COMPARATIVE: Unisoc SC9863A Vs all current SoC

Today we present our usual comparison for the Unisoc SC9863A SoC against the rest of SoC of the current market used in tablets. This SoC is an Octa Core model with 8 ARM Cortex-A55 processors in two clusters and a PowerVR IMG8322 GPU, at VPU level we have native support for H.264 and H.265 video up to 1080p. A chip for low-end tablets that within its sector that faces the options of Mediatek, Qualcomm and Huawei.

UNISOC SC9863A SPECIFICATIONS

Testing hardware

The Teclast P80X includes as an engine a Unisoc SC9863A chip, an Octa Core, with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage memory that we can expand thanks to the included microSD card reader. It has an 8-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 1280 × 800 pixels that includes a 0.3MP camera with microphone that complements the 2MP rear with flash. We also have WiFi b / g / n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, FM Radio, 4200 mAh battery and a 4G-LTE Multiband modem with Dual SIM tray. Finally, in the connectivity section we have a 3.5mm audio jack and an OTG microUSB port for data and battery recharge. Read our REVIEW about this tablet

Price and availability

• The Teclast P80X tablet can be purchased at Banggood.com only for $104.99 (€95.47) with shipping included.

General specifications

The Unisoc SC9863A SoC is the input range chip used in several Western mobiles and now trying to gain a foothold in the tablet sector, this SoC has an Octa Core configuration manufactured in 28nm with 4 ARM Cortex-A55 processors in two clusters . In the graphic section we have a PowerVR IMG8322 GPU with support for FullHD+ 2160×1080 screens, dual 16MP + 5MP cameras with Full HD video, eMMC 5.1 compatibility and LPDDR3 or LPDDR4 / 4X RAM.

CPU

The new Unisoc SC9863A Octa Core SoC has ARM Cortex-A55 cores divided into two clusters, one that stays at 1.2GHz and another that reaches up to 1.6GHz. A SoC manufactured in 28nm HPC+ which leaves it in the middle range in terms of consumption / thermal.

• As we can see, the system supports only ABI armeabi-v8a which allows us to install 64bit applications

GPU

For the graphic section we have a PowerVR IMG8322 GPU that has hardware support for OpenGL ES 3.2 and also Vulkan 1.1 but this is not activated in the firmware. We also have OpenCL 1.2 and Android NN HAL support for artificial intelligence. With this GPU we can play basic titles and PUBG in low settings with few frames.

VPU

The Unisoc SC9863A as a unknown VPU but from the data provided by the processor in general we can know that it is very basic, something that we will check in the tests. Theoretically, it only supports video up to 1080p on the h.265 and h264 codecs and can also support VP8 but not VP9 natively.

Android system

The system we found in this first tablet is based on Android 9 Pie (API 28) with 64bit application support, the kernel that controls the system is kernel 4.4.147 and with compilation date 2019-07-10, a pretty modern version that adopts the advantages of this type of kernel.

PERFORMANCE TEST

We perform several performance tests with the Unisoc SC9863A SoCs, we make them a VS against powerful SoCs such as Kirin 960, Snapdragon 450, Snapdragon 660 and Mediatek SoCs in several ranges.

Antutu

Possibly the best known test, we use version 6 for historical compatibility. With this test we get an idea of the overall performance of the device and can buy it with others. This test is greatly influenced by internal storage and other general performance values, as we can see in the results this new SoC surpasses the Mediatek MT8163 and Snapdragon 435 that only Cortex-A53 cores are mounted.

Geekbench

A test that gives us very interesting values of the raw power of the CPU in mono core and multi core as well as in GPU computing. As we see in the results, they indicate a substantial improvement respect to Cortex-A53 cores and greater efficiency in multicore.

3DMark

The graphic performance test par excellence with a fairly solid continuity in terms of results and that helps us when comparing GPU performance historically. As we can see the PowerVR IMG8322 GPU has a fairly basic performance and only exceeds the low ranges of other manufacturers.

PCMark

This test gives us an idea of the power at the level of desktop applications of this hardware performing tasks such as video editing, handling text or audio files, something that is increasingly used in Android. The result is a sum of all these aspects and is influenced by the general hardware components. The results are quite good and far exceeds the rest of SoC in the same sector thanks to multicore performance.

VPU y Sonido

We pass a series of performance tests at the level of video playback on the Unisoc SC9863A to test all the formats that your VPU supports, as we can see the results are quite limited and we recommend staying in 1080p content, we can only see 4K in format h.264 with limitations. With the lack of VP9 support we only take 720p on YouTube.

• Image quality: Correct colors and acceptable processing.
• HDR Compatibility: No.
• HDMI-CEC and Auto framerate: Not available when targeting tablets or smartphones.
• Sound: By default with the firmware it supports only stereo / No certificates.

CONCLUSIONS

The Unisoc SC9863A Octa core SoC as we can see in the results of the tests are in fight in the low range sector offering something interesting for the price. The somewhat higher gross performance thanks to the Cortex-A55 cores, have a significant mono core improvement over the Cortex-A53 and quite superior in multicore. At the graphic power level, the PowerVR IMG8322 GPU has a fairly fair performance although it allows us to play at low PUBG settings. Where it weak is in the support of decoding of its VPU quite limited in modern codecs.

With the Unisoc SC9863A we are facing an interesting SoC for the low range where we have the latest Android 9 Pie system that gives us some long-term useful life. As for battery life using this processors we recommend seeing the next review of the Teclast P80X tablet, the data may surprise you.

OTHER COMPARATIVES

• Mediatek Helio X20/23/27
• Amlogic S905X2 Quad Core
• All Reviews with more information of latest models