Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 a misleading promise in the Sony Xperia 1 VIII?

Although current flagship smartphones are based on the same SoC, our benchmarks reveal significant performance differences for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Anyone who assumes that the performance of top models in the Android sector varies only minimally due to minor thermal differences should take a closer look at our review of the Xperia 1 VIII.

To compare CPU performance, we use the Geekbench app in our reviews. Here, the Sony smartphone achieves significantly lower scores than a Xiaomi 17 Ultra or Oppo Find X9 Ultra. The Xperia 1 VIII’s results are particularly low in the multi core score, to the point where even a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with the previous year’s SoC is faster. Sony’s top-of-the-line smartphone is about 20 percent slower than a Vivo iQOO 15 Ultra.

Our power consumption data in the full review might provide the explanation.

The differences become even more apparent in the GPU benchmarks. In GFXBench, the Adreno 840 in the Xperia 1 VIII delivers significantly lower performance than the integrated graphics unit in a Galaxy S26 Ultra (starting around $1.000 at amazon.com). Here, we see differences of nearly 30 percent. Our in‑depth review shows precisely how wide the performance gap between the GPUs really is.