LG Velvet review - Style points (Update - On sale!) - Android

The design of the LG Velvet is probably its most important feature. For years, LG flagships have remained mostly unchanged, with only small shifts in design generation over generation. While this isn’t inherently a bad thing, it left the company’s phones feeling a bit outdated. The LG V60 is by far LG’s most modern design, but it still left a lot to be desired.

The LG Velvet, then, feels like a total reinvention for LG. From the shape of the body to the camera array to the colors, the Velvet signals something totally new.

The back of the device is fairly minimalistic, covered in colorful Gorilla Glass and a new camera array. The cameras are supposed to represent a falling droplet of water, and I think it looks great. LG did a good job using various sized cameras to its advantage to aid in the design. I’m a fan.

This is one of the thinnest phones I've used.

The rails of the LG Velvet are exceedingly thin; this is one of the thinnest smartphones I’ve used. At just 7.9mm thick, it’s almost difficult to hold. I can see why LG did this, though, in an attempt to make the Velvet a fashion icon. I would normally fault LG for this if it traded thinness for battery capacity, but it was still able to fit a fairly sizable 4,300mAh cell in this device.

The right side of the phone houses the power button, while on the left you’ll find volume buttons and a Google Assistant key. I’m a huge fan of the dedicated Assistant key, and it makes it less cumbersome to get the Assistant up and running if you don’t want to use the hot word. The button cannot be remapped to another function.

On top of the phone, you’ll find a SIM card tray with microSD card expansion, and on the bottom you’ll find a USB-C port, speaker, and a headphone jack. Unfortunately, LG decided not to include the quad DAC often found in its high-end phones. That said, LG includes a 3D Audio Engine that helps make music sound more full. I can confirm it works very well. I tested the Velvet’s audio quality directly against the LG V60, and I couldn’t tell a difference between the 3D Audio Engine on the Velvet and the Quad DAC on the V60. This is with a huge caveat that I am no means an audio enthusiast, so you’ll want to test it out for yourself if this is something you really care about.

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The display of the LG Velvet is a 6.8-inch P-OLED with an aspect ratio of 20.5:9 and a resolution of 2,460 x 1,080. It looks really nice with bright, vivid colors. In our testing, we found that it has highly accurate color temperature, in fact, one of the most accurate we’ve seen this year. The sides of the display are curved, which certainly looks modern, and adds to the perceived thinness of the phone.

At the top of the display, you’ll find a teardrop-style notch cutout. This is probably the most outdated aspect of the device in my opinion; a hole punch cutout would have looked more modern, though this is subjective.

There is also an optical fingerprint reader under the screen and it’s quite bad. It was slow and inaccurate, and usually more of a nuisance than a convenience.

Performance & battery: Fine at best