Sony Xperia XZ2 Review

Sony is a company that I admire just because of how awesome they are. In the past, I’ve used a lot of Sony phones and I can say only the best for them, even though some of the phones they made in the past few years aren’t that good. Just a couple of days ago, Sony released their new Xperia smartphone called XZ2. This phone is accompanied by XZ2 Compact and XZ2 Premium, making this phone a healthy middle between the two. In today’s review, we are going to take a look at how good or how bad this phone is. Grab a cup of tea and keep reading.

Design and Build Quality

Sony Xperia XZ2 is a juggernaut in a smartphone world. It comes with an interesting and rather robust design that you’ll either like or dislike, with nothing in between. Let’s begin with the things we see at a first glance. The things we see are the sturdy metal design, big 18:9 screen, and somewhat fewer bezels. Bezels have been plaguing Sony’s devices for a couple of years and I’m glad they got rid of some of them. There are still some bezels on the top and at the bottom of the screen, making this phone very big. If we just mention its thickness of 11.1mm, you’ll get the idea of this phone’s size.

While the front side of the phone is relatively good-looking, I’m pretty disappointed with the back. The camera is placed in the weird place (a single sensor) and the fingerprint sensor is just beneath it. It literally sits in the middle of the phone’s back, which is quite annoying and just dumb. I often found myself accidentally pressing this sensor and I had some issues finding it in the first few days of use. Since this is a heavy and sturdy phone, the build quality is top notch. Nothing to say ’bout that.

Display

Sony Xperia XZ2 comes with a 5.7-inch IPS LCD display that performs quite well. With its resolution of 1080×2160 pixels, it looks quite nice, but… we have some issues here. First, it’s an IPS display and second, we have a full HD resolution in a phone that costs around thousand bucks. Yeah, you read that well! Xperia XZ2 is a pretty expensive phone that comes with a 1080p display and an IPS one, which is pretty odd. But, let’s talk a bit about the quality, shall we?

I found the quality of this display satisfying, but not for the price. It has some nice colors to offer and they are pretty punchy at times. Of course, we can’t compare it to the Samsung’s AMOLED display but this one is relatively good. If nothing, we have Corning Gorilla Glass 5 here, which does a great job of protecting the screen from scratches, blemishes, and cracking. If they upped the resolution a little bit, I would say it’s a great value for the price. Otherwise… you already know the answer.

Camera

Although we have a single sensor here, Xperia XZ made this one pretty powerful. We are talking about 19 MP snappy camera that gives some great options to play with. When it comes to the camera interface, Xperia XZ will most likely confuse you, but that’s a good thing! We have tons of features and you can literally play like a child. The photo quality in a daylight is to be admired. The photos are saturated with colors, they have a nice depth of field and the quality bokeh effect can be achieved. However, the low-light performance isn’t up to par.

Another welcome addition is 4K video which Xperia XZ does very good. The details are here and we have some kind of stabilization, which can be seen easily. Since we have a 5 MP front shooter, we can’t say we’re that impressed. Still, you can be the king of Instagram with this camera, so no worries!

Performance

Xperia XZ comes with Android 8.0 OS and the newest Snapdragon 845 chipset. Oh, yeah, this sounds awesome, does it? Well, it surely does, especially if we mention the addition of Adreno 630 GPU that will blow away all your demanding and non-demanding games. The performance of this phone is simply crushing, to say the least. In our tests, it showed no stuttering whatsoever and the multitasking works as it should. It’s also important to mention the RAM amount which Xperia offers in two variants – one with 4GB and the other with 6GB of RAM.

While I’m not happy about the internal storage memory of 64GB, I’m happy that we have a microSD slot for expansion. If you want to record 4K videos, a microSD card is a must since these videos take a lot of space. All in all, Sony Xperia XZ really packs a heavy punch. If we compare its sheer power to Samsung S9, this phone can give it a run for its money, that’s for sure!

Battery and Speaker

The battery of Xperia XZ might sound lackluster on the paper, but once you boot it up, you’ll see how great it is. Sure, 3180 mAh sounds anything but exceptional, does it? However, XZ manages to keep up with my constant YouTube usage, music streaming, gaming, and video recording just fine. With a single charge, I managed to endure a full day with the juice still being there. On top of that, both fast charging and Qi wireless charging are available.

We also need to give some props to the sound quality. At the end of the day, this is THE Sony, a company that loves some badass sound. The speaker is awesome, it sounds clear, and distortion is almost non-existent.

Verdict

So, is Xperia XZ worth a dime? Well, it would be great if the price is actually THAT low. However, at almost thousand bucks, I can’t say this phone is the best solution. If you like a robust design, amazing camera, great sound quality, and long-lasting battery, XZ might still be worth considering. On top of that, the phone is blazingly fast and will match even Samsung Galaxy S9. So, if you like to refresh yourself a bit, Xperia XZ is a great, albeit wallet-hungry option.