Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “LG G8 Review: Master of None!”.
Hey what is up guys, mkbhd here? Okay, so the title a little harsh? Yes, but it’s true, so you know the saying jack of all trades but master of none that is the lg g8 thin q. In a nutshell, it’s pretty decent at pretty much everything. In fact, you probably wouldn’t regret getting one, but it doesn’t stand out in any major way for 820 bucks above the competition. To actually give you a reason to go, get one so yeah a little harsh, but it’s true. So you can start with the design of this phone. It’S nothing special! It’S familiar to a lot of people who have seen other lg or 2019 phones, it’s a slab of glass with rounded corners, there’s a power button and a good place volume rocker. On the other side, google assistant below those so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it at all.
It’S just very plain. You know, like i hate to encourage you, know, going crazy or making weird choices just to be different in design, but i feel like. Maybe they need a bit of a stronger identity here like if i asked you to describe an lg phone in a couple words.
What even comes to mind, really, you know so i’ll, say this red color, definitely pretty cool. It is also still a fingerprint magnet, though like the other colors, which are gray and black, but also the cameras on the back are totally flat. So this is one of few phones, i can actually say they really have no camera bump at all.
So this is one of them, which is nice, but i also think it makes it the sneaky slipperiest phone of all time, but other than that. Nothing really stands out to me. You know it’s a design, it’s a smartphone, so you get a 6.1 inch display up front and it’s quite good.
It’S super high resolution 1440p and plenty bright, not the brightest, but it’s viewable outdoors and with a very average notch up at the top, and we’ll talk more about why the notch is so big in a bit. But the side bezels are a little bit more than slim, it’s kind of feeling like the galaxy s10e or the iphone 10r as far as bezel size anyway, and then the normal stuff at the bottom is which you’d see in any other lg phone. You still have your usbc still your boombox speaker, still, your headphone jack, backed by a high quality dac.
This phone is ip68 water resistant and it still has wireless charging. Overall, the build is good. It’S not really like missing anything, although there are two things to note. One this boombox speaker, it still has at the bottom for some reason sounds worse to me. [ Applause ]. I don’t know it’s worse than i remember like it’s pretty flat and hollow sounding and of course it still comes from the bottom corner of the phone.
So it’s easy to block by accident, but number two. The other thing is: if you actually look up at the top of the phone where the earpiece normally is, this phone doesn’t have one. Instead, they have a speaker behind the glass called crystal sound oled, which fires from sort of the top third of the phone which, to my ear, sounded just like a normal phone call in terms of quality and volume. But i could also sort of hear this buzzing. Like a thin rattling sound that you don’t normally hear in a normal speaker, so that’s the first time. I’Ve actually heard one of these replacement speakers sound a bit weird, but it’s not a deal breaker for me, because i don’t make that many phone calls in the first place and the bonus is.
It can sort of act like bone conduction and it works in more than just the top eighth of the phone okay. So the specs ready snapdragon 855 six gigs of ram 128 3500 they’re fine, there’s no upgraded version with like eight gigs of ram or something. And if you want more storage, you have to go with microsd, which is kind of a bummer considering we have phones with way more internal storage for people who do lots of things on their phones and the battery size. It’S fine! It’S not pushing the limits or anything it’s bigger than the galaxy s10s battery, but it’s not pushing the 4200 milliamp hours.
We see on some other big phones, so the specs are fine and the performance through lg software has been pretty smooth and and predictable, except for scrolling for some reason. So, overall, i think lg skin is fine. Again. I’Ve used that word a lot. It hasn’t changed. Much since last year, so the settings app is still a little overwhelming.
It still buries some things, but for the most part, things flow pretty smoothly and you can easily get used to it. But for some reason the scrolling physics, especially in the app drawer, are super stuttery and it’s been a while now and really weird for a new phone like this to straight up stutter. So i almost feel like this is a bug, since the rest of the phone is fine, but yeah definitely got to mention that overall, though performance just using the phone every day through lg software, it’s fine. Now i don’t want to make this just a list of reasons not to buy this phone, so some of the good stuff or my favorite things about this phone are on the back and it’s the two cameras.
Lg was one of the first to consistently do that. Ultra wide over the years that we’re just now starting to see on the backs of phones everywhere, and they still do it, the sad thing for them is. It was so easy to copy that now everyone just added an ultra wide and they’re. Now all caught up. It’S not like lg mastered the ultra wide in any special way, so the cameras here are pretty fun but they’re, not incredibly unique or anything. But i, like the consistency of these cameras, it’s a confident shooter.
It’S fast, the color science is pretty good. It doesn’t over. Expose that often and the similarity in color between the 12 megapixel standard camera and the 16 megapixel ultrawide, i think, is actually better than huawei’s and samsung’s and even in the camera ui is the nice little things like the zoom with the shutter icon, that are a Nice touch, the camera is good in the g8 and again so many others have gotten so good that you just have to wonder about the ones who don’t get it right, like the razers and onepluses of the world. But i guess that’s a rant for another video. Now, if you’ve noticed pretty much everything so far about this phone’s, been it’s good, it’s fine! You know, so you would think there’s got to be something about this phone that takes it to the next level. That really makes it stand out, above the rest to make it lg’s flagship. So i guess for lg those things are hand id and air motion yeah.
So the notch up here in the phone is so big because lg has dropped a few extra sensors up there, including a time-of-flight camera and then an infrared blaster and a receiver to be able to read and identify and track your hand and its movement so with Hand id you’re supposed to be able to just hover it over your phone to unlock it and with air motion you’re supposed to be able to open apps and control media and things like that. Without touching your phone – and i will say it is a cool idea, i kind of wish it worked better than it did, but in practice, as you can probably understand from my tone and from the first impressions video, it’s far from ideal, it’s usable at best. But it’s not good so with hand id first i mean it works, but you have to hold your hand in a very specific distance and spot around in front of the phone and the learning curve, even for me, was just a bit too much and it just Makes you not want to use it plus straight up the feedback on the screen to help you correct yourself is blocked by your hand that you’re trying to unlock it with so yeah i mean it has a fingerprint reader on the back.
I just turned off hand id and use the regular fingerprint reader like i think most people will and then air motion to be fair. It seems to be a tiny bit more responsive than when i first tried it in the impressions video a little while ago. Specifically, the volume knob actually seems to be more responsive now and easier to trigger correctly, and then the twisting motion tracks really well, which is awesome but the rest of it like the waving to the left or right to open, apps or take your screenshot. It’S not really better than just using the buttons on the phone or even better, using the google assistant button.
That’S already there on the side of the phone to just ask it to open an app for you. It’S probably faster. Also, this is how long it takes to pause, something that’s playing, so you have music playing. Oh someone calls you, oh wait hold on one. Second, let me just let me just pause uh, the music give me a second hold up pause. What was that yeah? You might as well just just hit the button so yeah at the end of the day, it seems tough to even say the g8 is worth buying, even though it’s a pretty good phone like overall, the g8 does have a good build quality.
It has good software and a good set of cameras all around, but that’s just a testament to how good phones have gotten around it over the past couple years. I think in my heart it feels unfair to say: oh, the pixel has a better camera and the p30 has a bigger battery, and the galaxy s10 has a headphone jack like you’re, pulling from all these different phones to try to beat up on this little guy And say it’s not good, so i’ll make it simple for you. If you were thinking about buying an lg g8 just buy a galaxy s10e instead, because there isn’t a single thing that this phone does better than the s10e and the s10 is cheaper, like the g8. Has a regular and an ultrawide camera that are pretty good.
The s10e has those too and they’re, just as good. The display on the g8 is pretty good. It’S very big and it’s high resolution, but the display on the s10e is excellent. It has less of a notch: it has smaller bezels, better colors and better brightness. The g8 has a headphone jack, but so does the s10e. The fingerprint reader on the back is pretty standard and it’s better than hand id, but i’d argue the fingerprint reader and the power button of the s10e is better.
The battery life is fine here and it’s fine there. You know the software samsung software just got a lot better and lg’s just kind of staying the same, so there’s no real reason that stands out to buy an lg g8 over that phone and vane id, isn’t it sorry hand id just not the one now. If this phone was 700 bucks or 650, then the reason to buy it would be that it’s cheaper than the rest. That would be its main advantage, but even that’s not true. Yet now, i think, with lg’s history and kind of knowing where this phone’s at that may eventually be the case with discounts. But until that happens, don’t buy an lg g8 jack of all trades master of none thanks for watching catch.
You guys the next one peace .