Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Which Smartphone Will Win This Showdown?”.
So you probably caught my video recently on the new razer phone, the razer phone 2, which features two front-facing stereo speakers. Now, if you’ve been following the channel for a little while, you may remember some tests that i did with the previous version of razer phone, because at that point, when that phone came out, it had some speaker performance. That, for me, was unprecedented in the smartphone space. Now, one of the things i frequently test in my smartphone videos is speaker, quality and speaker volume in the razer phone 2 video. I kind of had the sense that the speaker was improved.
The speakers were improved from the previous version initial impressions here, uh a lot of sound coming out of there, but i hadn’t tested them yet not extensively. Last time around with the razer phone one, i came up with a scientific test using this right here. A decibel meter checkmate spl meter, and this will tell you how loud a signal is. I used a signal generator a frequency generator in order to figure out how last year’s flagship smartphones performed and stacked up against one another.
So i thought now would be a good time now that we have our hands on the latest. Razer phone, which should be might be possibly is the new speaker champ. We should do the tests again to see where these smartphones stack up. So in front of me, i have of course, the razer phone 2.
I’Ve also got the iphone 10s max and then on the far side i have another impressive speaker performer. At least it seemed that way in the unboxing video. This is the pixel 3 xl. It also has two forward firing speakers.
Now, in the last test, i found the iphone the iphone 10 to be very surprising, as well from a performance perspective, but then, when i tested out the 10s max, i saw an improvement. At least my impressions were that it was also improved, so we should see bigger numbers from all of them, but the main question is which one is the biggest, which is the loudest performing smartphone speaker of these three. I will place each smartphone in this location here i’ll then initiate the frequency generator, and we will watch the meter to see how it reacts to the signal coming out of the smartphone. Now.
The reason for this exact setup is to replicate what it would be like to sit in front of these smartphones. So if you’re wondering you know, maybe right now, you’re like look lou on the iphone. Not all the speakers are firing forward. It’S true they’re not, but your face is always going to be forward right like this is where you would be enjoying your content. So this is the important measurement from this location right here and the iphone does have some sound coming from the earpiece region and that is firing forward as well. We’Ll start with the iphone now another thing to note: these are going to be running frequency from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz. This is the human audio spectrum and i have all the different videos coming out of the youtube, app and playing back in the same quality, because, yes, the quality settings on youtube do also affect the audio quality. There’S a few different settings on this spl meter. You can pick between 40, 70, 60, 90 and so on. But if i recall last year i think most of them were in the 80 to 110 db range, so i’m gon na use that setting for this test. So, let’s go ahead, hit the play button and watch the meter so okay, so the test has been run. You have seen the numbers, and surprisingly, all of these devices are closer than i expected them to be in the maximum spl output. Now of the group, the razer is the only device with the built-in dolby effects, so you can go in and select equalizers and also bass, boost and and other aspects for the test. We actually had it in dynamic mode with the base enhancer turned on now, something i noticed you know to my own ears outside the realm of the meter, is that with the bass enhance on specifically, there was a bit of a sort of a garbling effect at Maximum volumes, so in a way i feel like maybe the razer device needs a bit more tuning or maybe they’re attempting to push it too far in terms of volume at the expense possibly of some quality. Now, it’s important to note that these devices were outputting volume at the lower frequency range.
It just wasn’t enough to trigger the sensitivity of the spl meter. So what i noticed with my own ears is that the lower frequencies, the razer device, was the only one that was discernible, especially at the ones that are barely audible to the human ear at the beginning of the frequency generator. So i could pick up some volume coming out of it, which leads me to believe that this device is probably outputting the most sound at the low end.
But the funny thing is that when i line them up here with some music, like a regular user, might – and i hold them in front of my face – the most pleasing is not necessarily the loudest and that’s where we get into the land of my own judgment. I actually like the razer phone, the least it’s a bit bizarre to me. There’S a bit of crunchiness there at certain aspects with certain instruments in a song almost like it’s clipping granted. This is a brand new device.
Maybe some of this can be tuned via software, but still a little bit upsetting, considering that i was expecting this to just blow these other ones out of the water, especially when you’re sacrificing so much screen real estate for these giant speaker grills, i mean it might Be a software thing, it might be an optimization thing, but for me these two are actually better. These two are actually better sounding than the razer phone too. That’S weird! That’S not what i expected to say granted on overall total maximum output that the spl meter could pick up. Yes, the razer phone 2 was capable of outputting the most sound, so i think it might have the potential, but as it stands right now in front of me, it’s the least pleasing audio that i’m hearing.
Yes, it’s forward-facing. Yes, it’s stacked up against some pretty good performers here, they’re all way better than some other options on the market, and it seems that smartphone makers are taking speaker performance into serious consideration when it comes to these other two on the right-hand side. It’S a bit of a toss-up everybody in the studio here was listening and was like. I don’t know man, i kind of like the pixel i kind of like the iphone.
I would probably give it to the pixel just because both speakers are forward firing as opposed to the iphone, but then the iphone, because it does have the down firing speaker on a table. It kind of resonates more it almost amplifies off the table to make it seem like it has more low end than it might so. If you’re, the type of person that likes to just leave a phone on the table have a little have a couple drinks. Have a party or something that might actually be the better choice.
So it’s really tough to say they’re all crazy speakers, amazing speakers for smartphones. I had really high expectations for the razer speakers and i don’t really think they’re there yet good on both google and apple for taking speaker performance seriously and delivering these type of products, because they both sound, pretty amazing. They might be the best sounding smartphones that are out there right now. I think the razer has a chance.
I don’t know what they can do via software, but i hope they do something because right now, they’re really missing out and i don’t think it’s strictly a hardware thing we’ll see what happens but right now, it’s not the most pleasing sound coming out of there, even Though it happens to be loud, .