ZUK Z1 by Lenovo review: The second cousin

Performance

For the ZUK Z1 Lenovo chose the tried and true Snapdragon 801 chipset. Once a flagship chip, it offered great performance with good battery life, though things in the high end have progressed since last year. In Z1's price range, however, it's mostly octa-core processors based on Cortex-A53 and low-power GPUs. Plus, the ZUK has 3GB of RAM, more than most of its competition. Overall, we're quite satisfied with the ZUK Z1 equipment.

Let's start with the processor - four Krait 400 cores at 2.5GHz should have the lead over Cortex-A53 cores, but as it turns out that's not the case. Basemark OS 2.0 gives it good marks for overall performance - below the OnePlus 2 and Meizu MX5, which have four powerful A57 cores and four A53s - but above the all-A53 crowd.

Single and multi-core performance is nothing spectacular though, even for this price range.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• OnePlus 2
  1622
• Meizu MX5
  1252
• ZUK Z1
  1178
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  1063
• Lenovo K3 Note
  984
• Meizu m2 note
  673

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 2
  5301
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  3434
• Meizu MX5
  3262
• Lenovo K3 Note
  2990
• ZUK Z1
  1871
• Meizu m2 note
  1709

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Lenovo K3 Note
  24538
• Meizu MX5
  22976
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  21516
• OnePlus 2
  16798
• ZUK Z1
  10490
• Meizu m2 note
  8105

Geekbench and AnTuTu 5 are not impressed either, putting the ZUK Z1 at or near the bottom. Krait was a great core in its day, but its time has passed.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Meizu MX5
  5110
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  4589
• OnePlus 2
  4429
• Lenovo K3 Note
  4067
• Meizu m2 note
  2649
• ZUK Z1
  2341

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Meizu MX5
  48915
• OnePlus 2
  47207
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  46307
• Lenovo K3 Note
  46283
• ZUK Z1
  43088
• Meizu m2 note
  32054

Moving on to graphics, the Adreno 330 should ace the 1080p test, though mid-range chipsets pack GPUs that are a generation ahead of it. That's Adreno 430 (OnePlus 2), Mali-T760 (Lenovo K3 Note), PowerVR G6200 (Xiaomi Redmi Note 2). These GPU names should be familiar if you've looked into the specs of current flagships.

For older games (OpenGL ES 2.0) and newer games (OpenGL ES 3.0) the GPU on the Snapdragon 801 should offer a similar performance to the newer mid-range GPUs. Only the OnePlus 2 showed competitive scores (no surprise, it uses Adreno 330's successor though at the same 1080p resolution).

Note that OpenGL ES 3.1 is not supported on the Adreno 3xx series.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 2
  48
• ZUK Z1
  28
• Meizu MX5
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  23
• Lenovo K3 Note
  15
• Meizu m2 note
  12

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 2
  46.7
• ZUK Z1
  27
• Meizu MX5
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  23
• Lenovo K3 Note
  15
• Meizu m2 note
  12

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• ZUK Z1
  27
• OnePlus 2
  22
• Meizu MX5
  10
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  8.5
• Lenovo K3 Note
  6.1
• Meizu m2 note
  2.3

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZUK Z1
  28
• OnePlus 2
  22
• Meizu MX5
  9.5
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  7.9
• Lenovo K3 Note
  6.1
• Meizu m2 note
  2.3

Basemark X gives the ZUK Z1 fairly high scores, but puts it behind the Adreno 430-powered OnePlus 2 (because this test would account for the difference in screen resolution).

Basemark X

Higher is better

• OnePlus 2
  21937
• ZUK Z1
  13596
• Meizu MX5
  10403
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  8518
• Lenovo K3 Note
  5656
• Meizu m2 note
  3946

The Cyanogen Browser is still very new (added in CM12.1) so we decided to use Chrome for the benchmarks instead. Kraken 1.1 shows very good JavaScript performance, ZUK obviously picked a well-tuned engine.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• OnePlus 2
  6808
• ZUK Z1
  8409
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  9504
• Lenovo K3 Note
  10712
• Meizu MX5
  11414
• Meizu m2 note
  14462

General web browsing, as measured by BrowserMark 2.1, is fairly close to the modern chipsets, beating the Meizu m2 note by quite some distance, losing to the OnePlus 2 by a smaller margin.

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• OnePlus 2
  2055
• Lenovo K3 Note
  1554
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
  1505
• Meizu MX5
  1471
• ZUK Z1
  1278
• Meizu m2 note
  656

To summarize, the Snapdragon 801 was a decent choice for the ZUK Z1. True, the new mid-range chipsets offer similar performance to this former flagship chipset and they even take the lead in CPU tests with their multiple cores. In the graphics department however the Snapdragon 801 was able to show the whippersnappers a thing or two. It can't play OpenGL ES 3.1 games though, so you'll miss out on the cutting edge gaming tech but that's hardly a thing at the moment. Browsing performance is solid for the class.