Sony Xperia XZ Premium vs Z5 Premium: should you upgrade?

So, the new 4K phone by Sony is out — the XZ Premium just hit, and it's as pretty as an exquisite marble... with tons of cutting-edge tech in it. You may be wondering whether it's good enough to entice you to upgrade from the 18-month-old Xperia Z5 Premium, and we will be examining this question here.

Design

The new XZ family of devices is supposed to be a re-imagined line of top-tier handsets, after Sony's Z series seemed to be going nowhere. But we wouldn't call the new design a radical departure from the Omnibalance form. Just like the Xperia Z5 Premium, the XZ Premium is a stark rectangle when viewed from the front. However, there are some refinements. The latter phone's sides are rounded off, instead of being flat, and its glass panels arch nicely towards their edges, seamlessly meeting the metal frame.

Yes, both phones are glass-and-metal sandwiches, and both are quite large. In fact, the XZ Premium is very slightly taller and wider, and noticeably heavier than its predecessor. We'd say it looks better, with its updated, contemporary design, but we can't guarantee that it would handle easier or any differently than the Z5 Premium. We do like that the volume rocker was moved up to a more natural position, than the awkwardly-placed control on the old Premium. As for color options, the new device only comes in black and silver, while the old Premium had a gold model sprinkled in as well.

Display

The XZ Premium repeats the Z5 Premium's specs here — a 5.5-inch display with a 4K (2160 x 3840 pixels) resolution are the line's signature features. The new phone, however, supports HDR media, which means that the contrast is improved for blacker blacks, lighter whites, and more detail and punchier colors inbetween for higher viewing enjoyment.

It's also worth noting that the Z5 Premium only utilizes the full 4K resolution while you view photos and videos from the stock Gallery and Videos apps, while everything else was rendered at 1080p and upscaled to fit the display. The new XZ Premium says “That's how you do it!” and will render your whole interface in 2160 x 3840 — no shenanigans here. Well, games and other graphic-intensive apps will still play at 1080p, and we suppose it's up to individual developers to make their content for the ultra-sharp resolution, if they wish to do so.



So, if you want to enjoy Android 7 Nougat in full 4K, however reasonable that is when we are talking about a 5.5-inch screen, the newer Premium is the way to go. The new HDR support should also sound enticing to film fans, but we'd need some extra testing before we can confirm if there's any reasonable difference from before.

Hardware

As you can expect, a cutting-edge 4K screen hides cutting-edge internals behind it. The Xperia Z5 Premium is powered by the best of yesteryear — the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 and 3 GB of RAM. The new XZ Premium, naturally, gets an octa-core Snapdragon 835 humming under its hood, coupled with 4 GB of RAM.

Now, the Snapdragon 810 was marred by some overheating and threading issues, and despite Qualcomm's attempts to minimize the issue by releasing refined versions of the chip, it ended up being a bit of a disappointment back in 2015. So, for heavy users, upgrading to the new Premium, which is powered by a new and promising Snapdragon should be a no-brainer.

On-board storage has also seen an upgrade — the Z5 Premium offers 32 GB of space, while the XZ Premium has 64 GB. Both are expandable via microSD card, however.