LG G8 ThinQ Review: An Affordable, Capable Flagship Smartphone

The LG G8 ThinQ is poised to perform very well courtesy of its Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC and 6GB of RAM. This setup places the phone on par with Samsung's latest Galaxy S10 lineup, but the other part of the performance equation comes from software optimization. How does the G8 ThinQ stack up? Let's find out.

JetStream And Basemark Web 3.0 JavaScript and Browser Testing

For our firsts set of tests, we're using the JetStream benchmark for Javascript performance and RightWare’s Web Test 3.0 for comprehensive, mixed-media web performance analysis, including HTML5 rendering. Here we'll primarily determine how the G8 ThinQ handles this workload with the Chrome web browser. All tests were performed at the phone's default FHD+ 2340x1080 screen resolution.



In JetStream and Basemark, the G8 ThinQ and Galaxy S10+ are virtually inseparable. The Galaxy S10+ holds the slightest edge, but in practice users will be hard pressed to notice any difference in usage. Both devices fly through browser rendering workloads.

GeekBench Synthetic CPU Benchmark

In the GeekBench test, we're stressing only CPU cores in a handset (not graphics), with both single and multi-threaded workloads. The test is comprised of encryption processing, image compression, HTML5 parsing, physics calculations, and other general purpose compute processing.

In Geekbench's pure processor workload, the G8 ThinQ again performs in line with its Galaxy S10+ rival. Their single core scores are identical, and the multi core results are within spitting distance.

Futuremark PCMark For Android General Purpose Pocket Computing Performance Metrics

Futuremark's PCMark for Android is an excellent suite of tests that we recommend for benchmarking performance of a handset in a wide range of tasks, for things like image and video editing, as well as lighter-duty workloads like email and web browsing. When you see the test running live it's clear the scripted application tests are carefully selected and tuned to make use of the platforms involved in a very controlled way. 


Since PCMark stresses more aspects of the phone's performance, we find a little more variance here. The G8 ThinQ drops to fourth place in the overall score, but we do not see that as much of a problem. Almost all flagship phones from the last few generations have been more than adequate for delivering day-to-day performance. The real takeaway here is that despite improved hardware capabilities, the end user experience is going to be differentiated in other aspects of the device.

AnTuTu 7 Platform Benchmarks

AnTuTu’s latest benchmark returns a number of metrics ranked with somewhat nebulous scores, rather than frame rates or time to complete. We tested with the latest version of AnTuTu across an all Android platform group. AnTuTu returns four top level performance metric results that we are including here: CPU, RAM, 3D, UX (or User Experience), along with a total score.


Finally, AnTuTu's benchmark yields similar results. It is more synthetic than the PCMark workload, so it is subject to less variance. Regardless, the G8 ThinQ delivers strong scores rivaling the Galaxy S10+, which essentially demonstrates it can measure up to any task you throw at it.