The LG X Power Review
by Brandon Chester on August 31, 2016 9:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- LG X Power
Battery Life
The name LG X Power can be interpreted in two ways. You might think that it means the phone is very powerful, or you might think that it has a massive battery. Of course, it could be both, but the phone would probably cost a bit more than $130 if that were the case. In the case of the LG X Power the name does refer to its battery, which comes in at a massive 15.58Wh. This is much larger than many phones that are actually thicker, larger, and heavier than the LG X Power, and I discussed in the previous section the likely reasons why LG was able to fit such a large battery into the phone.
It won't be surprising if the LG X Power outlasts every other device that I compare it to, but I did want to preface the review with our battery life tests instead of performance tests. I believe that the LG X Power's appeal will be to users who need an exceptionally long period of usage on a single charge, but it's not immediately clear based on the battery capacity alone how much longer the LG X Power can last than competing devices. The battery life advantage will have to be balanced against any potential disadvantages that the LG X Power provides, and so it makes the most sense to start off with the battery results before examining other aspects like performance, display, and camera quality.
As always, I'll begin with our internal web browsing battery test, followed by PCMark's battery test. Normally I would also include our GFXBench Manhattan ES 3.1 battery benchmark, but the LG X Power's GPU and drivers do not support OpenGL ES 3.1 which prevented me from running it.
In our WiFi web browsing battery test the LG X Power comes in at the top of the chart. At 12.77 hours it lasts much longer than most mid-range devices like the Moto G4 and the iPhone SE. When compared to devices of similar battery capacity like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and the Meizu M3 note you can see that it only lasts a bit longer. This is important to note because while the LG X Power is a smaller and lighter device than either of those, it's not a great deal smaller, and it doesn't compare very favorably as far as specifications are concerned either.
In PCMark's battery test the LG X Power continues its lead over the other smartphones. In this case the gap between it and the competition from Xiaomi and Meizu is much more significant, and PCMark is a good representation of the usage that a device can provide on a single battery charge, so this is arguably a more important test for the LG X Power to excel in than the web browsing test. In the following section it will also be important to make note of how the LG X Power performs in PCMark compared to those phones.
As expected, the LG X Power does well in our battery benchmarks. It would be hard to do anything else when you pair a 15.58Wh battery with fairly humble hardware, but we've seen stranger things happen with mobile devices. I don't really have much else to say here except that the phone definitely lives up to its name.
Charge Time
Smartphone charge time has been an issue in the past for mid-range smartphones. In some cases I've received chargers that aren't even your standard 5W blocks, and some were only half that at 2.5W. Thankfully we've seemingly moved past that time, and even though the LG X Power packs such a large battery one would hope that the time to charge it isn't extensive.
With its stock charger, the LG X Power takes about three and a half hours to go from 0 to 100% charge. Considering the size of its battery, this isn't a bad result, although the Meizu M3 note and Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 both charge a bit quicker. Given the fact that LG's charge time is similar to the Honor 5X which has a 25% smaller battery capacity there's not really anything to complain about.
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IUU - Friday, September 9, 2016 - link
For me, a mobile phone must have a good battery life. The longer , the better. And they have a long way to go so they seem acceptable to me. If they have a screen you can read from easily enough, just enough RAM so that they do not hung hopelessly, they are good. Mobility requires that you don't run out of cyber assistance when you need it the most and this means long periods between charges.Weight is no issue today, by any means. Those who complain about weight they adhere too much into needless details. It does have to be the prettiest. What do you need the looks for in a device that is mostly a tool ? It doesn't have to be the fastest. Technology advances at such a pace that the flagship of today rapidly becomes the baseline of tomorrow. Chances are that you will replace your device in some years at the most. So buying them for the premium quality "feel" is a moot point.
Conclusion is , battery life is quintessential, and it's about time manufacturers wake up from the fairy tale of fashionable and sleek devices.
fuelvolts - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Top notch review, thanks for reviewing a budget phone! I've been using this phone for a few days now, and I got to say, I really appreciate what you mention. This phone has 2014 budget phone specs in a 2016 world. However, I'll say this: using it daily (and not in a "review" sort of method), it's not horrible to use. The screen is decent for a 720p device (it's a much better screen than the Blu R1 HD, i.e. the Amazon phone) and Knock On is really useful. The performance is "alright" to me. I'm more of a purpose user. I unlock my phone to use 1 application, then I usually lock it and move on with my life.I'll say the worse app to open is GMail. That always takes forever to load for some reason. Everything else seems to work fine, even Chrome. It's a decent phone, and if you're a Cricket user, this phone is only $50 after MIR, so for a $50 phone, it's a fantastic deal. The battery life is astounding. I got 10.5 hrs SOT the first day I charged it up. I purposefully was trying to kill the battery, and when I finally went to bed, I still had about 16% battery left with that much SOT. Amazing; makes it almost worth the hassle.
This is a temporary/backup phone while I wait for the Nexus/Pixel phones.
FalconZ - Sunday, January 29, 2017 - link
So many variants under single name ? LG This is horrible, dont give them same names pls and specify the lte bands supported on the website.Sammisam - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link
It sucks bad I got stuck wit snapdragon. It's just my luck this would happen to me. Unfair both phones should`ve been the same. I feel like a elementary kid who got picked last for softball game type way. Lame LG!Sammisam - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link
Sucks I get stuck wit snapdragon. Just my luck. Both phones should've been the same. I feel like a elementary school girl that got picked last to be on the softball game type way. How can they get away with selling this phone two difference types.Seems like they would lose money over this. No one I know wouldve bought this phone if they knew this. If I knew it I would've just bought an iPhone 6 plus.Max.racer94 - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Cheap quality screen. Haven't owned the phone for more then a week and the screen crack in numerous places from being in my tight jeans pocket.Did not hit it against nothing, didn't drop it, just had it in my pockets and was walking some stairs and craaack!
Very fragile screen!
Williepeck99 - Saturday, April 8, 2017 - link
Interestingly my LG X Power came with a mediatek MT6755 octacore that clocked at 1.81 GHz and comes with 2GB of RAM. It's fairly fast and quite responsive. mine was bought as a Virgin Mobile phone.c21secco - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
I own an lg xpower cellphone. I love the phone. I had a samsung s4 till feb 2017 lol at&t. I changed to boostmobile because unlimited data. The phone was part of the service, is awesome. Even though yes lots of its core is reduced. Still works great. The battery is super. My question here. I can't find info of the xpower connectivity to hdmi tv. Probably not available!!. Does anyone have Info on this xpower to hdmi tv connectivity?