Honor 6X vs. ZTE Blade V8 Pro: Dual camera duel

Performance

The two phones have rather different chipsets. The Honor 6X uses Huawei's in-house, HiSilicon-made Kirin 655. Meanwhile, the ZTE Blade V8 Pro is powered by a more conventional Qualcomm Snapdragon 625. Despite the fact that the two chipsets have similar eight-core setups, in our synthetic benchmark testing each exhibited differing strengths and weaknesses.

The Kirin 655 features 4x2.1 GHz Cortex-A53 cores + 4x1.7GHz Cortex-A53 cores. The quicker ones take most of the load while the lower-clocked cores take over background processing and lighter loads. Powering graphics is a Mali-T830MP2 GPU.

On the other hand, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 features eight Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.0GHz and powering graphic-intensive games is the Adreno 506. Qualcomm's CPUs are typically better for graphics than their competitors, but that always comes at the expense of something else whether it be battery life or thermal throttling.

Starting with GeekBench 4, we can immediately see different winners in either single or multi-core tests. The Honor 6X excels at multi-core processing while the ZTE Blade V8 Pro is just a tad better in the single-core test.

GeekBench 4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6X
  3351
• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  3081

GeekBench 4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  827
• Huawei Honor 6X
  801

In the Antutu 6 benchmark, the Snapdragon 625 outperformed the Kirin 655 by about 9%. This could be due to any number of factors, since Antutu takes into account system aspects such as RAM and storage speeds.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  62629
• Huawei Honor 6X
  57012

Here is where things get more interesting. In the GFX Manhattan test, the Blade V8 Pro was a little better, but the tables are turned in the GFX Car Scene, where the Honor 6X did better than the Blade V8 Pro. Here's to show you how difficult it is to compare processors with synthetic tests.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  6.2
• Huawei Honor 6X
  4.8

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  6.1
• Huawei Honor 6X
  4.6

GFX 3.1 Car scene (offscreen)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6X
  4.6
• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  3.4

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6X
  4.8
• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  3.4

Let's hope that Basemark X can shed some more light on how these processors rate against each other in graphics performance. It can serve as a tiebreaker from the inconclusive head-to-head results that GFX Benchmarks gave us above. The ZTE Blade V8 Pro is the clear winner when it comes to gaming performance.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• ZTE Blade V8 Pro
  10376
• Huawei Honor 6X
  8458

Both devices perform exceptionally well. While you could expect to play hard-core mobile game titles like 'Asphalt 8: Airborne' or one of the Grand Theft Auto mobile ports, there won't be any limitation to the titles you choose.

Neither device warmed up enough to any kind of discomfort. The Honor 6X's metal jacket dissipates heat rather quickly while the ZTE Blade V8 Pro's right edge warmed up just a little bit.

Winner: ZTE Blade V8 Pro (but not by very much). Both of these smartphones will give you exceptionally snappy performance for day-to-day multitasking. You'll be able to play the newly released Super Mario Run with flying colors on either device you choose.