Honor Play Gaming Review: Does GPU Turbo Really Make a Difference?

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has recently launched the Honor Play, a low-priced phone that comes with the company’s proprietary GPU Turbo technology. A technology that Honor claims provides a pretty impressive 60% increase in gaming performance on the phone and 30% reduction in battery consumption while gaming – all thanks to software changes and improvements. Well, we have the Honor Play with us, and I’m stepping it up by playing games that support GPU Turbo. Here’s the phone’s performance compared to other phones in its price range and phones with similar features:

Honor Play Features

Before we dive into Honor Play’s gaming performance compared to other similar phones, let’s take a look at what Honor has packed into the Honor Play starting at Rs. 19.999.

At first glance, it’s pretty impressive that this phone has the Kirin 970 SoC at this price. Anyway, let’s take a look at the gaming performance of Honor Play.

comparisons

First, we ran a few tests on the Honor Play to get a general idea of ​​the phone’s performance. As always, we tested the phone with Geekbench and AnTuTu to see how it performs. We’ve also compared the Redmi Note 5 Pro for comparison, as it’s priced similar to the Honor Play and the OnePlus 6 comes with Qualcomm’s flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 845.

geekbench

Honor Play on Geekbench scores 1902 in the single-core test and 6529 in the multi-score. That’s a score we’ve come to expect from the Kirin 970, but it’s nowhere near where Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 easily beats the 2400 in single-core and 9000 in multi-score as we saw when benchmarking the OnePlus 6 on Geekbench. .

However, the Redmi Note 5 Pro, which comes in a similar price range, Snapdragon 636 scored 1341 in single-core and 4877 in multi-core The tests clearly show that the Honor Play is better in the price range, if not on the same basis as Qualcomm’s flagship offering, the Snapdragon 845.

AnTuTu

On AnTuTu, Honor Play points 1,89,062 which is still quite overwhelming compared to OnePlus 6 with 2,67,128 points on AnTuTu. But comparing the Redmi Note 5 Pro once again shows that the Honor Play is better in its price range. This Redmi Note 5 Pro scored a meager 1,13,131 on AnTuTu.

Real World Performance

When it comes to benchmarks, the Honor Play is definitely a great phone in its price range, only to falter when set against giants like the OnePlus 6, which is powered by Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 845. But that doesn’t mean it will be the same. be observable in real-world performance too, so we tested gaming on Honor Play, OnePlus 6 and Redmi Note 5 Pro.

Since not all games use the GPU Turbo technology that Honor has built into the Honor Play, we’re stuck with games that support it – PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends.

pubg mobile

If I had my highest expectations of seeing a drastic improvement in performance with GPU Turbo, it was in PUBG Mobile – a game with tough, intense gunfights and a truly famous game on Android.

During gameplay, I used GameBench to check the game’s FPS and get an idea of ​​the game’s performance over time. The following are my observations.

Honor Play, a Consistent frame rate of about 25-30FPS in the game, which is fine I guess. However, after profiling the game, GameBench showed the average FPS for the game to be 40FPS, and frame rate stability was at 76%. Also, the variability of frame rates was at +/- 1.19FPS.

While running PUBG Mobile on the OnePlus 6, I once again observed a similar 30FPS framerate in-game, and GameBench showed: average frame rates will be 40FPSwith impressive 96% stability. This is much more than the Honor Play has. However, the variability of frame rates was +/- 1.05.

GameBench on Redmi Note 5 Pro 26FPS median FPS valueand a 94% stability, which is considerably higher than the Honor Play and quite close to the OnePlus 6. The variability of frame rates is lower here too, at +/- 1.16FPS.

Mobile Legends

Next up, I tried Mobile Legends, which I’ve never played before, but which supports Honor’s GPU Turbo technology. This The Honor Play has a frame rate stability of 79%, as well as an average FPS of 30FPS, which sounds good.. However, the variability of frame rates was found to be at +/- 3.1 FPS.

OnePlus 6 fares better than Honor Play and Average frame rate of 30FPS with a higher stability value of 84%. Framerate variability here was +/- 3.44FPS, higher than the Honor Play.

I finally played the game on the computer. Redmi Note 5 Pro achieving an average frame rate of 29FPS That’s not really noticeably lower than scores on the OnePlus 6 and Honor Play. However here the stability was 72% Which is lower than Honor Play. Also, the variability of frame rates was recorded at +/- 4.01 FPS, which is definitely much higher.

GPU Turbo Battery Usage

Honor also claimed that GPU Turbo will reduce battery consumption by 30% while gaming, and we tested it. We delivered Honor Play, Galaxy S9+, Nova 3 and OnePlus 6 to the best PUBG players in our office and let them play the game for 1 hour nonstop.

With all phones charged to 100%, after 30 minutes of gaming Honor Play was at 83%, Nova 3 at 86% (notable for having the same battery size but no GPU Turbo), OnePlus 6 at 79% and S9+ at 89%. The S9+ has a lower battery capacity than the Honor Play, but still manages to be more efficient.

After a full 1 hour of PUBG, Honor Play was 69%, Honor Nova 3 73%, OnePlus 6 64% and S9+ 78%. So yes, it’s pretty clear that GPU Turbo doesn’t really help battery life at all; actually, it might actually hurt to some extent.

SEE ALSO: Huawei Nova 3 Review: Affordable Flagship with Outstanding Cameras

Honor Play Gaming Review: GPU Turbo Probably Not Completely Made

So the Honor Play is definitely the best smartphone you can get in its price range in terms of performance. After it comes with all the phone Huawei’s flagship Kirin 970 processor has Mali G72 GPU and GPU Turbo above all to further enhance the gaming experience.

However, in my use, I don’t think GPU Turbo makes any noticeable difference to the phone’s gaming performance. TRUE, It’s better than the Redmi Note 5 Pro, but that’s to be expected as Honor Play is basically packing the Kirin equivalent of the Snapdragon 845; and by comparison, the Honor Play lags behind the Snapdragon 845 that launched the OnePlus 6. However, Honor Play will get more improvements including 4D Gaming Experience which will bring features like smart shock and 3D surround to the phone. audio feature for wired headphones. These features and the price at which the Honor Play is sold make this phone an unrivaled performance champion in its price range.

What do you think of Honor Play? Are you excited about GPU Turbo, or do you (like me) feel more like a gimmick than something that really helps? Let me know in the comments section below.