21:9 Vision: Sony Xperia 1

It’s the best phone ever for watching movies and TV. But what about the rest?

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The Xperia 1 is, in many ways, a technical showcase that reminds you just what Sony is capable of. But it also retains some issues that feel left over from Sony’s difficult last five years or so in the mobile phone industry.

The first thing you notice is just how tall and slender it is. It has a 21:9 aspect ratio screen that just seems to go on and on, and makes it a very pocket un-friendly phone. But the display is, simply put, an absolute stunner. 4K, HDR and OLED together is a powerful mix and delivers a screen that is the best looking on the market today. Crispness, colour reproduction and contrast between the lightest and darkest areas are just superb, and make everything from web browsing to playing games to watching videos a proper joy.

And if you actually feed it 21:9 movie content (which most films are), it’s God tier: you get the perfect presentation of everything from expansive wide-open locations to detailed character-filled close-ups, to kinetic action scenes.

Of course, not everything is 21:9, so some videos can’t make full use of the space – but they’ll still make use of near-4K detail and HDR lushness.

All that said, the max brightness level is a bit disappointing – it’s not always that easy to see during the day.