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Oppo Find X5 review

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The latest Oppo smartphone impresses.
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The Oppo Find X5 is the successor to last year’s Oppo Find X3 (confusingly, Oppo skipped the X4), which we praised as an Android powerhouse in an increasingly crowded market. Oppo is seemingly looking to win similar acclaim with the Find X5, which boasts impressive features while retaining a price-tag that undercuts its biggest rivals.

First impressions and design

The Oppo Find X5 is by no means the most exciting smartphone to look at, but it’s a well-put-together piece of hardware that feels sturdy and comfortable in hand. The rear of the handset is coated in a matte black finish that feels silky smooth and is impressively resistant to picking up fingerprints, which can’t be said for the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S22 and OnePlus 10 Pro.

You’ll also find an oddly-shaped camera array on the back of the Oppo Find X5, which houses three lenses: 50MP wide, 13MP telephoto, and 50MP ultrawide. Although it protrudes slightly from the rear of the handset, we found it didn’t affect its balance when laid flat on a table, nor did it prove too visually offensive.I

n terms of size, the Oppo Find X5 is one of the most pocket-friendly smartphones we’ve reviewed in recent months. It measures in at 160.3 x 72.6 x 8.7mm and tips the scales at a handbag-friendly 196g. This impressive svelteness is likely thanks to the super-skinny bezels surrounding the handset’s 6.5-inch screen, which make it seem much smaller than other big-screened smartphones on the market.

Unlike its Oppo Find X5 Pro sibling, there's no IP68 waterproofing or dustproofing on this model, which means it’s unlikely to withstand a dunk in the bath or any nasty falls. With that in mind, we’d recommend keeping the handset in a protective case.

Screen

The Oppo Find X5 packs a 6.5-inch 1080 x 2400 OLED screen, complete with a maximum brightness of 1,000 nits, support for HDR10+, and a top refresh rate of 120Hz. We have no complaints when it comes to the quality and brightness of the screen. And though this device is positioning itself as a “premium mid-range device”, it delivers visuals that compete with many of its bigger-name competitors, no matter whether you’re watching TV, gaming, or scrolling social media.

The display also punches above its price bracket with its sleek curved edges that appear to melt into the side of the handset, making the Oppo Find X5 feel much more expensive than it actually is.

The screen is also home to an under-display fingerprint sensor, which sits where your thumb naturally rests when picking up the handset. This worked efficiently during our time with the Oppo Find X5, though you also have the option of setting up face unlock instead.

Camera

Although it’s the standard model in the Find X5 range, the handset packs a near-identical camera system to the Find X5 Pro. You’ll find a 50MP main camera, a 13MP 2x optical zoom telephoto, and lens, and a 50MP ultra-wide lens with a 110-degree field of view. However, what you won’t find is the five-axis stabilisation system that ensures shake-free recording, as this remains exclusive to the higher-end model.

You’ll unlikely miss this feature too much, as we were very impressed by the Find X5’s cameras. Picture quality was pin-sharp in a variety of lighting conditions, and images didn’t appear over-sharpened or over-saturated as can be the case with some high-end smartphones.

We weren’t quite so wowed by the telephoto lens, which offers 2x optical or 5x hybrid. Although it can capture crisp images at 2x zoom when shot in good lighting, we found it struggled in poorer lighting, resulting in often grainy images.

If you hadn’t guessed due to the unmissable logos emblazoned on the rear of the Find X5, Oppo has also partnered with Hasselblad to add some new shooting modes and software add-ons, such as Hasselblad filters and a handful of new shooting modes and software tweaks. You can apply unique Hasselblad filters to your shots, as well as shoot in a letterbox-style XPAN mode.

Performance and battery life

Under the hood, the Oppo Find X5 packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, last year’s flagship mobile CPU from Qualcomm. However, for those after blazing fast performance, it’s worth noting that the Oppo Find X5 Pro features a Qualcomm Snapdragon Gen 1, which means it may be the better choice for heavy users.

However, although it isn’t the highest-spec handset in the Find X5 series, we didn’t run into any performance issues whatsoever. The handset showed no signs of slowing down no matter what we threw at it, from browsing and sending emails to playing graphically intense games. In Geekbench 5, the Oppo Find X5 racked up single-core and multi-core scores of 801 and 3,362, respectively, putting it roughly on par with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.

We didn’t have any issues when it came to battery life, either. The Oppo Find X5 comes with a 4,800mAh capacity battery, which we found easily lasted an entire day, typically into a second. On average, we found ourselves with at least 30% battery life at the end of each day.

You have a number of options when it comes to recharging. While last year’s Oppo Find X3 Pro offered 65W fast charging, the Find X5 boasts 80W charging, fast 30W wireless charging, and even reverse 10W charging. That means smaller gadgets like Bluetooth earbuds can be re-juiced by placing them on the rear of the handset. The handset is incredibly fast to charge, though it doesn’t come with the 50W wireless charging of the Pro-branded model.

On the software front, the Oppo Find X5 ships with Android 12 with ColorOS on top. We’re not huge fans of Oppo’s custom Android skin, particularly due to the number of unwanted apps that come pre-installed on the device (Amazon Shopping, Booking.com, Linkedin, DuckDuckGo, TikTok, and more). However, while we prefer the sleekness of the stock Android experience on Google’s Pixel smartphones, it’s worth noting that it’s easy enough to customise the UI to suit your tastes.

Value and verdict

The Oppo Find X5 is priced at an impressively competitive ÂŁ749, which is not only ÂŁ300 cheaper than the Find X5 Pro but also hundreds of pounds cheaper than the likes of the Galaxy S22 and iPhone 13.

It’s competitively-specced, too, and during our time with the Oppo Find X5, we had few complaints. Performance is great, the screen is among the best we’ve tested, and battery life is more than enough to see you through a full day of use. Of course, it’s not without its niggles, and the lack of IP68 waterproofing and its somewhat overbearing ColorOS UI is sure to put some prospective buyers off.

If you can look past these minor faults, however, we think the Oppo Find X5 is a brilliant phone that gives its bigger-name rivals a run for their money.

Check out our best Oppo phone deals.