Xiaomi Black Shark 4 review

 Hey what's up guys will be here for gsm

arena this

is the black shark 4 this year's

dedicated gaming phone from Xiaomi

while it doesn't bring all the bells and

whistles as competitors do.

it's also cheaper does it still have

what it takes to provide a great gaming

experience.

let's find out in our full review.

this year's Xiaomi has come out with

both the black shark 4

and the black shark 4 pro which has

better specs.

but is only found in china so the

the non-pro version here is what we're going

to see worldwide.

looks wise it's a pretty typical curved

glass smartphone.

with what feels like an aluminum frame

this color scheme has an x-shaped

gradient pattern.

but there is a more vanilla looking

option if you want the angular camera

bump also hints at the phone's hardcore

nature.

unique hardware features are expected

from this sort of device.

and the black shark 4 doesn't disappoint

with its physical shoulder triggers

they're retracted inside the body and

you can pop them out or back in with a

a couple of switches on the side

the triggers are clicky and responsive

and in my opinion more satisfying than

the more common touch-sensitive ones

and together with the phone's excellent

the haptic motor you get overall a pretty

satisfying tactile experience

the black shark 4 screens is a 6.67 inch

OLED with a 1080p resolution

there's no gorilla glass protection but

there is a super-fast.

144hz refresh rate to help smooth out

movement on the screen.

144hz is pretty impressive on paper but

in practice, it isn't used often

the phone will enable 120hz when you're

interacting with the home screen

and games that support 144fps are rare

you can force 144 in-game settings but

without support, it wouldn't work well

with that aside this screen is quite

nice you get deep OLED blacks and hdr 10

plus support.

using the phone outdoors is no issue

thanks to a max brightness of 500 nits

with a slider.

and a boost up to nearly 700 nits in

auto mode when in bright sun

color accuracy is really good here too

and since it's an old the black shark 4

has to support for noise on the display

and is quite customizable too for audio

there's a pair of symmetrical stereo

speakers.

one firing from the bottom and the other

from the top, they're well balanced and

earn a good rating on our loudness

charts.

the sound quality is great with punchy

mids and vocals

and even some bass.

there's also a 3.5-millimeter jack if

Do you want to plug in traditional

headphones

the black shark 4's fingerprint reader

the power button is sided mounted

and sits a bit recessed into the frame

so you won't press it accidentally when

gaming

it's super fast to wake up and unlock

the phone and you get 128 or 256 gigs of

storage onboard the black shark 4

which isn't expandable the phone's

the interface is joy UI 12.5

it's an adapted version of Xiaomi's mini

for black shark phones

it's almost the same as miui 12 with an

app drawer to store your apps in

and a separated notification center and

control center

one unique feature here is that you can

use the shoulder triggers as

customizable shortcuts for different

tasks

Xiaomi Black Shark 4 review

they can even be set to work with the

screen off pressing and holding both

shoulder triggers will call up the shark

space

a dedicated hub for your games from here

you can manage your game collection

sync the phone with accessories and also

select global settings for

things like notifications you can also

access a ton of settings from within a

game

through the game assistant which appears

if you swipe from the corners of the

display

under the hood of the black shark, 4 is

not the highest tier flagship chipset

but it's pretty close it's a snapdragon

870 built on a 7-nanometer process

and it's the same as last

year's top performer the snapdragon 865

plus

but with some higher clock speeds this

means that in benchmarks the black shark

4 pretty much comes out on top over last

year's flagships

however, it does fall short of those

phones running this year's snapdragon 88

regardless of that though gaming

performance is flagship great

and the heaviest of titles run smoothly

plus you get support for 5g connectivity

to manage thermals the black shark 4 has

an internal cooling system

involving vapor chambers and other

elements and they do a great job

after an hour of punishing tests CPU

performance was still at 95 percent of

the maximum

unlike the nubia red magic 6, you don't

get an internal cooling fan

but you can buy an external one called

the fun cooler too

and is excellent at preventing thermal

throttling during those long gaming

sessions

it requires an outside power

source though and the best way is to

power from the phone itself

but you need to buy an extra cable as

the one provided with the fan doesn't

have USB-C on both ends

powering the black shark 4 is an average

sized 4 500 million power battery and it

was able to score an endurance rating of

96 hours in our proprietary tests

it's pretty good but nothing exceptional

especially for a hardcore gamer

what is exceptional is the charging

speed outside of china the phone ships

with a 67 watt charger

but you can buy the optional 120 watt

adapter

which we have here this thing is a brick

but with it, we were able to charge the

phone from zero to 100

in just 19 minutes incredible I hope

it's sustainable in the long term though

now onto the cameras, there's a quad

Bayer main cam is an 8-megapixel ultra-wide

cam

and a 5-megapixel macro camera the main

the camera takes 12-megapixel photos by

default

and they are nice with vibrant colors

good contrast

balanced sharpening and a decent amount

of detail, the hdr does a pretty good job

managing the shadows and highlights as

well

portrait shots from the main cam are

great they're sharp with vivid colors

and the edge detection and defocus

backgrounds are convincing

the ultrawide camera's 8 megapixel

photos are just average in quality

they're generally on the soft and

noisier side but still the colors and

contrasts are in line with those from

the main cam

and the lens distortion correction does

a nice job too

the macro camera has autofocus which

greatly improves the chances of getting

a sharp photo

these 5-megapixel shots are good with

nice colors

sharpness and detail in low light photos

taken with the main cam are pretty good

they have well-balanced shadows and

light sources look nice too

colors and contrast are natural as well

however, these shots are a bit soft and

because of the lack of oil

you can't end up with some blurry or out

of focus results

if you enable night mode you also get

cleared up noise and better sharpness

contrast and detail the best part is

that these shots don't take too long to

process either

ultra-wide cam struggles at night these

photos are foggy

lack detail and have a narrow dynamic

range and there's no net mode support

here either

selfies are taken with a 20 megapixel

front-facing cam the detail level here

is disappointing for this resolution

but still, the dynamic range is wide

noise is minimal

and the phone does a good job in

exposing for the subject's face

the black shark 4 can't record an 8k video

like the rest of the recent gaming

phones can

but the 4k footage from the main cam is

quite impressive

it's sharp with balanced processing low

noise and good contrast

and the dynamic range is quite wide

there's no stabilization in 4k though

the ultrawide cam can shoot in 1080p

resolution these videos are noisier and

softer than the main cams

and dynamic range is more limited here

so that's the Xiaomi black shark 4. you

get a nice looking design that

incorporates physical shoulder triggers

which is something pretty unique

the AMOLED display is quite nice and

this is a solid chipset

great-sounding stereo speakers a

dependable main camera and crazy fast

charging

the phone does fall short in a few

places through the super high refresh

rate of the screen has to be enabled

specifically for each game title and

the actual support is limited

plus all the other gaming phones have

more powerful chipsets

and you'd have to buy that lightning

fast 120-watt charger

and the cooling fan separately at the

end of the day the biggest

the advantage that the black shark 4 has

over other gaming, phones are a lower

price

but these shortcomings make you wonder

if those savings are worth it