Oppo Find X5 Pro review

When Oppo unveiled the Find X3 Pro, its design was… a bit of a shock, to say the least. The single pane of mirrored glass on the rear that curved up, around, and over the camera module looked unlike anything else out there.

There’s no such shock this time around, as the Find X5 Pro (no, there was no X4 – we’ll get to that) is a case of refinement rather than reinvention. And not just in the design – most of the phone’s specs are half-steps forward from Oppo’s 2021 flagship, but tweaked and improved just enough to justify the update.

And yes, there was never a Find X4 series. Oppo says that this is down to the fact that last year’s Find N foldable was the series’ fourth generation, making this the fifth – but perhaps the company just doesn’t want to admit that it’s a tad superstitious, with four considered an unlucky number across much of Asia.

Design and build

• Unique curved ceramic build
• Gorilla Glass Victus on the display
• IP68

So yeah, Oppo hasn’t changed too much about the broad strokes design of the Find X5 Pro – which is still a bit love it or hate it – but there have been some smart tweaks throughout.

The most obvious one is the newly slanted camera module. This is more than just change for change’s sake though – the idea is that the angle better suits where users are likely to rest their index finger on the phone’s back. It gives you not only a comfortable spot to sit your finger, but just as importantly keeps it from blocking and smudging your camera lenses.

I’ll admit I was a sceptic, but I’m a big fan of the change – and in fact wish Oppo had gone a little further, with a sharper angle, though that may be a quirk of how my hands sit.

It’s a small tweak, but has a surprising impact on how the phone is to hold, with the weight of the camera and the upper part of the phone now able to rest comfortably. That matters more than usual, but Oppo’s other big change – a switch to a ceramic rear – has made the Find X5 Pro quite heavy at 218g.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing – though no doubt the phone will now feel too bulky for some – as it is part of making the phone feel especially premium in the hand. It’s worth noting that while the two colours are Glaze Black and Ceramic White, both in fact use ceramic – not just the white model.

The ceramic finish should prove tougher than most glass options, though it is at least as bad for picking up fingerprints. Meanwhile the display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, and an IP68 rating means this should be safe from most dust and water damage.

The other obvious visual addition is a Hasselblad logo that sits alongside Oppo’s on the rear. I’ll talk about that camera collaboration more later, but I do wish the logo had been omitted – or at least shrunk. Between the two company logos, the ‘Powered by MariSilicon’ mark on the camera, and the slew of legal marks required in the UK and Europe, the back of the phone looks especially cluttered and busy this time around, which does detract from the design.

Display and audio

• Large 6.7in AMOLED display
• 1-120Hz variable refresh rate
• Powerful stereo speakers

The last few Find X flagships from Oppo have flaunted their display quality and while the Find X5 Pro isn’t as dramatic a step forward as we’ve seen before, it still boasts one of the best displays in the business.

At 6.7in it’s at the larger end of Android flagships, but the specs are hard to argue with: a WQHD+ LTPO AMOLED with variable refresh rate from 1-120Hz and HDR support.

That’s a lot of jargon, but it boils down to the fact that you’re getting a detailed, high resolution display with great colour coverage and contrast, and a variable refresh rate that delivers both super smooth animations and excellent battery optimisation.

One clever touch that is new to this phone is the ability to vary refresh rate across the display. This will only really kick in for split-screen multi-taskers, but in theory lets part of the display run at a high refresh rate for video or a game, while running another part down at only a few Hz for your WhatsApp conversations to conserve power.

As you’d expect in a flagship you’ll also get stereo speakers, and these really aren’t bad. Of course there’s a limit to their bass output, but sound is crisp, clear, and never muddled, making this plenty good enough for watching YouTube or even the odd spot of music if you don’t have a speaker handy.

Specs and performance

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset
• 12GB RAM and 256GB storage
• Dual-SIM 5G

The Find X5 Pro is powered primarily by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, the latest flagship from Qualcomm. There’s actually also a variant using the Dimensity 9000, from rival MediaTek, but for now at least this model remains exclusive to China.

The 8 Gen 1 only launched in December, and so it will take some time to figure out exactly what it’s capable of, and how various phone manufacturers make use of it. Some early 8 Gen 1 phones seem to struggle with thermal management, but Oppo has taken this in its stride with a 75% larger vapour chamber and I haven’t noticed the Find X5 Pro heat up any more than I’d expect.

As with most flagships here, performance here really falls into two distinct camps. If you’re anything like a typical phone user – mostly worried about social media, listening to music, maybe some light gaming – then this has more than enough power. The 8 Gen 1 can handle just about anything you throw at it, and the phone is slick and smooth to use.

If you’re a multi-tasking power user or more committed mobile gamer, then this is still one of the most powerful phones on the market, but the 8 Gen 1 doesn’t deliver any huge jump on last year’s Snapdragon 888 flagships. In fact its Geekbench 5 scores are even beaten by some of last year’s handsets, though it impresses more in the graphical GFXBench tests, where it’s comfortably ahead of Snapdragon 888 phones at the same resolution – note that the Galaxy S22+ included for comparison has an unfair advantage here, as it runs at a lower resolution.

Oppo has decided to offer just one version of the phone, so you’ll get 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage whether you like it or not – and with no microSD support, that storage isn’t expandable either.

5G is supported of course, and the dual-SIM slot will let you use two 5G SIM cards at once (or one card and one eSIM). Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and NFC support round out the connectivity features.

Battery and charging

• Large 5000mAh battery
• 80W wired charging (charger included)
• 50W wireless charging

The Find X5 Pro’s sheer size affords Oppo the chance to include a capacious 5000mAh battery. Still, with the high specs included her the phone can burn through that faster than you might think, so this is still a phone that will need a charge every day.

With light use you might just about be able to stretch it further, but for the most part you’ll probably only get one day at a time out of it, with five hours or so of screen-on time.

Fortunately charging is fast, with support for 80W wired charging and 50W wireless. A new ‘Battery Health Engine’ helps protect the battery while charging, and Oppo says the phone should retain 80% of its full capacity after a whopping 1600 charging cycles – though of course I haven’t been able to test that claim myself.

With the included 80W wired charger I topped the phone up by 56% in just 15 minutes, and up to 94% in half an hour. If you’re likely to need to use third-party chargers too, the phone supports the PPS standard at up to 30W speeds.

Oppo says the 50W wireless charging can deliver a full charge in 50 minutes, but for that you’ll need an official AirVOOC charger. Standard Qi wireless chargers are supported too, but at much lower speeds – the max is 15W over the EPP standard.

Camera and video

• 50Mp main and ultrawide cameras
• 13Mp 2x telephoto
• No microlens or periscope zoom

Oppo has made some interesting choices with the camera system on the Find X5 Pro, though I’ll admit to having mixed feelings about some of them.

First up, here’s what you get: a pair of 50Mp main and ultrawide lenses, a 13Mp 2x zoom telephoto lens, and a 32Mp selfie camera.

There’s no sign of the novel microlens camera used on the Find X3 Pro, nor of any 5x or 10x zoom periscope lens. Oppo says that it thinks consumers care more about the quality and low light performance of the main lenses, and so has focused its efforts there.

There are two other elements to be aware of before we dive into the results. First is hardware: Oppo has included its first in-house silicon here in the form of the MariSilicon X NPU. This is an extra 6nm chip devoted to image processing, which the company says is key to the camera’s performance – especially in low light.

The other change is software. As given away by the big logo on the back, Hasselblad has helped here, but only in offering the same sort of features found on last year’s OnePlus 9 Pro. That means the camera app now has Hasselblad’s orange accents and distinctive shutter sound, along with a few new colour filters and an XPan mode that shoots in the unusual 65:24 aspect ratio. That’s really about it though – don’t get too hung up on the Hasselblad stuff.

Camera performance really is very good. Images are sharp and detailed across the three lenses, with warm colours that seem true-to-life – and with impressive colour consistency between the three lenses.

Any camera system at this price will nail it in good light though, so low light is where things really matter. Here the Find X5 Pro is good – but it’s not the best, despite Oppo’s insistence that this is where it’s focused its efforts. The Vivo X70 Pro+ remains head and shoulders above the competition in low light, though the Find X5 Pro holds its own against the likes of the Galaxy S21 Ultra or Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, and still comfortably beats the iPhone 13 Pro.

Low light images are sharp and impressively detailed, but dynamic range can be lacking. Some black areas stay very black, and light sources can be extremely over-exposed – though this is improved when you use the dedicated night mode, rather than rely on the default camera mode.

The main camera fares best of the three, no doubt helped by its wide aperture and 5-axis OIS stabilisation – with no optical stabilisation at all on the other lenses, they can’t compete when the going gets dark.

This probably sounds more critical than is fair – the three rear lenses all take excellent low light shots (and even the front-facing lens holds its own). But when Oppo has justified ditching a periscope to deliver on low light, it’s disappointing to see that it’s not really any better than its key rivals in that area.

If camera is your main concern then the Find X5 Pro is definitely in the mix, but it’s not the be-all, end-all, especially if you care about the extra zoom options elsewhere. But if you just want a new flagship with a camera you can trust, then this absolutely delivers, and then some.

Software and updates

• Android 12 with ColorOS 12.1
• Three Android OS updates

The Find X5 Pro ships with Android 12, and runs Oppo’s ColorOS skin on top.

Mandatory Android 12 features like icons to alert you to when the camera and microphone are in use, or the new privacy dashboard, are included here. However, Oppo has opted to entirely leave out Material You, the new Android 12 feature that tweaks user interface colours based on a palette drawn from your wallpaper – though you can at least just go in and tweak the colours manually, as I have.

There’s still a lot to like about ColorOS though, which remains one of the better Android skins around. It’s simple and easy to use, with a clearly laid out settings menu and a wealth of customisation options throughout the OS.

Oppo also promises three years of Android OS updates for its flagships, with a fourth year of security patches, which should see this phone update to Android 13, 14, and eventually 15. That’s not quite the long-term software support offered by Apple, but it’s up there among the best for Android brands, with only Samsung doing better right now.

Price and availability

The Find X5 Pro is on sale now across the UK, Europe, and Asia, but don’t expect it to release in the US – Oppo phones never do. We’ve rounded up the best Find X5 Pro deals we can find, so check that out for more on where to buy the phone.

In the UK it costs £1,049, while in Europe it’ll set you back €1,299. In the UK that’s actually a slight price drop from the Find X3 Pro, though the cost has gone up in Europe, and there it’s directly up against premium flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra or last year’s Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra and Sony Xperia 1 III.

If the Find X5 Pro is going to struggle here, it’s because most of those rivals offer powerful periscopic zoom cameras, which this doesn’t. If that’s a key feature for you then look to those rivals, but if the Find X5 Pro’s 2x zoom sounds like enough then the well-rounded package here could be a winner.

Check out our round-ups of the best flagship phones and best Android phones to see the key rivals, or the best Oppo phones for more from the brand.

Verdict

The Oppo Find X5 Pro is beautiful, powerful phone that delivers just about everywhere it counts.

Compared to other recent flagships, this feels like an all-rounder: you get an excellent display, strong performance, decent battery and charging, and a powerful camera – all wrapped in a fairly interesting design.

Outside of that aesthetic I’m not sure there’s a single area that the Find X5 Pro is the absolute best of any phone out there, so if you have specific priorities you may find that some rivals give you more of that you want. But few nail just about every aspect of the phone the way that Oppo has here, which could give the Find X5 Pro more wide-ranging appeal.