Nubia Z60 Ultra review: the unexpected new star?

The Z60 Ultra represents the top of the range from the manufacturer Nubia. According to him, it offers unparalleled performance, a screen to die for and produces images worthy of a hybrid camera. All for a price starting at €679. Just that. You know us, we wanted to check all of this by taking it in hand for…

amerbekic

7. Mar 2024.

10 minutes

Nubia Z60 Ultra

You know us, we wanted to check all of this by taking it in hand for six weeks. And the least we can say is that the Z60 Ultra surprised us…

Don’t know Nubia? No wonder: for a long time, this Chinese brand concocted by the telecoms giant ZTE was under-represented in Europe.

Nubia Z60 Ultra price and availability

The Z60 Ultra is available in Europe in three versions:

8 GB + 256 GB: €679
12 GB + 256 GB: €749
16 GB + 512 GB: €899

The first two are offered in black, the third also benefiting from a silver version. It is mainly available for purchase on the manufacturer’s website or on Amazon. Nubia accompanies it with a fast charger and a transparent plastic shell.

Imposing dimensions

If the manufacturer is discreet, this is not the case for the Z60 Ultra. The smartphone, rather imposing and heavy (164 x 76.4 x 8.8 mm for 246 grams), has angular shapes that the artists of the Bauhaus movement would not deny. This bias contrasts radically with the rounded shapes that we see among competitors. This does not prevent it from being IP68 certified, therefore resistant to immersion and dust.

The back camera consists of three enormous modules housed on a prominent rectangular plate occupying almost a third of the rear side. Two of them have the luxury of protruding from this growth: one is rectangular while the other, circular, is surrounded by a red circle. Finally, a dot of the same color, strangely reminiscent of the Leica logo, takes place next to the flash.

The mechanical keys are grouped on the right side. In addition to the volume and power control, we note the presence of a switch to which we can assign a frequently used function. It activates the camera by default, but you can assign it another one among the five offered. Well seen.

Let’s finish this quick tour of the owner with the front, mainly occupied by a 6.8 ” screen. It is surrounded by very thin borders and does not reveal any punches, the camera being housed under the pixels.

Impeccable screen

The display is provided by a 6.8 ” AMOLED panel in 20:9 format displaying 1116 x 2420 pixels and managing more than a billion shades. It has a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and is HDR10+ certified. Its maximum brightness reaches 1500 nits in HDR peak (automatic brightness, HDR mode activated and use in direct sunlight).

As mentioned previously, the front camera is housed under the AMOLED panel. In normal use, we therefore benefit from an image not altered by a punch, which we appreciate when watching video or playing a game. The pixels covering it turn off when it is activated, revealing a virtual perforation.

We’re not going to beat around the bush: the image produced by the Z60 Ultra is impeccable except for a slight tendency to boost colors. This is nice for watching videos or playing games, but fans of colorimetric accuracy will not be happy.

We can correct this by going through the display settings. We will activate the “soft” mode then we will play on the color temperature setting which we will push towards “cool”. According to our test patterns, we then obtain a result close to perfection.

Featuring ultra-thin borders and no visible punch, the Z60 Ultra’s screen is undoubtedly one of its main assets. And it’s not the only one, as we’ll see…

Top performance

For its high-end, Nubia did not do things by halves. The Z60 Ultra is built around a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 accompanied, depending on the version, by 8, 12 or 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256 or 512 GB of UFS 4.0 Flash for storage (non-expandable). Our review unit featured 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, suggesting excellent performance.

According to our benchmarks, the Z60 Ultra is quite simply the most powerful smartphone at the moment. We’re not going to bore you with numbers, that’s not what we’re here for. Just remember that it has phenomenal computing power and far exceeds the excellent performance of the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Needless to say, we experienced no slowdown of any kind during our testing. Whether it’s the latest 3D games or advanced software (video editing, augmented reality, etc.), nothing is a problem for him. Same thing for multitasking, the 16 GB of RAM doing wonders here.

Throttling — reducing the operating frequency to avoid CPU overheating — remains under control. Over 180 minutes of continuous use, the SoC frequency drops by up to 25%. This leaves enough power to run the most demanding applications without problems.

The metal chassis of the Z60 Ultra then tends to heat up: this is not abnormal since it actively participates in heat dissipation. The device can become very hot with intensive use, particularly on its edges.

Wireless connection performance is simply excellent, both in 5G and Wifi 6E. Wifi 7 is announced as supported, but the smartphone does not recognize it yet. Compatibility should arrive quickly with an internal software update.

Software: MyOS4 does the job

The Z60 Ultra unsurprisingly comes with Android 14, supplemented by the in-house MyOS4 overlay. It replaces the official Android Stock interface in order to fill some of its shortcomings, while maintaining its ease of use.

Rather than reinventing what already exists, MyOS4 relies on official Google applications: this has the advantage of not unnecessarily overloading the interface, even if it means manually adding your favorite applications.

MyOS 4 and Android 14 go well together and the whole thing is very pleasant to use on a daily basis. However, there remains a little work to be done in terms of French translation. It is not uncommon to find untranslated sentences or amusing turns of phrase. A random example: “tiny screen adjustment”…

Fast charging and very good autonomy

The Z60 Ultra is one of the rare smartphones to feature a 6000 mAh battery. In normal use (without overdoing games or video streaming while keeping the default settings), you can last almost two days without having to go near an electrical outlet.

In intensive use (a lot of photos, games, watching videos, phone calls, Internet and social networks galore), we last between 1 and 1.5 days before going through the recharge box. That’s not bad at all for a product of this size.

Nubia has – for the moment – not given in to the trend of no longer delivering a power supply. The one supplied with the Z60 Ultra allows rather efficient 80 Watt fast charging. If you activate Turbo mode, which heats up the battery and therefore risks reducing its lifespan, you go from 0 to 100% in around forty minutes.

Don’t have that much time? No problem, since in just 20 minutes, we go from 0 to 65%. We appreciate the performance, especially in the face of weak competition on this point (hello Apple and Samsung). In the end, we will only blame it for the absence of induction charging , although it is increasingly useful.

Beautiful images and advanced functions

The Z60 ultra has four photographic modules: one at the front and three at the rear.

Main module : 50 Mpxl sensor (1/1.49 “photosites 1 µm); 35mm f/1.6 lens; Laser autofocus; OIS
Ultra wide-angle : 50 Mpxl sensor (1/2 ”); 18mm f/1.8 lens; OIS
Telephoto lens : 64 Mpxl sensor (1/2 ”); 85mm f/3.3 lens; 2.4x periscopic zoom; OIS
Front camera : 12 Mpxl sensor under screen; lens opening at f/2.0

As mentioned previously, the front camera is hidden under the OLED panel of the screen. The images it produces are of good quality, in any case better than what we have seen so far with this technology. They are not yet perfect, a slight blur hovering over the scene. This does not pose a problem during a video call, the image being satisfactory in good brightness.

The back camera produces beautiful photos in good and medium brightness as long as you do not exceed a zoom factor of 5x, a value where you start to see a little digital noise. This is hardly annoying since it is only visible on a computer screen. We can therefore use it without fear.

The 10x zoom, partially digital, remains quite suitable if we accept a loss of the finest details. Here too, it works without any problem for sharing on social networks, or for printing no larger than A4 format. At 30x zoom, the maximum value available, the image remains usable with a little indulgence.

At night, the images produced hold up well, even if digital noise appears a little more quickly. Present from 5x, he makes himself at home from 10x and puts his feet on the table at 30x, a value that will be used as a last resort. The whole still remains homogeneous and pleasantly successful.

Portrait mode is more erratic. The AI handles complex scenes quite well, but not all the time. On images of trees and bushes, for example, we have the impression that the clipping was done with a rounded chisel by a kindergarten student… Let’s hope that a software update will make it possible to improve the results a little. things.

Good point for macro photography, clearly boosted by good quality autofocus. Note that the Z60 Ultra has many special modes. Part of it is grouped under the enigmatic name “camera family”. Others have their own entry, like “Milky Way night” designed to shoot images of the sky. Unfortunately, we were unable to evaluate it, as the nights in March were not clear enough for this.

The “Street” mode turns out to be quite interesting for taking spontaneous images. When activated, only the telephoto sensor is used, while the digital zoom is deactivated in favor of its optical equivalent. It doesn’t seem like much, but this mode is very practical for street photography enthusiasts.

The photographic part of the Z60 Ultra is a nice surprise. If it is not yet up to what Samsung or Apple offer on their high-end models, it has no reason to be ashamed of its performance. Especially at this price point.

Nubia Z60 Ultra: our opinion

What a pleasant surprise this Nubia Z60 Ultra is! In addition to an almost perfect screen devoid of perforations, it has equipment that will make the competition pale: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 8 to 16 GB of RAM as well as 256 or 512 GB of internal storage. Everything works perfectly and has performance worthy of a gaming smartphone.

The 6000 mAh battery provides up to two days of autonomy and the fast charging mechanism is effective.

The photographic aspect is not neglected, far from it. The three modules making up the back camera produce excellent images that have no reason to be ashamed of what market leaders Apple and Samsung offer.

Does this make the Z60 Ultra the dream smartphone everyone has been waiting for? Yes, provided you accept a few small inconveniences. Between grammatical errors and expressions that are not always understandable, the French translation of the MyOS 4 overlay turns out to be imperfect.

You will also have to deal with a rather heavy and bulky product (a little more than a Galaxy S24 Ultra, that is to say) which tends to heat up with intensive use. Finally, Nubia does not officially announce the duration of support for security updates or new versions of Android. If these few small flaws don’t bother you too much, then go for it: you won’t be disappointed.