HTC One M9 review: A fast, well built phone, that’s now more affordable

HTC One M9 review: Performance

With its octa-core 2.0GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and 3GB of RAM, the HTC One M9 has plenty of power behind it, too. It got quite toasty while we were running our benchmarks, but it was never uncomfortably hot and it soon returned to cooler temperatures once we went back to browsing the web.

In BaseMark OS II, its overall score of 1,463 puts it comfortably in front of the Nexus 6, but it lagged behind both of Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge handsets, which scored 1,643 and 1,845 respectively. The same was true of the One M9’s graphics performance. Whereas the One M9 scored 28,074 in our BaseMark X 1.1 graphics benchmark (averaging 30.6fps in the Dunes test and 42.9fps in the Hangar test), the S6 and S6 Edge scored a massive 31,157 and 37,885.

It’s not as fast as the S6 and S6 Edge, then, but web browsing on the One M9 was still supremely smooth as we were able to scroll up and down sites with hardly any judder at all. Panning around and zooming in were also fast and responsive, although we rarely felt the need to do so unless we were browsing desktop sites.

HTC One M9 review: Display

Where the One M9 starts to fall behind, at least on paper, is its 5in 1,920×1,080 display. Admittedly, a Full HD display is still perfectly acceptable by modern smartphone standards, as videos look much sharper on a 1080p screen than they do upscaled to 2,560×1,440, and the main home screens are still perfectly sharp and easy to see.

However, while 1080p is still practical, the One M9’s image quality is relatively poor. For instance, our colour calibrator showed it was only displaying 87.1% of the sRGB colour gamut, which is almost 10% less than we’d normally expect to see from an LCD panel. Its weakest area was its warm colour coverage, which fell quite a long way short of the sRGB gamut boundary. This had the effect of making images appear a little cool when compared to one of Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays, for example, but at least the One M9’s contrast ratio of 1,356:1 helped provide plenty of detail.

Black levels were around average, measuring 0.35cd/m2, and the screen’s peak brightness of 478.50cd/m2 ensured that whites were clean and pure. This is more than enough to comfortably use the phone outside, and just below half brightness still provided plenty of clarity indoors as well.

HTC One M9 review: Battery life

For our battery life test, we set the screen brightness to 170cd/m2, which is just above halfway on the phone’s brightness slider. Playing a continuous video on loop, the One M9’s 2,840mAh battery lasted 9h 13m, which isn’t spectacular by modern standards but should still be enough to get you through the day. However, once again, it pales in comparison to the S6 and S6 Edge, which lasted 13h 37m and 15h 33m under the same conditions.

HTC One M9 review: Storage

Unlike the Galaxy S6, which is available in separate 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions, the One M9 only has 32GB of onboard storage. However, you do get a microSD card slot with the One M9, allowing you to expand the phone’s internal storage up to 128GB if necessary. We prefer this, as it makes the phone both more flexible and cheaper in the long run, as you don’t have to fork out more money up front for a higher capacity handset.