Our mobile benchmarking apps include ranked lists of the best smartphones and tablets.
- In 3DMark Android Edition, the list is on the COMPARE screen.
- In PCMark for Android, the list is on the BEST DEVICES screen.
The score shown for each device in the list is the median of all the results from users with the same device with unusually high or low results excluded. For popular models, the median is calculated from thousands of individual results.
The performance of some devices is extremely sensitive to temperature and other factors. Many devices will intentionally slow down to avoid overheating. It's also the case that many people benchmark their device under less than ideal conditions. For example, the device may be too hot or have other apps running in the background. These results tend to lower the average score for a device. We include these results in the calculation because it provides a better indication of a device's performance in the real world. You will usually get a higher score when testing your own device under optimal conditions.
How to see the range of 3DMark scores for a device
Average benchmark scores are good for comparing devices, but our 3DMark app goes further by showing you the full range of scores for each device with a PERFORMANCE RANGE chart on the DEVICE DETAILS screen. This chart gives you the complete picture of a device's performance outside of the test lab.
Looking at the chart below, for example, the peak shows the most common scores for the device. The higher the peak, the more results there are around that score value. In this case, you can see that all the results tend to fall in the same narrow range. This means the device performs consistently even when the benchmark is running under less than ideal conditions.
In the next chart, however, we see a different performance profile. There are four distinct peaks spread over a wide range of scores. A chart with this shape tells you that, even though the device can score nearly as well as the first device, it cannot perform to that level consistently in real-world use.
The rightmost peak (1) shows the score the device can achieve under ideal conditions. Peaks (2) and (3) tell you that this device slows down when hot or when multitasking. Many devices tend to reduce performance in steps, and those steps are visible in the chart. Lower scores may also come from devices running an older version of Android. The leftmost peak (4) shows you that the device's real-world performance can sometimes be far below the optimum.