Oppo’s Find X5 Pro – wowza!

Oppo has built a solid presence in the flagship smartphone space and gained a devoted following in recent years. With both the Find X2 Pro and the Find X3 Pro so highly regarded, the big question to this reviewer is this: Does the Find X5 Pro have what it takes to earn a place in the minds, hearts, and wallets of buyers?

If it came down to looks, this review would be short. This is because Oppo’s designers have given the Find X5 Pro a slick and verily desirable design that’s quite eye-catching. It comes with a ceramic back done out in a very shiny finish. As good as this looks, the counter-argument is that it also makes the back of the Find X5 Pro bit of a fingerprint magnet, even if it confers a desirable shiny finish. Thankfully, there’s a silicone case in the box, so your sweaty dabs won’t sully its glossy finish.

The Oppo Find X5 Pro might be slinky and shiny, but it isn’t generic. Unique design flourishes like a camera bump blended into its back, and gently curved edges on the display give it an Oppo look and feel. Its ergonomics are excellent, and it feels great in hand.

The Find X5 Pro’s 6.7-inch, 1440p OLED display delivers punchy colours. As you’d expect from an OLED panel, you get inky dark blacks and acres of brilliantly bright whites. This makes for effortless outdoor readability and crisp onscreen content. The display has a clever trick up its sleeve too. It can display two different refresh rates at once. You could, for instance, have an app with little onscreen motion (such as Chrome) running at a low refresh rate as well as an app with plenty of onscreen motion (such as YouTube) refreshing at 120hz on another part of the screen for smooth onscreen action but less draw on the battery. Nice!

The camera impressed. Its wide-angle and ultra-wide shooters took great colour-accurate and detailed photos in various lighting situations. If that’s the good, the zoom is not so good (more on this later). The wide and ultra-wide shooters deliver vibrant and accurate colours. Night shooting has improved a lot too. Much of this is due to three-axis sensor-shift and two-axis lens-shift stabilisation. This translates into longer exposures in low light shooting conditions.

Another factor in the great photos taken using the wide and ultra-wide shooters is that both use the same 50MP sensor. The lenses on the wide-angle camera are great. There was no discernible barrel distortion at the edges, and you get a 110-degree field of view, which is ample for landscapes. Further helping everything camera related along is Oppo’s new MariSilicon neural processing chip. It handles image processing, offloading many camera tasks from the Find X5 Pro’s main chipset, resulting in a quick and responsive camera.

The rear zoom camera uses a 13-megapixel sensor with an f/2.4 lens. There’s no periscope zoom, so you’re reliant on digital zoom. It delivers good photos up to a point, but if you go beyond that, images lose detail at high zoom levels. Around the front, you get a 32MP selfie shooter. It can switch from an 80-degree field of view to 90-degrees depending on how many people you’re trying to get into the shot. With video, 4K 60fps is possible too. Thanks to sensor and lens stabilisation, shooting steady video is no hardship either. Add in 4K Ultra Night Video, and there’s plenty for videographers to like.

Under the hood, plenty is happening. Powering everything is the latest 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 CPU. Add in 12GB of RAM plus a roomy 256GB of storage and a vapour chamber (for cooling) and you have smooth multi-tasking and oodles of room for apps and media. Even when the CPU runs hot, the Find X5 Pro stays cool, only warming up slightly with particularly demanding apps.

Oppo’s Color OS UI continues to improve. Its clean and crisp design aside, there are some clever customisations that other phone makers could learn a thing or two from. A feature I liked is it’ll show what audio codec is in use. Oppo has committed to three years of Android updates and four years of security patches. About the only real downside with Color OS is its preinstalled bloatware. Amazon, Facebook, and PUBG mobile are all present, taking up space. Add in preinstalled telco cruft, and a good slice of the 256GB of storage is consumed.

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Like many circa 2022 flagship phones, the Find X5 Pro has a 5000mAh battery. It typically lasted around a day with heavy use and just shy of two days with light use. Even if the Find X5 Pro starts to warn that it’s getting low on juice, charging it takes hardly any time. The Find X5 Pro’s 80W super Vooc charging goes from 0 to 100% charge in just 30 minutes. A 15-minute charge also got me past the 50% mark. Fast 50W wireless Qi charging is supported too.

A great eye-catching design, solid camera, crisp display, and plentiful storage make the Find X5 Pro excellent. While the camera’s zoom could be improved, there’s little else to find fault with, making the Find X5 Pro a standout flagship phone.

www.oppo.com/nz/