ZTE Nubia Z9 review: A disappearing act

Performance

The ZTE Nubia Z9 is powered by a Snapdragon 810 chipset - the best that Qualcomm currently has, even if it's troubled by heating issues. It houses four Cortex-A57 cores (2GHz) and four Cortex-A53 cores (1.5GHz) and Adreno 430.

The GPU has to push "only" 1080p (nearly half the pixels of QHD), so we expect some great gaming scores. However, the chipset definitely gets steamy with heavy usage.

As some makers (like LG) have opted for the Snapdragon 808, which often gets close in terms of performance while keeping cooler. Still, in total performance the two extra A57 cores give the Nubia Z9 and other S810-powered devices (like the One M9) a performance edge in some multi-core setups.

Geekbench 3 places the Nubia Z9 ahead of the LG G4, but Basemark OS 2.0 rates it lower.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  5095
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  3795
• HTC One M9
  3761
• LG G4
  3509
• Huawei P8
  3380
• Oppo R5
  2806

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  1750
• LG G4
  1584
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  1529
• HTC One M9
  1365
• Huawei P8
  1112
• Oppo R5
  710

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  6173
• LG G4
  5871
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  4688
• HTC One M9
  4688
• Huawei P8
  3684
• Oppo R5
  2437

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  27703
• Huawei P8
  23676
• HTC One M9
  18047
• LG G4
  17739
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  13011
• Oppo R5
  12044

For whole system performance, AnTuTu 5 places the Z9 above many current flagships other than the Galaxy S6. Samsung's in-house chipset has a manufacturing process advantage that allows it to take the same CPU core setup and push it higher.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  70053
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  54705
• HTC One M9
  51427
• Huawei P8
  50876
• LG G4
  49295
• Oppo R5
  31417

Qualcomm fumbled the CPU section, but the new Adreno 430 GPU is on point. Measured on level ground (1080p offscreen) it beats the Mali-T760MP8 in Samsung's Exynos. ZTE even squeezed out better performance than HTC managed.

On-screen the performance is essentially identical since the ZTE Nubia Z9 uses a 1080p screen, unlike the QHD units on the S6 edge and G4.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE Nubia Z9
  27
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  26
• HTC One M9
  23
• LG G4
  14.9
• Huawei Honor 7
  9.2
• Oppo R5
  5.8
• Huawei P8
  5.4

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE Nubia Z9
  26
• HTC One M9
  24
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  15
• LG G4
  9.4
• Huawei Honor 7
  9.3
• Oppo R5
  5.8
• Huawei P8
  5.7

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE Nubia Z9
  19
• Huawei Honor 7
  4.9
• Huawei P8
  3.4

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE Nubia Z9
  19
• Huawei Honor 7
  5.2
• Huawei P8
  4.3

Basemark X leans towards the Samsung, but the Nubia is still one of the best-performing phones in that chart.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  27046
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  25001
• HTC One M9
  19848
• LG G4
  15090
• Huawei Honor 7
  9377
• Huawei P8
  6307
• Oppo R5
  4855

So far, so good but we come upon a trouble area for the Nubia Z9. It comes with the QQ Browser (more on that later), which just isn't as highly optimized as the Android or iOS browsers. We'd recommend installing a different one for a better browsing experience.

Kraken, which measures JavaScript performance, gives a very low score, far below what the chipset achieves with optimized browsers. The Browsermark result is not great either.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  3989
• LG G4
  4085
• HTC One M9
  5500
• Huawei Honor 7
  11493
• Oppo R5
  11656
• Huawei P8
  11867
• ZTE Nubia Z9 (Firefox)
  12966
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  20208

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  2702
• LG G4
  1990
• HTC One M9
  1681
• ZTE Nubia Z9 (Firefox)
  1562
• Oppo R5
  1319
• ZTE Nubia Z9
  887
• Huawei Honor 7
  825
• Huawei P8
  764

The ZTE Nubia Z9 provides true flagship performance for general app usage, gaming especially is a strong suit. The web browsing was a letdown, but we tried Firefox which greatly improved the score - more befitting of the fast chipset.

As expected, Snapdragon 810 gets steamy under sustained load - more than the Samsung Exynos 7420 - but not to unusable levels.