LG Velvet review
Our Verdict
The LG Velvet introduces an impressive new design in a more affordable 5G-ready telephone. But you'll find ameliorate values out there.
For
- Dandy looking phone
- Colorful brandish
- 5G compatibility
- Decent performance, photos and battery life
Against
- Low-lite photos are subpar
- Lots of bloatware on AT&T version
Tom's Guide Verdict
The LG Velvet introduces an impressive new design in a more affordable 5G-ready phone. But you'll notice better values out there.
Pros
- +
Great looking phone
- +
Colorful display
- +
5G compatibility
- +
Decent functioning, photos and battery life
Cons
- -
Low-light photos are subpar
- -
Lots of bloatware on AT&T version
LG Velvet: Specs
Screen size: 6.viii-inch p-OLED (2460 x 1080)
CPU: Snapdragon 765G (AT&T/Verizon); MediaTek Dimensity 1000c (T-Mobile)
RAM: 6GB
Storage: 128GB
microSD: Aye, upwards to 2TB
Rear cameras: 48MP main (f/i.8); 8MP wide (f/2.2); 5MP depth (f/two.4)
Front camera: 16MP (f/ane.9)
Battery size: 4,300 mAh (AT&T); 4,000 mAh (Verizon)
Battery life: 10 hrs: 29 mins
Size: half dozen.vi x two.9 x 0.31 inches
Weight: half dozen.three ounces
The LG Velvet is the electronics giant'south attempt to break out of the "seen one, seen 'em all" cycle of smartphone updates. While not groundbreaking, the handsome 3D Arc design on the mid-range LG Velvet at to the lowest degree represents something different. Even the Velvet proper name represents an attempt to break away from the string of letters and numbers that brand up most smartphone monikers.
Our LG Velvet telephone review found a stylish looking device that's capable of producing some pretty colorful photos, thanks to a trio of rear lenses. You also go 5G capability and pretty good battery life. Priced at $599, the LG Velvet would be a great culling to pricier flagships -- if in that location weren't already cheaper phones that perform merely besides.
- The best 5G phones
- AT&T 5G: Coverage maps, speeds and devices
- LG Velvet vs. Milky way S20: How LG's budget phone compares to a flagship
LG Velvet review: Release date and price
The LG Velvet was offset released in July in the U.Southward. after debuting in South Korea. AT&T sells the LG Velvet for $599. You can also get the phone at Verizon at present, where you'll pay a $100 premium for a version designed to work with Verizon's Ultra Wideband 5G network. T-Mobile starts selling the LG Velvet on Sept. 10; its version has a different chipset (the MediaTek Dimensity 1000c) and costs merely $588.
The LG Velvet's toll puts it on the less expensive end of the 5G telephone spectrum, costing $100 less than the OnePlus 8 and Samsung Milky way A71 5G (provided you lot're ownership AT&T'southward version of the phone). So far, merely the £379 OnePlus Nord costs less among the all-time 5G phones, though that device isn't available in the The states. The upcoming Pixel 4a 5G volition cost $499 when it arrives, reportedly at the cease of September.
LG Velvet review: Design
Design was clearly at the meridian of LG'south priority listing when it started work on the Velvet, and that focus pays off in the final product. This is not just another black slab of a phone, but 1 with curves and grapheme.
I particularly similar what LG calls the phone's 3D Arc Blueprint, which gives the Velvet symmetrical forepart and rear edges. More than chiefly, the curved corners really helped me become a good grip on the telephone. Today's slick smartphones accept a tendency to eject out of my mitt, just that never was a problem during my time with the LG Velvet.
Flip the telephone over, and you'll come across another nice design detail. The three rear cameras on the LG Velvet are arranged on the left side of the phone in descending club. LG calls this the "raindrop" array, and while it seems similar a small thing, information technology's a nice minimalist approach in an age where camera arrays bulge out from the backs of phones. You only demand to expect at the LG Velvet next to the comically oversized array on the Samsung Galaxy Notation 20 Ultra to realize that LG went with the more clever design.
AT&T offers the LG Velvet in Aurora Silver and Aurora Gray, which is a shame because those are the two least interesting colors in the rainbow of options LG has assembled. (Verizon at least livens things upwards with Aurora Cherry-red and Pinkish White versions to become with the gray model.) The Aurora Silverish model I used to exam the LG Velvet looks decent enough, merely the flashier colors are more eye-communicable. Also, the phone's glass-and-metallic instance is a fingerprint magnet.
The LG Velvet's rounded edges make the telephone announced a little thicker than rival devices, merely it's a visual play a joke on — at 0.31 inches, the Velvet is really thinner than the Milky way Note xx Ultra and iPhone 11 Pro Max. Unlike those phones, the Velvet besides includes a headphone jack, and so who'south complaining?
LG Velvet review: Display
The LG Velvet features a vivid, colorful P-OLED screen with 2,460 x 1,080 resolution. LG uses a teardrop notch and modest though still noticeable bezels at top and bottom of the phone to fit an expansive 6.eight-inch display into the Velvet. The issue is a pretty immersive viewing experience, whether you lot're playing games or watching videos, fifty-fifty if you don't get the faster 120Hz refresh rate found on other phones.
Watching the teaser trailer for the Suicide Squad sequel — we all have to make sacrifices for our job — John Cena'southward red Peacemaker getup popped off the LG Velvet's screen. Other phones I've tested have had problems with darkly lit scenes in the trailer for No Time to Die, but the LG Velvet handled those with ataraxy. And the vivid Golden of Age of Hollywood tones from Hail, Caesar! shone through when I streamed that motion picture over Netflix.
According to our tests, the default display setting for the LG Velvet captures 140.six% of the sRGB color spectrum. That's a wider range of colors than the Pixel 4a (105.8%), though the Motorola Edge, which uses a Saturated setting equally its default, captured 194.ane%. When we set the Motorola Edge'southward display to a more natural setting, its sRGB reading of 138.eight% was in line with what we saw from the LG Velvet.
The LG Velvet renders colors as accurately as other phones in this toll range, with a Delta-East rating of 0.xxx. That's a little bit better than the Motorola Edge (0.32) and Milky way A71 5G (0.33), equally numbers closer to zero are more than accurate.
The all-time function about the LG Velvet'southward display is how bright it is. With adaptive brightness turned on, nosotros got a reading of 567 nits. That'due south not as good every bit the Pixel 4a'due south reading of 681 nits with adaptive brightness enabled, but it'due south ahead of the Motorola Edge (558 nits) and Galaxy A71 5G (481 nits).
LG Velvet review: Camera
You get three cameras on the LG Velvet — a 48-megapixel main camera, augmented by an 8MP broad angle lens and 5MP depth sensor. That means no telephoto lens — a mutual sacrifice for phones at this price range, though the Motorola Border includes one.
The LG Velvet can't compete against the best camera phones out there, simply it however produces some decent-looking shots. And in some cases, the cameras can even surprise you with what they produce.
This shot of an apple tree in my backyard features realistic colors and a reasonable corporeality of detail — you tin see some of the the patterns in the leaves in the foreground of the shot, and I think the LG Velvet did a skilful job recreating the splash of red beginning to stretch beyond the ripening apples.
A similar shot from the Moto Edge puts the focus on the apples toward the back of the tree, leaving the apple toward the forepart of the shot somewhat blurred around its edges. The LG Velvet takes the opposite approach, and the consequence is a meliorate composed shot.
Moving indoors, this plate of waffles looks vivid and colorful in the LG Velvet's photograph, with the strawberries and sausage links glistening. However, the Velvet struggles a little chip with low-cal pouring in from a nearby window. The Pixel 4 Forty doesn't take that problem, and while its photograph is a petty bit darker than what the Velvet produced, it's also a more than balanced photograph that keeps everything sharply focused.
The LG Velvet actually has a hard time when the lights are depression, even after yous enable the camera's Night View feature. Some stuffed animals arranged in my lawn nether a string of unforgiving blue LED lights aren't really in focus in the LG Velvet'due south picture, and you lot take a hard fourth dimension making out details, like the fig tree trunk in the groundwork. My daughter's bubble-bravado toy on the left-hand side of the table is besides a psychedelic blur.
The Pixel keeps the bluish cast in its Night Sight shot, simply all the animals and other objects are in focus. It's not a groovy shot, by any means, but it's better detailed than what the LG Velvet has to offer.
Wildfires in California make this a crummy time to have landscape shots with any wide angle lens, just this hazy shot of the Oakland skyline from beyond the San Leandro Channel looks a little meliorate in the LG Velvet'due south version. The LG Velvet managed to continue all the building in focus, while the Motorola Edge'southward rendition loses some of the sharpness.
The depth sensor on the LG Velvet didn't actually help when information technology was time to take a portrait shot. This photo of my daughter turned out okay, and even the shadows caused by the low-cal from the nearby window are used to good outcome here. Simply zoom in on the hair on the left of my daughter'due south head — the LG Velvet gets a little over-aggressive when it comes to blurring that hair, a trouble the Motorola Border didn't run across. I too prefer the Motorola Edge using a tighter frame on my daughter when information technology'south in portrait mode.
Too blurs, you can have the LG Velvet try out other effects on portrait shots, everything from stage lighting to 3D photo furnishings. I used a cartoon effect on that same portrait of my daughter and I similar what the effect imposed on the view outside the window on the left of the shot. I think the Velvet struggled with separating my daughter'due south hair and shirt from the remainder of the background, though.
Those different portrait effects reveal that the LG Velvet has been designed with artistic types in mind. That's also apparent when you explore the video capture capabilities of the phone.
You can record video at upwardly to Ultra HD resolution, but LG has thrown in a few other features for capturing more distinct-looking footage. An ASMR recording mode, for example, lets yous dilate faint sounds without having to worry nigh baloney. A short prune of some sausage links cooking in my oven amplifies the sizzle to make information technology sound like nosotros're in a rainstorm.
I was less impressed by a vocalisation bokeh feature that allows you to hone in on a particular subject's voice instead of any background noise. I tried to capture a video of my daughter singing along to her favorite popular vocal, but I noticed no real improvement with the bokeh voice feature enabled.
Up front, the LG Velvet features a 16MP camera that produces decent selfies, though you'll observe amend self-portraits elsewhere. Turning on the portrait feature with the Velvet's forepart camera, I expect a little washed out, though the groundwork blur upshot is rendered decently enough. The Pixel 4 XL'south version is brighter, though, fifty-fifty if my face isn't equally cerise in really life. I also remember the Pixel does a better job bookkeeping for the ambient light in the groundwork.
LG Velvet review: Performance
The LG Velvet replaces LG'south onetime Thousand series of phones, which typically used the best Qualcomm silicon available at the time of release. The LG G8x ThinQ, for example, turned to the Snapdragon 855, the all-time Android system-on-fleck when that phone debuted last year.
With the Velvet, LG is taking a different route, stepping down to Qualcomm'southward vii Series of chipsets. You'll nevertheless go decent performance from the Snapdragon 765G powering the AT&T and Verizon versions of the LG Velvet, merely cypher approaching the Snapdragon 865 found in the best Android phones to come out in 2020.
Not that the trade-off really matters. The Snapdragon 765G can handle most of what mobile apps and games throw at it, and as a outcome, the LG Velvet's functioning either matches or exceeds comparably priced phones.
On the Geekbench 5 test, which measures overall functioning, the LG Velvet posted a multicore score of i,927. The OnePlus Nord — which also uses a Snapdragon 765G chipset — beats that ever so slightly with a score of ane,948. But the LG Velvet outperforms comparably priced phones like the Galaxy A71 5G (1,796) and Motorola Edge (1,867), both of which run on a Snapdragon 765.
The Snapdragon 765G is characterized by ameliorate graphic performance, then you'd expect a phone like the LG Velvet to dominate the competition. Our tests found a mixed pocketbook, however. In 3DMark'due south Sling Shot Extreme OpenGL test, for example, the LG Velvet's score of 4,644 bested both the OnePlus Nord (4,251) and Motorola Border (iv,237). Only on the GFXBench Aztec Ruins Vulkan examination for high-tier devices, the LG Velvet's score of 548 frames or 8.v frames per second cruel just backside the Galaxy A71 5G and its standard Snapdragon 765 chipset, which produced a issue of 551 frames, or 8.6 frames per second.
The Snapdragon 765G comes with a built-in X52 modem, meaning the LG Velvet can connect to 5G networks where available. Our review unit came with an AT&T SIM menu, and from my front porch, I could hop on to AT&T'south nationwide 5G network, which produces slightly faster download speeds than LTE. Once I moved to the backyard, thought, I was back in AT&T's 5GE network — a fancy way of proverb LTE. That feel just speaks to the vagaries of 5G coverage at this point. Standing in my driveway, AT&T's 5G network provided download speeds of 16.ane Mbps over 5G on the LG Velvet, and if that sounds bad, consider that a few feet fashion over LTE, my speeds topped out at 2.64 Mbps.
Now all that applies to the version of the LG Velvet you can get at AT&T or Verizon. T-Mobile sells an LG Velvet that'south powered with MediaTek's Dimenisty 1000c system-on-bit, which includes a 5G modem that works with the carrier's low- and mid-band 5G network. Nosotros can't say how the Dimensity-powered LG Velvet compares to other phones — let alone its Snapdragon 765G-based siblings — until we get the T-Mobile version in for testing.
LG Velvet review: Battery life and charging
The iv,300 mAh within the AT&T version of the LG Velvet hints at decent battery life, and the phone delivered in our testing. We fix the LG Velvet's screen to 150 nits and then had it surf the web over a cellular connection — AT&T'due south in this instance — until information technology ran out of power. The LG Velvet lasted 10 hours and 29 minutes on this test, which is amend than the average for smartphones.
(Note that the Verizon version of the LG Velvet has a smaller 4,000 mAh battery to suit the antennas needed to connect to the carrier's 5G network. Nosotros'd anticipate a unlike bombardment issue exam for that model of the LG Velvet.)
Some rival phones last longer. The Galaxy A71 5G, for instance, held out for 20 minutes longer on our test, getting closer to the xi-hour mark that'due south the standard for the best telephone battery life. Just the LG Velvet outperformed the Pixel 4a (8:55), which struggled in our testing.
You tin can charge the LG Velvet wirelessly if you desire, and AT&T'southward version of the phone comes with a 16.2W charger. (Verizon customers are treated to a 25W charger.) Nosotros got the telephone back to a 24% charge after 30 minutes. The Milky way A71 5G promises to become dorsum upward to threescore% after one-half-an-hr of charging, and the OnePlus Nord's Warp Charge 30T gets you close to 70%, and then the LG Velvet is on the slow side here.
LG Velvet review: Software and special features
The LG Velvet runs Android ten with LG's overly fussy UX skin. At to the lowest degree, there'due south minimal duplication between LG'due south included apps and the Google ones that come with Android, but the AT&T version of this phone comes loaded downwardly with actress software. In addition to an entire folder'southward worth of apps like AT&T ProTech, myAT&T, Phone call Protect and Mobile Security, you'll find icons for AT&T Tv set, HBO Max, and multiple Game of Thrones games among other non-essential downloads.
LG offers a $199 Dual Screen case for the LG Velvet that adds a second vi.8-inch screen alongside the Velvet'south standard brandish. Every bit with other phones similar the LG V60 ThinQ, you lot tin can employ this 2d screen to run apps side by side or, in some cases, across a full screen. Gamers can turn one of the displays into a virtual gamepad. Information technology's a little bit clunky, to be honest, though I did appreciate the 2.1-inch display on the Dual Screen case where notifications and other information can announced.
Like the V60, the LG Velvet supports pens with Agile Electrostatic (AES) digitizer technology. An included QuickMemo+ app works with such pens to let y'all sketch and create handwritten notes. I didn't have a take a chance to examination this feature.
Contempo LG flagships have featured a quad digital-to-audio converter, which accept fabricated those models some of the all-time sounding phones you tin can buy. That's missing from the LG Velvet, which offers stereo speakers and an LG 3D Sound Engine. Personally, I constitute the audio on the Velvet to be fine, only if you're used to that DAC on previous phones, prepare for a fleck of a step dorsum.
LG Velvet review: Final verdict
LG deserves credit for trying to shake up its phone lineup. The LG G series that the Velvet replaces just wasn't resonating with people. Swapping in a ameliorate looking telephone — which the LG Velvet clearly is — is a big footstep toward making LG's handsets relevant with a wider audience. The cameras also take decent pictures, though LG would be brash to improve with depression-light performance and portrait shots.
The problem the LG Velvet faces is that at $599 — or more, if you opt for Verizon's version — yous're not getting maximum value for your buck. In the past few months, Apple, Google and OnePlus have all released phones that cost less than the Velvet and outperform it in crucial areas. The Velvet can claim improve battery life than the iPhone SE and Pixel 4a, and information technology'southward got 5G compatibility, but otherwise Apple and Google offer more compelling phones. The OnePlus Nord is a better value, too, though at to the lowest degree LG has made its new phone bachelor to U.Southward. shoppers.
The LG Velvet is a good phone that with a tweak here or in that location tin can exist a great one. Anyone who puts a premium on style will be pleased with this device, but there are better bargains.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/lg-velvet
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