Over the years, there were only a handful of OPPO phones that I reviewed. Personally, my favourite one was the OPPO Find X way back in 2018 so when I was tasked to review the latest OPPO Find X5 Pro 5G, I was really looking forward to it. After all, it should have a multitude of improvements in four years.
The Find X5 Pro was revealed just recently and it's already on pre-order. However, I'm sure many of you would find the price tag of RM4999 staggeringly high. Not gonna lie, I was pretty shocked too when they announced the price. But before we get to the conclusion of its worthiness, let's go through my OPPO Find X5 Pro 5G review.
Design - It's so "Find"
Continuing its design philosophy from the Find X3 Pro, OPPO has refined it further making it look exquisite and truly a sight to behold. Indeed, when most brands are just copying each other here and there, OPPO may have finally given the Find X5 Pro its own design identity. The one that I reviewed was the white model and it looks gorgeous, albeit the black variant looks good too.
Simply gorgeous looking
The surrounding frame is curved but not too much, it's just nice
The curved rear camera design is better than before
You can find the SIM card tray, USB C and speaker grill below
Even though there is a silicon casing provided in the box, I still didn't feel safe enough because of the exposed side edges for the curved display. I don't believe that you can just simply walk into a phone shop and just find a better quality one for the Find X5 Pro though (or at least not yet).
However, if you decide to get the phone on 28 May 2022 at an OPPO Brand Store, you can get a higher quality Kevlar Phone Case worth RM129 for free. It's very much recommended that you put on the casing at all times because if you don't, you may get paranoid about not trying to drop the phone which can be mentally tiring.
Tech specs and Features - MariSilicon "marilah"
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset + MariSilicon X Imaging NPU
- 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM
- 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage (expandable memory is not available)
- Measures 163.7 x 73.9 x 8.5mm, weighs 218g
- 6.7-inch AMOLED LTPO display (QHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate)
- 50MP (main) + 50MP (ultrawide) + 13MP (telephoto) triple rear camera
- 32MP front camera
- Features 4K Ultra Night Video, Hasselblad Camera, Ultra HDR Video, Optical Image Stabilization, 80W SUPERVOOC Flash Charge, 1 Billion Colour Bionic Display, in-screen fingerprint sensor, facial recognition, 50W reverse wireless charging, IP68 water and dust resistance rating
- Supports 5G, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, WiFi 6, and USB Type-C (for charging and earphone jack) connectivity
- ColorOS 12.1 based on Android 12
- A dual-cell 5000mAh battery
MariSilicon means business
One of the marketing highlights of the Find X5 Pro is the MariSilicon X processor. In case you missed it, this is OPPO's first-ever imaging processor that is dedicated to producing the best photos and videos possible. Through AI noise reduction and dynamic processing, this should prove useful in shooting in a low-light environment without much noise, on paper but we will get to that in the camera performance section soon.
Besides specialising in taking dark photos and videos, the HDR is said to be improved as well. It now has a 4K Ultra HDR video recording whereby the subject won't be overshadowed by a strong backlight. Moreover, OPPO's partnership with Hasselblad offers mobile photographer enthusiasts something to play with, particularly with the Pro mode and XPAN mode. All the camera modes work brilliantly with the SLR-Level 5-Axis OIS.
Camera UI, there are a ton of options for you
Night videography mode in 4K will automatically turn on by itself, but you can choose to switch it off by tapping on "AI"
XPAN mode preview, great for landscape shots
Since I haven't tried out the ColorOS 12 yet, I was eager to experience it and I have to say, it's not bad. There are a ton of features for you to customise to your liking such as setting up an Omoji, Always-On Display designs, UI shortcuts and so on. However, I also do find the bloatware on the phone annoying and it's even worse than before.
For example, the Game Center, Hot Games and HeyFun offer the same thing for users to find mobile game apps. This applies to the Hot Apps section, App Market, and the Google Play Store as well. At this point, you might think OPPO doesn't really care anymore since it's been years and can't seem to delete them either. However, there is a way - all you have to do is press hold on either Hot Apps or Hot Games > App Info > then deselect them to appear on your home page forever. Thank goodness!
The Omoji (left) and a screenshot of going into App Info to remove Hot Apps and Hot Games (right)
Always-on display (left) and customising shortcuts (right)
You can't scan your Facial Recognition with a mask on, but you can still use the in-screen fingerprint sensor
Game focus mode
You can drag the Game Center toolbar from the left to do chatting, performance settings, gameplay recording and many more
Performance - A true flagship in and out
Asphalt 9 gameplay, the 120Hz refresh rate makes the race awesome
Expected results from 3DMark (left) and Geekbench 5 (right)
You can fully max your graphics on Apex Legends Mobile seamlessly
I don't really need to tell you the details of how it handles graphics intense mobile games, as it passes with flying colours. The camera performance is pretty good too but one thing that I did notice, though is that the battery performance is uh...well, it could be better.
For a phone with a 5000mAh battery pack, I was quite surprised to find that I could easily drain it in one day, usually before night time before needing to recharge again. To be fair, I was pushing the Find X5 Pro as much as I could by taking photos, gaming and binge-watching my YouTube videos. I guess if you aren't playing on your phone too much, then it should be sufficient. The fast charging does compensate for this, though, fully charging easily in less than an hour.
The battery chart monitor (left), you can also adjust how your want to save battery power in the Settings (right)
Add-on, GPS connectivity is fine
Worth mentioning that the display colour performance is a solid A+
Great for entertainment if you need a break
The Find X5 Pro is very much a high-end camera-centric smartphone, both in and out. I'm glad to report that the OPPO's MariSilicon X processor is not some gimmick and it performed well. To be honest, most of the photos look just alright to me but night photography is where it excels the most. Most of the noise in low-lit photoshoots is processed well enough not to be a hindrance.
Before we get to that, it's odd that OPPO didn't include the Microscopic feature from the OPPO Find X3 Pro. When asked about it, the R&D team had to give up this feature in order to focus on the new hardware. Oh well, fair enough but anyway, below are some of the photo samples I took.
Good morning!
This shot was taken on XPAN mode, I love it!
Night photography in ultrawide mode
You may see a bit of noise in the picture here, but the picture is refined well
Add-on - the telephoto lens does a great job too
Night mode, as if it was taken in a well-lit room (it was almost completely dark)
Selfie with and without portrait mode
Another selfie but with lights on
Wefie!
A normal shot with HDR included
The lights behind the model couldn't steal the model's spotlight
The microscopic feature may be gone, but there's still a pretty good macro mode
Macro mode no.2
Macro mode no.3
I'm satisfied with the OPPO Find X5 Pro camera :D
Conclusion - Great phone, but a tough sell
There are a lot of reasons to like the OPPO Find X5 Pro. Case in point, the camera performance is definitely the best thing on the device, alongside the sleek and beautiful design, powerful chipset and crazy fast recharging speed. As much as I was annoyed by the amount of bloatware, you can now remove them in the settings. The battery performance could have been better too, but I was testing its capacity pretty hard, so it would likely perform longer under more normal conditions.
On the other hand, the RM4999 price is somewhat a difficult price tag to justify. Many users would comment that you might as well top up a few Ringgit to get an iPhone 13 Pro but even if you discard that, there's still the Samsung Galaxy S22+ that is equally impressive at RM4299 as well as the Xiaomi 12 Pro for just RM3899 with similar tech specs and features. Another competitor is the vivo X80 Pro 5G for the same price but I haven't tested it yet.
I think at the end of the day, it really depends on your budget. If you do have the budget and you're an OPPO fan, why not? And if you want to get a different taste from the usual and mainstream Samsung and iPhone flagships, the OPPO Find X5 Pro 5G is worth trying out as an alternative Android device.
But that's just my two cents, what about you? Thanks for reading and do stay tuned for more tech gadget reviews at TechNave.com.
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