tempt flagship addicts away from the likes of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S7.

One solution to this dilemma is to squeeze in as much high-end hardware as the budget allows while sacrificing a little design panache along the way. I’m thinking here of the Google Nexus 5X or the OnePlus 2, both phones with plenty of oomph, but not necessarily the polish of higher-end models. Another is to make the best phone possible, but make it ever-so-slightly cheaper. Take the LG G5, for instance, or Sony’s Xperia Z5.

That makes the Sony Xperia X something of an oddity. Given the price, it appears to be a natural competitor to handsets like the LG G5 or Sony’s own Xperia Z5. It certainly looks the part, complete with its matte-finish metal rear panel, slab-like design and smoothly rounded-off edges on the glass panel at the front.

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It’s a very lovely thing, and much more so in the dark grey of my review sample than the lime gold Sony showed off at MWC earlier this year. Crucially, though, it combines good looks with great build quality: thanks to the combination of the signature Xperia design flourishes and solid feel, it’s far more premium-feeling than its principal rival, the Nexus 5X.

And yet, upon examining its specifications, it looks as if Sony has picked the wrong bits out of the parts bin. With a 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 chipset residing at the heart of this handset, alongside 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (with a microSD card available for expansion), the Xperia X is closer to the Nexus 5X, a phone that starts out £160 cheaper, than phones in its own price bracket.

With the Nexus 5X packing in a Snapdragon 808 for less cash, things don’t look good for the X. The only consolation is that the Xperia X sports a fingerprint sensor, which, along with the NFC radio embedded in the top-left corner of the phone, allows you to take full advantage of Android Pay.  

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Sony Xperia X review: Performance and battery life

However, the Snapdragon 650 is a bit of a dark horse. It’s a hexa-core unit, with a 1.8GHz dual-core CPU carrying out demanding tasks and a more power-efficient 1.4GHz part taking over when the phone isn’t doing much. And with Android 6.0 Marshmallow at the helm, it feels more spritely than you might expect it to, with nippy transitions, menu animations and web page zooming and panning.

Moreover, when you look at the benchmark results, the Xperia performs at a similar level to the Nexus 5X, both in the CPU and the gaming-centric GFXBench tests. It’s a touch behind the Xperia Z5, though, and the LG G5, which comes in at a similar price to the Xperia X.

As you can see, the Xperia X is ahead or level in all the tests, which is quite something from a chipset that is nominally a rung down the ladder.

The Xperia X also has very decent battery life. Not only did it acquit itself well in our video rundown test, lasting 12hrs 4mins, but its array of power-efficiency tweaks – par for the course with a Sony handset – help it last an age in day-to-day use.

As with any modern smartphone, if you use it constantly, you won’t get much more than a day out of it. However, as I write this, the battery gauge is sitting on 19% after a day and a half of use. That’s excellent performance, and with Sony’s usual battery-saving wizardry in charge, I fully expect it to last until teatime on day two at least.

BUY NOW FROM AMAZON: Sony Xperia X

Sony Xperia X review: Display

The Sony Xperia X is a very pocketable phone. Part of that is due to its slim, light chassis, but it’s mainly due to the 5in screen.

Perhaps it’s because my eyes are failing in my old age, but I still prefer a larger screen. There’s no denying, however, that a 5in phone is much less of a pain in the pocket. This one slips comfortably into the front pocket of a pair of jeans, and most of the time you won’t notice it’s there.

The display is great quality, too. It has a resolution of 1080p, which is as much as anyone needs on any smartphone up to 6in in size; don’t let anyone tell you different. It’s also insanely bright, reaching 579cd/m² at maximum settings, and its contrast ratio is excellent, reaching right up to 1,356:1. With sRGB coverage of 99.9%, there’s not much here to pick holes in at all.

Sony Xperia X review: Camera

The camera, however, is a bit of a mixed bag. On paper, it all looks grand: a 23-megapixel, 1/2.3in sensor sounds promising (the same resolution as on its more illustrious stablemate Xperia Z5), the aperture is a reasonably bright f/2.0, and you also get phase detect autofocus for super-fast focusing.

The most significant addition in this model, however, is the new Predictive Hybrid Autofocus, which enables subject focus tracking in both stills and video-capture mode. Tap on your subject and the Sony Xperia X will keep it in focus as it moves around the scene. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, when I tested it, it worked patchily at best, locking on to a subject and tracking it initially, but losing the lock after a few seconds.

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What worked better was the Xperia X’s Superior Auto mode, which analyses a scene for motion and adjusts the shutter speed accordingly. If it detects you’re shooting a static scene, it will use a slower shutter speed than if it detects motion, meaning more reliable shots more frequently.

In any case, quality is decent, with detail capture among the best I’ve seen. In good light, the Xperia X picks out fine details with uncanny accuracy, and it’s also fantastically good at balancing out extremes of light and dark in scenes, avoiding the dreaded blown-out highlights in most scenarios. That Auperior Auto mode detects such scenes automatically and switches on its HDR mode, fixing the worst of the problems.

READ NEXT: The best smartphones of 2016 – our guide to the best handsets this year

Things start to go wrong when the light isn’t optimal. Examining a shot captured on a grey London day closely reveals lots of noise and overprocessing, which are evident in smeared blocks of colour and odd speckles around the edges of objects.  

Still, if you like your selfies, the Xperia X is the phone for you. Its front-facing snapper has a 1/3in sensor and an f/2.0 aperture, and it’s capable of capturing some great-quality images. It’s just as good at balancing the dark and light parts of a tricky scene as the rear camera, but its greatest quality is its wide-angle lens, which means you won’t have to stretch out your arm for those best-mates shots.

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Sony Xperia X review: Verdict

The Sony Xperia X is an odd fish. In its own right, it’s a very good smartphone, with lovely design, decent battery life and performance, a great screen and (in some circumstances) an impressive set of cameras.

Yet, given its specifications, it’s entirely the wrong price. The Nexus 5X, although not quite the looker the Sony Xperia X is, starts at £160 less and has similar levels of performance. The OnePlus 2’s camera isn’t as good as the Sony’s, but it has a superior specification, double the storage and costs £210 less.

The most damning thing, though, is that the LG G5 is cheaper, faster, has a better camera (plus a bonus extra wide-angle camera) and a removable battery – and a lower price. Should you buy the Xperia X, then? Only if the price comes down significantly.

BUY NOW FROM AMAZON: Sony Xperia X

Sony Xperia X specifications
Processor	Hexa-core 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 650
RAM	3GB
Screen size	5in
Screen resolution	1,080 x 1,920
Screen type	IPS
Front camera	13 megapixels
Rear camera	23 megapixels
Flash	LED
Storage (free)	32GB (20GB)
Memory card slot	microSD
Wi-Fi	802.11ac
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2
NFC	Yes
Wireless data	3G, 4G
Size (WDH)	69 x 7.7 x 143mm
Weight	152g
Operating system	Android 6.0.1
Battery capacity	2,620mAh