Lenovo S90 Sisley review: Under cover

Performance

The Lenovo S90 Sisley sports the Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 chipset equipped with four Cortex-A53 cores, clocked at 1.2 GHz. It is backed up by 1GB or 2GB of RAM, depending on whether you choose the 16GB or the 32GB model. The accompanying GPU is the modest Adreno 306, which frankly is adequate at best.

This particular setup seems to be rather common in mid-range devices, most notably Samsung's new Galaxy A3 and A5, as well as the Galaxy Grand Max and the Galaxy E7. The platform is also found in the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 and the Redmi 2 as well as a few HTC desire phones, like the Desire 520, 620 and 820q and last but not least a few Huawei smartphones. Interestingly enough Lenovo's own Vibe Z2 is almost identical to the S90, despite a larger screen and a lot less Apple design influence.

Considering the specs, expectations are not very high, but let's see what out test actually show. First up we have raw CPU performance test with GeekBench 3, so things should be pretty straight-forward in this department. The dominance of the Vibe X2 with its MediatTek MT6595m True8Core is totally justified and so is the lead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 in the Xiaomi Mi3. But they are here to represent what Lenovo has to offer in the higher register and what Xiaomi has on sale for roughly the same price as the Sisley.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  3647
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  1837
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1469
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1460
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  1460
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1377
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  1181
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1171

What is more interesting though is Samsung's clear lead with two devices - the Galaxy A5 and Galaxy Grand Prime, which essentially have the same CPU, again clocked at 1.2GHz. We must note that the Lenovo did get pretty hot during testing so perhaps throttling form overheating might be the reason behind the mismatch. The situation is almost identical in the AnTuTu 5 test.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  46666
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  21581
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  21002
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  20616
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  19690
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  18466
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  18245

Advancing further to the slightly broader Basemark OS II test we see much the same poor performance. The overall score places the S90 around the middle of the table with only slight deviations in its adversaries.

Most notably the Galaxy Grand Prime, which is after all equipped with only 1GB of RAM, while the A5 and our in-house Sisley both have 2GB, has dropped significantly. On the other hand the Moto G (2014) has a slightly better total score, despite its presumably weaker chipset, but this can perhaps be credited to the almost pure stock Android ROM it runs.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 3
  1234
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  930
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  555
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  526
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  513
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  509
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  504
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  466

The single and multi-core performance breakdown also shows quite poor performance on the S90. Again it might be due to heating issues or perhaps poor software optimization, but whatever the case it seems Lenovo is not taking full advantage of the Snapdragon 410 and could take a few queues from Samsung.

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  2571
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  2397
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1420
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  1414
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1217
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  1203
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1187
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1123

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  13999
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  8976
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  5481
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  5313
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  5234
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  5001
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  4880
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  4208

As already mentioned the Lenovo S90 Sisley comes equipped with an Adreno 306 GPU, which is less than ideal. In fact our GFX bench tests speak for themselves. Compared to the Lenovo Vibe X2 and its PowerVR G600 the Sisley looks grossly underpowered and even its 720p screen doesn't help much, despite having to drive half the number of pixels.

Just as expected the Xiaomi Redmi 2 and Galaxy A5 have an identical graphics score and considering they have identical GPUs anything other would be weird. The same is also true for the Galaxy Grand Prime, which did manage to ramp up some points in onscreen rendering, but only because of its even lower 540 x 960 pixels resolution.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 3
  27.4
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17.8
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  5.8
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  5.8
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  5.4
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  5.3
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  5.3
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  5.2

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 3
  28.2
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  12.8
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  11
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  10.8
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  9.6
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  9.6
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  9.3

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 3
  11.6
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1.8
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1.8
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1.8
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  1.8

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 3
  11.5
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  6.4
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  4.1
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  4
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  3.9
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  3.9
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  3.9

Browser performance on the Lenovo S90 is adequate, but nothing spectacular. The big life-saver here is probably the smart decision to make Chrome the default browser of choice on the handset. Having things any other way might have resulted in significantly lower marks, given the scores we have seen so far.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  4747
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  6586
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  13083
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  13694
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  14488
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  15737
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  15988
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  18343

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  2211
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1171
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1085
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1076
• Xiaomi Mi 3
  706
• Xiaomi Redmi 2
  549
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  413

Overall, the Lenovo S90 Sisley is a little rough around the edges when it comes to performance. There is definitely room for improvement and seeing how Samsung has managed to squeeze a lot more from the Snapdragon 410 and Adreno 306 it seems Lenovo still has some work to do to get the Sisley up to speed.

We can only assume that if Lenovo updates the Vibe X2 to Android 5.0 Lollipop, we'll not only see a slight boost in performance, but also some nice optimizations resulting in better battery life. Your move Lenovo.