Our Xiaomi Black Shark 2 video review is up

Our latest review video is up where we review the Xiaomi-made Black Shark 2 gaming smartphone. The BlackShark 2 has a unique metal unibody with some glass panes embedded in the back. There are also some cool RGD LED bars along the edge of the phone, good for peeking at notifications.

Although there’s a tall 6.39-inch 19.5:9 AMOLED display, there are bezels big enough to rest your hands while playing a game. It supports HDR 10 and a 240Hz digitizer, this is not to be confused with the refresh rate, which is the industry standard 60Hz.

We also check out the accessory gamepad which lets you map touch controls to physical paddles, a joystick, and some action buttons.

There’s an in-display fingerprint scanner for authentication and the software is not what you’d find on any Xiaomi device. The Black Shark 2 runs Joy UI, which is based on stock Android, lean enough for playing games. There’s a dedicated physical switch for entering the phone’s “Shark Space” for gaming configurations and options.

The phone itself is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 paired with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and features a sophisticated passive cooling system with metal plates and heat pipes. A 4000 mAh battery keeps the lights on and there’s 27W USB Power Delivery support.

Read our full review or watch the video and let us know what you think about the Black Shark 2! Is this a phone you’d use to play games with?