Archos 50 Diamond review: Emerald cut

Snapdragon 615 chipset inside

The Archos 50 Diamond sports a Snapdragon 615 chipset with what you may call a dual quad-core chipset consisting of a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 plus a quad-core 1.0GHz Cortex-A53 processors. There is also 2GB RAM and an Adreno 405 GPU. While the Snapdragon 615 is a 64-bit chipset, it's aimed at midrange to upper-midrange performance and won't challenge the higher-specced devices on the market.

We've selected a number of the Archos 50 Diamond's peers to do battle on the synthetic benchmarking front and as usual will divide the performance by CPU, GPU and browsing. The first task sees the Archos 50 Diamond in a middling position - the compound Geekbench 3 and AnTuTU 5 place it below devices like the Samsung Galaxy A7 and Oppo R6 which offer the same chipset. The 50 Diamond manages to beat the Desire 820 in AnTuTu 5 but gets served by the HTC smartphone in Geekbench 3.

The CPU-focused Basemark OS 2.0 shows a good overall score for the Archos smartphone followed by the same results in both the single and multi-core breakdowns.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  3081
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  2880
• Oppo R5
  2806
• HTC Desire 820
  2586
• Archos 50 Diamond
  2460
• ZTE Blade S6
  2086
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1460
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1377
• Sony Xperia T3
  1373

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  42688
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  31436
• Oppo R5
  31417
• Archos 50 Diamond
  28756
• ZTE Blade S6
  27198
• HTC Desire 820
  27070
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  21581
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  19690

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  888
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  813
• ZTE Blade S6
  751
• Archos 50 Diamond
  745
• HTC Desire 820
  728
• Oppo R5
  710
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  569
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  497

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  4106
• HTC Desire 820
  2546
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  2480
• Archos 50 Diamond
  2454
• ZTE Blade S6
  2446
• Oppo R5
  2437
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1861
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1712

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  21198
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  16640
• Oppo R5
  12044
• Archos 50 Diamond
  11587
• HTC Desire 820
  10275
• ZTE Blade S6
  8229
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  7492
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  5418

The graphic-intensive GFXBench shows how the GPU performs at 1080p resolution in the T-Rex and more demanding Manhattan tests. None of the devices here post playable, stutter-free 30fps results and we see more or less similar performance between the smartphones in the list. In the on-screen test the Archos 50 Diamond loses handily to smartphones with lower resolutions such as the Desire 820 and the ZTE Blade S6.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  16
• Oppo R5
  15.1
• Archos 50 Diamond
  15
• HTC Desire 820
  15
• ZTE Blade S6
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  15
• Sony Xperia T3
  5.9
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  5.4
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  5.3

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC Desire 820
  26
• ZTE Blade S6
  24
• Huawei Honor 6
  17
• Archos 50 Diamond
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  15
• Oppo R5
  14.8
• Sony Xperia T3
  11.2
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  9.6
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  9.3

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  8.1
• Archos 50 Diamond
  5.8
• ZTE Blade S6
  5.8
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  5.8
• Oppo R5
  5.8
• HTC Desire 820
  5.7
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1.8
• Sony Xperia T3
  1.8
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1.8

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC Desire 820
  12
• ZTE Blade S6
  11
• Huawei Honor 6
  8.7
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  5.8
• Oppo R5
  5.8
• Archos 50 Diamond
  5.7
• Sony Xperia T3
  4.2
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  3.9
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  3.9

The final two tests evaluate the JavaScript and HMTL 5 performance. Kraken 1.1 by Mozilla shows a very good score by the Archos 50 Diamond but still not close to the top. BrowserMark 2.1 places the 50 Diamond as the second in the list of HTML 5 performers - a very good score.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Huawei Honor 6
  6937
• Oppo R5
  11656
• Archos 50 Diamond
  12110
• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  12266
• ZTE Blade S6
  12865
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  13083
• HTC Desire 820
  13568
• Sony Xperia T3
  13738
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  14488

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy A7 (S615)
  1655
• Archos 50 Diamond
  1437
• Oppo R5
  1319
• ZTE Blade S6
  1271
• Samsung Galaxy A5
  1171
• Lenovo S90 Sisley
  1076
• HTC Desire 820
  991
• Sony Xperia T3
  978
• Huawei Honor 6
  745

When we factor in all of the scores we can extrapolate that the Archos 50 Diamond is in line with other smartphones that use the Snapdragon 615 chipset and is slightly better than those using the Snapdragon 410 chip. Graphics take a hit compared to 720p smartphones but that's to be expected.

As we like to point out, the benchmark data hardly represents the true day to day performance. In practice the Archos 50 Diamond is great and that could easily be attributed to the mix of stock Android and the Snapdragon 615 chipset. We didn't experience stutters and everything was smooth.

The Archos 50 Diamond obviously doesn't feel as fast as a flagship smartphone in 2015 but fares very well compared to similarly-priced phones.