The LG V60 and VELVET Review: A Classic & A Design Restart
by Andrei Frumusanu on July 15, 2020 9:00 AM ESTBattery Life - Outstanding
Battery life has been an aspect where LG has had tons of issue in past generation devices. The root cause here was the company’s usage of LG Display manufactured displays, which all shared the same common issue of having extraordinarily bad base power consumption. This had always handicapped phones from achieving better results, more accurately tracking the SoC’s efficiency and the battery capacity.
The V60’s downgrade from 1440p to 1080p screen might help in that regard, and the manufacturer also opted to include a large 5000mAh battery. The Velvet’s 4300mAh battery should also fare adequately – here’s more of a question on whether the Snapdragon 765 is as efficient as its bigger brother.
In our web-browsing test, we see the LG V60 do outstandingly good, coming in at 14.75H runtime. This vastly exceeds the results of any LG phone we’ve come to test in the past, and competes amongst the longest lasting devices in the market right now. LG still seems to have not quite as an efficient display panel as Samsung, as the S20 Ultra’s 1440p unit is only margins behind the V60, but the gap has considerably narrowed.
The LG Velvet surprised us with equally impressive results. At 12.73 hours runtime, it’s also a great result given the phone’s battery capacity, and nearly scales in line with the 700mAh difference to the V60. This bodes well for the Snapdragon 765 overall, although we’ve seen that the CPU cores themselves aren’t as efficient as on the Snapdragon 865.
In PCMark, the V60 even manages to get the top spot in our charts by a few minutes against the 6000mAh ROG Phone II, and the Velvet also fares extremely well against the competition.
Overall, battery life of both the V60 and Velvet is outstandingly good. In a year where most other competitors have opted for higher refresh-rate displays, LG’s decision to keep things simple is rewarded by being able to take advantage of the new silicon’s power efficiency in order to notably increase battery life.
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PeachNCream - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Basically that Notebookcheck is better for comparing things to other things than Anandtech - which is true. If I want to kill time reading meandering articles about hardware I will never own, I read AT. If I want to research a product I actually do intend to buy, Notebookcheck is where I go first to get to the actual point.s.yu - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Yup, with the exception that their battery tests are updated from time to time so you won't get apples to apples battery numbers between equivalent devices across generations, say S20 and S7, which was what psychobriggsy suggested.s.yu - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
lol, I don't get what you're not getting.ack68 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
I received two v60's free from AT&T when we switched from Sprint. Also received the dual screens for free as well. Using the dual screen all the time can kill your battery within 4hrs. The only irritating thing is if you have it in landscape view, you can accidentally touch the corners of the screen and select whatever is in the corner where you touched. Other than that, it's all good.Quantumz0d - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
No mention of the ESS Quad DAC in the V60 no need to even test but just a mention of them would be good, just a simple one line mention it takes, LG upgraded the DAC chip to ESS9219 from 9218 which was in V30 to V50. And Android 11 destroys the DSD playback. And no mention of the LG's Audio recording modes available in the camera mode either it has HiFi options with Filters for recording in 192KHz with 24Bit in FLAC and Audio playback also has Filters from the DAC directly, same for Pro camera video modes which LG and Sony only offer as well.And vs OnePlus no other features mentioned at all, what about SD slot ?
Until Apple brings the Pro Video, I think no one even gives a shit about those. All shiny toy things and camera output, that's all matters I guess, every review same mainstream talk.
Quantumz0d - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Color accuracy, no ones gives a shit about them tbh. Look at Samsung Ultra high saturated modes, people only use those. And 90Hz or 120Hz is not a pity at all, its a good option but at the expense of battery life with shitty non removable $1000 consumable piece is it worth ? Nope.SD card slot, Bootloader unlock, 3.5mm jack and stability of the OS, Software features - Camera modes those are the things which matters most so different sects of the audience.
brucethemoose - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
I wouldnt trade 120hz for the world, though Android could use some VRR love.The DAC/ADC is a huge plus for the V series though. I'd love to see that in other phones, even if its only over USB C analog.
s.yu - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Sorry I've been on AMOLED Photo since I switched to Samsung, will be looking for something similar once I switch to some other brand from Samsung betraying the jack.mrbios - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I agree with Quantumz0d, color accuracy isn't something that most people care about, especially when it comes to OLED screens. The Pixel 2 I believe it was, people were losing their shit when Google shipped those with a more accurate color profile, instead of one that "pops". Once they changed things to be ultra saturated, it was still worse than a Samsung AMOLOED panel, but people complained a lot less.And my mom, she had some cheaper Samsung smartphone, and she was complaining about how the photos she was taking looked like absolute crap. So, I got her a used OnePlus 3T for Christmas last year, since that was still better all around than what she was using. Once I transferred over the photos from her old phone, she was shocked at how amazing those photos suddenly looked! So, it really wasn't so much that the camera was bad on her old phone, it was that she was seeing those oversaturated colors on other OLED screens, and thought that the camera was the issue.
Only a couple of data points, but really, most people stick with the oversaturated colors on Samsung phones as well. So to most people, true color accuracy is meaningless, it's all about the colors that "pop" off the screen.
vanilla_gorilla - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
"The LG Velvet comes in at 599€. Whilst the phone its generally good for its price-point, the biggest issue I have with these premium devices is that 90% of the time you’re just better off buying last year’s flagship phones."I feel like as difficult it as it is to get updates for a phone, chopping a year off that period of supported software is pretty painful. I'm really not interested in trying to load some custom version of Android, I just want a phone that works.