[OPPO Find X5 Pro General] Lennyuk:
CAMERA

I enjoy photography. I am not a pro by any means and have never had any formal training, but I do spend a lot of time taking photos with my DSLR, or mobile devices, and editing them - I am not amazing, but I am more than capable of getting some magic shots if everything falls together for me (one of the other Ambassadors is an actual photographer and his work is brilliant).

I know my way around a camera and had some things planned for this review, but unfortunately due to brexit delivery of my phone was delayed and the opportunity for some great night and low light photos was missed (I had a trip to the O2 Arena, London, to see Hanz Zimmer live, would have been great shots of the gig itself but also London at night) - since then I have been very busy with my day job and battling illness so opportunities to get great shots have been extremely limited, but I have still had a play with the camera, enough to give you some thoughts and a rundown.

Anyway, the juicy bits - the OPPO Find X5 Pro boasts three lenses and has been co-developed with leading manufacturer of middle format cameras, Hasseblad, if you have never heard of them before, shame on you! It has a 50MP Wide Angle Camera, a 50MP Ultra Wide Angle Camera and 13MP Telephoto Lens capable of 5x hybrid optical zoom (2x proper optical zoom) and 20x digital zoom.

The Wide Angle camera has a 5 Axis mechanical stabilisation system that really helps with mobile photography and can get you an aperture of f/1.7 which for a mobile device is extremely low - for those of you not camera nerds, the lower this number the blurrier the background of an image becomes, what is known as “bokeh” - perfect for portrait photos.

The Ultra Wide has a 110.3 degree field of view and an aperture of f/2.2 which gives you great options when shooting landscapes, or city scenes.

Both of those lenses use sensors from Sony - my preferred camera sensor manufacturer.

Then what really makes this camera stand out from the crowd is the MariSillicon X NPU (Neural Processing Unit) think of it as a form of hardware acceleration enabling the camera’s software to work brilliantly and do things it couldn’t otherwise do and all without impacting the on the devices CPU or GPU functionality.

Specifically this NPU enables the device to offer something truly unique when it comes to low light or night photography. You will notice that you can still truly see the colours and other details which most mobile cameras will lose without the images looking faked or over processed or without it looking like a daytime shot - because that isn’t the point - you want a night shot to be a night shot - you want the viewer to know it was taken at night, but without losing any of those important details and that is what the cameras on the Find X5 Pro and the MariSillicon X NPU allow for.

When you open the camera you are greeted with the standard “photo” mode, the click and shoot mode, moving that bar left or right lets you pick other modes including “Night”, “Video”, “Portrait” or “More” - in More you will find access to the Hasselblad Pro mode, a Hi-Res mode, Panorama, Film, Slow-Mo, Time-Lapse, Long Exposure, Dual Video, Sticker, Text Scanner and “X-Pan”, another Hasselblad feature.

Pro mode offers features such as a histogram and focus peaking and the ability to shoot in RAW.

If you are after a device that can take very nice photos in almost all conditions then you can’t go far wrong with the Find X5 Pro. The S22 Ultra also has very good camera options and the Find X5 Pro matches or beats it at almost every step, except one, which is the telephoto option - the S22 Ultra is very very good at 30x zoom and is somewhat good beyond that too, this device can’t go that far, but honestly, how often on a day-to-day basis do you need to zoom in that far?

Using the camera is a very enjoyable experience and it’s pro mode is one of the nicest on a mobile device I have used (Sony offers a very nice Pro mode on their devices, but it is still missing some key features that it’s own cameras or the Find X5 Pro have, such as focus peaking). It’s certainly a solid offering and highly competitive.

PERFORAMNCE/GAMING

One thing that really impressed me, especially after coming from the Samsung S22 Ultra which you would expect to be the best you can get at the moment, is how smooth this device is to use - there is no UI lag, no missed frames, freezes or delay - it simply reacts to your input how you would expect it to do - you might think this should be standard especially in such a top spec device, but anyone who has used a S22 Ultra should know performance isn’t guaranteed…

The Find X5 Pro has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 CPU with 8 cores and the Adreno 730 GPU clocked to 818MHz - both pretty much as good as you can get at the moment and it shows in the devices performance levels.

I won’t be benchmarking or discussing those in this review, they are largely meaningless and often manipulated (yes I am looking at you Samsung!), so I am focusing on real world usage experience, my usage experience.

Anyone who knows me (or looked me up) will know that one thing I do like to do in my spare time, when I have any, is game, be that on a Console, PC or a mobile device - my current mobile vices include games by Supercell (Clash of Clans and Clash Royale), detective/escape room type games (e.g. Tiny Room) and mobile versions of battle royales (like Bullet Echo).

All the games I play have been smooth and responsive much like the rest of the performance of this device, however, no game, even those that say they can, goes beyond 60fps - however, the same can be said about the S22 Ultra, so it might be a game development issue - but that the end of the world when you know the games are not lagging otherwise - it is certainly far less frustrating gaming on the OPPO Find X5 Pro than the Samsung S2 Ultra.

AUDIO

I spend an awful lot of time listening to YouTube Music or Audible on my devices, including via headphones (Samsung Galaxy Buds 2, which work perfectly on this device with the Samsung Wearable App installed, I have not used the OPPO Headphones to compare) and on the device's speaker.

Whilst certainly not terrible, the speaker performance certainly isn’t as good as other devices out there - the louder the volume gets the more tinny it sounds, regardless of your EQ settings.

Audio performance (like displays) is something Samsung have got near perfect so I know I am judging the Find X5 Pro on a very high standard, but all I can say is, if using the speaker is your main device use, then perhaps this isn’t the device for you (but certainly weigh your decision with the Find X5 Pros other features).

ANDROID AUTO

This might not be your use case, but is it mine - I rely on Android Auto a lot when driving, for Google Maps, YouTube Music, Audible and various EV (Electric Vehicle) apps for route planning with charging locations etc.

I had some issues using android auto on this device, although I have since found a reliable workaround - when the device is plugged in to the car, it sees the car like a PC and gives you the choice to select if you want to “charge only” or “transfer data” - selecting the latter then ensures a reliable connection to the car - selecting the former might work, but could then drop out at random times.