LG Q6 review

Benchmarks

The Snapdragon 435 chipset that powers the LG Q6 is definitely placed squarely in the lower-midrange segment, and the way it performs in benchmarks reflects this, unsurprisingly. The SoC has an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at up to 1.4 GHz. An Adreno 505 GPU is in charge of graphics. Depending on whether you buy the Q6a/Q6/Q6+, you will get 2/3/4GB of RAM.

Unfortunately this chip choice, paired with the 2,160x1,080 resolution screen, is something you might regret while using the Q6 day-to-day. Although general UI performance in the launcher, Settings, and some built-in apps is passable, you will encounter slowdowns and choppy scrolling in media-intensive apps - and we don't mean YouTube here, even Twitter and Facebook suffer from the lack of hardware resources on offer.

Let's get on with the benchmarks then. The Q6 manages a 652 single-core score and 2244 for multi-core in Geekbench 4.1. That's not great, and once again reveals that one of the big downsides to the Q6 is its SoC. The Q6 is outperformed slightly even by the Nokia 6, which has the older Snapdragon 430 but an identical CPU arrangement. The Xiaomi Redmi 4 features the same SoC as the LG Q6 and in single-core results overtakes it, but interestingly the Q6 does better when it comes to the multi-core score. The Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017) has a higher-clocked CPU than the Q6 and this translates into its results as you can see. The vivo V7's Snapdragon 450 takes that to a whole new level.

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia XA1
  887
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  877
• Motorola Moto X4
  866
• Moto G5S Plus
  843
• Huawei P10 lite
  834
• vivo V7
  775
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)
  734
• Xiaomi Redmi 4
  670
• Nokia 6 (Global version)
  665
• LG Q6
  652

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi A1
  4292
• Moto G5S Plus
  4193
• Motorola Moto X4
  4136
• vivo V7
  3935
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)
  3779
• Sony Xperia XA1
  3611
• Huawei P10 lite
  3344
• Nokia 6 (Global version)
  2841
• LG Q6
  2244
• Xiaomi Redmi 4
  1819

The Adreno 505 GPU built into the Snapdragon 435 chipset isn't the best at handling even 16:9 1,920x1,080 screens, but LG's added some extra pixels by stretching the display to 18:9 2,160x1,080. The fact that the GPU can barely keep up with the added resolution becomes pretty obvious when you look at the results in graphics benchmarks.

Plainly put, you aren’t going to be playing any graphics-intensive games on the Q6, with perhaps the exception of very old ones. Also the very casual titles that don’t need almost any GPU power. For anything else you’ll always be counting frames and dealing with hiccups here and there.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia XA1
  15
• vivo V7
  13
• Motorola Moto X4
  11
• Xiaomi Redmi 4
  10
• Oppo F5
  6.8
• Moto G5S Plus
  6.8
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  6.3
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  6.2
• Huawei P10 lite
  5
• Nokia 6 (Global version)
  4.5
• LG Q6
  3.6
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)
  3.3

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto X4
  14479
• Moto G5S Plus
  10488
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  10472
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  10446
• vivo V7
  9987
• Sony Xperia XA1
  9714
• Oppo F5
  9205
• Xiaomi Redmi 4
  7608
• Huawei P10 lite
  7588
• Nokia 6 (Global version)
  7516
• LG Q6
  6336
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)
  5489

The compound tests such as AnTuTu and BaseMark OS put the Q6 at the bottom of the charts. The scores are not bad, but they are not on par with the Q6 competitors. It's the SoC that lets it down, because depending on which model you get RAM can be as high as 4GB. The Snapdragon 450 would have been a better choice for the Q6 for sure.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto X4
  71224
• Moto G5S Plus
  64554
• Oppo F5
  63889
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  61762
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  61616
• Huawei P10 lite
  60895
• Sony Xperia XA1
  60707
• vivo V7
  54970
• Nokia 6 (Global version)
  47495
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)
  46822
• Xiaomi Redmi 4
  44089
• LG Q6
  40558

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto X4
  1743
• Huawei P10 lite
  1521
• vivo V7
  1393
• Xiaomi Mi A1
  1392
• Sony Xperia XA1
  1367
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  1290
• Oppo F5
  1286
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)
  1171
• Nokia 6 (Global version)
  978
• Xiaomi Redmi 4
  946
• LG Q6
  907

The benchmarks show that the Q6 will definitely not be featured in any Top 10 list when it comes to performance. But you were probably expecting something along those lines when taking into account that this isn't a flagship in any imaginable way aside from its screen's aspect ratio. The phone performs adequately for day-to-day tasks, though pushing it even a little, be that in image and video-intensive social media apps or more demanding games, will result in some choppiness that you'll have to learn to live with. The handset's performance basically tracks the choices made for its spec sheet, and there's no way around that.