Huawei Mate 10 Lite review

Performance

The Huawei Mate 10 Lite is powered by the Kirin 659 chipset developed in-house by Huawei's HiSilicon subsidiary. It's a minor step over the Kirin 658, obviously. It has an octa-core CPU with eight A53 cores. Four of those take the heavy lifting and work at 2.36GHz, while the other four take care of less power-intensive tasks while ticking at 1.7GHz.

The GPU in charge of graphics is a dual-core Mali-T830, and Huawei also throws in 4 gigs of RAM.

The 659 chip has 10MHz higher clock for the faster CPU quarter and newer Bluetooth 4.2 support when compared to the 658 model. It's dropped the 5GHz Wi-Fi connectivity though.

The chip is built on a 16nm fabrication process, which isn't the most power-efficient process used for mid-range chipsets right now, but not that far behind the widespread 14nm either. So we expect the Kirin 659 to keep the phone rather cool at full throttle.

We kick off our benchmark routine with some processor torture as usual. A single A53 core can't get you very far on Geekbench, but at least its result offers consistent midrange performance results.

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  1876
• Oppo R11
  1596
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  913
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  901
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  877
• HTC U11 Life
  873
• Motorola Moto X4
  866
• Huawei P10 lite
  834
• vivo V7+
  767
• LG Q6
  584

The consistent score continues with the high-performance quartet on the multi-core Geekbench test - the Mate 10 Lite is on par with the mid-range competition. The Snapdragon 660-powered R11 have an edge thanks to the Cortex-A72 pair.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  6457
• Oppo R11
  5777
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  4292
• HTC U11 Life
  4140
• Motorola Moto X4
  4136
• vivo V7+
  3912
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  3783
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  3603
• Huawei P10 lite
  3344
• LG Q6
  2011

The Mali-T830MP2 isn't a powerful GPU, but the series has proven over the past few months to offer balanced graphic performance for the class - nothing over the top, but enough. And our graphic tests confirm that. All competing Adreno GPUs by Qualcomm are obviously better, while the Mate 10 Lite's Mali offers the bare minimum for the class.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  33
• Oppo R11
  15
• vivo V7+
  13
• Motorola Moto X4
  11
• HTC U11 Life
  9.6
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  6.7
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  6.3
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  6.2
• Huawei P10 lite
  5
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  4.6
• LG Q6
  3.5

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  14
• Oppo R11
  8.6
• vivo V7+
  6.6
• Motorola Moto X4
  5.8
• HTC U11 Life
  5.3
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  4
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  3.5
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  3.4
• Huawei P10 lite
  3
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  2.7
• LG Q6
  1.9

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  29398
• Oppo R11
  20350
• Motorola Moto X4
  14479
• HTC U11 Life
  14286
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  10472
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  10446
• vivo V7+
  9955
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  9543
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  8721
• Huawei P10 lite
  7588
• LG Q6
  6179

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  699
• Oppo R11
  345
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  191
• Motorola Moto X4
  189
• HTC U11 Life
  183
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  146
• Huawei P10 lite
  145
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  136
• vivo V7+
  131
• LG Q6
  82

Our performance checkup continues with the compound tests - those gauge GPU, CPU, RAM, Web and OS performance. Here the Mate 10 Lite bested most of its competitors with similar chipsets posting some great all-round scores. The Oppo R11 and Honor 9 are obviously better with their premium chips and slashed prices, though.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  143583
• Oppo R11
  118677
• HTC U11 Life
  72854
• Motorola Moto X4
  71224
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  63068
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  61762
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  61616
• Huawei P10 lite
  60895
• vivo V7+
  57791
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  55657
• LG Q6
  37276

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Honor 9
  3072
• Oppo R11
  2386
• Motorola Moto X4
  1532
• Huawei Mate 10 Lite
  1408
• HTC U11 Life
  1342
• vivo V7+
  1290
• Huawei P10 lite
  1284
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  1262
• Sony Xperia XA1 Plus
  1198
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  1050
• LG Q6
  275

Huawei Mate 10 Lite is well equipped for the class and won't fail you at any task. It handles organizing tasks hassle-free, and we had no issues playing popular games, though loading takes a while and hiccups do happen. The phone runs cool even at full throttle, so don't expect any heat issues no matter how you use it. It isn't a chart topper, sure, not even next to fellow mid-ranges, but the Mate 10 Lite offers balanced performance, and that's enough.