Razer Phone hands-on review

Early performance findings

Razer definitely talked the big talk when it comes to the performance of its Phone so we were very eager to check out what that is about. The company's PC business has seen no shortage of third-party support, but we are yet to see if developers will be equally keen to push titles optimized for Razer's unique high refresh rate display on Android.

The road to high frame rate gaming is a long and bumpy one and we can't realistically expect all current titles to make proper use of the Razer Phone's display. Still it makes a lot of sense to throw traditional benchmarks at the phone to see how it does in terms of raw processing power.

You can expect more benchmark numbers in our full review, but we managed to get some on the show floor. As expected CPU performance is broadly in line with the other Snapdragon 835 devices.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  6784
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  6754
• Razer Phone
  6728
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  6629
• Huawei Mate 10
  6625
• OnePlus 5
  6604
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  6593
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  6590
• HTC U11
  6393
• LG V30
  6365
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  6301
• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  5460

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  4232
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  1987
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  1986
• OnePlus 5
  1932
• Razer Phone
  1931
• HTC U11
  1919
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  1919
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  1915
• LG V30
  1901
• Huawei Mate 10
  1882
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  1862
• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  1836
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  1832

The more compound AnTuTu benchmark paints a pretty typical 2017 flagship picture as well.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  188766
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  181570
• OnePlus 5
  180331
• Razer Phone
  179357
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  178674
• HTC U11
  177343
• Huawei Mate 10
  175426
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  175153
• LG V30
  174330
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  174070
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  172425
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  168133
• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  144223

What about graphics then - it is a gaming phone after all. As it turns out there are no surprises there either and the raw performance is as good as its Snapdragon 835 peers.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  85
• Huawei Mate 10
  65
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  63
• Razer Phone
  61
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  61
• HTC U11
  60
• LG V30
  60
• OnePlus 5
  60
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  57
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  53
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  51
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  50
• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  50

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  59
• OnePlus 5
  56
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  49
• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  47
• Huawei Mate 10
  43
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  42
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  40
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  40
• Razer Phone
  39
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  37
• HTC U11
  35
• LG V30
  35
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  34

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  43
• Razer Phone
  42
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  42
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  42
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  42
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  42
• HTC U11
  41
• LG V30
  41
• OnePlus 5
  41
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  39
• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  39
• Huawei Mate 10
  38

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  41
• OnePlus 5
  40
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  32
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  23
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  23
• Huawei Mate 10
  23
• Razer Phone
  22
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  22
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  20
• HTC U11
  19
• LG V30
  19
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  18

As a matter of fact 1080p devices even manage to outscore the Razer Phone - that could only be expected given that they have the same GPU and almost half as many pixels to refresh.

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Razer Phone
  25
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  25
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  25
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  25
• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  25
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  25
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  25
• HTC U11
  24
• LG V30
  24
• OnePlus 5
  24
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  23
• Huawei Mate 10
  21

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia XZ Premium
  25
• OnePlus 5
  24
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (MIUI 9 Beta)
  24
• Razer Phone
  15
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  15
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  13
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  13
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  13
• HTC U11
  13
• LG V30
  13
• Huawei Mate 10
  13
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (SD 835)
  12

Razer made bold claims regarding its cooling solution, saying that it's superior to all its rivals, but we will note that our review unit got pretty hot during this, granted pretty long, benchmarking session.

Still it would be foolish to say that the Razer isn't any faster than its competitors. Benchmarks don't tell the whole story and we will have to complete our full review before we are to deliver a final verdict. After all the UI navigation and the games we tried were super smooth and that's certainly worth more than some numbers that you can post online to get bragging rights.