Flagship smartphones sit in the space where they don’t just have to look good; they need to offer the best possible features. In OPPO’s case, it brings its best tech into the Find series. The OPPO Find X5 Pro, its latest entry, doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel too much. In fact, it’s a bit more of a refinement of last year’s model. But we’ll dive deeper into that in this hands-on story. If you want to learn more, then read on.
Distinctive design
The OPPO Find X5 Pro features a distinctive look that we got a glimpse at when OPPO launched the Find X3 Pro last year. It still features that unique, curved ceramic design made with a single pane of mirrored glass that curves up, around, and over the camera module. It comes off as a device that would fit right in a sci-fi film. If I saw this in a Star Trek show or movie, I wouldn’t find it too out of place.
It has sharper angles around the camera module, which serve a purpose that’s more than just an aesthetic choice. The slope is meant for resting your index finger when shooting in landscape. It also means you won’t accidentally block the lenses when shooting this way.
The Find X5 Pro isn’t a phone for those with dainty hands. Or at least it’ll be a two-handed device for you. With a large 6.7-inch display, it will take some maneuvering to use with one hand. It’s not the lightest smartphone either. The ceramic back means it comes in a bit heavy at 218g. I didn’t feel any strain from using it, but that might be different for others.
The Glaze Black and this Ceramic White model I’m testing have this ceramic finish, which OPPO says makes the phone a bit more durable. The display is also protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. And the phone itself has an IP68 rating which should keep it safe from some dust and water damage.
I heard that the Glaze Black is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but thankfully the Ceramic White version isn’t the same, or at least it’s able to mask smudges from my hands. And that comes in handy because I prefer using this phone without a case. The OPPO Find X5 Pro is probably one of the few phones I’m comfortable using without the case. It’s so pretty, and the included jelly case didn’t seem as premium as I thought it would. It looks a bit like your typical opaque silicon case, which kind of does the phone’s design a disservice.
Display built for consumption
One of the features I enjoy on the OPPO Find X5 Pro is its large display. With a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen, it’s on the larger side for recent flagship phones. And it comes with all the bells and whistles you come to expect from a flagship phone that’s come out in 2022.
It has a 3,216 x 1,440 WQHD+ display with a 20:9 aspect ratio, HDR support, and an LTPO panel with a variable refresh rate from 1Hz to 120Hz. You may or may not be familiar with the jargon. Basically, you can expect a high resolution, detailed, crisp display with excellent color coverage and contrast. Having a variable refresh rate means you get smooth animations while optimizing your battery in certain instances. The refresh rate can vary depending on what app or activity you’re doing on the phone. So, if you’re just replying to messages, it won’t take you to that full 120Hz. This way, it helps lengthen your battery’s life.
If there’s one thing I’m not too fond of with the OPPO Find X5 Pro, it’s the slight curve off the sides of the display. It’s not as deep as the old Samsung Galaxy Edge phones or even the vivo X80 I have for test. I don’t like the feel of touching the display on the sides, and there are some visible shadows when you’re in an app with a light background. In my case, it annoys me a bit when I’m reading an e-book.
I like the colors to come out on the vivid, punchy side, so I tend to use options like the Vivid mode on the Find X5 Pro. But there are other screen color settings to choose from, including a Cinematic mode that uses Display P3. That mode supposedly offers a more faithful color reproduction. A Brilliant mode also claims to use the widest color gamut for a brighter color display.
Regarding audio, you have a stereo speaker setup which we’ve expected and gladly got on this phone. The audio quality is pretty clear, but as expected from a smartphone, it won’t be bass-heavy. But it will come in handy if you’re just holding the phone and watching something or you’re alone in your room or office. Of course, you can opt for listening via wireless earbuds or if you have earphones that connect through the USB-C port. Unsurprisingly, there is no audio jack here.
LiTT Tip #1: With a high-quality display, OPPO offers some options to improve content quality on the Find X5 Pro. To get sharper, more vivid colors in photos and videos, head to Settings, then Display & brightness. Scroll down to O1 Ultra Vision Engine and then enable Image Sharpener, Video color enhancer, and Bright HDR video mode. The phone will warn you that these modes might eat up more battery. But if you prefer better quality visuals, you would accept that tradeoff.
Reliable performance
Another hallmark feature of the OPPO Find X5 Pro is a 2022 flagship phone is what powers it. It runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, which is the latest processor for flagships (the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 was just recently launched). That’s paired with what I’d consider an excessive 12GB of RAM and 256GB of non-expandable storage. I forgot to mention you can even increase RAM up to 7GB extra with a RAM expansion feature on this phone. I would prefer getting extra storage instead of RAM. But then again, I feel like I’m representing the more casual smartphone user, so others might find more use out of this spec’d out phone.
And the Find X5 Pro hasn’t let me down throughout testing. I can efficiently multitask and switch between apps. It breezes through whatever task I throw at it. I could easily create and edit content for our socials, check on said content, browse, stream my favorite shows and movies, indulge in casual gaming, and more.
This handset ships with Android 12 skinned with OPPO’s ColorOS 12.1. You get Android 12 features like an icon that alerts you when the camera and microphone are in use, the privacy dashboard, and even tweaking interface colors with a palette based on your wallpaper. OPPO promises three years of Android OS updates and an extra year for security patches, so you could potentially get up to Android 15. Android phone manufacturers still have a long way to go when delivering consistent software updates, but this is one of the better promises.
I tend to shoot outdoors to get better lighting, and the Find X5 Pro could handle that without excessive heating. I’ve had other phones crumble under that pressure, but this took it like a champ. I could attribute that to the 75% larger vapor chamber to help with cooling. It will get warm sometimes but not any more than I’d expect. As the title of this section, this is one reliable device.
That reliability extends to the cameras. It loses the fun and quirky microlens on the Find X3 Pro. Instead, you get a pair of 50-megapixel primary and ultra-wide cameras, a 13-megapixel telephoto lens, and a 32-megapixel selfie camera. There’s no periscope zoom here either. But you can zoom in up to 20x for both photos and video. Of course, the more you zoom in, the more the quality will look like an oil painting.
OPPO’s reasoning for this camera setup is they wanted to focus on image quality and low light performance. The Find X5 Pro gets the company’s first in-house silicon, the MariSilicon X NPU. It’s an additional 6nm chip explicitly designed for image processing, which the company says is at the heart of its camera’s performance.
There are also software tweaks brought about by a collaboration between OPPO and Hasselblad. You might have heard of the renowned camera maker. The interface will look familiar if you’ve used a OnePlus 9 or 9 Pro. The default camera app gets the signature Hasselblad orange accents and distinctive shutter sound. It also gets color filters from the company and the XPan mode that shoots in the unique 65:24 aspect ratio. As far as I know, there aren’t any hardware changes as a result of the partnership, but maybe that’ll change in the next Find X device.
It’s not tough to get excellent photos in well-lit scenarios. The images come out sharp and detailed. The color appears consistent even when I switch between the lenses. It’s an easy camera to whip out when I need it.
But what about in low light? You can get some shareable photos, even if you shoot handheld. There are plenty of details you can get, but sometimes you will get light sources that look over-exposed. One solution to this is using the dedicated night mode.
The OPPO Find X5 Pro’s camera setup won’t leave you hanging. That reliability is crucial for a device that costs as much as this does. Here’s how it performs when you make short-form videos on social media. (We have some selfie video samples here and our in-app test on Instagram and TikTok, too.)
This handset is built for a day’s use and possibly a bit the next morning. Even with a large capacity 5,000mAh battery, the high specs on this phone mean it’ll burn quickly through your battery. But you get flagship-worthy charging features like 80W wired and 50W wireless charging support. OPPO includes a Battery Health Engine that works to protect the battery while charging. According to the company, the Find X5 Pro can retain 80% of its total capacity after 1,600 charging cycles. Of course, I can’t test that claim now, but it’s something to think about.
LiTT Tip #2: If you still find 12GB of RAM lacking for some reason, the OPPO Find X5 Pro supports RAM expansion, too. Head to Settings, then scroll down to About device. Tap on RAM and enable RAM expansion from there. You can choose between 3GB, 5GB, and 7GB options.
LiTT Tip #3: Help combat battery aging with this tip. Open Settings, then scroll to Battery. Select Advanced settings, then enable Optimized night charging. This will allow the OPPO Find X5 Pro to learn from your daily charging routine and control charging speeds (especially if you do it at night) to avoid overcharging.
What’s lit and what’s not?
What’s lit about it:
- Cool, futuristic design
- Vivid display built for consuming content
- Color modes and color temperature adjustment
- Decent stereo speaker setup for solo listening
- Top-of-the-line 2022 flagship phone processor and RAM
- Up to 3 years of OS updates, 4 years of security patches
- Excellent heat management
- Versatile camera setup
- Fast charging support
What needs the extra spark:
- Needs a better-looking jelly case
- Curved display causes shadows to appear on the edges
- No headphone jack, unfortunately (this con is for you audiophiles or those who prefer wired earphones)
- Missing external storage expansion
- Wanting more out of that Hasselblad partnership
- Powerful specs mean it eats through the battery
Final thoughts
The OPPO Find X5 Pro has one of my favorite smartphone designs of the year. It’s sleek and beautiful with a side of unusual. On top of that, it’s a flagship phone you can rely on to deliver most of what you want. It has a great display, stable performance, excellent charging speed, and versatile camera.
I can’t say it’s above other flagship devices out there. But being able to perform well in the aspects mentioned above makes it a pretty good all-around premium phone. And for some, that’s more than enough.
The OPPO Find X5 Pro retails for EUR 1,299.
Will you pick up the OPPO Find X5 Pro? Let us know your thoughts on social media!