Sony Xperia 10 V review

Greatest Costs As we speak: Sony Xperia 10 V

Sony doesn’t launch many mobiles per 12 months however sticks to a few specifically. The highest mannequin Xperia 1, the compact Xperia 5 and the equally compact mid-range mannequin Xperia 10. Now I’ve examined this 12 months’s Xperia 10, with an extended slim OLED display screen and a really helpful worth of £399. Regardless of a variety of good options, I’m not completely satisfied it’s definitely worth the cash.

One, 5 and ten have appeared roughly the identical for the reason that first technology of the sequence in 2019, and this 12 months they’re as much as technology 5. Or V, Sony needs to make use of Roman numerals, and insists that or not it’s pronounced “mark 5”. They will argue all they need, a 5 is a 5 and I don’t see any “mark” so I gained’t say.

Mark or no mark, you should purchase it from Sony in addition to retailers like Amazon, AO, Ebuyer and Very. It’s not formally obtainable within the US on the time of writing however you should purchase it from Amazon.

Try our chart of the most effective mid-range telephones for extra choices.

Design & Construct

The Xperia 10 V has an unusually slim design that makes it simple to grip. It’s as broad because the small Asus Zenfone 10, in reality even a tenth of a millimetre narrower, and nearly a millimetre thinner. Extra when you embrace the Zenphone’s giant digital camera pucks on the again. But it surely has an elongated 6.1-inch display screen with a 21:9 side ratio, and further millimetres each above and beneath the display screen to accommodate the selfie digital camera, audio system and different electronics.

Mattias Inghe

This makes it nearly a centimetre longer and dangers protruding of some smaller pockets. Brief width measurements have some benefits. I can simply attain your entire width of the cellphone with one thumb, and Sony’s Android interface can also be, like Asus, properly tailored for one-handed navigation.

You don’t have to succeed in to the highest to swipe the notification and fast menu, and it’s simple to activate a one-handed mode that shrinks the lively display screen in top. Sony does different issues excellently in its interface, too. The split-screen administration is easy and considerate, and also you get a number of sensible options to optimise vitality consumption.

Mattias Inghe

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The marginally curved body and flat again are inbuilt matt plastic, which feels sturdy and secure and is snug to grip. The entrance, fabricated from sturdy Gorilla Glass Victus, is totally flat. The cellphone has another typical Xperia options when it comes to design and performance, reminiscent of an analogue headphone jack on the highest and Sony’s typical slot for SIM and SD playing cards which you could pull out with a fingernail. It doesn’t have a twin sim slot, however you can too activate eSIM in your cellphone.

However, it’s a fully waterproof development and is classed as IP65, which implies that it may possibly face up to, for instance, rinsing below a faucet, and IP68, which implies that it may be submerged in water for as much as half-hour. Not too deep although, it’s not a scuba cell, however it may possibly face up to a puddle, a ditch or a bath. Any type of water resistance is nice, after all, and on this respect the Xperia 10 V outperforms most different mid-range telephones which might be both IP68 or IP65, or nothing in any respect.

Mattias Inghe

Display & Audio

The display screen is 6.1in OLED and thus gives glorious distinction and wealthy, intense colors that may preserve excessive color accuracy, each in the usual DCI P3-rated mode and one known as Unique that matches sRGB. Nonetheless, the usual mode is initially set to an unusually chilly white stability, however this may be simply adjusted manually.

The display screen’s brightness is formally as much as 1,000 nits for automated most brightness and HDR show. In commonplace mode, I get slightly below 700 nits at greatest on an all-white display screen, and for the reason that solar is shining, I can even measure peak brightness in automated mode, which delivers on Sony’s promise. Utilizing the display screen exterior on a strong day is okay. You additionally get HDR10 help and Sony has ensured that the Xperia 10 V has the suitable certificates for many main streaming companies.

Nonetheless, a superb previous display screen shouldn’t be uncommon within the mid-price vary, and plenty of are higher than this one, with even greater brightness, and particularly greater frequency. Right here I’m caught at 60Hz, which is a distinctly disagreeable expertise once I’ve been used to 90- and 120Hz screens. There are even 90Hz screens in most actual finances mobiles these days, so possibly it’s time for Sony to catch up?

The title Sony is normally a assure of excellent sound, and sure, with the suitable headphones, it’s positively true. Plugged in analogue, they’re fed by a superb DAC, and also you get help for Excessive Decision Audio each wired and wi-fi in addition to DSEE Final, a know-how that makes use of AI to scale up CD-quality audio or decrease to a extra Excessive Res-like expertise. However to be sincere, I don’t hear any distinction, and it additionally attracts additional battery energy to activate it.

Enjoying something aside from voice by way of the built-in audio system is much less pleasing, as they each lack nearly all bass and lose a variety of element within the treble. Stereo dispersion is nice due to the forward-facing parts at every edge, however that’s the one optimistic factor I can say. Sony ought to do higher than this.

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Cameras

Similar to its predecessor, the Xperia 10 IV, you get a full triple digital camera system, with a wide-angle, optical zoom and a foremost digital camera with a focal size in between, and a sensible zoom perform within the digital camera app that permits you to zoom all the best way from 0.6x to 10x hybrid zoom. There’s some leaping within the viewfinder when it switches sensors, however it’s not too distracting. You can even activate a useful mode within the app that exhibits the sections for various mounted zoom ranges.

Sadly, the distinction in high quality between the totally different sensors is big. The primary digital camera has a big half-inch 48-megapixel sensor, Sony’s IMX582, with optical picture stabilisation and quad bayer pixel binning that delivers sharp 12-megapixel photographs with good dynamics and loads of element. Colors are barely muted, however this can be a typical Sony attribute, adopted from their color administration in system cameras. It’s extra pure rendering than intense and impactful.

A protracted publicity mode routinely kicks in when taking pictures in darker environments, at evening or indoors, and with a gentle hand it takes first rate photographs. Taking fast snapshots remains to be manageable, you don’t have to carry the digital camera nonetheless for all of the seconds the app signifies, however you lose quite a bit in color management and dynamics. Autofocus additionally turns into jumpy, gradual and affected person when it will get the slightest bit darkish.

The opposite two sensors are extra modest at eight megapixels every and considerably smaller in space. This implies, for instance, that hybrid zooms of greater than 2x rapidly grow to be blurred and so they don’t have practically the identical potential to take pictures in the dead of night as the principle digital camera. It rapidly turns into pitch black, noisy and mottled the place different cameras can pick colors. The selfie digital camera can also be primarily based on the identical eight-megapixel sensor and shares its traits.

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Efficiency & Battery Life

Maybe the Xperia 10 V was helped by a extra fashionable and sooner system circuit. It’s outfitted with the Snapdragon 695 that arrived in 2021, which delivers good multitasking capabilities however not so excessive peak efficiency. Particular person processor-intensive duties deliver the cellphone to its knees. For instance, some digital camera operations.

Even one thing as fundamental as rendering a fancy net web page could cause micro-pauses. It’s additionally not a cellphone to play demanding video games on, a sport of Sweet Crush and a few Roblox is okay, however you’ll be able to’t be choosy with persistently excessive body charges. A cell phone that ought to be the second greatest a producer has to supply, and with a price ticket shut to 5 thousand SEK, ought to ship a bit greater than this.

Even the vibration motor within the cell phone feels prefer it belongs in an actual finances system. There’s no tactile suggestions, simply an annoying shaky buzz that I’ve to rapidly change off to keep away from going loopy.

It’s an equally lengthy record of pluses and minuses for the Xperia 10 V, so it’s as much as you which ones values are essential to make you are feeling tempted to purchase. I can’t suggest it outright, as there’s a superb likelihood that some essential characteristic gained’t be ok, even when there are some issues it excels at.

That, power-efficient {hardware} and a big 5,000mAh battery make the Xperia 10 V among the best battery life I’ve seen. I can stream video at full brightness for over 24 hours and surf, electronic mail, and use different blended apps for about the identical period of time at medium brightness.

Sadly, I can’t give the identical reward to the battery cost. Sony doesn’t reveal how a lot energy is supported and also you don’t get an included charger. The one official info is that the cellphone will help Quickcharge and USB Energy Supply. With a 30 Watts and a 65 Watts USB-PD charger I get the identical outcome, 35 per cent charged in half an hour, and over two hours for a full battery.

Sony Xperia 10 V benchmarks

• Geekbench 6: 2,076 factors
• Geekbench 6 single core: 858 factors
• Geekbench 6 compute: 1,377 factors
• GFX Bench Aztec OpenGL Excessive: 11 fps
• GFX Bench Manhattan: 40 fps
• Storage, learn: 477.22 MB/s
• Storage, write: 369.46 MB/s

This evaluation first appeared on M3.

Specs

• System chip: Qualcomm Snapdragon 695
• Processor: 2 Kryo 660 Gold 2.2 GHz + 6 Kryo 660 Silver 1.8 GHz
• Graphics: Adreno 619
• Reminiscence: 6 GB
• Storage: 128 GB, micro sd slot
• Display: 6.1 inch oled, 1080×2520 pixels, 60 Hz
• Cameras: 48 megapixel + 8 megapixel broad angle + 8 megapixel 2x telephoto with led rear, 8 megapixel entrance
• Connections: Usb 2 sort c
• Communications: 2g, 3g, 4g, 5g, wifi 5, bluetooth 5.1, agps, galileo, nfc
• Working system: Android 13 with Xperia UX, 2 years of updates
• Different: Esim, aspect fingerprint scanner, waterproof (IP65/68)
• Battery: 5,000 mAh, 25 hrs video streaming (max brightness), 19 hrs 20 min blended use (Pcmark Work, 200 cd/m2 brightness), about 33 hrs calls (4g)
• Battery charging: usb 21 W (pd, qc), 0-18% in 15 min, 0-35% in 30 min, charger not included.
• Measurement: 15.5 x 6.8 x 0.8 cm
• Weight: 159 grams