A reasonable performer with an amazing battery. But give this a miss if you're used to flagship models, or like taking photos.
The Blackview P6000 is a chunky 5.5 inch Android phone, with a huge battery and some impressive hardware under the hood. Priced at around $280, this isn’t a flagship model, even if the specification fools you. Let’s see what it can do – and at the end of this review, we’ve got one to giveaway to one lucky reader.
Blackview P6000 Features
The P6000 houses an eight core Helio P25, 6 GBs of RAM, and 64 GBs of storage, which is expandable via the microSD slot. The 5.5 inch IPS LCD panel is only 1080p, so while it would have been nice to see more pixels, or an OLED or AMOLED panel, it gets the job done.
Confused about what difference this would make? Check out our mobile display technology guide.
The case comprises a cool metal and glass combination. This works really well, and the rear comes in a choice of black or blue. This easily picks up fingerprints and dust, however.
With a massive 6180 mAh battery, the P6000 is capable of handling a demanding workload. This battery isn’t removable, but it does support fast charging via the USB Type-C port.
The chin of this phone features a touch ID sensor, which works very well. It’s worth noting that this sensor placement, along with the design of the P6000, it looks exactly like the OnePlus 3. The similarities end there however, as the P6000 is significantly larger at 0.38 inches thick, and weighing 7 ounces.
Finally, the P6000 ships with Android 7.1, dual rear cameras, and support for dual SIMS. There’s no headphone jack, but inside the box you’ll find a USB Type-C to 1/8th inch adaptor.
Performance
Performance is something of a mixed bag. You’d think that with such a beefy processor and vast amounts of RAM that this phone would fly through any task, but that’s not always the case.
General tasks such as web browsing, checking emails, making calls, and so on, all perform fine, and the 6 GBs of RAM ensure that you can keep plenty of apps running at the same time.
What’s surprising here is that there’s a tiny lag between opening some apps and then seeing the result. Things like opening new tabs in Chrome, or viewing the task launcher. While you’ll struggle to notice this in reality, it is something I noticed coming from an original Google Pixel, which is hardly a current generation device.
Flagship devices perform basic tasks instantly, and although this is a midrange model, its specs should be more than capable of blasting through simple things like opening an app.
Perhaps Android 7.1.1 is partially to blame here, as Android 8 brought some fairly significant stability and performance enhancements. As it stands, there’s no official upgrade path to Android 8, although you should be able to install a custom ROM fairly easily.
Geekbench benchmarks the P6000 at 865 for single-core performance. Put simply, this is a terrible score, and may explain some of the lag experienced. Devices such as the LG G3 (944) or Samsung Galaxy S5 (915) outperform this phone, and those models came out in 2014!
Current device single-scores are in the 1500 – 2000 range, so such a low score is surprising. It’s no wonder this phone feels slow at times.
The multi-core score of 3980 is slightly redeeming, which is about on par with the OnePlus 3. This is much better than the single-core score, but don’t forget than many tasks don’t actually benefit from multiple cores. Simply opening tabs or swiping between screens is all based on the single-core performance, which is woefully inadequate.
The GPU compute RenderScript score of 2616 matches the graphics with the Samsung Galaxy S7, which came out in 2016.
The P6000 handles gaming surprisingly well. I played a selection of modern and slightly older games including:
- Cover Orange
- Cut the Rope
- Catchers
- Sausage Run
All of these games ran flawlessly, although this is no surprise, as they are hardly graphically demanding. The real surprise here is that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile runs absolutely perfectly, with no stuttering to be seen.
You do have to reduce the graphics to the lowest quality, and the phone does get warm to the touch, but the processing power provided by the ARM Mali-T880 MP2 GPU is certainly capable of keeping up.
Battery Life
The battery life on the P6000 is fantastic, and is probably the biggest reason to purchase this device. With a huge 6180 mAh on tap, there’s enough juice to power even the most demanding of workloads.
During daily use, I had no concerns at all about running out of power, and even playing demanding 3D games such as PUBG for nearly an hour did little to diminish the remaining power. You could probably achieve two or more days of use, with some careful planning.
Quick charging is provided via the 12V/2A charger, which can charge 80% in 100 minutes, or 70% in one hour. This may seem slow, but don’t forget that this battery is double or nearly triple the capacity of other devices, so this is actually very impressive.
Image Quality
The image quality is disappointing. With a 21 megapixel Sony sensor, dual rear cameras, and face recognition, pictures should come out beautifully clear, but that’s not the case. The focus is painfully slow, and images generally lack detail.
High contrast scenes really struggle to be captured, and most images become washed out, regardless of lighting conditions. You can shoot in manual mode, or capture Adobe DNG files, or even correct things in post, but none of this helps if you just want to capture a quick snap or memory.
The included camera app is reasonable, and does a good job of presenting all the features and tools in an easy to use way.
The dual rear cameras are used to provide an optical zoom between 1x and 2x. This works very well, and the simple control at the bottom of the interface provides easy access to various levels of zoom in between the two.
The P6000 camera can produce a “fake bokeh”, called simply “beauty mode”. I don’t recommend this at all, however, as all this does is blur an already bad image, producing a weird, alien looking rendition of anything unlucky enough to photographed by you.
Standard portrait mode on the left. The right photo is beauty mode:
The front facing camera produces reasonable results, but again, this suffers with a lack of detail. Face detection works well, but you probably wouldn’t need this if a good solid autofocus was implemented.
Video quality is rather average. The camera records at a maximum resolution of 1080p, and while there are many reasons to shoot in 4k, it’s not absolutely essential to have in a camera.
Video suffers from all of the problems apparent in images. Colors are poor, images lose all sharpness, and there’s a lack of detail. If you’re upgrading from a very old model, you may be impressed, but models by the vast majority of other manufacturers produce better video, at higher resolutions and frame rates as well!
This image was extracted from the video footage:
Should You Buy the Blackview P6000?
There’s a lot to like about the P6000. The beautiful screen, good specs, or massive battery life. Unfortunately, it’s not all about the hardware, and this model fails to meet the standard set by all the other devices.
It tries very hard to keep up, and if you’ve got basic needs you will probably be very happy. It’s hampered by the slow processor and bad camera however, so for the price, you’d probably be better of with a OnePlus 3.
Enter the Competition!
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