First Impressions
Key Features
- Big focus on ultra wide cameraThe 50MP ultra wide lens doesn’t sacrifice quality
- It’ll charge very quicklyUse the Super VOOC charger and you can get 50% charge in around 10 minutes
- Impressive screenHigh-res display with excellent HDR support and fast refresh rate
Availability
- UKRRP: £1049
- EuropeRRP: €1299
Introduction
The Oppo Find X5 Pro is a new flagship phone that matches the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra at a technical level, jamming in as many high-end specs and features into it as possible.
Like the Samsung rival I recently reviewed, the Find X5 Pro aims to create a no-compromise device for buyers that want the best Android phone possible and are prepared to pay for it.
In the past few years, Oppo has established itself in the high-end space. The Find X2 Pro won our Phone of the Year gong after release and last year’s Find X3 Pro was up there with the best phones I reviewed in 2021.
While there’s no Find X4 Pro (Oppo says its foldable N device took this name), the X5 Pro has a lot of pressure to perform as well as its predecessors.
I’ve only been using the Find X5 Pro for a few days, so my full review will come later once I’ve run it through our usual array of tests.
Screen and Design
- Sharp 6.7-inch 1440p screen
- OLED panel with rich colours
- Very glossy body
Oppo has fitted the Find X5 Pro out with a ceramic back which sports a very (very) shiny finish. This is easily one of the glossiest finishes I have ever seen on a phone and it means you’ll be wiping off fingerprints on an hourly basis if you want it to avoid it looking messy.
While there was a glossy finish option with the X3 Pro, I reviewed the matte version and It feels like an odd decision to go high gloss for both the black and white finishes here. Especially as a matte, fingerprint-resistant finish is far more common now across the best Android phones we’ve tested.
The finish aside, the rest of the Oppo Find X5 Pro looks good and features the usual array of touches I would expect in a phone like this – an IP68 rating for some form of water resistance being one. The camera bump almost melts into the body, while the Gorilla Glass Victus display curves around the edges. It’s got a very soft finish that feels really nice to hold.
During a briefing ahead of the release, Oppo reps said the Find X5 Pro has a slightly rejigged camera module when compared to the Find X3 Pro. The module has been shifted up slightly, supposedly so your fingers don’t encroach on the camera lenses.
Oppo has impressed me with its displays in the past, and that trend continues here. The 6.7-inch, 1440p OLED screen here is colourful and rich, with perfect blacks and plenty of brightness for outdoor use. Put it next to the Galaxy S22 Ultra and it’s not quite as bright when watching HDR video on Netflix, but I can’t imagine many noticing the difference unless you have the two phones next to each other.
The Find X5 Pro uses an LTPO panel, allowing it to move between 1 and 120Hz depending on what you’re doing. Oppo also claims the screen can display two different refresh rates at once, so if you’re using WhatsApp on the top portion and YouTube on the bottom both can refresh independently. As with all mobile attempts at variable refresh rate, the idea here is to stretch the battery life further – whether that works out in practice remains to be seen.
Performance and Battery Life
- Very fast charging with an 80w charger
- Top-end specs, including Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip
- 12GB RAM and 256GB storage
This is a flagship phone, sitting at the top of the Find X5 line. As a result, it’s jammed with top-end specs you’ll see on many phones over the next 12 months. There’s a 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset powering the phone, 12GB RAM, 256GB storage and a hefty vapour chamber to disperse heat.
Bigger cooling systems seem to be a theme with 2022’s high-end phones so far, likely as a result of the 8 Gen 1 chip. Aside from the usual ramp-up while installing all my apps, the Find X5 Pro has thus far stayed relatively cool during testing, so that’s a good sign.
I’ve only been using the phone for a few days, so I’ll save my full battery life thoughts for my full review. But, first impressions are in line with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. The 5000mAh cell has been getting me through the day, though it doesn’t seem like this will be a multi-day device.
What the Find X5 does have up its sleeve is some very snappy charging. Using the bundled 80w Super VOOC charger you can go from 0-50% in just over ten minutes. Forget to charge your phone one night and you’ll end up with a full cell as you get ready in the morning. It’s a great safety net and one of my favourite additions to modern phones.
There’s fast wireless charging too, though you’ll need a specific 50w capable Qi pad to achieve those speeds.
One interesting, and welcome, addition is the Oppo Find X5 Pro has had its number of charging cycles doubled to 1600. Its battery will last twice as long as the industry standard and should help the phone last longer.
Camera
- The focus here is on the wide and ultra wide-wide camera
- Partnership with Hasselblad
- 32MP selfie camera and MariSilicon X
The focus of the Find X5 Pro, like the majority of phones, is the camera. It’s a triple sensor array on paper, but in reality, it feels like the main focus is on the wide and ultra-wide sensors.
These are both 50MP Sony IMX766 sensors and this is one of the few phones that focuses just as much on the ultra-wide as the wide. The main wide camera has a 5-axis OIS (3 axis sensor shift and 2 axis lens shift) and an f/1.7 lens, while the ultra-wide has a narrower f/2.2 lens but a wider 110-degree FOV. Oppo has used proper glass lenses too, rather than plastic, for less distortion and, Oppo says, improved colour accuracy.
While the focus is on a quality ultra-wide camera, it does come at the expense of high levels of zoom. Oppo claims this is because most prefer that wider look over Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra-like levels of zoom. There is zoom, but it’s just a 13MP sensor with a 52mm equivalent focal length. I’ll be curious to see how this impacts performance when I get a chance to more thoroughly test the camera.
There’s more to this phone than just the megapixels though, as on paper the differences to the outgoing Find X3 Pro are minimal. What is different though is that backend. Instead of using the imaging unit from the Qualcomm chip, Oppo is using its own MariSilicon X imaging NPU. Oppo claims this improves low-light performance (down to five lux), noise reduction and allows for higher dynamic range.
Oppo has also teamed up with iconic camera brand Hasselblad, a move OnePlus also made in 2021. Just like the OnePlus partnership, Hasselblad’s influence here is very much on the software side and feels a little bit of a gimmick. Maybe I will be proved wrong, but so far there’s not a whole lot to it. The pro camera app, for example, has been rebadged as the Hasselblad Pro Camera, while the shutter button is now orange to match the brand’s iconic cameras. There are some Hasselblad infused filters and, probably my favourite addition, a striking XPAN mode that shoots in a 65:24 aspect ratio.
There is a lot going on in this camera and I haven’t spent enough time with the phone yet to really see how it compares to the best camera phones, but the results so far are promising. In a completely dark studio, the camera took some shots that were bright without looking fake. Colours and details in daylight situations were natural and sharp, too.
First Impressions
After a few days with the Oppo Find X5 Pro, it’s clear this isn’t a monumental step forward for the series. Instead, it makes smaller adjustments in multiple areas with varying degrees of success.
The design, for me, is a downgrade over the Find X3 Pro. The overly shiny rear is such an odd choice that I don’t think works. The changes and additions to the camera though could see this compete with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and iPhone 13 Pro.
Trusted Score
Oppo Find X5 Specs
UK RRP EU RRP Manufacturer Screen Size Storage Capacity Rear Camera Front Camera Video Recording IP rating Battery Wirless charging Fast Charging Size (Dimensions) Weight Operating System Release Date First Reviewed Date Resolution HDR Refresh Rate Ports Chipset RAM Colours Oppo Find X5 Pro £1049 €1299 OPPO Digital 6.7 inches 256GB 50MP + 50MP + 13MP 32MP Yes IP68 5000 mAh Yes Yes 163.7 73.9 8.5 MM x x 218 G Android 12 2021 24/02/2022 3126 x 1440 Yes 120 Hz USB-C Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 + MariSilicon X 12GB Ceramic White, Glaze Black A 'hands on review' is our first impression of a product only — it is not a full test and verdict. Our writer must have spent some time with the product to describe an early sense of what it's like to use. We call these 'hands on reviews' to make them visible in search. However these are always unscored and don't give recommendations. Read more about our reviews policy.
Jargon buster
mAh
An abbreviation for milliampere-hour and a way to express the capacity of batteries, especially smaller ones in phones. In most cases the higher the mAh, the longer the battery will last but this isn’t always the case.
5G
Offering faster download and upload speeds when compared to 4G. Great for game streaming and HDR video playback. Not supported everywhere yet and speeds vary wildly.
IP rating
An abbreviation for ‘Ingress Protection Code’, which lets you know to what extent a device might be waterproof or dustproof.
