Oppo Find X5 Pro with its MariSilicon X NPU looks like an interesting phone and is definitely a step in the right direction for Oppo. It is a flagship in the truest form, and can easily take on the might of the iPhones and Galaxy S22 Ultras of the world. Sadly, it won't be able to do so in India as Oppo has no plans to launch the device in the country any time soon.
Building on the success of the Find X3 Pro, Oppo recently launched the Find X5 Pro in select markets across the globe — India, unfortunately, isn't part of the list. As the company's latest flagship, the Find X5 Pro comes with a host of interesting features, including support for 150W super-fast charging and more. But that's not where the device stops showing off. It also hides beneath the surface of Oppo's new MariSilicon X (NPU) which Oppo claims helps drastically improve the low light performance of the Find X5 Pro's camera system. But, does it actually do so? Well, let's find out in our review of the Oppo Find X5 Pro.
Make no mistake, the Oppo Find X5 Pro is more than just a thing of beauty. In fact, it looks more like a thing of luxury. One glance at it, and I was sure this makes the list of one of the most beautifully designed smartphones I've tested to date. This is mostly down to the fact that Oppo's designed this phone to be a looker, and that's something clear the moment you set your eyes on the device. It has an interesting curvy ceramic rear panel that houses a camera module that's again one of the best takes on a camera module design we've seen on a phone.
Unlike many of its competitors, the Find X5 Pro's design does not feel mechanical. Its curves and cuts feel very natural, and thanks to the polished back, the phone just looks and feels more expensive than it actually is. Another good design decision on Oppo's part is that they've kept things really clean and minimalistic with the Find X5 Pro's design. As such, the back panel only features the finely machined camera module and in addition to it, just the Oppo and Hasselblad branding.
This back panel melts into the phone's metallic frame, which in turn, melts into the Find X5 Pro's front display. This is a beautiful 6.7-inch 120hz panel with support for 240hz touch sampling rate. In our tests, we found the display going slightly over 1000 nits in high brightness mode. However, Oppo claims the panel can touch 1300 nits while displaying HDR content. In our tests, we found the Find X5 Pro's display to be quite colour accurate in the Natural preset. However, when set to the Vivid profile which is tasked to cover the wider DCI-P3 colour gamut, the colour accuracy of the display does go for a toss.
Underneath the hood, the Oppo Find X5 Pro+ hides a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor that is paired with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space. This is a configuration we've recently seen on a few other flagship phones as well. And much like them, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip remains a mixed bag on the Find X5 Pro as well.
The chipset does not hit stable peaks and instead, its performance in the CPU Throttling test remained all over the place, as the chip creates some level of extra heat. The performance was nothing to be alarmed about, but the phone did drop to about 85 per cent of its performance during the test. While it's true that the Find X5 Pro offers powerful performance, along with an overall enjoyable gaming experience thanks to its rich feature set, it does not manage to do it consistently across the board for all games or for that matter benchmarks.
For example, while gaming, the Find X5 Pro handled demanding titles like Call of Duty 5 and Asphalt 9 Legends relatively well, but did show signs of frame dips during a session of Genshin Impact. Unlike the first two titles, the phone did not display consistent performance, with frame rates dropping in between.
The benchmark results of the Find X5 Pro were also nothing to get too excited about, with the throwing up lower scores than phones we've tested in the past in some of the benchmarks. In both AnTuTu, Geekbench and 3DMark WildLife scores, the performance was not as we had expected, while the results in some others were even worse than phones such as the ROG Phone 5s which is powered by last year's Snapdragon 888+ SoC. On the Find X5 Pro, the issue appears to be poor thermal management, with the phone also getting a little hot after a long gaming session or even during benchmark testing.
This thermal performance did have an impact on the battery performance of the device, with the phone losing charge really quickly once it got a little hot. But when running at manageable temperatures, the phone did offer good performance in the battery department. At the heart of this performance is the Find X5 Pro's big 5,000mAh pack, which on moderate use offers good standby and screen-on time. We got about two days of use from the phone when we used the phone moderately, with increasing gaming on the device being the only thing bringing down the battery of the phone drastically. However, it is to be noted that during our test, we set the phone to run on FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, instead of maxing it out at QHD+ resolution.
But one of the phone's biggest strengths only comes into play when the battery levels on the Find X5 Pro dip. Yes, we're talking about the support for 150W SuperVOOC fast charging. When charged in ideal conditions, this new charging technology filled up our Find X5 Pro to about 50 per cent in about 13 minutes and about 100 per cent in 32 minutes. These are impressive numbers, but when compared to what devices like the OnePlus 9 Pro or the yet-to-be-launched OnePlus 10 Pro do, the gains do not look as substantial.
Moving on to the camera performance of the Oppo Find X5 Pro, the device comes with a 50-megapixel primary lens with support for a five-axis optical image stabilisation system. There's also another 50-megapixel lens, but this one is used as a wide-angle camera. Last, but not least, there's a 13-megapixel telephoto lens as well which can click up to 2x optically zoomed photos.
This hardware is backed by Oppo's MariSilicon X Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which paired with the colour tuning algorithm by Hasselblad promises to improve colour balance and overall results in low light scenarios. The reality, however, is a little detached from Oppo's claims.
Yes, it's true the camera system on the Find X5 Pro can click really good shots when fed with enough natural light. However, the low light performance of the device is not comparable to the results achieved by the likes of the iPhone 13 Pro, or for the matter the Galaxy S22 Ultra. But that's not to say the performance in the low light scenarios on the Find X5 Pro is bad. All we're saying is the performance could have been better.
The ultra-wide lens on the Find X5 Pro is quite impressive, with the lens clicking shots with plenty of details in them. But overall, shots from this lens come out fine in daytime conditions, with low-light images leaving a little to be desired. The telephoto lens on the device is our least favourite one from the set-up. But, that's not a consequence of the poor performance of the lens. Rather, it's because of just how little usability telephoto lenses offer in general.
First things first, the Oppo Find X5 Pro is not available for purchase in India and at the moment Oppo has no plans of launching it in the country as well. As such, this verdict is not going to be buying advice, and the scope of this verdict will be limited to giving you an idea of why the Find X5 Pro is good and it's not good.
To begin with, the Oppo Find X5 Pro is a gorgeous phone, one that could arguably pass off as the best-looking phone to have launched in the recent past. In fact, it's such a well-designed phone, that its looks alone can be a reason to buy the Find X5 Pro. Then, there's the fact that it offers really fast 150W fast charging and also hides beneath the surface flagship-grade hardware in the form of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. The cameras on the phone are also positive, with the Find X5 Pro generally clicking really impressive shots using its primary lens. And did I forget about the display? Yes, to complete the package the Find X5 Pro also has one of the most colour accurate panels on a phone right now.
But for all that's good about the Find X5 Pro, we also get a phone that's a little heavy to hold and is also slippery at the same time. Its ColorOS 12 based software is also not the easiest to use and as we found out in our review, the phone does have a tendency of heating up a little when tasked to run heavy-duty applications.
Nonetheless, the Oppo Find X5 Pro with its MariSilicon X NPU still looks like a step in the right direction. It is a flagship in the truest form, and can easily take on the might of the iPhones and Galaxy S22 Ultras of the world. Sadly, it won't be able to do so in India as Oppo has no plans to launch the device in the country any time soon.