Hardware Overview and Arrangement Performance

The Meizu Pro 6 Plus is the commencement not-Samsung device to hit the market with Samsung's Exynos 8890 SoC within. This is the same SoC that Samsung used in the Milky way S7 and Galaxy Note vii, and then it's a truly loftier-end part that competes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 seen in virtually of 2022's flagship devices.

The Exynos 8890 is a 14nm octa-core SoC, featuring four Samsung Exynos M1 CPU cores for high performance tasks, clocked up to ii.3 GHz, forth with 4 ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores clocked upwardly to one.half dozen GHz for power efficient processing. There's also an ARM Republic of mali-T880 MP12 GPU clocked upward to 650 MHz, and a 64-fleck dual channel LPDDR4 memory controller providing effectually 29 GB/s of bandwidth.

Pro 6 Plus models with 128 GB of storage within will come across the full clock speeds of the Exynos 8890 unleashed. Those that opt for the cheaper 64 GB version will run across the CPU underclocked to 2.0 GHz and 1.5 GHz across the M1 and A53 cores respectively, while the GPU has ii of its 12 cores disabled. I'yard non a huge fan of artificially limiting a bit's performance in lower-tier models of the same smartphone, merely Meizu has college margins on their larger storage devices, then for them information technology makes sense.

Other hardware includes 4 GB of RAM, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/one thousand/n/ac back up on both 5.0 and 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 4.ane, and LTE support on unspecified bands. Hither in Australia, I had no problem using the Pro 6 Plus on our fast LTE networks, although you may not get the aforementioned feel everywhere.

When I first used the Pro 6 Plus, I wasn't greeted with a high-terminate feel. The telephone seemed laggy, both in system animations and app loading, and it was obvious that the Exynos 8890 wasn't performing to the same standard as information technology does in the Milky way S7. The Pro 6 Plus felt like a cheap entry-level device to apply, and this clearly wasn't going to be acceptable for a $400+ handset with high end hardware.

Afterward doing a little excavation, I discovered a section of the bombardment settings labelled 'ability mode', with options for a 'saving' mode forth with 'balance' and 'functioning'. Balance was enabled by default, so I flicked the Pro 6 Plus into performance mode to see how the ii compared.

The deviation is enormous between the balance and performance modes. When y'all switch to performance mode, the telephone transforms from an entry-level experience to what you'd look from a high-stop device. The operating system was noticeably smoother and snappier, apps loaded faster, and persistent lag vanished. I've reviewed a ton of smartphones over the years, and I've never seen such a stark comeback in performance by flicking a software switch.

It's only apparently stupid on Meizu's part to have the phone ready in 'balance' mode by default when the experience sucks out of the box. This is a loftier finish telephone, buyers will be expecting top-end functioning, and they shouldn't have to get information technology by changing a setting. My advice to whatsoever buyers of the Pro 6 Plus is to immediately enable the performance mode.

In the benchmarks that follow, I've included the results for the Pro half-dozen Plus in both its balance and functioning modes. In that location is a significant difference in benchmark performance here that matches the meaning difference in real-world feel.

In balance manner, the Pro 6 Plus is only iii percent faster than the Moto G4 Plus, which has a mid-range Snapdragon 617 SoC, in CPU limited workloads. Considering the S617 is equipped with an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU cluster, four of which are clocked upwards to 1.v GHz, information technology's easy to describe conclusions about what 'balance' way does to the Exynos 8890. This fashion but disables the Exynos M1 high performance CPU cluster (graphics functioning is also reduced past a moderate amount, possibly due to downclocking the GPU).

Switching to functioning mode improves CPU performance by a huge 49 per centum. Across all the benchmarks I tested, the Pro six Plus is 32 percent faster on average in this mode, which is a significant divergence from a mere software switch.

The Exynos 8890 in the Galaxy S7 is nevertheless faster than the Exynos 8890 in the Pro 6 Plus with performance mode enabled, although results varied from test to test. The lower clock speeds of my 64 GB model, though, do announced to have a small-scale effect. The OnePlus 3, a Snapdragon 820 device, was around 20 to 30 percentage faster in CPU express workloads.

One affair is abundantly clear, though, during my testing: the Pro 6 Plus does not produce loftier-cease web browsing performance. High-stop devices similar the Galaxy S7 and OnePlus iii routinely shell the Pro 6 Plus by 200 to 250 percent, and there is no difference in web browsing performance betwixt the slow 'balance' mode and the 'performance' mode.

We use Google Chrome for testing all Android devices, and it should be noted here the Pro six Plus does non come with Chrome pre-installed like many other Android handsets. But performance in Meizu's included browser is as well poor, so it's clear the visitor has fabricated no effort to optimize the phone for this important use case. In fact looking at a functioning monitor reveals that the M1 performance CPU cores exercise not fire up during web browsing, which is disappointing because this weakens browsing operation relative to other loftier-cease handsets.

In most other apps I saw no appreciable operation difference between the Pro 6 Plus and other Exynos 8890 and Snapdragon 820 devices.