Sony Xperia XA Ultra review: Lord of the selfies

Performance

The Sony Xperia XA Ultra is powered by the MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10. That's the same chipset that is inside the 5" XA, but you get an extra gig of RAM - 3GB total. The extra gig made switching between apps smoother (the XA was already pretty snappy).

The processor in the XA Ultra is an octa-core Cortex-A53 clocked at a high 2GHz. There are no high-powered cores here like in some Snapdragon 6xx or Kirin chipsets. The GPU is a dual-core Mali-T860.

Overall performance hasn't improved greatly since the Xperia C5 Ultra, which had a similar MediaTek chipset. The Oppo R7 Plus and Motorola Moto X Play, which use a Snapdragon 615 chipset, perform about the same too. The Samsung Galaxy A8 has the same chipset but gets slightly ahead of the Xperia. The Xiaomi Mi Max with the newer Snapdragon 650 performs much better.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi Max
  1362
• Samsung Galaxy A8
  1089
• Sony Xperia XA
  1013
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  987
• Oppo R7 Plus
  968
• Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
  931
• Motorola Moto X Play
  809

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi Max
  74488
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  50109
• Sony Xperia XA
  47170

The GPU was great for the 720p screen of the 5" XA, but the Xperia XA Ultra has a 1080p screen and a Mali-T860MP2 doesn't quite cut it. It's faster than C5 Ultra's GPU, but at 1080p resolution, it only manages about 50% of the frame rate of the Adreno 510 in the Mi Max.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi Max
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A8
  13
• Sony Xperia XA
  7.2
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  7.2
• Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
  6
• Oppo R7 Plus
  6
• Motorola Moto X Play
  5.8

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia XA
  15
• Xiaomi Mi Max
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A8
  14
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  7.5
• Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
  6.4
• Oppo R7 Plus
  6.3
• Motorola Moto X Play
  6.1

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi Max
  9.4
• Sony Xperia XA
  4.8
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  4.7
• Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
  2.9

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia XA
  11
• Xiaomi Mi Max
  9.4
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  5.1
• Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
  3.1

Basemark shows similar scores between the two XA phones, but that's because the benchmark considers off-screen performance.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi Max
  15487
• Samsung Galaxy A8
  8838
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  6754
• Sony Xperia XA
  6420
• Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
  5695
• Oppo R7 Plus
  5349
• Motorola Moto X Play
  5032

Basemark X (medium)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi Max
  27070
• Sony Xperia XA
  14635
• Sony Xperia XA Ultra
  14360

Games can still render at 720p resolution like they do on the 5" XA (and miss out on XA Ultra's sharper screen) or render at full 1080p, but with reduced graphic effects.

Either way, the Sony Xperia XA Ultra handles apps and daily tasks smoothly, but it isn't the phone for serious gaming.