Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Sony Xperia Z Review!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here – and this is the sony, sperry z and this little slab of metal and glass. Here i found it to be the most mixed bag of all time. Allow me to explain when you’re sony you’re going out to make the high-end super phone to compete with the likes of the galaxy note 2 and the droid dna and other super high-end devices you’d go all out right, you would add, you know high-end materials, high-end, build Quality high-end, internals high-end software, the whole works. That’S what you expect when you get the sony, xperia z, so taking a look at the body itself, it’s definitely sexy. You can’t take that away from it. It’S 7.9 millimeters thin and it’s got a piano black glass finish on the front and the back. So it’s nice, there’s a 13.1 megapixel rear facing camera and led flash on the back and all around the phone has a pretty solid button layout. The power button itself is a great button. It’S really big and easy to press and not too sensitive, which is nice, doesn’t go off in your pocket, so the whole right hand.
Side is basically the power button, the volume rocker, which is less easy and the sim card tray and, on the left hand side. You have your micro sd card slot, which is covered, but that allows for expandable storage. So you notice that all around this device, all the ports, are covered and sealed by plastic flaps. This isn’t actually a bad thing. This is a good thing because when all these flaps are closed, the xperia z is water resistant for up to half an hour and three feet of water. So this thing is actually a bit rugged.
They were demoing it just like that at ces. So if you ask me, this is a pretty tough device. Every single important thing about this device has something hugely awesome about it and something hugely disappointing about it. Everything about this device so starting, let’s take take a look at the camera. It’S half awesome with a 13.1 megapixel sensor, extremely fast performance. I noticed it takes pictures and burst shots very very quickly and it can take 1080p hdr video, so the capabilities are really high and the very intelligent and fast autofocus is really pleasing.
But it’s it’s pretty versatile, yet the images it produces, especially for landscapes, tend to be pretty soft, with below average led flash performance and overall, not the best image quality, something comparable with the galaxy nexus. So, on the software side of things, this guy is running android. 4.1, jelly bean. So that’s not bad! No word on the 4.2 update, but that is pretty pretty recent and the positive side is that this is one of the less obtrusive skins on any android 4.1 device out there.
So that’s a good start. That’S a good sign! There’S also not a whole lot of sony bloatware, not a whole lot of bad pre-installed apps like we see on verizon phones, so that’s pretty good and the value adding features are definitely welcome. However, i am not a fan of the light gray software buttons at the bottom and in the notification bar. I would have preferred these to be, i guess, darker – to match the black bezel or lighter to be like more transparent, but that gray is just really awful in between and that theme kind of permeates throughout.
So you might not think it’s ugly, but there is definitely room for improvement with design here and then there’s performance. This thing in terms of performance flies, i actually can’t take anything away from the performance frame rates are constantly high. The thing just powers through the most intensive apps and games without a problem and that’s thanks to the qualcomm snapdragon s4 pro chip and two gigabytes of ram. So it’s a quad core thing and this just just flies and of course kills benchmarks. And you can check out how it crushes, through data, when browsing more image heavy sites like the verge – it’s very well done, but basically overall performance is stellar on par with the galaxy note 2, and it’s just about as good. If you don’t count the huge battery in the note 2, but then you have to look at that display now. The sony xperia z has a 1080p display. Yes, it does 440 ppi, but that is kind of becoming the megapixel count number and it’s extremely sharp and beautiful when you view it head-on and if you’re going to be spending a lot of time on a high-end smartphone like this, you do want it to have A sharp big, beautiful display because you’re doing all the looking on the display.
Unfortunately, the good ends there. It’S kind of like having a 37 megapixel camera that doesn’t take great photos when you look at this display from even a few degrees off axis the viewing angles. The color reproduction, the contrast just goes straight downhill. You don’t even have to have it side by side with an oppo, fine, 5 or a droid dna to notice that this display is subpar. I mean it’s definitely not that good. I haven’t personally looked at the htc ones display, but from the specs that i’ve seen i’m expecting it to be really good, so it’s gon na be hard to compete, and this thing just it lets me down.
I’M really disappointed the viewing angles are the most disappointing. I couldn’t have asked for anything worse than this literally just a few degrees off axis and it’s noticeably worse, and then there is the speaker. This is this is a terrible speaker, in fact i’ll.
Let you have a listen for yourself, so this sperry z has its ups and its downs like it has its really really high ups and it’s really really far downs. I know it’s going to be hard to compare this to the htc one and the droid dna, but it’s going to be compared with those 1080p phones. It’S going to be compared with the galaxy s4 and anything else high-end that comes out this year.
But the comparison is really crazy when you try to put a semi-rugged water resistant, but also thin and elegantly designed phone up against something. That’S just going all out in one department. You may love the speria z and i wouldn’t blame you. This thing is sexy, but a lot of people are going to pick it up just for the design which itself is okay, but definitely think twice about what you want in a phone and what you don’t want in a phone before throwing down the cash.
So, in the end, what is the deal with the sony? Xperia z? It is the biggest mixed bag ever this one has so many things that are good about it, and so many things that are bad about it. Now, if it was all bad or all good, it would be easy to not recommend this phone or to recommend this phone. But you really have to pay attention to the goods and the bads and pick what you like about it and what you don’t like about. It and if they match up with your values, you might still go for the spare uzi, but for me they don’t align perfectly with the things that i’ve gotten used to enjoying about a phone. That being said, i still love the pixel and see of a 1080p display and i’m excited for the wars of the five-inch 1080p smartphones this year or even the htc one, which is a slightly smaller than five inch screen and it’s 1080p. So i like the fact that we’re seeing more 1080p phones now, but honestly, it’s just getting to that point where you got to make it good. If you’re going to have a 1080p display on a phone, it has to be a great display and for the price point, this is just such a hard recommend. You really have to look at your values.
Also another interesting fact – and i guess a bit of a disclaimer is this phone comes out of the box with a screen protector in the box, but it also comes with a very subtle screen protector already applied on the phone. It takes up the entire slab of glass and the sony branding on the front of the xperia z is actually attached to the screen protector. So if you take it off, it’ll just be a perfectly blank black slab, which is kind of cool, but that screen protector is probably the cause of some of the issues i have with the display. But honestly, it’s a little bit weird that you can’t even really tell that the screen protector is applied, but i wouldn’t take it off of the display because taking it off would mean pretty much exposing uh that less than up to par display uh to the elements And if you’re going to have a ruggedized phone, you’re, probably going to want to leave that on which of course brings up the question? Is this a slick beautiful designed, well phone designer phone? Or is this a really tough rugged water resistant phone? Because it’s really hard to be both and i guess sony tried to be both and that’s where they ended up having some contradictions in this phone either way.
The choice is yours: do you like the sperry z? I think it’s sexy, but again it’s all up to you leave a comment down below the like button on this video and uh. The comment section is open, so you’ll probably see me replying to comments down there either way. Thank you for watching and i’ll talk to you guys in the next article peace you .