LG Optimus L9 review: Living large

Synthetic benchmarks: Two Cortex-A9 cores still gets the job done

LG Optimus L9 is powered by the TI OMAP 4430 chipset with two 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPU cores and the PowerVR SGX540. Sure, the L9 hardware is not the benchmark champion of every geek's dreams, but it's nowhere near the end of its lifecycle. In fact, it's more than adequate for the price range. Anyway, let's take a look how this one stacks among the competition.

Benchmark Pi is a simple single-threaded benchmark, so we know what we can expect from it. The Optimus L9 falls behind the Krait-powered and the latest quad-core smartphones, but comes close to its Cortex-A9 CPU siblings - the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Nexus.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• HTC One S
  306
• Samsung Galaxy Premier
  372
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  447
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  452
• LG Optimus L9
  480
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  499
• Samsung Galaxy S Advance
  530
• HTC Sensation XE
  536
• Sony Xperia S
  536
• Sony Xperia sola
  551
• HTC Desire X
  639

Linpack offers multithreaded benchmarking, making it essential for testing dual and quad-core beasts. The Optimus L9 stacks the same as its dual-core siblings - the Galaxy S II and Galaxy Nexus.

Linpack

Higher is better

• HTC Desire X
  74.79
• Sony Xperia sola
  68.1
• LG Optimus L9
  65.9
• Samsung Galaxy S Advance
  64.74
• Sony Xperia J
  38.37
• HTC Desire V
  34.4
• HTC One V
  34.4

Quadrant is a composite benchmark (it tests CPU, GPU and I/O). The LG Optimus L9 scored almost the same as the Samsung Galaxy S II, beats the Galaxy Nexus but was outrun by the Galaxy Note, Xperia S and naturally, all the quad-core beasts.

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5365
• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  5146
• HTC One S
  5047
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  4842
• LG Optimus 4X
  4814
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  3531
• Sony Xperia S
  3173
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  3053
• LG Optimus L9
  3019
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  2644
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  2316

Another worthy composite benchmarks are AnTuTu and GeekBench. Here are the results.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  12288
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  11633
• LG Optimus L9
  7168
• Motorola RARZ i XT890
  6150
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  5823
• HTC Desire X
  5177
• Sony Xperia J
  3546
• Sony Xperia miro
  2916

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Nexus 4
  2100
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2000
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  1634
• Apple iPhone 5
  1601
• LG Optimus L9
  908

The Optimus L9 uses the PowerVR SGX540 GPU and has a qHD screen to fill with pixels. Obviously that's a pretty tall order, which explains the rather poor showing in NenaMark 2. The L9 result is comparable with the Xperia S, but that one uses a 720p screen.

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• HTC One S
  60.5
• Samsung Galaxy Premier
  55.3
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  51.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  43.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  38.9
• Sony Xperia S
  37.5
• HTC Desire X
  35.4
• LG Optimus L9
  32.5
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  28.7
• Sony Xperia sola
  27.7

GLBenchmark isn't particularly kind to the Optimus L9, either, but the smartphone can take consolation in the fact that it matches the HTC One X result. We're using the Egypt test in offscreen 1080p mode so that results are directly comparable even though each device has a different screen resolution.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  29
• Apple iPhone 5
  27
• Nexus 4
  26
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15
• HTC One X+
  12
• LG Optimus L9
  9
• HTC One X
  9

SunSpider is a JavaScript benchmark and as such isn't strongly affected by the number of CPU cores - it mostly reflects the raw performance of a single core and how optimized the JavaScript engine itself is. The Optimus L9 score is somewhere between the previous generation Galaxies and the iPhone 4S.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy Premier
  1171
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  1626
• HTC One S
  1708
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  1849
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  1888
• LG Optimus L9
  2029
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2217
• HTC Desire X
  2259
• Sony Xperia S
  2587
• Samsung Galaxy S Advance
  2663
• Sony Xperia sola
  2837

BrowserMark adds HTML to the equation - behind the scenes JavaScript computing won't do much if the web page can't update fast and smooth. Since BrowserMark got updated we don't have all the results from previous phones, but you can still get the idea. Interestingly, the Optimus L9 managed to beat the Galaxy S III here.

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  2555
• Acer CloudMobile S500
  1877
• Nokia Lumia 820
  1760
• Samsung Omnia W
  1632
• LG Optimus L9
  1329
• Samsung Galaxy S III (JB)
  1247
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  714
• Sony Xperia J
  587

The Vellamo score isn't too bad either. We only have the results of quad-core smartphones to compare the L9 performance to, but the difference isn't too huge, which bodes well for the LG mid-ranger.

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1468
• Nexus 4
  1310
• LG Optimus L9
  1162

Overall, the LG Optimus L9 is hardly the most powerful smartphone around and there are certainly be plenty of devices out there to give you faster ride around Android. However, it's no slouch either and it's raw power will be more than enough for the vast majority of the users.