Benchmarking the Sony Xperia X, starring Snapdragon 650

The Sony Xperia X is powered by a Snapdragon 650 - Qualcomm's new and highly popular mid-range chipset. To be honest, we tend to prefer its 652 sibling.

Don't be fooled by their name, these are the true successors to the Snapdragon 810. They use the Cortex-A72 CPU core, faster and more powerful than the A57 it replaces. The Snapdragon 650 has two of them, the 652 has four, both add four Cortex-A53 cores for low-power needs.

Better still, the GPU is part of the Adreno 5 series, a 510 to be exact. It's miles ahead of the Adreno 405 that's used in lower-end Snapdragon 6-series chipsets. It even stacks up well against the Adreno 430 in the S810 chipset. Sony paired the chipset with 3GB of RAM, while some makers are slowly making their way to 6GB.

The Xperia X focuses on things like design, camera and audio. Sony also has the Xperia X Performance, which as you can guess from the name, offers a faster chipset - a Snapdragon 820, if you want more oomph than the S650 delivers. There are other advantages to the Performance model too, but that's a story for another time - for now, let's stick with benchmarking the S650.

GeekBench 3 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Meizu Pro 6
  6427
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  5358
• Sony Xperia Z5
  4017
• Sony Xperia X
  3796
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  3554
• LG Nexus 5X
  3527
• HTC One A9
  3209
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  3061
• vivo X5Pro
  2241

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  43
• Sony Xperia Z5
  25
• Meizu Pro 6
  18
• LG Nexus 5X
  17
• Sony Xperia X
  15
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  8.7
• HTC One A9
  6.7
• vivo X5Pro
  5.8
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  5.7

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  30
• Sony Xperia Z5
  18
• LG Nexus 5X
  11
• Meizu Pro 6
  11
• Sony Xperia X
  9.2
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  4.5
• HTC One A9
  3.8

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  29
• Sony Xperia Z5
  19
• LG Nexus 5X
  11
• Meizu Pro 6
  11
• Sony Xperia X
  10
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  4.9
• HTC One A9
  4

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  33110
• Sony Xperia Z5
  23923
• LG Nexus 5X
  16609
• Meizu Pro 6
  15209
• Sony Xperia X
  15087
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  7780
• HTC One A9
  6617
• vivo X5Pro
  5091
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  4947

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  2180
• Meizu Pro 6
  1919
• Sony Xperia X
  1714
• LG Nexus 5X
  1591
• Sony Xperia Z5
  1482
• HTC One A9
  944
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  860
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  833
• vivo X5Pro
  738

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  580
• LG Nexus 5X
  306
• Sony Xperia X
  251
• HTC One A9
  132