Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) review: Value driven

Performance

Samsung's price-conscious "J" series was never really intended to hit big in terms of specs, nor is it the first place you would naturally look for a good performer. But, while the Galaxy J7 (2016) does quite alright in this department, especially the Exynos 7870 Octa one and even, to some extent, the J5 (2016) as well, with its Snapdragon 410, Samsung really dropped the ball after that.

The J3 (2016) can be picked up with one of a few chipset options: the rather old Exynos 3475 Quad, with four Cortex-A7 cores, clocked at 1.3 GHz and built on a 28nm process or one of the Spreadtrum SC8830/SC9830 duo, which only differ by modem with slightly faster Cortex-A7 cores, at 1.5 GHz. The Exynos chipset comes with a Mali-T720 GPU, while the latter relies on the Mali-400 and as you can imagine, both are quite the underachievers. We did our testing on the 4G model with a Spreadtrum SC9830. We caught rumors of a Snapdragon 410 version as well, but we couldn't confirm its existence just yet.

1.5GB of RAM can only take you so far and while Samsung has really done a terrific job of optimizing TouchWiz to feel at home on the sub-par platform and work smooth, synthetic performance is really disappointing. A shame, really, as there are many other budget chipset offers out there that other manufacturers have really leveraged for a major performance advantage, even within the same price range.

Let's start things off with GeekBench, which is great at giving us a reliable reading of raw CPU performance. We can clearly see the Galaxy J3 (2016) being severely outperformed by practically every competitor out there, with the exception, of its little sibling - the J2 (2016).

GeekBench 3 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  4537
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  4140
• Lenovo K3 Note
  4067
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  3570
• Meizu MX4
  3556
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  3386
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  3321
• Oppo F1 Plus
  3242
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  3175
• Huawei Honor 6
  3081
• Meizu m3 note
  3028
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  2842
• Lenovo Vibe Shot
  2827
• ZTE Nubia Z9 mini
  2298
• Moto G (3rd gen) 2GB of RAM
  1589
• Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016)
  1437
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  1247
• Samsung Galaxy J2 (2016)
  1207

GeekBench 3 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  1573
• Oppo F1 Plus
  857
• Meizu m3 note
  807
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  745
• Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016)
  471
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  396
• Samsung Galaxy J2 (2016)
  385

AnTuTu 6 is a compound benchmark but the Galaxy J3 (2016) doesn't really have any particularly strong points to make up for the CPU, so it understandably ranked quite low.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  75051
• Oppo F1 Plus
  51299
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  49094
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  45474
• Meizu m3 note
  44898
• Lenovo Vibe Shot
  35932
• Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016)
  27487
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  24884
• Samsung Galaxy J2 (2016)
  24697

Time for some GPU testing, where we don't really expect the Mali-400 to shine. In fact, it is such an old graphics processor that the only benchmark it managed to run is GFX 2.7 T-Rex - one we have been planning to phase out for some time now, as most current devices simply breeze through it. However, even in this department, the Galaxy J3 (2016) didn't even manage 8fps when rendering at 720p on its display - far from a playable rate. And when tasked with 1080p rendering, it struggled even more, barely putting out 4 frames per second.

That being said, we wouldn't recommend the Galaxy J3 (2016) at all if you intend to do any Android gaming at all. Well, perhaps the most casual games of them all, but nothing really beyond that.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  35
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  27.6
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  26
• Meizu MX4
  22.7
• Huawei Honor 6
  16
• Lenovo K3 Note
  15
• ZTE Nubia Z9 mini
  15
• Moto G (3rd gen) 2GB of RAM
  5.3
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  3.9

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  35
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  28.2
• Meizu MX4
  21.3
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  17
• Huawei Honor 6
  17
• Lenovo K3 Note
  15
• ZTE Nubia Z9 mini
  14
• Moto G (3rd gen) 2GB of RAM
  9.7
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  7.5

Moving on to Basemark in both its general compute and graphics forms. Sadly, we can't really say there is any redeeming aspect of the Galaxy J3 (2016) and its performance to be noted here either. It is almost embarrassingly under-powered compared to other similarly priced offers.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  1464
• Xiaomi Mi 4
  1324
• Oppo F1 Plus
  1114
• Lenovo K3 Note
  1053
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  999
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  956
• Meizu m3 note
  930
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  922
• Huawei Honor 6
  863
• ZTE Nubia Z9 mini
  818
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  727
• Meizu MX4
  695
• Moto G (3rd gen) 2GB of RAM
  619
• Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016)
  576
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  399

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  14732
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  12096
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  9111
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  8540
• Meizu MX4
  8324
• Oppo F1 Plus
  6204
• Lenovo K3 Note
  5656
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  5383
• Lenovo Vibe Shot
  5215
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  5108
• ZTE Nubia Z9 mini
  5003
• Huawei Honor 6
  4868
• Meizu m3 note
  4567
• Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016)
  2180
• Moto G (3rd gen) 2GB of RAM
  1866
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  1424
• Samsung Galaxy J2 (2016)
  1419

Basemark X (medium)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  23376
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  15359
• Oppo F1 Plus
  14843
• Meizu m3 note
  11604
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  11199
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  11088
• Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)
  4605
• Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016)
  4157

Overall, benchmark scores for the Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) are really poor, even by entry-level standards. Despite bringing usability down quite a bit, this doesn't bode well for long-term performance. While the fresh Android installation ran smoothly and we didn't experience any glitches, but Android does slow down a bit over time so things will probably be less rosy once you get all your apps up and running.

Gaming is a no-go right from the start, unless you are into light 2D gaming, and even then you might see an odd stutter here and there.