This is Sony’s new flagship phone, the Xperia 1 mark 4.
It brings all the goodies you’d expect from a high end 2022 phone,
along with a bunch of proprietary Sony features as well.
So is the Xperia 1 mark four the flagship you need in your life?
I’m Will for GSMArena and let’s find out in our full review.
The Xperia 1 mark 4 has a very familiar tall, flat and slim design.
It’s very similar to last year’s model, but this time all the color schemes are matte.
The matte black finish looks nice, and it does a good job at hiding fingerprints and smudges.
Both the back panel and the aluminum frame are flat, and they meet at a sharp edge that
provides some extra grip. Like last year, the front is protected by shatter resistant gorilla
glass victus, and now the back has victus as well, making the build a bit sturdier.
Just like before, the new model is water resistant,
with both an IP65 and IP68 certification. Another feature that has returned is the
fingerprint reader built into the power button, but it’s larger now. It’s always on and very fast.
And just like on last year’s Xperia Pro-i, you get a dedicated 2 step camera shutter.
The first step is for focus, and if there’s a human or animal subject,
the phone will use Eye Autofocus: automatically locking onto the subject’s eye.
The Xperia 1 mark 4 also has a few “old school” features
that you don’t see on flagships these days.
There’s MicroSD expandable storage, on top of the 256 or 512 GB built in.
The selfie cam sits in the top bezel, rather than in a cutout, and there’s also a notification LED.
And last but not least, you get a regular 3.5mm jack for plugging in headphones, too.
Besides the headphones, for your audio the xperia 1 four
also offers a pair of full stage, front facing stereo speakers.
The speakers are slightly louder than on last year’s model, still earning a score of Good in
our loudness test. The sound, however, is deeper and richer, with a noticeable boost in the bass.
One cool feature is dynamic vibration. You can enable it next to the volume controls,
and it allows the phone to vibrate along with the sound of your media.
We also want to mention this screen’s great haptic feedback - it's really precise,
vibrating right on the spot that you touch.
Speaking of the screen, it’s pretty much the same as last year:
a 6.5 inch OLED with a 120Hz refresh rate and an impressive 4K resolution.
Even though this screen is identical specs-wise, Sony claims that it is brighter this time around,
and we confirmed this in our tests. On the mark 3, the panel’s max brightness
was different between the manual slider and auto mode, and you’d get different max brightness
ceilings depending on your color profile. But the mark 4 can provide over 600 nits maximum
regardless- the most we measured was 680. More than enough for good sunlight legibility
but still a bit behind the competition. The Xperia 1 mark 4’s panel is one of the
sharpest around, at 643 ppi. The 4K resolution isn’t always active though- the phone will fall
back to an extended FullHD resolution for most day-to-day use to save energy,
and then output in 4K for a limited set of tasks such as video playback.
Anyway, the picture is crisp, clear, and contrasty. The Xperia 1 mark 4 is HDR10 video certified,
but there is no Dolby Vision support. It does have a new real-time HDR video drive, which can uplift
SDR content to HDR. And there’s support for 10-bit color as well- that’s over 1 billion colors.
The color SETTINGS are pretty much the same as we’ve seen on recent high end Xperias.
The creator mode is very accurate, and can adjust the display’s colors between sRGB and DCI-P3 as
needed. The default standard mode is punchier overall. There’s also a toggle for auto creator
mode in standard mode- it’ll kick in for certain content, giving you the best of both worlds.
On top of that, further tweaking of the colors is possible within the 'White balance' menu.
Let’s touch upon the high refresh rate. If enabled, the phone uses 120Hz most of the time-
unlike some competitors, it won’t dial down to save energy. It will go back to 60Hz
only within certain apps, or for video playback. There is support for high framerate gaming though-
you can enable the 120Hz display for supported titles through the Game Enhancer settings.
You can also force it to 120Hz on a per-game basis just to be sure.
Within the game enhancer there’s even a 240Hz option, too. That's what Sony calls blur
reduction, and it uses frame interpolation to reduce blur when using the 120Hz mode.
When it comes to refresh rate on the Xperia 1 mark 4, we did encounter one annoying issue.
If the phone heats up, the 120Hz mode is actually automatically disabled,
dropping you down to 60hz and 60fps! This happened a few times to us even at room temperature, and it
can take up to 5 minutes to go back to normal. This ties in to the phone’s thermal management.
With its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, the Xperia 1 mark 4 has the most powerful Android hardware-
but the performance is limited because it throttles quite heavily.
After just 10 minutes of testing, the Xperia 1 mark 4 went down to
about 65% of max CPU performance, and the GPU output was cut in half!
That sounds bad, but there’s so much power there to begin with,
that even with the throttling games still run well, and the dip in performance isn’t
that noticeable. Also the phone never got uncomfortably hot while we were using it.
But still the Xperia 1 Mark handles thermals and throttling worse than any of its competitors.
Back to the Game Enhancer. It has two main interfaces-
the first is a game hub slash launcher, through which you’ll find the performance
profiles that you can tweak for each game. The second interface is an overlay that you
can open in game. It’s like what you’d find on the previous model, with features like focus settings,
which can silence notifications while gaming. And there’s H.S., or heat suppression, power
control. With this on, you can plug in the phone to provide just enough power to do your gaming,
without charging the battery in the process as this creates more heat.
Speaking of the battery, the Xperia 1 Mark 4 has a 5000 mAh capacity,
10% larger than last year, and the battery life is better too- it was able to score an endurance
rating of 100 hours in our proprietary tests. This year Sony is taking cues from Samsung
and Apple, and we don’t get a charger included in the box, .
There’s support for 30 watts of USB Power Delivery charging,
and with such an adapter we were able to charge the phone from 0 to 47% in half an hour.
This result is in line with the competition.
The phone also supports wireless charging at up to 15 watts.
The Xperia 1 mark 4’s interface is quite similar to other recent Xperia phones-
a very stock feeling Android 12, with some proprietary Sony apps and features sprinkled in.
One such feature is the multi-window switch. It’s basically two task switchers stacked
on top of one another, meant for navigating between and opening apps in split screen mode.
Side sense is another of the in-house Sony features. A handle on the side of the phone
opens up a menu of shortcuts to apps and features, most of them user-configurable.
Sony also told us about a couple of new services that will be available.
Music Pro is a paid service record audio - like singing,
and uploaded it into the cloud
it’s supposed there and comes back to you with studio-like quality.
And then there’s Bravia Core: it’s a streaming service that’s coming from Bravia TVs to
Xperia phones for the first time. You can watch Sony movies
and a bunch of other content, and the Xperia 1 mark 4 comes with a one year subscription included.
Finally let’s get into Sony’s extensive suite of camera apps.
The default one is Photo Pro, and in its basic mode, you get a zoom selector,
and several sliders with options for things like aspect ratio, flash, bokeh and white balance.
Clicking on the more button will get you some extra features on top of that.
And then you can also scroll from the basic mode to the Pro section of this app,
which includes a few modes, including auto and manual, and there’s a memory recall function
too. These get a different looking interface. The next app we’ll talk about is Cinema Pro.
You can create separate video projects here, and you have plenty of controls to play with,
including the resolution and the frame rate, shutter speed, white balance, and iso.
All of the videos from this app come out in a cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio.
One of Cinema Pro's most useful features is the ability to rack focus between
pre-set focus distances, A and B. You even get control over the duration of the transition.
One major omission of the app in general though is the lack of focus peaking, which
would really help out when taking manual focus. Next is the VIDEO Pro app. Like Cinema Pro,
it offers more controls over the regular PHOTO Pro app, but you have more freedom
when it comes to aspect ratio, and the footage doesn’t need to be color graded afterwards. That
makes it more suitable for direct uploads to your favorite video-sharing platforms.
Actually, live streaming is one of the things that Sony wanted to focus on this
year with the Xperia 1 mark 4. Sony has made an exclusive deal
with YouTube and every Xperia 1 mark 4 owner will be able to livestream there,
even if they don't meet the required minimum number of subscribers. You can even stream with
a Sony Alpha camera if you have the appropriate cable to attach it to your Xperia smartphone.
Now on to the cameras. The Xperia 1 mark four’s triple-camera setup is similar to
the mark three’s, but the telephoto has been updated, and now provides seamless optical zoom.
Last year you got two fixed magnification levels, and you again see two selections here,
at 3.5 times and 5.2 times. But there’s also continuous optical zoom for everything in between.
Also, all cameras now support SteadyShot with FlawlessEye - that's improved
stability in low-light conditions. Eye Autofocus and Real-Time Object Tracking
are now available across all cameras, too.
The three cameras on the back include a 12MP
main cam, the 12MP telephoto, and a 12MP ultrawide camera.
There’s also a ToF camera for bokeh, as well as an RGB IR sensor for white balance adjustment.
During the day, the main camera takes outstanding photos that are incredibly
detailed and noise free. The sharpness is well balanced, and fine details and foliage
have a natural looking rendition. White balance is spot on here,
and the colors are true to life. The dynamic range is also praiseworthy- wide but not over the top.
There is no dedicated portrait mode, but these are the results with bokeh
enabled in the camera settings. These are good, though the subject separation is far from ideal
despite having a ToF camera to help.
With the telephoto cam at 3,5x zoom,
you get a decent amount of detail, but these photos aren’t as sharp as the main cam’s.
The colors match though, and you again get a natural rendition. The dynamic range is wide too.
The quality goes down the more you zoom in. At 5.2 times, the photos are softer and a bit noisier.
You also get some purple fringing around some objects. But still these are good, with enough
detail, and you again get great colors, wide dynamic range, and natural looking processing.
And here are some photos taken in between at 4.4x zoom. They are as good as the 5.2x samples,
but with a bit more detail and sharpness. Photos taken with the ultrawide cam are impressive
as well, with abundant detail, and good sharpness in the center. The rendition is again incredibly
natural, with great looking foliage. Noise is low and the colors are true to life, and the dynamic
range is excellent for this sort of camera. It’s worth noting that although the ultrawide
has autofocus, the focus distance isn’t close enough for this camera to be used for macro shots.
Sony doesn't do Night Mode, but they would argue that the Xperia 1 mark four doesn’t need it. And
that may be true - at least for the main cam. The photos we took at night are incredibly realistic,
sharp, and colorful. There is a ton of resolved detail and once again, the natural rendition is
unmatched. The dynamic range deserves praise most of the
time, though some demanding scenes do have a few clipped highlights.
When zooming at night, well-lit scenes come out lovely - they are sharp and detailed,
with excellent color saturation, good exposure, low noise and better than expected dynamic range.
In darker situations, the photos come out darker
and have considerable clipped highlights. They still have excellent rendition though.
Low light photos taken with the ultrawide camera are solid. They’re detailed and sharp,
with good noise reduction, realistic colors, and an acceptable dynamic range.
They are a bit on the darker side though. A Night mode could have really helped here.
For selfies, the Xperia 1 mark 4 has a new 12MP front facing cam,
which is even capable of 4K video recording. We love the quality here. The subject is always
well-exposed in these selfies, with incredible detail and sharpness, low noise and spot-on
colors. The dynamic range is good, too.
Now on to video recording. All of the rear cameras can shoot in 4K at up to 120fps.
Footage from the main camera is impressive, with enough detail and the same natural looking
rendition as the stills. The noise is quite low, and there’s decent dynamic range
though you may see some blown highlights from time to time.
There’s a new mode this year called Wide Dynamic Range. It combines multiple frames
to provide a boost in the contrast, and shadows look more natural. The clouds and white objects
aren’t blown out either. It’s best used on a tripod though because there is no
video stabilization with this option ON. We really liked the 4K videos shot with
the telephoto camera at 3.5x zoom. They are detailed, with balanced sharpness,
low noise and a natural look. The dynamic range is great, and the colors are spot-on.
The 5.2x zoomed video is softer than the 3.5x footage and less detailed.
It is more than usable, colorful and has dynamic range, but when it comes to resolved
detail and sharpness, those are lackluster. The 4K videos shot on the ultrawide camera
are excellent for this sort of camera. There’s more detail than most ultrawides, outstanding
processing and natural sharpness. And you also get accurate colors, low noise and good dynamic range.
In low-light situations, footage from the main camera is usable. It offers enough detail, the
exposure is okay, and the colors are true to life. There is noticeable noise, but it’s tolerable.
Low-light videos from the zoom camera are noisy, but there’s a decent level of detail underneath,
so these videos are rather usable. The low-light 4K videos from the ultrawide camera
are also usable. There is okay-ish detail and good colors, but these are quite noisy.
So, that’s the Sony Xperia 1 mark 4. It’s among the pricier smartphones you can buy,
but with the premium price comes pretty much all the features you could want from a flagship.
This includes the 4K OLED screen, the good battery life, and the pro-oriented camera
kit. You even get retro features like expandable storage and a headphone jack.
We do wish that Sony hadn’t followed Apple and Samsung and ditched the charger.
But the biggest problem here is that the performance throttles quite a bit,
and this might not be the top choice for a heavy gamer. And even outside of games,
the throttling is noticeable on screen as heat builds up and that refresh rate dips to 60hz.
When it comes to cameras, having all these apps and options can be great for enthusiasts,
but it’s a bit complicated for your average point-and-shoot consumer.
And in low light, you get a natural look here, without night mode,
and some people might prefer the kind of processing that turns night into day.
Still, if you are a Sony fan that’s into smartphone photography, the Xperia 1 Mark four
is definitely worth recommending. Thanks for watching and see you on the next one.