Sony Xperia 1 VIII review

Display

Sony chose to keep things simple with the display of the Xperia 1 VIII, and it appears to be the same panel as on the Mark VII and the Mark VI before that. It's a 6.5-inch OLED unit with a 1080x2340px resolution in a 19.5:9 aspect ratio - the 1 VI put an end to the 4K displays that used to be a staple of the lineup (and rightfully so, as they had little practical benefit).

Like before, it's a 120Hz-capable panel with 10-bit color and HDR support. We did our standardized measurements on the Xperia 1 VIII and got mostly expected results in line with previous Xperia 1 iterations. It appears that in manual mode, Sony is still aiming to come close to the 800 nits mark, which is a fairly popular figure these days. Toggling on Auto brightness results in around 1,510 nits on a 75% white patch (slightly more in the gallery - 1,548 nits).

With a 10% white patch, we measured 2,122 nits in the web browser and 2,198 in the gallery. All in all, perfectly expected results and more than enough to be usable outdoors.

It is, perhaps, worth noting that playing around with the special Sony Image quality settings menu and things like Creator mode generally results in slightly lower maximum brightness.

The minimum brightness we measured with a white test patch was just under 1 nit.

The Xperia 1 VIII can refresh at up to 120Hz, and in keeping with its usual approach to things, Sony just includes a single toggle to enable or disable high refresh rate. When disabled, the phone still does some automatic switching, namely down to 30Hz, which is where the phone goes typically while idling, and there is nothing happening on screen.

The high refresh rate mode does a lot more dynamic frame rate switching, but still sticks to the same 30Hz while idling logic even though the system reports that it can refresh at 24Hz and even 15Hz. Most of the UI gets rendered at 120Hz, which is great. Most apps also render at 120Hz, like Chrome. However, trying to test the actual frame rate cap inside the browser with Blur Buster's UFO test results in a 60Hz/60FPS cap for some unfortunate reason. Also, none of the high refresh rate capable games we tried managed to push past the 60fps mark. We really wish Sony had implemented some better high refresh rate handling logic, perhaps some per-app settings. There is actually a menu buried within the Game mode overlay that claims to offer a refresh rate "override", but in our experience, it didn't manage to do its job at all.

Playing 24fps and 48fps videos results in a 48Hz refresh rate, while 30fps and 60 fps videos get rendered in a 60Hz refresh rate mode.

Sony continues to certify its displays according to the HDR BT.2020 standard, which is not particularly popular. The video renderer reports support for HDR10 and HLG, so unfortunately, no Dolby Vision and no HDR10+. Still, on a more practical level, we successfully got an HDR video feed from both YouTube and Netflix.

The Xperia 1 VIII also has the highest possible Google Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing apps like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams.

One extra bit worth mentioning is the Image quality settings menu. This has been a staple on Sony flagships for a while now. You can just leave it on "Recommended" and call it a day, but if you really want to experience "creator accurate" colors or do some color-sensitive work on the device, you should really explore deeper.

Battery life

Sony hasn't changed the battery capacity in its flagship for some time now. It is rated at 5,000 mAh like before. We did our standardized testing and got a pretty solid Active Use Score of almost 18 hours. That's definitely a respectable result coming from a battery with such capacity.

Sony claims two days of battery life on a single charge, and depending on your usage, you can, indeed, squeeze that out of it.

Charging speed

Another thing Sony didn't feel the need to upgrade is the charging speed. The Xperia 1 VIII still only supports 30W charging. At least it is done through absolutely standard USB PD with PPS, so you don't have to go out of your way to source a specific charger.

Given the identical battery size and charging speed, it is only expected that the Xperia 1 VIII would charge at the same rate as its predecessor. That is indeed the case. In our testing, the phone got from 1% to 26% in fifteen minutes, then 50% in thirty minutes (just like Sony advertises), and a full charge took an hour and twenty-five minutes.

These charging figures effectively put the Xperia 1 VIII at the bottom of the current flagship charging chart.

The Xperia 1 VIII also supports 15W wireless charging and reverse wireless charging - there is no Qi2.2 or magnetic alignment support here.

Credit where credit is due, Sony was one of the pioneers when it comes to battery health and longevity features. There is still a pretty solid set on board the Xperia 1 VIII. Basically, you can either set a simple fixed charging cap at either 80% or 90% to keep your battery healthier for longer. Alternatively, you can set a custom charging schedule and have the phone charge up to 80% first and only top off completely shortly before you take it off the charger. That can be done automatically as well, as the phone tries to learn your charging patterns.

Sony promises at least four years of battery health, which is pretty great.

Speakers - loudness and quality

In keeping with its tradition, the Xperia 1 VIII has a stereo speaker setup with both units facing forward. That makes for pretty balanced and symmetrical output. Sony still seems to be assigning the left channel to the top speaker and the right channel to the bottom one, and not adapting that based on the phone's orientation. That means there is only one correct horizontal orientation to consume media in.

Overall, just like its predecessor, the Xperia 1 VIII offers very clean audio output with a rich and wide sound stage. Not quite on the same level as, say, the current iPhone crop, but still very respectable.

Sony has also seemingly tuned the speakers to be a bit louder in this generation, since the Xperia 1 VIII managed to score a VERY GOOD loudness rating in our testing. The new phone also sounds a bit fuller and more balanced than last year's model..

Sony still has a headphone jack for wired headphones. It's one of a few, if not the last remaining, makers to offer wired headphone connectivity on its high-end smartphones.

There is, unfortunately, not a lot for audiophiles to sink their teeth into in terms of audio features. There is an "Audio effect" toggle buried inside one of the menus that offers some automatic functionality as well as manual Dolby Sound tuning and profiles. You get 360 Upmix as well and DSEE Ultimate. On top of that, there is a 360 Reality Audio engine that also lets you personalize your sound profile. So, come to think of it, it's not that there are no options to explore; it's more that they are a bit hard to navigate and poorly laid out.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Connectivity

Unlike its predecessor, the Xperia 1 VIII seems to only exist in a single physical Nano-SIM variant. On the flip side of the tray, you get a microSD expansion slot, which is definitely not a common sight, particularly on modern flagships.

The phone supports SA/NSA Sub-6. There is eSIM support as well, but you can only have a maximum of two active lines at a time, regardless of whether they use a physical SIM or not.

Location services include GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO and QZSS. Local connectivity is handled by Wi-Fi 7, which Sony claims is tri-band, but for some reason, our unit did not recognize a 6GHz test network at all. It must have been an isolated bug of some sort, though, since the system does report support for the 6GHz band. Bluetooth is version 6.0 with LE support as well as LE Audio, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless. There is NFC on board as well as a trusty old 3.5mm audio jack.

The Type-C port on the Xperia 1 VIII is backed up by a USB 3.2 Gen1/3.1 Gen 1/3.0 data connection, also known as SuperSpeed, or in other words, capped at a theoretical 5 Gbps maximum. The Xperia 1 VIII also naturally offers support for USB OTG/Host. There is also a DP video output over USB Alt Mode. Unfortunately, Sony lacks a fancy dedicated desktop environment.

The Xperia 1 VIII has a pretty full set of onboard sensors. There is an STMicro lsm6dsv accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an akm ak0991x magnetometer and compass combo, a sensortek stk3acx light and hardware proximity combo and a BOSCH bmp5 barometer.