Sony Xperia 1 V review: an overlooked flagship?

It's stacked with top-of-the-line features, so are we sleeping on the Sony Xperia 1 V?

A black Sony Xperia 1 V camera phone sitting on a wooden table
(Image: © Ian Evenden)

Our Verdict

Sony’s best phone in 2023, is an excellent performer, but costs more than a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and that’s a problem for it. The phone is beautifully made and a refined companion to keep in your pocket, its combination of computing performance and sharp cameras putting the Sony Xperia 1 V near the top of the 2023 smartphone charts, but you just might find your thoughts drifting to other flagships.

For

  • High performance
  • Good cameras
  • Long battery life

Against

  • More expensive than the S23 Ultra
  • Casing feels cheap
  • Apps can be complicated

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You can always tell a Sony phone, and the Sony Xperia 1 V is no different in that respect. They’re taller and thinner than other handsets with the same sized screens, and have in recent iterations sported a textured back that offers more grip than the equivalent shiny glass. They also all look the same, with the Xperia 1 - the top of Sony’s range - being almost indistinguishable from the Xperias 5 and 10 except for differences in port and camera positioning that are discernable to experts. Part of owning a flagship smartphone is for other people to know you’ve got one, to ask you about it and allow you to show off, and a phone that blends in with those further down the scale may have an issue with this.

The Xperia 1 V deserves its place at the top of the best camera phone hierarchy, however, with some powerful internals, a high-res screen, and excellent cameras that set it apart from other Xperia models. There's also the price tag, which is a little higher than that of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and just slides under that of the iPhone 14 Pro Max - both with the same amount of storage but featuring larger screens.

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Chipset:Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
RAM:12GB
Storage:256 or 512GB plus microSDXC
OS:Android 13
Screen:6.5in OLED, 120Hz, 1644 x 3840 pixels, 21:9 aspect ratio, 643ppi
Cameras:48 MP, f/1.9 wide, 12 MP, f/2.3 tele zoom, 12 MP, f/2.2 ultrawide, 12 MP, f/2.0 front
Connectivity:5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, NFC, USB 3.2 Type-C, headphone socket
Dimensions:165 x 71 x 8.3 mm
Weight:187g
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Sony Xperia 1 V benchmark scores
Geekbench 6:Single-core: 2,032
Row 1 - Cell 0 Multi-core: 5,434
Row 2 - Cell 0 GPU: 8,670
Row 3 - Cell 0 Machine learning: 603
PC Mark 10:Work 3.0: 12,417
Battery test:15h04m
The Verdict
8

out of 10

Sony Xperia 1 V

Sony’s best phone in 2023, is an excellent performer, but costs more than a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and that’s a problem for it. The phone is beautifully made and a refined companion to keep in your pocket, its combination of computing performance and sharp cameras putting the Sony Xperia 1 V near the top of the 2023 smartphone charts, but you just might find your thoughts drifting to other flagships.

Ian Evenden

Ian Evenden has been a journalist for over 20 years, starting in the days of QuarkXpress 4 and Photoshop 5. He now mainly works in Creative Cloud and Google Docs, but can always find a use for a powerful laptop or two. When not sweating over page layout or photo editing, you can find him peering at the stars or growing vegetables.

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