1. HTC One M8 The flagship device from HTC has some pretty amazing integrated speakers. The speakers provide power without losing too much quality and both are found on the front of the smartphone. Normally, when you crank the external output on your smartphone, the music gets relatively distorted due to the size of the speakers, but not with the HTC One M8. However, HTC loses some points when it comes to the standard headphones provided with the device and purchasing some higher quality earbuds or headphones is definitely recommended to get the full audio experience. With our test headphones, the sound quality is almost perfect. HTC Beat Audio provides an excellent tool to help manage your different equalizer settings and provides crisp sounds: the sound hardware built into the HTC One M8 is a dream.
2. LG G2 In close second comes the LG G2 with its Wolfson W5110 DAC hi-res music chip built inside. The LG G2 does come with some better standard headphones that are shipped with the device, but they’re not quite up the quality of audio output that the LG G2 can produce. With our test headphones, the LG G2 produced crisp audio, but was lagging a little behind our number one pick, the HTC One M8. The integrated speakers, however, are not in a great position on the device and can be covered by your hands sometimes. As well, the strength and the quality of the sound from these speakers aren’t all too great.
3. Sony Xperia Z2/Z3 Both of the latest Xperia devices win the third spot in the list as we couldn’t tell much of a difference between the two in tests. The placement of the internal speakers is great, located on both side of the screen. However, the output for these speakers is much lower than those of its competitors. One of the biggest draws for the Xperia Z2 and Z3 is the fact the headphones that come with the device are a step above the rest. When using the Sennheiser headphones, both the Z2 and Z3 have a very good balance and come close to producing the same quality audio that the LG G2 and HTC One M8 produce.
4. Samsung Galaxy S5 If you’re looking for a device with a good integrated speaker, I would pass over the Galaxy S5. In our tests, they didn’t perform anywhere near any of the other competitors and we were seeing sound distortion when at 80% of the full volume. The provided headphones are okay and are aesthetically pleasing, but they don’t provide the same quality that you would expect from Samsung and the sound is easily distorted when using them. When using a proper pair of headphones, the sound quality bumps right up and rises to the levels of the Z2 and G2. If the external speakers were just a tad bit better on the Galaxy S5, it definitely would have been bumped higher than the fourth place.
5. iPhone 5s We move from the Android world and into the Apple world for the fifth spot. The iPhone 5s doesn’t have a great external speaker and it’s located at the bottom of the device, which is easily covered and distorted by your hands. The headphones are a bit subjective: some people love them and think that the quality of sound they produce is great, others find them uncomfortable and find that the audio that they produce is average. However, it’s easy to see that when tested with the Sennheiser headphones, the audio quality is up there with some of the best. The range that the iPhone can produce is quite excellent, although the sharpness could use a little boost.
Conclusion It seems that the reoccurring point here is that most manufacturers aren’t going for anything special when it comes to providing default headphones or external speakers, the one caveat for the latter being the HTC One M8. We’re sure that most manufacturers assume that if we want to hear good quality, we will either have a quality sound system or headphones. What do you think of our list? Are there any other devices you’d throw up there for their sound quality?
No comments:
Post a Comment