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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
81 Comments
View All Comments
Pelonquin - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
I went from a V30+ to a OnePlus 8. After getting the OnePlus replaced 3 times within 3 weeks i told them i wanted out and got the V60. I got two of them with dual screens for about the same monthly as what the 1+ would have been. I hated the thin candybar shape of the 1+ along with all the troubles that i had with it. I got tired of wasting screen protectors on the 1+.s.yu - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Interesting but...you completely skipped LG's unique audio and video features, which the Oneplus obviously lacks.Looking forward to an Xperia 1II review :)
BenSkywalker - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Nothing about the quad DAC?There are those of us who only buy LG phones because of that feature. It can drive high impedance cans, it is an entirely different tier than a regular 3.5mm jack.
Is high quality audio going to be like wide color gamut? Ignore it entirely unless Apple tells you it is important?
Quantumz0d - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Look at G7 review and how the author disregarded the DAC, same for G8, in the comments for both, I made significant posts about the lack of the data. I think that's why here we do not see the ESS DAC or any of the LG's world's top smartphone in the Audio aspect doesn't even get a fucking spec list out.A shame on journalism. When we see Apple's deep SoC SPEC measuring contest where in real life it translates to nothing but dust.
Quantumz0d - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Although I applaud the author for making such a strong point on the 3.5mm jack it's really rare to see, AT is one of those places where there's integrity. SD card slot should also make it to that level of appreciation, sadly with Google fucking up storage I highly doubt we will see that PCIe class SD cards anytime soon when the OEMs are pushing for cloud bs.nicolaim - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
Typo: one place says Adreno 640, another 650.Dave_S - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
The V60 would be a great device to own. If LG would let us buy it!Their marketing and distribution SUCK! Only available in very few countries.
Not good enough LG. Lift your game or lose market share big time.
RaduR - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I loved LG G3. It was a true flagship at its time . Qi, huge screen , huge resolution. It was a true flagship killer.Even the following phones with accessories were standing out of the crowd. It was G5 I believe.
But what on earth are they thinking now. Who in his right mind would buy these pieces of crap while Xiaomi Mi10 is half the price and better in any aspect. Also Samsung from last year is a better choice.
They should stop fighting against Samsung since they are not there anymore. They first should undercut Chinese products and only after that chase Samsung .
Look what One Plus and Xiaomi did. In a few yeats they are top brands but they did not fight Samsung in the first place.
LG , wake up !
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Well, the Xiaomi and other Chinese brands are not really an option in the US unles you like playing russian roulette on network support, especially with VoLTE becoming mandatort in the next year or 2.eek2121 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I had the V30 and it was solid.I am not singing praises for LG here, because they lock their boot loader tighter than....yeah we will leave it there, but let’s just say that the majority of the problems with boot-looping and other oddities can almost always be traced back to Qualcomm.