Samsung Galaxy K zoom review: Zoom-zoom

Synthetic benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy K zoom is powered by an Exynos 5260 Hexa developed in Samsung's own labs. It's based on ARM's big.LITTLE design with two fast Cortex-A15 cores running at 1.7GHz and four lower-power Cortex-A7 cores at 1.3GHz. All six cores can work simultaneously.

The K zoom was allotted 2GB RAM, great for a mid-range device, and the processor is coupled with a relatively fast Mali-T624 GPU. Another plus is that the device is running a fairly recent Android 4.4.2 KitKat, plus the screen is 720p so the GPU doesn't have to work as hard as on 1080p phones.

We're starting off with the cheat-detecting benchmarks. Neither Basemark OS II (testing mostly the CPU) nor Basemark X (testing the GPU) found big discrepancies meaning there's no cheating going on.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• LG G3 (16GB)
  1151
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  1082
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1080
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  630

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  2415
• Galaxy K zoom
  2403
• Sony Xperia Z2
  2253
• LG G3 (16GB)
  2137

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  10256
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  10063
• Sony Xperia Z2
  10044
• LG G3 (16GB)
  9937
• Galaxy K zoom
  9412

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  4962

We've included some flagships and a mid-range phone like the Galaxy Grand 2, which uses a Snapdragon 400 chipset (4x Cortex-A7 plus Adreno 305). The two additional Cortex-A15 cores have a big impact and in multithreaded performance the Galaxy K zoom is closer to the LG G3 flagship than it is to the Grand 2.

In the full system test AnTuTu 4 the K zoom practically matched the likes of LG G3 and Sony Xperia Z2.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7
  3178
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  3011
• Sony Xperia Z2
  2856
• LG G3 (16GB)
  2563
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  2000
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  1159

AnTuTu 4

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7
  38484
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  36018
• Sony Xperia Z2
  33182
• LG G3 (16GB)
  32780
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  32312
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  17106

Interestingly, the GFX 2.7 T-Rex test shows quite poor performance from the Mali-T624. However in the newer benchmark, Manhattan, the Galaxy K zoom surprisingly tops the Adreno 330-packing flagships by quite a margin. That's even in the off-screen test where the difference in physical screen resolution doesn't matter.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7
  28
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  27.8
• Sony Xperia Z2
  27.2
• LG G3 (16GB)
  27.2
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  5.8
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  3.7

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia Z2
  28.7
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  28.1
• LG G3 (16GB)
  20.5
• Oppo Find 7
  19.9
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  10.6
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  4.5

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  14.7
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  11.8
• Sony Xperia Z2
  11.7
• LG G3 (16GB)
  11.4
• Oppo Find 7
  11.1
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  1.9

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  24.5
• Sony Xperia Z2
  12.2
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  11.7
• LG G3 (16GB)
  7.2
• Oppo Find 7
  6.7
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  4

We're not sure if this is a problem with the test or if Manhattan is the best case scenario for the Mali-T624. Using Epic Citadel at Ultra quality as a tie-breaker we're going to call the good GFX 3.0 score a fluke. Running at just over 30fps on screen (that's 720p resolution) isn't great performance.

Epic Citadel (Ultra)

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  53.7
• Sony Xperia Z2
  52.6
• LG G3 (16GB)
  43.2
• Oppo Find 7
  42.2
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  32.9

Samsung's highly optimized browser gets along great with the Samsung-made chipset and it posts the best Kraken 1.1 score among the selected phones, including the Galaxy S5. The browser test result is also excellent even when you consider that the 720p screen resolution lightens the load of rendering web pages.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  5085
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  6043
• Oppo Find 7
  6363
• LG G3 (16GB)
  6987
• Sony Xperia Z2
  7041

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• LG G3 (16GB)
  1474
• Oppo Find 7
  1452
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  1398
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  1351
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1224

The processor of the Galaxy K zoom proved surprisingly fast getting in competition with Snapdragon 801-powered flagships. With 2GB RAM the phone handles multitasking with easy and browsing the web is as fast as on a Galaxy S5 (save for the resolution difference).

Gaming performance proved to be a bit of a weak spot for the Galaxy K zoom and Mali-T624. 3D games will run even at high quality settings but you'll have to sacrifice framerate (for action games running at 60fps rather than 30fps is important). Still, that's a great performance coming from an essentially a mid-range smartphone.