OPPO Find X5 Pro Review: The Verdict
The Find X5 Pro is a great option if you're looking for a high-end Android device, but we'd love to see OPPO do a little more to justify the premium price.
What we love
- Great cameras
- Snappy performance
- Lovely build quality
What could be improved
- Expensive
- Just okay battery
- Shorter support life than competing devices
The essentials
- Performance: Top-tier, no complaints.
- Battery: Just okay. Up to four hours of screen time per charge, which should get most through a day, but some will find themselves in need of an evening top-up. The stupid fast charging helps offset this.
- Screen: Excellent.
- Camera: Great. Not the best in class, but reliably takes lovely photos in most conditions. The ultra-wide lens is the best on any phone.
80/100
A price tag tells a story. It informs you what a brand thinks about how its products should be valued, especially with reference to the competition. It impacts perception, and how you feel about an object. A high price tag can go two ways: a product is either high-end or overpriced.
As of late, OPPO has cemented itself as a premium phone manufacturer. The last few years have seen it go beyond the realm of budget and "good value" devices, with OPPO instead setting its sight on the big guys. And honestly, OPPO has done an admirable job.
Of course, even OPPO's flagships have still represented a saving when compared to the likes of Apple and Samsung. Even at the high, you'd still be looking at saving a few hundred dollars by opting for an OPPO.
That's no longer the case Find X5 Pro. Priced at $1,799 outright, it's just $50 cheaper than the starting price of an iPhone 13 Pro Max or Galaxy S22 Ultra. Whatever way you slice it, that's a confident move.
As a challenger brand, price parity gives away some of OPPO's advantage. It doesn't want customers choosing its phones over Apple's or Samsung's because they're cheaper. It wants customers to choose them because they're just as good, if not better. The question is whether it can make customers believe that.
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Shot in the dark
Camera is a big part of OPPO's pitch for the Find X5 Pro, with the manufacturer taking a two-pronged approach. To start, the Find X5 Pro is the first OPPO phone to launch since the manufacturer announced its partnership with camera builder Hasselblad. The results are underwhelming, however. All you're really getting is a selection of (quite nice, admittedly) filters you can apply to your photos before you shoot. Well, and a bonus logo on the back of your phone.
The more exciting part of the story is the MariSilicon X, a custom-made neural processing unit (NPU) solely dedicated to camera applications. Without getting too deep into technical details, the vast majority of phones now rely on computational imaging, where artificial intelligence is used to maximise the performance you can get from a camera. Many phones have NPUs, which are processors used solely for artificial intelligence tasks, but OPPO's MariSilicon X is the first NPU made for imaging.
Broadly speaking, OPPO has said the MariSilicon X provides improved low light camera performance and dynamic range, but also claimed that every shot of 4K low light video is as clear as a still. The latter is hyperbole, that oversells the Find X5 Pro's capabilities, but despite this, the Find X5 Pro still delivers an excellent camera experience.
The Find X5 Pro takes great photos, in all lighting conditions. The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max do however give you cleaner, sharper (albeit slightly dimmer) images in low light environments, while the Find X5 Pro can be a bit more prone to loss of detail and noise. It's also a touch less consistent when it comes to nailing focus in low light. The Find X5 Pro outperformed the Galaxy S22 Ultra when it came to low light photography, however, offering up sharper but once again slightly darker images. The Find X5 Pro and Google Pixel 6 perform similarly well in terms of low light.
Where the Find X5 Pro stands out is its ultra-wide angle lens, which is easily the best on any high-end phone. While still a step down from the primary lens, the Find X5 Pro ultra-wide lens manages to deliver consistently great photos in most conditions, even in low light where images are far sharper than those from competing devices.
Conversely, the Find X5 Pro's zoom lens is a bit of a letdown. The photos are fine, but a definite step down from the primary and ultra-wide lenses. You're also limited to 2x optical zoom, which is out of step with the competition. The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max both benefit from a longer range 3x optical zoom lens, while the Galaxy S22 Ultra also has a 3x zoom lens paired with a secondary 10x zoom. This makes the Find X5 Pro a little bit less versatile.
Okay battery, insane charging
Battery has been a consistent weakness across the "Pro" Find series models, which OPPO seems to have acknowledged by putting in a large cell this time around. Battery life still isn't exactly a strength for the Find X5 Pro, but it's at least more consistent than its predecessors.
While not incredible, you should still get about a full day per charge, or around four hours of screen time. With my usage, that saw me getting to under 20% battery most nights, so it's the kind of phone where I felt the need to top up before heading out in the evening, for example.
Disabling 5G and the 120Hz refresh rate display helped get a little more screen charge, but not significantly.
Stupidly fast charging does help offset this, however. A 12 or so minute charge is enough to take the Find X5 Pro from flat to 50%. This does rely on the bundled proprietary charger, however - you won't get the same speeds using any old power brick. As long as you've got OPPO's fast charger on hand, the Find X5 Pro is easy to keep alive with just quick top-ups. I still would have liked a longer out of the box battery, but fast charging isn't the worst compromise. And hey, at least OPPO is still including the charger in the box.
Premium feel with some compromises
Camera and battery aside, the OPPO Find X5 Pro is pretty much what you'd expect from a top-tier phone. It's powered by the same high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor you'll find in the Galaxy S22 family, so you can expect buttery smooth performance. You also get 256GB storage out of the box, which is double the starting configuration for the iPhone 13 Pro Max and Galaxy S22 Ultra.
On the front, you'll find an ever so slightly curved screen. While curved screens can be divisive, the contours are pretty subtle to the point where the usable part of the display is barely impacted. The curves are only there for aesthetics.
Overall build quality is excellent. The Find X5 Pro feels in the same class as any Apple or Samsung handset. One key difference is OPPO has used ceramic for the back, rather than glass. You probably wouldn't notice in the hand, but it should make it harder to crack. The back itself has a glossy finish, which is a departure from the matte that has been trending in high-end devices over the last couple of years, but it still hides fingerprints well. At least on the white model.
While the OPPO Find X5 Pro has the trimmings you'd expect from a premium phone, including features like IP68 water-resistance and wireless charging, there are a few compromises worth noting. The first is pretty minor.
Out of the box, the Find X5 Pro has far too many preloaded apps for the money. It feels like you're being advertised to. If you're paying $1,799 for a phone, it shouldn't come preloaded with apps like Booking.com, Amazon, PUBG, and AliExpress. Sure, they're easy enough to delete, but it's not a great user experience.
The bigger issue is OPPO lags behind Samsung and Apple when it comes to its support commitment. The Find X5 Pro is set to get three years of major Android operating system updates and four years of security updates. For comparison, Samsung offers four years of major Android operating system updates and five years of security updates, while Apple is best in class with its phones getting at least six years of iOS updates. If OPPO wants to charge the same amount as Apple and Samsung, it needs to match their support too.
OPPO Find X5 Pro - Final Thoughts
The Find X5 Pro is a worthy contender for the high-end phone crown. It plays the part well even if it doesn’t quite live up to all of OPPO's camera claims, and I'd still love a little more battery resilience. But if you're looking for a top-tier Android device, the Find X5 Pro is a great alternative to the Galaxy S22+ and Galaxy S22 Ultra.
That being said, if OPPO is going to charge the same kind of money as Apple and Samsung, there are areas it needs to improve. It needs to match Samsung's security commitments at a minimum, and it needs to stop preloading unnecessary apps on its high-end devices. While the Find X5 Pro is genuinely a premium phone, these issues put it a step behind the competition. And when OPPO is asking you to spend just as much, that's not something it can afford.
OPPO Find X5 Pro camera samples
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