Oppo Find X5 Pro review, that little chip that makes a huge difference

Oppo's top of the range for 2022 builds on the successes of the model that preceded it. Oppo Find X5 Pro represents an evolution of Oppo Find X3 Pro more than a complete reinvention, which is certainly a wise choice for the company given the excellent response of the public and the media to the flagship of last year.

Oppo Find X5 Pro therefore presents itself as an elegant smartphone, with unique shapes, powerful and with an ace up its sleeve called MariSilicon X which promises to take it one step ahead of the competition.


The design of Oppo Find X5 Pro is characterised once again by what the brand last year defined as "the impossible curve". The rear body of the smartphone is in fact made from a single element that gently curves to rise in the presence of the rear cameras and protects them, without the need to use two different assembled parts.


Oppo has used ceramic as the material for the back of the Find X5 Pro.


Ceramic is generally cooler to the touch and dissipates heat to the surrounding environment much faster, while glass used in smartphones tends to cool over longer times. The ceramic is also much more resistant to scratches (hardness of 1200HV), a significant advantage for those like me who do not like to cover the beautiful modern smartphones with a cover.


Oppo Find X5 Pro has the IP68 certification which certifies the resistance against the ingress of water and dust.


There are some aspects that do not convince me of the design of this Find X5 Pro. As comfortable and really beautiful to look at, the whole device is practically impossible to keep clean . Especially in the Ceramic Black coloring, fingerprints accumulate inexorably and the shiny metal edges do not help.


A display that can adapt to each of you

Find X5 Pro's AMOLED LTPO2 panel has a diagonal of 6.7 ″ , a QHD + resolution (1440 x 3216 pixels) and is able to vary its refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz .


It has a maximum brightness of 800 nits (HBM) and 1300 nits peak , so it is very pleasant to use outdoors


The panel once again supports the display of more than a billion colors (10-bit) and is certified for viewing HDR10 + high dynamic range content.


The third camera is equipped with a 13MP sensor and f / 2.4 lenses but does not have optical stabilization. We can see that Oppo has decided to give less importance to the zoom, limited to a 2x optical magnification, compared to the other two very high quality cameras. The lack of an OIS system is felt a lot , especially in the dark, a lot more than competitors like the Xiaomi 12 Pro.


Oppo has added a calibration tool based on user perception (Munsell 100 test Hue), making Find X5 Pro enjoyable to the fullest even for those who have difficulty at various levels in distinguishing colors.


The right balance of performance / warmth

the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip is extremely powerful, very efficient in some situations but just as difficult to tame when it flexes its muscles.


Oppo seems to have chosen a very conservative processor power calibration for Find X5 Pro , but in the heat management, it is definitely among the best in the category . The smartphone hardly heats up and when it does it cools down fast enough to never be a problem.


Using the smartphone in games such as Wild Rift or Genshin Impact you will not notice absolutely any difference in performance when compared to smartphones that perhaps score slightly higher scores in the benchmarks. However, it is fair to note that Oppo has preferred to minimize the power of the chip to ensure a superior user experience for its users.


Accompanying the chip we find 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM (virtually expandable by another 7GB in case you feel the need) and 256GB of UFS 3.1 internal memory, nothing less than what we expect from modern flagships.


On the connectivity side we find Wi-Fi 6e, Bluetooth 5.2, 5G on both SIM cards and Find X5 Pro also has a USB Type-C 3.1 port , a detail not to be taken for granted as in 2022 some top of the range are still limited to USB 2.0.


The stereo audio system consists of the main speaker positioned in the lower part of the smartphone and the amplified ear capsule. The volume is good and the sound quality is in line with other modern smartphones.


Oppo Find X5 Pro gains 500mAh of battery compared to Find X3 Pro, for a total of 5000mAh available, a value in line with the market.


Fortunately, this is where the new Oppo charging technology comes into play, which allows the top of the range to regenerate itself using the 80W SuperVOOC technology thanks to the power supply included in the package. The company claims that the Find X5 Pro is capable of going from 0% to 50% charge in just 12 minutes , enough to clear low battery anxiety when you're in close proximity to the original charger.


It features AirVOOC wireless charging at 50W (proprietary base, from 0% to 100% in 47 minutes) and reverse wireless charging at 10W.

The main dual camera system does not change , once again we find two Sony IMX766 50MP sensors for the main and ultra-wide-angle cameras. The first camera this year gains a 1G + 6P lens system (one glass and six plastic lenses), able to reduce chromatic aberration by 77.39% compared to classic resin-only lenses and guarantee a yield better color coupled with the 13-channel multi-spectrum sensor . The ultra-wide angle maintains the free-form lenses we praised last year and maintains the PDAF autofocus with the possibility of taking macro photos as well.


First, the Find X5 Pro features a 5-axis optical stabilization system unique to Android smartphones on its main camera . The sensor supports the "sensor shift" technology, similar to what Apple did for the first time with the iPhone 12 Pro Max.


In addition to the traditional OIS anti-vibration system based on lens movement (2-axis stabilization), the sensor also achieves an anti-vibration and anti-rotation suspension (3-axis stabilization). Below we have deliberately made the smartphone vibrate conspicuously (exaggerating the movement) to demonstrate the stability of the image captured by Find X5 Pro:


The Oppo chip enables Ultra Night Video and HDR recording in 4K and 60fps , even if neither of these two functions is manually selectable by the user and you just have to hope the software always recognizes the most appropriate time to take advantage of these capabilities. Here Oppo could do better, leaving control to the user should it be necessary.

The camera app gets a makeover on the occasion of Oppo's collaboration with photography giant Hasselblad . Nothing new, however, it is the application that we have already known and used on the latest generation top-of-the-range OnePlus smartphones, nothing more and nothing less.

Fortunately, Oppo seems to have maintained its image processing pipeline, which is different and in my opinion better than the one present on the smartphones of the brand born under the motto “ Never Settle “, now almost completely incorporated by the parent company.