Oppo Find X5 Pro in practical test: Android in a ceramic case
The best Android smartphones are similar in many ways: more and more cameras, the latest processor from Qualcomm, garnished with a pretty OLED display with a lot of hertz and even more colors. The Chinese manufacturer Oppo, which has meanwhile incorporated the OnePlus smartphones as a subsidiary brand, still keeps going its own way with its Find X Pro series. The 2021 Oppo Find X3 Pro had amazing macro magnifications with the built-in microscope lens. With the Find X5 Pro, Oppo relies on an even more exclusive design and a special coprocessor just for image processing in the camera. By the way, there is no Find X4 Pro, the number is considered a bad luck charm in China.
The Oppo Find X5 in black: the camera bulge is carved out of the ceramic back. This creates a seamless transition.
Oppo Find X5 Pro: ceramic body in one piece
Oppo’s new 5G smartphone Find X5 Pro offers a remarkable design: Because the housing is milled out of one piece of ceramic, the block with three camera lenses merges seamlessly into the back. Our test sample comes in glossy black, but there is also a white variant – for a real ceramic feel. Either way, the case looks very chic, is very scratch-resistant, but magically attracts fingerprints with its glossy surface. At 221 grams, it is not a light weight. The front display is made of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy S21. Comparison: The Galaxy S22 already uses Gorilla Glass Victus+, which was just as scratch-resistant as its predecessor in the test.
The case is 8.5 millimeters thick at its thinnest point.
The best Android phones
Samsung
Details about the test
Per
Super display – large, sharp, high-contrast and extremely bright
WiFi 6E
against
Big and heavy
No memory card slot
Samsung
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Per
Very bright OLED
Good battery life
against
No jack socket
No power supply included
Samsung
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Per
Enormously bright and large OLED
Good battery life
against
No jack socket
No power supply included
OnePlus
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Per
Brilliant, crisp 120Hz display
Very good photo quality (main camera)
against
Average selfie camera
No jack connection
Samsung
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Per
Fast processor
Bright, high-contrast display
against
Display could be sharper
No memory card slot
OnePlus
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Per
Very high speed
Very good screen
against
Memory not expandable
No jack socket
Google
Details about the test
Per
Great screen
Good photo quality
against
No jack socket
No memory card slot
OnePlus
Details about the test
Per
Very high speed
Good endurance, very fast loading
against
No wireless charging
Not waterproof
Samsung
Details about the test
against
No jack socket
No memory card slot
Google
Details about the test
Per
Great screen
Good photo quality
against
No jack socket
Wide display border
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Top quality OLED screen
At 6.7 inches, the screen is as large as is usual for this performance class. Oppo uses state-of-the-art OLED LTPO technology, i.e. with a battery-friendly variable control of the refresh rate between 1 and 120 Hertz – like in the Galaxy S22 Ultra. As with the predecessor, there are a particularly large number of colors. Display and processing take place in 10 bits, i.e. with up to 1.07 billion colors – the camera also works internally with 10 bits. Oppo advertises a maximum brightness of 1,300 nits. That’s less than the S22 Plus and S22 Ultra. In the practical test, the screen was still easy to read in sunlight. The sharpness is very high at 525 ppi (pixels per inch). The WQHD+ resolution brings 3216×1440 pixels to the screen.
Speed comparison: The Oppo Find X5 Pro with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (left) is slightly slower than the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra with Exynos 2000 in the Geekbench test.
Oppo Find X5 Pro: Snapdragon with extra CPU
The new Qualcomm processor Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 drives the Oppo Find X5 Pro. In the Geekbench 5 test, it achieved 3,395 points in the multi-core test. In terms of speed, the device is more or less at the level of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, which is slightly ahead with 3,619 points measured in the test (average of several measurement runs, individual measurements can also be higher). There is also a special chip for image processing: the MariSilicon X. This is a special neural processing unit (NPU). Oppo promises up to 18 tera operations per second for artificial intelligence (AI). The battery is very large at 5,000 milliampere hours (mAh), and an 80-watt power adapter is included for fast charging.
The in-house MariSilicon-X chip supports the camera.
Oppo Find X5 Pro: camera with ultra wide angle, standard and 20x zoom.
Triple camera – without a microscope
The Oppo Find X5 Pro comes with three cameras: 50-megapixel main camera (f/1.7), 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle (f/2.2) and 13-megapixel telephoto (f/2.4). The camera equipment is similar to that of the predecessor X3 Pro, but its highlight is missing: there is no microscope camera. However, Oppo still uses the same high-quality 50-megapixel sensor (Sony IMX 766) in both the ultra-wide-angle and the main camera. This had an effect in the practical test: In contrast to some competitors, the image quality of the ultra-wide-angle lens does not fall off compared to the main camera in terms of sharpness and quality. The telephoto with double optical magnification was only convincing in the test at small zoom levels. At 20x magnification, for example, the device cannot keep up with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. In general, however, the photos in the practical test showed a very good quality, compared to the photos of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, colors were less overemphasized. A more detailed laboratory analysis is still pending. Some photo examples can be seen here.
Ultra wide-angle shot with the Oppo Find X5 Pro.
Main camera recording with the Oppo Find X5 Pro.
Main camera recording during the day.
Oppo Find X5 Pro: price, release, other models
The Oppo Find X5 Pro will be released in Germany on March 21, 2022. The recommended price is 1,299 euros. The internal memory is 256 gigabytes. Two cheaper models will appear at the same time: the Oppo Find X5 for 999 euros and the Find X5 Lite for 499 euros.
Alternative: Oppo Find X5
An interesting alternative to the Pro model is the basic Oppo Find X5 variant. It does without the ceramic housing, instead it is in a glass housing, but is also very well equipped. The smartphone comes with similar camera equipment – including double 50-megapixel sensors for the main and ultra-wide-angle cameras. Instead of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Oppo uses the top processor from 2021, the Snapdragon 888. The OLED display also uses 10 bits and variable control from 1 to 120 Hertz, but only in the FullHD+ resolution. With 402 ppi, the display sharpness is good enough.
