Oppo Find X5 Pro review

A premium device at a premium price, Oppo’s Find X5 Pro smartphone boasts the flashy design and standout camera that we all now expect of flagship phones. Our primary concerns, though, are picture and sound quality, and here it’s a bit more of a mixed bag.

Still, those determined to avoid the usual high-end options and instead go for something out of the ordinary will find much to like here, particularly if they’re willing to spend some time in the settings menu.

With it coming up on a year since the Oppo Find X5 Pro's official announcement, we expect to see some news regarding a successor soon; likely the Oppo Find X6 Pro. There hasn't been much in the way of leaks or official news quite yet, but we anticipate the next Find X Pro device making its debut soon.

Price

As standard, the Oppo Find X5 Pro comes in a 12GB RAM and 256GB storage configuration costing £1049 / AU$1799 (about $1314 – unfortunately the Find X5 Pro isn’t officially available in the US). There appears to be a 512GB version available in China, but there’s no sign of that making its way to the UK or Australia. It’s worth noting that there’s no option to expand this via SD card.

The Oppo’s price puts it up against some stiff competition. For similar money you could buy an iPhone 14 Pro Max or Sony Xperia 1 IV, and you’re even encroaching on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Oppo’s sister company, OnePlus released its 10 Pro flagship last year, and it shares a lot of features with the Find X5 Pro, including a Hasselblad branded camera system, and it’s a fair bit cheaper. There is also the freshly announced OnePlus 11 5G which launches soon, another rival that provides similar specs to the Find X5 Pro for a fair bit cheaper. 

Design

The Oppo Find X5 Pro comes in two stunning finishes, Glaze Black and Ceramic White, that adorn the weighty, premium ceramic body and smooth, polished aluminium frame.

The rear of the phone houses a camera bump unlike any other phone we’ve seen. Instead of a step-up style bump that feels separate to the rest of the phone, Oppo has engineered a fluid camera cluster that melts into the rest of the ceramic backing to create a seamless finish.

It's certainly unique and eye-catching, and it's equally as impressive as the camera system it is housing. Inside is a powerful array of Hasselblad cameras, consisting of a 50MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide camera that reaches a field of view of 110 degrees and a 13MP telephoto camera.

Features

The camera system is ideal for a budding photographer, with every lens you could need on a phone to capture both close up targets, or squeeze sprawling vistas into a single shot. Colours look punchy and, together with the phone’s colourful display, the Find X5 Pro is an ideal companion for snapping shots on the go. 

The Oppo Find X5 Pro features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor which, when paired with the aforementioned 12GB of RAM, keeps things running smoothly at all times. Apps load quickly and there are useful software management options to make sure the phone is running at maximum efficiency. There are a few instances where this software is a bit intrusive, though. For instance, when you try to close all apps and the phone insists that’s unnecessary in terms of performance – we don’t care, Oppo, we would like to close all apps please.

Bundled in the box is the Oppo Find X5 Pro’s most convenient feature, an 80W SuperVooc charging adapter. It's always nice to get a charger in the box these days as many manufacturers are leaving them out, and it's especially nice when the bundled charger can juice up the phone at a blistering rate – a 50 per cent charge takes just 12 minutes.

The Find X5 Pro launched with Android 12 earlier last year, skinned with Oppo’s ColourOS on top. It has since received Android 13 (dubbed ColourOS 13) as of August 2022, which has brought a host of aesthetic changes to the software. This includes updated animations and a card-based system for a lot of the visual elements which makes organising the navigating the OS easier than ever. Arguably the biggest upgrade to ColourOS is the new always-on-display, which will now cycle down to just 1Hz while active. This supposedly offers a 30% power-saving increase to the Find X5 Pro.

Picture

Up front is a 6.7-inch curved display running at 3216 x 1440 resolution (525ppi) in a 20:9 aspect ratio, and the LTPO AMOLED screen supports variable refresh rates right up to 120Hz. The display has a hole punch camera nestled in the top left corner that can be used for facial recognition and remains fairly unobtrusive to the viewing experience. There is also an under-display fingerprint scanner for biometric authentication. 

As for picture quality, the Oppo Find X5 Pro is crisp and delivers a solid HDR performance, making for an enjoyable viewing experience overall. Netflix’s Lost In Space looks great on the Oppo’s AMOLED screen, with inky blacks to reflect the depth of endless space while the pinpoint stars burst through with surprising impact.

As the Robinsons’ ship loses power and the lights dim, it’s still easy to pick out details within the shadows and, to juxtapose, grandiose scenes of an ice-clad foreign planet retain their epic scale. It's not all perfect, though: the edges of the ice-capped mountains in the background of the scene are a tad fuzzy and when compared with our Award-winning Sony Xperia 1 III, the impression of depth and overall detail levels are slightly lacking.

By default, the Oppo comes in a slightly overbearing Vivid mode that tends to accentuate colours a bit too much, though there is a suite of picture settings, including a Cinematic mode that utilises Display P3 for apparently faithful colour reproduction, as well as a Brilliant mode that uses the widest colour gamut for an almost blindingly bright picture. There’s also the option to customise colour temperature in a couple of the presets. Even so, despite vast amounts of tweaking, the Find X5 Pro never quite reaches the cinematic accuracy of its Sony rival, particularly when the latter is in its Creator Mode.

That isn’t to say that the Oppo looks unnatural. Playing an episode of 2007 teen drama Skins, it retains the colour in characters’ vibrant clothing while keeping skin tones natural. That said, this lower resolution video suffers with soft edges and slightly ill-defined textures to skin and clothing. The Xperia does a better job of retaining detail and keeps edges a little sharper and more defined, with skin textures specifically looking noticeably better.

The other issue with the Oppo’s display is its curved edges, which create some distortion and, on white and lighter coloured backgrounds, produce a strange glowing halo effect that runs down the edge of the screen. Whilst this doesn’t cause too many issues as it’s such a slim part of the screen, it does bring into question whether the Oppo is more dedicated to form than picture performance.

Sound

While the Oppo Find X5 Pro’s picture is good overall, it’s rather let down by its audio performance, with a lack of dynamic expression and rhythmic drive, as well as slightly mushy bass when using a range of headphones (with the necessary third-party USB-C to 3.5mm adaptor). Grand compositions such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra's rendition of In The Hall Of The Mountain King feel unnervingly tight and claustrophobic, with little separation between the vast array of instruments. The instruments lack texture and reverberation, leading to a processed and unnatural delivery that fails to capture the grand scale of the piece. Dynamics also suffer here, with the jump from quiet to loud also feeling restrained.

The same can be said in relation to the Oppo’s speakers. They too make a mess of the classical piece with the same compressed, claustrophobic arrangement and overall lack of definition, stifling the piece's grand composition and making it a less than ideal option. 

For something more conventional, Billie Eilish’s Bury A Friend sounds decent, though not much better than that. The thumping bassline is certainly present (as much as we can expect from a product like this), but it lacks definition and sounds a bit soft. Thankfully, the bass isn’t too overbearing, so vocals remain clear and distinct.

Verdict

Oppo’s Find X5 Pro is a solid device in most ways. It's packed with features, user friendly software and it provides an enjoyable, if not mind blowing visual performance. However, it's marred by an audio experience that’s easily surpassed by the class leaders.

An iPhone 14 Pro Max costs roughly the same money and features fantastic sound and picture quality, as well as an equally solid build and feature set, and the Sony Xperia 1 IV is another great option if you prioritise picture and sound quality. 

Still, if you’re determined to go with an outsider choice for your next phone and sound quality isn’t much of a priority, the Oppo Find X5 Pro is certainly worth a look.

SCORES

• Features 5
• Picture 4
• Sound 3

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