nubia Z60 Ultra review

A 6.8-inch uninterrupted slab of a display

The Z60 Ultra is all displayed on the front - its 6.8-inch panel has minimal bezels all around, and thanks to the under-display camera, there's no unsightly punch hole either. It's got an unusual resolution, at 1,116x2,480px, but perhaps nubia was targeting the 400ppi density. Of course, the panel supports a 120Hz refresh rate, and the Ultra employs 2160Hz PWM for flicker-free dimming.

The official specs promise 1,500nits of peak local brightness. In our testing, the phone was good for a little over 1,000nits with adaptive brightness enabled or 580nits when adjusting it manually. These aren't record-breaking numbers, of course, but it's not a bad showing either.

Refresh rate

The Z60 Ultra's display isn't the most adaptive regarding its refresh rate - there are no 10Hz or 1Hz modes. All we could observe was a drop to 60Hz when you don't interact with the phone for a few seconds. That's in both Auto and 120Hz modes - the latter isn't a fixed refresh rate either.

On a positive note, the phone was perfectly happy maintaining the 120Hz refresh rate in gaming. The in-house gaming utility reported frame rates all the way up to 120fps too. Apparently, the Red Magic gaming chops have made it to the Z nubia too.

Streaming and HDR

The Z60 Ultra is not so keen on playing HDR content though - it only supports the HDR10 standard, so no HDR10+ and no Dolby Vision. We did get HDR streams from YouTube, but there was no HDR from Netflix. Not only that, but since the phone doesn't have Widevine L1 (just L3), you won't be getting full-resolution DRM-protected content - Netflix is limited to standard definition.

nubia Z60 Ultra battery life

The Z60 Ultra is equipped with a 6,000mAh battery - one of the largest power packs in any reasonably mainstream phone. While there has been a push for higher capacities this year, potential rivals only go as high as 5,500mAh. With that in mind, the Z60 Ultra is set up for success in an endurance race.

Update, 14 August 2024: While testing the nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Version, we also re-ran some of the tests on the original phone. We got minor changes here and there, including in the battery life, which dropped slightly overall. The battery widget below has been updated to reflect that. The web browsing result took a minor hit (12:24h vs. 13:00h, 5%), and video playback got an adjustment too (19:11h vs. 20:47h, 8%), but the gaming longevity reduction was the most notable (9:31h vs. 10:50h, 12%).

The nubia Z60 Ultra does remain one of the best phones for battery life in its class, even with this adjustment. The brand new Z60 Ultra Leading Version, meanwhile, ranks slightly below it.

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

Charging speed

The Z60 Ultra ships with an 80W adapter that can send up to 7.25A of current at 5V-11V or up to 3.8A at 5V-21V over its USB-C port. The supplied cable has a '9A' marking on it.

Update, 14 August, 2024: The side-by-side testing of the Z60 Ultra with its just released Leading version returned slightly lower results for charging speed. At this point in time, the regular nubia Z60 Ultra would take 50 minutes to get to 100% (previously 40 minutes) and a half hour would get us to 73% (87% at the original review time). We also got the same results on the Z60 Ultra Leading version. Here are the updated charts.

The nubia Z60 Pro lacks wireless charging, as does the iQOO. A lot of the others do have an induction coil though, and that could affect your purchasing decision one way or the other.

Speaker test

The nubia Z60 Ultra features a stereo speaker setup with a familiar arrangement. There's a higher-powered main speaker firing out the bottom and a secondary unit that outputs sound through a forward facing slit above the display. Both speakers will play their own track plus the opposite channel at a lower volume. The phone does switch channels depending on orientation too.

Bottom speaker • Top speaker / Earpiece

In our testing, the Z60 Ultra earned a 'Very Good' rating for loudness - same as the Z50S Pro and most phones in the class. We can't say we enjoyed its sound too much though - it was relatively thin, with no bass and an overall mid-forward presence (hence the high integrated loudness).

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.