Acer Liquid Jade S review: Semi-precious

Performance

The Acer Liquid Jade S packs a potent Mediatek MT6752m chipset, with an octa-core Cortex-A53 processor. If weren't for the "m", it would be clocked at 2.0GHz, but here it's only ticking at 1.5GHz.

The graphics chip is a dual-core Mali-T760, clocked at 700MHz. The same one is found in the beastly Exynos 7420, only there it's an octa-core version. Operating memory is 2GB, which should be more than enough for daily tasks.

Those specs put the Liquid Jade S towards the upper end of the midrange, and that's the kind of performance we expected setting out to do the usual tests. The smartphone mostly delivered.

First off, the Liquid Jade S aced the CPU-centric Geekbench 3 benchmark. Placing close to the Lenovo Vibe X2, which packs a slightly superior MT6595m chipset, the Acer smartphone beats the current Snapdragon 615-packing crowd as well as the S800, found inside older flagships Sony Xperia Z1 and LG G2.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  3647
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  3557
• Huawei Honor 6
  3081
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  2880
• Sony Xperia Z1
  2638
• HTC Desire 820
  2586
• LG G2
  2243
• ZTE Blade S6
  2086
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1469
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1377
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1171

Moving on to the Antutu benchmark, which tests overall performance including CPU, GPU and memory management. The Liquid Jade S again pulls ahead of the Qualcomm competition but is bested by the Vibe X2 and the Huawei Honor, which has 3GB of RAM working for it.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  46666
• Huawei Honor 6
  42688
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  39637
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  31436
• ZTE Blade S6
  27198
• HTC Desire 820
  27070
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  21002
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  19690
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  18245

Basemark OS II 2.0 is another compound benchmark, but interestingly the Liquid Jade S doesn't fare too well here. It's combined score puts it in the middle of the bunch, while the Honor 6 is noticeably better.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Samsung I9506 Galaxy S4 LTE-A
  1105
• Huawei Honor 6
  888
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  813
• ZTE Blade S6
  751
• HTC Desire 820
  728
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  725
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  520
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  497
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  497

The CPU-specific parts of the benchmark tell a slightly different story and the eight identical Cortex-A53 cores put the Liquid Jade towards the top of the pack in the multi-core routine. Single-core performance is average, though.

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung I9506 Galaxy S4 LTE-A
  5669
• Huawei Honor 6
  4106
• HTC Desire 820
  2546
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  2480
• ZTE Blade S6
  2446
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  2438
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1773
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1712
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1562

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung I9506 Galaxy S4 LTE-A
  21580
• Huawei Honor 6
  21198
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  18968
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  16640
• HTC Desire 820
  10275
• ZTE Blade S6
  8229
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  7552
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  6421
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  5418

Graphics department turns out adequately covered. While the standardized 1080p off-screen tests in the GFXBench bundle yield unimpressive numbers, in reality the GPU has to push less than half of those pixels at the phone's actual 720p resolution. Thus, the Acer posts good framerates in the T-Rex test and an acceptable 10 in the more complex Manhattan benchmark.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia Z1
  23
• LG G2
  22
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17.8
• Huawei Honor 6
  16
• ZTE Blade S6
  15
• HTC Desire 820
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  15
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  11
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  5.8
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  5.4
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  5.3

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  8.1
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• ZTE Blade S6
  5.8
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  5.8
• HTC Desire 820
  5.7
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  4.9
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1.8
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1.8

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC Desire 820
  26
• ZTE Blade S6
  24
• LG G2
  23.1
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  22
• Huawei Honor 6
  17
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  15
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  12.8
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  10.8
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  9.3

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC Desire 820
  12
• ZTE Blade S6
  11
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  10
• Huawei Honor 6
  8.7
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  6.4
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  5.8
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  4.1
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  3.9

Basemark X doesn't make that differentiation and only tests off-screen performance, hence the rather low results.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• LG G2
  11101
• Sony Xperia Z1
  9399
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6512
• ZTE Blade S6
  5039
• Huawei Honor 6
  4868
• HTC Desire 820
  4859
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  4802
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  3934
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  3142
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1909
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1904

Browser performance is decent but nothing spectacular. We ran the benchmarks in both the stock browser as well as the included Google Chrome, and results were consistent, which is not always the case.

The JavaScript-focused Kraken 1.1 is in fact a letdown, with rivals Vibe X2 and Honor 6 posting markedly better scores. Even so, Snapdragon 615 remains behind.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  4747
• Huawei Honor 6
  6937
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  11410
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  12266
• ZTE Blade S6
  12865
• HTC Desire 820
  13568
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  14488
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  15988
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  18343

Browsermark 2.1 is a compound benchmark which tests overall performance in everyday tasks like resizing and page loading. The Liquid Jade S did okay but Vibe X2 was miles ahead once again.

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  2211
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  1655
• ZTE Blade S6
  1271
• Acer Liquid Jade S
  1175
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1085
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1076
• HTC Desire 820
  991
• Huawei Honor 6
  745
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  413

Overall, the Liquid Jade S performed well with very good raw CPU performance and decent graphics. The posted scores show no unpleasant surprises and the potential of the capable hardware is optimally utilized.

What the numbers don't reveal is that the phone gets pretty hot while running the benchmarks. It exhibits that behavior in general use as well, for example while browsing. It doesn't go past the point of being bearable, but the limited volume for heat dissipation has had its say.