Nexus 6 vs. Galaxy Note 4: A game of Battleships

Performance

Both the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Motorola Nexus 6 that we're testing are powered by the same chipset, the Snapdragon 805. Samsung has another option, the Exynos 5433 chipset that looks forward to the Snapdragon 810 with the same big.LITTLE chipset.

Anyway, we can expect similar results considering both have the same amount of RAM (3GB) and render all content at the same resolution (QHD, 1,440 x 2,560px). We have the Note 4 updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop so they're essentially running the same core software, aside from vendor-made changes (as in TouchWiz, the Nexus 6 doesn't have any).

The Krait 450 cores in the Snapdragon 805 are the last of their line. They update the Krait 400 cores of previous chipsets, but boost the clockspeed to an impressive (even for laptops) 2.7GHz. Meanwhile, Adreno 420 is the beginning of the new GPU line with 2x texturing performance, hardware tessellation and a dedicated memory controller.

In Geekbench 3 the CPU cores poke their heads up above the Krait 400 models from the previous generation. Though the Cortex-A15 cores in the Meizu MX4 Pro are giving them a run for their money.

Basemark OS II 2.0 has something to say about the OS version (it favors KitKat on the Note) and the Moto X (2014) is surprisingly competitive on this test. The older Cortex-A15 cores don't do so well against the newcomers in this test.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  3394
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  3386
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  3285
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  2970
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  2925
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  2923
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  2884
• Sony Xperia Z3
  2860

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  1328
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  1267
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  1267
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  1186
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  1176
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  863

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  6224
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  6165
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  5977
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  5624
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  5235
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  3118

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  21841
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  21140
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  21026
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  18601
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  18386
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  12080

AnTuTu 5 reaffirms the strong overall performance of both flagships though there's still no clear leader among them.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  49803
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  49273
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  48489
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  46824
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  45660
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  45530
• Sony Xperia Z3
  40393

Unsurprisingly, the GPU performance is pretty much on par between the two. GFX Bench once again shows a preference for KitKat, though with time game makers will learn to optimize for Lollipop. Anyway, the only GPU that comes close to overall performance (measured at offscreen 1080p) is the PowerVR GX6450 in the iPhone 6 Plus.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  44.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  41.7
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  40
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  38.9
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  28
• Sony Xperia Z3
  27.7
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  27
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  26

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  18.6
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  18.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  18.5
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  18
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  13
• Sony Xperia Z3
  12
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  12
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  12

Of course, all that extra power is needed to support the higher resolution screen. The Galaxy Note 4 and Nexus 6 render graphics at QHD resolution, which adds 80% more pixels to the workload compared to 1080p. The LG G3 is also at QHD while the Meizu MX4 Pro has slightly more pixels.

The Adreno 330 and Mali-T628 used the LG G3 and MX4 Pro respectively don't cut it at those resolutions and lag behind in the on-screen tests so Adreno 420 is definitely the better choice here. The other Galaxy Note version (the Exynos one) comes with the successor to the Mali GPU, the Mali-T760.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  30
• Sony Xperia Z3
  29.3
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  29
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  27.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  26.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  26
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  17

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  13
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  13
• Sony Xperia Z3
  12.7
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  11.9
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  11.2
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  11
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  7.8

As with the processor performance, graphics benchmarks don't find much difference in speed between the two flagships. Basemark X supports the findings from GFX with a small lead for the Nexus 6.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  20901
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  20043
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  18684
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  18297
• Sony Xperia Z3
  12637
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  12257
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  12190
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  9111

Apple has a strong lead in mobile web performance, but the speedy Krait 450 core and Samsung-specific optimizations push the Galaxy Note 4 close to the iPhone 6 Plus in JavaScript performance as reported by Kraken 1.1.

Page rendering is made more difficult by the higher resolution so the Galaxy Note 4 drops behind the iPhone 6 Plus a bit but is still closer than its competition. Note that we used Chrome on the Nexus 6 and the Samsung-customized browser on the Galaxy Note 4.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  4650
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  5181
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  5351
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  6088
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  6260
• Sony Xperia Z3
  6355
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  7023
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  10193

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  3389
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Lollipop)
  2232
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (KitKat)
  2208
• Motorola Moto X (2014) (Lollipop)
  1562
• Sony Xperia Z3
  1533
• HTC One (M8) (Lollipop)
  1460
• Motorola Nexus 6 (Lollipop)
  1447

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Same chipset, same RAM package and same screen resolution make for some very similar results though optimizations to the browser give Samsung a narrow victory here.

The Motorola Nexus 6 is an equal to the Note 4 in general performance and gaming, though we wish Google have spend some more time optimizing the browser.