 This is my daily driver Samsung Galaxy Note 9, and it's about two years old at this point. And I know some of you are probably asking yourselves, Why this? You could literally use any phone in the whole world. Why on earth are you using a two-year-old Note? That's a good question. And the answer is that honestly the performance gains of newer devices just haven't been enough to make me accept their compromises. This thing still has a headphone jack. And so does the topic of today's video sponsored by LG. This is the LG Velvet. A smartphone designed with a flagship experience in mind, but with a less expensive Snapdragon 765G processor rather than something like the 865 employed by most flagships, which in turn affords the Velvet a lower price tag. Raising the question, Does your smartphone really need the latest and greatest processor for you to have a good user experience? Well, that is just what we intend to find out, ladies and gentlemen, right after this intro, because the video is sponsored by LG. [♪ Music playing. Before we get into any benchmarks or testing, let's get familiar with the device at hand. On first glance, the Velvet looks and feels like any modern device. It has a big and beautiful 60 Hertz 6.8 inch OLED panel contributing to a nearly all screen design, save for a small raindrop camera cutout at the top. And underneath in true flagship fashion is an integrated under screen fingerprint sensor. The Velvet has stereo speakers with the earpiece acting as the second channel, a big old 4,300 milliamp hour battery, wireless charging, 5G support built directly into the SoC, that's pretty sweet, IP68 water and dust resistance, a full glass, velvety smooth design, and of course, a headphone jack. Around back, the Velvet's triple camera setup features a 48 megapixel main camera capable of 4K 30 FPS video recording, an 8 megapixel ultra wide camera, as well as a 5 megapixel depth sensor. Before we get into the last piece of the puzzle, the SoC or system on a chip, it's important to note that there are three main components of most smartphones that have the greatest effect on pricing. The display, the cameras, and of course, the SoC. And that's really the main discussion point here. As we mentioned before, the Velvet is equipped with a Snapdragon 765G, probably not a processor you've heard much about until recently, what with all the discussion of phones being too expensive. And that's because the 765G is more affordable than the 865 that you're used to seeing in most flagship devices. In fact, the 765G is roughly half the price, and those savings go straight to improving other aspects of this device without additional burden on your wallet. Spec wise, the 765G is configured slightly differently than what you might be used to with the 865 and its predecessors. It features Cortex A76 based CPU cores, comparable to last year's flagship Snapdragon 855, but with only two of the larger performance oriented cores out of its 8 core layout compared to the 4 out of 8 that the 855 and the 865 have. Another key note of the 765G is that the 5G cellular modem is built directly into the SoC, whereas phones with a Snapdragon 865 require an entirely separate modem added into the device to support 5G, which can be less power efficient and add cost. Now that's not to say that the 765G is a slouch, because in synthetic benchmarks, it actually ranks better in single threaded testing than the Snapdragon 845 in my daily driver Note 9, a phone which, as I mentioned, still meets my day to day needs perfectly. And that's really the statement that LG is making here with the Velvet. Yes, there are devices that objectively perform better with bigger benchmark scores, but does that actually matter in the day to day to normal users? To find out, we devised a few different testing scenarios to see if it really does make a difference. First, in classic fashion, we ran a little app launching test. And this is definitely not the be-all and end-all of user experience testing, but it does help to illustrate the differences between devices. And while it is noticeable, there's definitely not a huge difference between LG's Velvet and the S20 Plus 5G that we tested against, especially when you consider that an S20 Plus 5G is nearly twice the expected price. Then we ran a battery test using PCMark's Android Work 2.0 benchmark, which intends to simulate real world power user battery drain with a set of productivity benchmarks running on loop. Now the results weren't quite what we had hoped, even the lower power SoC, but when we adjust for the slightly different capacity of the two devices, battery life was indeed better. Next up is word processing. In both Microsoft Word and Excel, we loaded up large documents to test the loading speed, and the results were similar to our last test, with the Velvet falling slightly behind, more so in the 100,000 line Excel sheet. Smaller sheets, like our benchmarking results templates, loaded nearly as fast on both devices. But once you start to move around the graphs and the frame rate drops, well, the weakness of the Snapdragon 765G starts to show. It's GPU. And that right now is the biggest issue with the more affordable SoCs on the market, the GPUs, which are used for more than just gaming these days. While the CPU performance was comparable to my two-year-old flagship Note 9, in 3DMark, the GPU number showed the gap between the two was wider. But the weaker GPU limits a device to the standard 60Hz refresh rate when you want to run a QHD plus resolution. However, that works to the Velvet's advantage, because the device only needs to push 60fps in a game to max out the capability of the display. We did observe that larger games like PUBG Mobile or Fortnite could take a bit longer to load up on the Velvet, but once you're playing, they're fluid even on high settings. At the end of the day, though, this phone and the accompanying SoC are not made for those who want to be on the bleeding edge of performance. The thing is, yes, you can tell the difference if you put them side to side, but in the days that we used it, it's not like we noticed any weird slowdowns or anything like that. It just felt like a regular smartphone. So if you're the type of person who just uses your phone for social media, emails, some light gaming, the Velvet could be an awesome way to get the newest features, like wireless charging, the latest OS, an OLED screen, and a standout design without breaking the bank. LG's pricing puts it at around $600. But here's the thing. If history has anything to go on, I wouldn't be surprised to see accessory bundles or promotions that position the Velvet as sort of like a brand name alternative to the devices from companies that you've never heard of on the shelf at your local carrier store. Their dual-screen case in particular is a pretty cool value add, and LG has already telegraphed the move of doing bundles with this when they did a pre-order bundle for the European release of this phone that also included wireless earbuds. So thanks to LG for sponsoring this video. If you're interested in the Velvet, you can check it out at the link in the video description. And hey, while you're down there, don't forget to check out lttstore.com. By the way, if you're looking for some more smartphone content, why not check out our recent video where we tried out an AliExpress phone water cooling kit. It's actually a pretty sick way to get maximum sustained performance out of your smartphone.