In this video, we're going to take a look at the performance of the Microsoft Lumia 950. We have three apps that will test the overall performance of the device: Basemark OS II, GFXBench, and AnTuTu. These are three of the most reputable benchmark apps out there for Windows 10 Mobile. Obviously, there are others that I won't be running in this video but please, if you have any recommendations, let me know in a comment. If you would like to run and submit your scores, then by all means please do so and post your scores in a comment.

The first app we shall run is AnTuTu. AnTuTu can also be found on Android and iOS. It's one of the benchmarks staples in the industry as it works across platforms and it works very well by testing a variety of areas. Such areas include the general UI responsiveness, CPU, GPU, memory and storage performance. The scores of each test are combined into a final score that we can see right here. On average, the Lumia 950 received a score around 24000, which is significantly lower than say flagship Android devices but it is worth mentioning, AnTuTu's benchmark algorithms are not exactly the same as the Android version. So the scores can't be accurately compared across platforms unfortunately.

The second app we shall run is GFXBench and inside that app, we will run the Manhattan test. The Manhattan test utilizes the direct X 10 capabilities of the Lumia 950. Basically, it's a graphic-oriented benchmark that stresses the GPU of the device it's running on so it'll measure visual fidelity and render quality. It'll even record the average frame rate at which your device manages to run through some pretty complex simulations. Now the Lumia 950 scored an average around 420 frames, which is not really the best relative to the other devices listed. In fact, it's really not that impressive at all.

The third and final benchmark we shall run today is Basemark OS II. Basemark is similar to AnTuTu in that it tests the general performance of the device so it focuses on the system, graphics, memory, web and even the camera department, which I found interesting. It'll then spit it out an overall score along with a score for each main category. On average, I found the Lumia 950 to receive a score of about 1200 overall. Once again, if you have this app available to download, feel free to run it and see how your device compares.

So after running the benchmarks, I decided to run a real world speed test. Here's what I did: I opened up the alarms in Clock app and made sure there were no running applications in the background. And then I started the stopwatch. Then I proceeded to open up a series of apps. So I opened up the Camera, Photos, Settings, Hill Climb Racing game, Crossy Road game and Asphalt 8: Airborne game. Then I opened up Microsoft Word, Pandora, Netflix, Instagram Beta and then Microsoft Edge. The three games included in this test are the three most popular games in the game store and each of them had to load completely before I skipped to the next app. As for Microsoft Edge, I opened it up and made sure it loaded PhoneDog.com completely.

But this is a fun non-scientific test to gauge how fast a device is. If you have a Lumia 950, please load these apps up and raise through them yourself to see the time you receive. If you don't have a Lumia device, you can load up the same apps on your phone of choice and run through each app to get a rough estimate as to how your device compares. But with that all said, the Lumia 950 received a time of about 1 minute and 46 seconds. If you'd like me to compare the speed of the Lumia 950 against the Nexus 6P or iPhone 6S or 6S Plus, please let me know in the comments below.

I do have a few more comments I'd like to make about the performance. Windows 10 Phone, as a whole, is very fluid. The OS has a very high frame rate. But it really struggles to provide a buttery experience when navigating the device quickly. Some areas are just naturally funky or not very smooth to begin with. The notification panel is a bit clunky when you slide it down. The subtle pause below the quick settings icons really bother me. You will notice some frames do drop when quickly sliding down the notification tray. I'm also not a big fan of the overview or multi-tasking tray. You have to hold down the back button for at least two full seconds which almost defeats the purpose of pressing it to begin with. When the system is under a lot of CPU stress, more weird things start to happen. The store is where I've spent the most time since I've been researching apps and what not. But for such a simple UI, it should run flawlessly but I've encountered a ton of bugs. Windows 10 Phone has a lot of bugs and I'm sure you've seen some of them just from this roll here.

With that said, I'm going to continue to use the Microsoft Lumia 950 as my daily driver up until my review. I hope I didn't offend anyone with my comments on the performance. I don't want anyone to lose faith in the Lumia 950 yet because there are some other areas of the device that I definitely want to take a look at. They're very compelling. Some of which include the Camera and Continuum feature.