The Honor 8X launched in India today with impressive mid-range specs and affordable price tag. The phone relies on a Kirin 710 processor, which although not being a high-end chipset, still manages to provide plenty of power.

Based on its specifications, the Kirin 710 is a direct competitor to the Snapdragon 636 and Snapdragon 660, both of which power mid-range devices from the budget category.

So you’re probably wondering how does the Kirin 710 compare against the two Snapdragon chipset? And should I consider getting the Honor 8X instead of devices based on a Snapdragon 636 or 660? We’ll try to answer that in what follows.

But first, check to see which are some of the most popular devices which are based on these three processors.

Kirin 710 vs Snapdragon 636 vs Snapdragon 660

We take a look at the Android devices powered by these processors, their specs, the benchmarks, and then finally, the conclusion.

Here we go.

Device list

Kirin 710 Snapdragon 636 Snapdragon 660
Huawei Honor 8X Huawei Honor 8X Max Realme 2 Pro
Huawei Nova 3i Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 and Note 5 Pro Xiaomi Mi A2
Huawei Mate 20 Lite Nokia 7.1 Nokia 7 Plus
Huawei Enjoy 9 Plus ASUS Zenfone 5 BlackBerry KEY2
BlackBerry KEY2 LE Xiaomi Note 3
HTC U12 Life
Motorola Moto Z3 Play
Motorola One Power

As of this writing, these are the popular phones that are powered by these three top mid-range processors. You would note that Huawei itself used the Kirin 710 for the Honor 8X but resorts to Snapdragon 636 for its another model, the Honor 8X Max, which focuses on battery life.

This is as good an indication as any that if you want the maximized battery life, opt for the power-conserving Snapdragon 636 chipset, which also means that it’s slightly less powerful than the SD660 and Kirin 710 chipsets.

Related articles:

Specs

  Kirin 710 Snapdragon 636 Snapdragon 660
Manufacturing process 12nm 14nm 14nm
CPU 2.2GHz 4x ARM Cortex-A73 + 1.7GHz 4x ARM Cortex –A53 64-bit 8x Qualcomm Kyro 260 CPU 64-bit 8x Qualcomm Kyro 260 CPU
Clock speed Up to 2.2GHz Up to 1.8GHz Up to 2.2GHz
GPU ARM Mali-G51 MP4 GPU Adreno 509 GPU Adreno 512 GPU
Camera Up to 16 MP + 2MP Dual Cameras Up to 16MP Dual Cameras Up to 16MP Dual Cameras
Display Full HD+ (2340 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ (2340 x 1080 pixels) Full HD (2560 x 1200 pixels)
Other features 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz/5GHz) 2×2 MIMO, Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS+GLONASS 1×1 802.11ac with MU-MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo X12 LTE, Wi-Fi 2×2 802.11ac with Mu-MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo

However, Qualcomm has the Snapdragon 710 which is designed on a 10nm process and is thus superior to the Kirin 710. Which is why it wouldn’t be fair to compare it against the Huawei processor, as the Kirin 710 is more closely related to the Snapdragon 660 and 636. Below you’ll find their detailed specifications.

We’ll start off our comparison of the three chipsets, by looking at the specifications. The Kirin 710 is the first silicone piece from Huawei that was made using the 12nm process. While the Snapdragon processors are both based on 14nm processors, as Qualcomm has yet to offer a 12nm chipset in the middle-range sector.

Benchmarks comparison

On paper, the Kirin 710 appears to be superior in some areas, while the Snapdragon chips seem to be better in other aspects.

But to be able to assess how these chipsets compare against one each other in terms of performance, we’ll have to take a look at benchmarks. Benchmarks are a mainstay of Android device reviews. They are basically a convenient way to measure the performance of a phone, although they don’t always provide a real guarantee that one phone running a certain processor with a higher score will be faster than another based on a processor with a lower score in real life.

Below you can check out the scores for the Kirin 710, Snapdragon 636 and 660, as assessed by various benchmark apps like AnTuTu.

  Kirin 710 Snapdragon 636 Snapdragon 660
AnTuTu 138K 113K 141K
Geekbench 1,590 on single core | 5,594 on multi-core 1,328 on single core | 4,860 on multi-core 1641 on single core | 5920 on multi-core
3D Mark Sling Shot Extreme – OpenGL ES 3.1 940-950 930-940 1270
3D Mark Sling Shot Extreme – Vulkan 1120- 1130 750 1034

Conclusions

Based on the benchmark results, the Kirin 710 seems like a great chipset that’s more than capable of taking on the Snapdragon 636, as well as the Snapdragon 660. As you can see, it can easily beat the first Qualcomm chipset in scores.

But while the Kirin 710 offers almost similar CPU performance with the Snapdragon 660, it’s not so great when it comes to GPU performance. Even with the GPU Turbo technology on board. So basically the Kirin 710 stand somewhere in between the two Snapdragons. At least according to benchmarks.

Related articles: Full list of devices that are getting GPU Turbo

However, you need to keep in mind one thing. Benchmarks are great tools for measuring your phone’s raw abilities, as they provide you with some rough numbers that show you how the device might perform in a certain situation.

But you need to take them with a grain of salt, as more-often-than-not benchmarks don’t reflect real-life performance. Actually, we expect that the Snapdragon 660 and Kirin 970 will offer similar performance with real-life usage, while Snapdragon 636 may not offer that much a performance but may give you better battery life.