It can do it all: Sony Xperia 1 VI [review]

I was not expecting Sony to use their naming scheme for such a long time, but here we are. This is the Xperia 1 Mark 6, and not only with the name, Sony is doing its own thing. This smartphone is very special; it has features that some other companies don't have yet or do not have anymore. But who should buy this very special phone? Well, let's find out.

Apparently, current trends have no influence on Sony's designers because the Xperia 1 Mark 6 is pretty much the opposite of any other smartphone. Don't let this unassuming minimalistic design fool you; the engineers have worked a few wonders. For example, instead of a large, round protruding camera, we have here the flattest element I know, despite a large and modern camera sensor and lens. The lenses are securely framed in metal. The back is not just glass; it's covered in a nappy, rubber-like texture. It looks robust, and you can practically see no fingerprints on it, even on the black model, which I reviewed. Speaking of fingerprints, the sensor for unlocking is on the power button on the side, and it's super fast. So fast, in fact, that I have unintentionally unlocked the device inside of my trouser pockets a couple of times. The frame around the phone is finely ribbed and angular; it feels great. And look up here; there is a headphone jack; nobody else these days has one. The same goes for the microSD card slot, and you can even pull it out without any tools needed. So, that means you can expand the 256 GB of storage very quickly or insert a card into your computer or camera for easy data transfer. Yet the Xperia 1 Mark 6 is waterproof for 30 minutes at a depth of 1.5 meters. All of this is in a device that is 30 grams lighter than the iPhone 15 Pro Max, even though it has a 12% larger battery.

When we turn around the smartphone, there's something very special on the front. It's a display, but unlike the last few years, it is no longer in a long, narrow 21:9 aspect ratio. It's now slightly shorter and wider, more like all the other smartphones. It's a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. Whether this is better or worse is purely a matter of taste. I liked it before, and I like it now. There's something for both sides. Typing on the keyboard is a bit more comfortable for me. The bezels on the sides are super thin; at the top and bottom, though, they are relatively thick. They house the selfie camera and two stereo speakers. Sony has done this to have no hole, no curve, no notch—nothing but a display. It is 6.5 inches in size, has OLED technology, a new variable refresh rate from 1 to 120 Hz, and is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2. Gorilla Glass Armor with 70% lower reflections would have been great in my opinion, but it helps that the display is 50% brighter now with 1,500 nits of sunlight. This is good, but not the best value out there. The resolution has dropped from 4K to Full HD Plus, so it's only 2.2 million pixels instead of the 6.3 million before. This sounds like a huge difference, and technically speaking, you can see that if you are looking for it, but in day-to-day use, it's really not that drastic. I think Sony was going for record-breaking battery life.

Sony advertises this phone quite aggressively with two days of battery life, and at first, I didn't understand why. The battery is 5,000 mAh, the same as the last few years and the competition. I thought that's only marketing, but it is not. Every single night, I was going to bed with above 50% of my battery, so two days would have been possible. We're speaking about 8 to 9 hours of display use, which is insane and way better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Galaxy S24 Ultra. I was doing a trip from the very tip of Germany down to Switzerland, only using mobile data and music streaming, and still had 16% battery left in the evening with 4.5 hours of display time. Unfortunately, charging is below average; 30 minutes brings you to 50%, and 1.5 hours brings you to 100%. However, you can set a charge limit of 80 or 90% to increase the battery life. That is a feature that Apple just invented with iOS 18, and it should enhance the longevity of the battery. The super-long battery life should help with that as well. Wireless charging and reverse wireless charging are available. Sony promises that its battery will age significantly slower than everybody else's, and the long battery life will certainly help. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 12 GB of RAM will ensure that you have had excellent performance all these years. This is the best you can get right now; the performance is outstanding. There's nothing that could make this smartphone stutter. Almost pure Android is installed, with a few visual adjustments and Sony apps. For example, you can use the Xperia 1 Mark 6 as a screen for your Sony Alpha camera. The Quick Settings here are eight tiles instead of the usual four, and the ultimate will use artificial intelligence to improve the music quality. Apart from that, there is not a ton of artificial intelligence in here. Sony is not pushing it like Google, Samsung, or Oppo, but Google Assistant, of course, can be used.

Sony is behind pretty much everyone else when it comes to software updates: only three years of Android and four years of security updates. That's just too little for such good battery life performance and for that price point. I really think that Sony should take it more seriously because they are very serious about the environment. There's no plastic in the packaging at all, not even a wall plug or a cable. There's 85% of recycled materials inside of this phone when it comes to plastic, and they're using renewable energies and such stuff. They take it seriously, so it doesn't really make sense that the updates are so short. Did you know that Sony is the only smartphone manufacturer that produces its own cameras, lenses and even sensors? Apple, Google, Xiaomi—they all buy their sensors from Sony. Perhaps that explains why Sony is also going its own way with the camera. The current trend is strong HDR, brightened faces, and strong saturation. Sony leaves the images just like they are, just like a real camera. They are neutral and accurate, and I found this very pleasant. You know what you get before you even take the shot, and yes, it might look a bit pale and boring next to other smartphones, but food without any enhancement and without any salt is always a little bit plain, if you know what I mean.

The main camera has a 24 mm lens and a 48 MP sensor; it is quite large and does have dual-layer transistors for faster readout and low noise in darkness. Sometimes, only sometimes, the shutter speed was too slow and the highlights were a bit overexposed. Photos are sharp but in an honest way, not an artificial way, so even the two-times crop looks great. There's an incredibly fast autofocus with eye detection. There is an extra camera button on the side, and the whole interface looks just like a Sony camera. The ultra-wide angle has 16 mm and 12 MP. The quality is behind the main camera, but it does have autofocus, just like the other focal lengths. It supports 4K videos with a maximum of 120 frames per second. This is unique and enables cool slow-motion effects in high resolution. The videos also have a high-quality, neutral look. The telephoto is a brand new lens. Now, it is 85 to 170 mm—in other words, 3.5 to 7.1x magnification. That is a lot, and because it's a variable optical zoom, you don't lose any resolution. You always have full sharpness. Other manufacturers do need two cameras for this; Sony only needs one. The image quality itself is better than the predecessor but still not on the same level as the main camera. Again and again, I looked at pale and blurry photos. There was a deer inside of a forest, and it's very overexposed. It is a shame, but perhaps it can be improved a little bit by software. What impressed me way more was the bokeh effect and how close you can focus. This is not just a macro camera; that is like a microscope. I've never seen anything like it. It takes photos that look like they were taken with a large camera. The selfies are only average. I think they are okay, but I was not impressed.

All in all, this is a strong camera, and above all, it does not jump on trends; it goes its own way. It does have 4K with 120 FPS, a variable zoom, eye detection, and the extreme macro mode. The conclusion is that the Xperia 1 Mark 6 is special in truly many ways. We have a headphone jack, a microSD slot, a special design, and a display without any distractions. It has an insane battery life, and all of that combined is truly unique. But it is not perfect. We do have a very loud vibration motor, a display that is not the brightest, the zoom camera is not the sharpest, and the updates are not the longest. And then there is the price. We are talking about €1,399; that makes it one of the most expensive smartphones out there. I think for that kind of price, you have to have a very certain expectation of what you want for your next smartphone. I do think that this thing is worth the money, but only because it can hold its value very well. Sony has been good in the past with this, so if you sell it one day, you will get a big chunk of that money back, hopefully. That's it from this video. I hope you liked it. See you in the next one. Bye.