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A 3.5 mm jack, a micro SD slot, and stereo speakers. No, we're not describing the Galaxy S10 from 2019. Sony's new Xperia 1 Mark 8 will give you all of that and even some more stuff you won't find anywhere else. Like look at this finish. What is that? Sony definitely loves doing things differently. But doing things differently is exactly what makes their phones niche and expensive. So, is the Mark 8 the one to turn things around and put them back on the map? Let's run through all of our tests and find out. There's no other phone like an Xperia. That much is clear. As we've seen before from Sony, the Xperia 1 Mark 8 is a premium phone, but it has a sizable top bezel and chin around the display, which some might consider a bit retro-looking.
But we don't mind them. It's one of the only flagships on the market which includes a 3.5 mm jack for headphones. There's also a capacitive side-mounted fingerprint reader, rather than an under-display one. Still, it reads fast and is quite reliable. Also, storage is expandable through micro SD. You don't even need a tool to open the tray and swap something out. And these phones have had a camera control button since before it was cool. Unlike Apple's iteration, this is an actual button with a two-stage shutter. And besides having these throwback features, Sony has omitted something which other manufacturers focus on a lot these days, more serious AI integration.
There's not much here besides the circle to search and Google Gemini you'd get on any Android phone. And as this phone uses Google Photos as its gallery, you don't get any proprietary AI photo editing tools, just the ones Google has whipped up. Still, Sony does claim that their AI smarts are work for the cameras. It's behind the features like eye autofocus, main subject recognition, and the AI camera work video stabilization mode. Also, there's the AI camera assistant. The phone will detect the scene and offer you pop-up suggestions on the fly for camera profiles to apply. They alter things like colors, exposure, and even bokeh effects. As far as hardware updates go, it seems
Sony didn't want to rock the boat too much, besides the new chipset. And they switched the zoom camera. There's no continuous zoom this time around. You also notice the redesigned camera island. Feeling the back and frame, you'd think this phone was made of plastic with a grippy coarse texture, but that's actually Gorilla Glass Victus on the back, and the frame is all aluminum. And for ingress protection, the phone is rated IP65/68 against water and dust, as usual. The display of the Xperia 1 Mark IV appears to be the same as last year.
It's a 6.5-in OLED panel with a 1080p resolution and a 120-Hz refresh rate. Unlike what you see on other phones, this selfie cam sits above the display, so there's no punch hole. The display looks nice and has support for 10-bit color and HDR10 video playback. The image quality settings aren't new, but they're worth mentioning. You can enable a creator accurate mode, which is useful if you want to do some color sensitive work on your phone. This panel has solid brightness output. We measured a maximum of over 1,500 nits in automatic brightness mode, and this goes up to over 2,100 nits when measuring a small portion of the screen.
More than enough for comfy outdoor use. While the high refresh rate is dynamic, unlike other LTPO screens, this one won't go anywhere below 30 Hz. Still, this year it's more adaptable to the frame rate of the video content running on screen. For audio, the Mark IV has a pair of front-facing stereo speakers. They're a bit louder than last year, earning a rating of very good in our tests. And the sound has slightly better bass. You can listen for yourself with our comparison tool linked below. The interface of the Xperia 1 Mark IV is Android 16 with a few Sony customizations and features on top. The style and feature set is much the same
as what we saw in the previous generation. This includes Side Sense, where a handle on the edge of the display can be used to access a panel of customizable shortcuts. Sony also includes a fairly comprehensive gaming suite called the game enhancer. It consists of both a dedicated game launcher and hub and a side overlay which can be summoned while gaming to access all kinds of settings. You can even take in-game screenshots with the side camera key. And with the HS power control feature, you can power the phone directly if you plug it in while gaming.
By doing this instead of just plugging in and charging the battery, you reduce heat build-up. And for software support, Sony promises four major OS upgrades and 6 years of security patches. One upgrade that you'd expect from a new flagship is the latest and greatest chipset available. Currently, that means a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Looking at the benchmarks, the Xperia 1 Mark 8 delivers high-end scores, but they fall behind other flagships that are running on the same silicon. It seems that Sony is holding back a bit here, though it's not enough to be a real concern.
However, while Sony claims there is a large vapor chamber inside the phone, the thermal management leaves more to be desired. In our prolonged CPU stress test, the Xperia 1 Mark 8 displayed heavy thermal throttling, losing a substantial chunk of its performance. At least the behavior in our GPU stress test was more typical for the class. The battery capacity is 5,000 mA hours as it's been for generations, but despite this, we saw noticeable improvements in battery life here. In our standardized test, the Xperia 1 Mark 8 displayed much better web browsing and video playback scores and it earned a great overall active use score of almost 18 hours. Quite respectable given the battery size.
Sony didn't make any updates to the charging speed this year. The phone still only supports USB power delivery charging up to 30 watts. And just like last year, the charging numbers are far from impressive. In our testing, the phone went from 0 to 50% in 30 minutes and a full charge took an hour and 25 minutes. In fact, these charging figures put the Xperia 1 Mark 8 at the bottom of the charts as far as flagships go. The phone also supports 15-W wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. Now onto the cameras. As I mentioned, Sony has swapped the continuous zoom with a fixed one that has a larger sensor and promises up to 5.8 times optical level digital zoom.
So, overall, you have the same main camera and ultra-wide as last year, plus the new telephoto camera, all with autofocus and an effective megapixel count of 48 megapixels. You also get raw multi-frame processing on all cameras, which should improve the dynamic range and noise. The camera interface is mostly the same as last year, heavily influenced by the company's Alpha cameras. During the day, photos from the main camera are solid, but the processing might not appeal to everyone. Shots are overly contrasty, and the colors are not too exciting, either. Dynamic range is good, but with the high contrast
leaning, it might leave you with less than ideal results in certain scenes. The detail is good. There's plenty of sharpness, and random textures look nice. Though there are sharpening halos around contrasting edges. The Xperia 1 Mark 8 isn't too great with the portraits. Detail isn't rendered in the best way, and skin tones aren't exactly likable. Zooming in to two times with the main camera, the results leave us wanting more. We've seen better digital zoom from rivals these days.
The dedicated telephoto zoom does a good job, though. Its 2.9 times zoom images are properly sharp, unlike what we got from the continuous zoom camera of last year. Detail rendition is nice. And actually, compared to the main camera, the contrast is lower here, and foliage is livelier. We're also liking the telephoto cam's people shots better. Detail is sharper, and faces look more alive. However, the bokeh mode is again too much. With a digital crop, the 5.8 times zoom level gets shots that are just usable.
They come out with the same detail quality as the two times zoom from the main camera. Again, other phones do better with their digital zoom. Now, the ultra-wide. And here, the Xperia displays more of a standout performance. These shots are nicely sharp and detailed, better than most competitors. However, the contrast is still on the higher end of the spectrum. And here's a look at close-ups taken with all three rear cameras. They come out very good.
Selfies on the Xperia 1 Mark 8 are just average. The HDR processing can be very harsh in terms of sharpening on facial detail, and that seems to be the case in all brightly lit scenes. There's no autofocus here, either, like you'd find on many other flagships. Moving on to low-light shooting, the main cam captures good night time photos, but they're not quite up there with the best of competitors. Exposures can be dim, shadows can be soft, and the detail rendition can leave a bit to be desired, at least by flagship standards. The telephoto camera does a bit better. Its results are good to very good, depending on the scene and lighting. Dynamic range is all right, and colors are on point. We'd still prefer more brightness in the shadows,
and darker scenes don't have class-leading sharpness. Low-light 5.8x zoom photos are decent, but they're softer than what you get from other top camera phones at similar zoom levels. And at night, the ultrawide's results are respectable, with good sharpness all around, vibrant colors, and good dynamic range. The Xperia 1 Mark 8 can record videos in up to 4K at 120 FPS with its rear cameras, while the selfie camera maxes out at 4K at 60 FPS. Like before, there's a pro video mode. The option to shoot in log is still missing here, but you do get several looks to choose from.
Actually, we like the videos from the Xperia better than the stills. They have wide dynamic range and more measured level of contrast, plus lusher greens and generally more vivid output. However, overall, the sharpness of the videos is less than ideal. This seems to be a widespread phenomenon across brands. We've seen it in other top camera phones this year. You can expect mostly good video stabilization here, but it's not perfect, especially when walking. And in the dark, the Xperia likes to use a relatively bright exposure. This grants an overall lively look, but results in a rather harsh rendition of
light sources and the surrounding areas. And while detail is good on the main cam and the ultra wide, the telephoto cam's detail is less competitive. So, that's the Xperia 1 Mark 8. Overall, Sony has delivered the flagship we've come to expect from the brand. We again have the full set of legacy features like the headphone jack, the wider top and bottom bezels, the expandable storage, and the side-mounted fingerprint. The Xperia 1 has also gone through one of its most serious redesigns in a while and now has a bold new look and hand feel. Battery life has improved this year. The speakers are a bit louder and we appreciate the new sharper telephoto camera. But while it doesn't make any major missteps, the Xperia 1 Mark 8 also
misses the mark when it comes to scoring any real competitive edge. In the end, it just seems like a refresh of last year's Mark 7. And if you already have last year's model, it might not be worth upgrading to. Thanks for watching, guys. If you're interested, here are links to our reviews of the Xperia 1 Mark 7 and the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Let us know what you think down below and I'll see you on the next one.
