OPPO Find X5 Pro 5G review: premium, loaded, unavailable

Over the past couple of years or so, quite a few smartphone brands have moved up the price ladder into the premium flagship space. Xiaomi with its high-end Mi series, Vivo with its X series, and more recently, even iQOO with its 9 Pro, are some brands who’ve started giving the likes of Apple and Samsung a run for their money in the premium league. Not OPPO though. OPPO’s Find series of flagships hasn’t made its way to India for a while now, and it doesn’t look like the scenario will change anytime soon. I got the new OPPO Find X5 Pro 5G to try out, but it seems the company has no immediate plans to launch it in India. That’s quite unfortunate since the phone does score quite high on most aspects. On paper, it seems to have it all — ceramic-clad body, top-of-the-line Snapdragon chipset, Hasselblad-branded cameras, a quad HD 120Hz AMOLED display, 80W superfast charging — basically, the works. Let’s get a closer look.

Verdict

The Find X5 Pro is a loaded flagship overall, but doesn’t really have any extra-special features to talk about. That said, its ceramic body is a treat to look at and hold, and the phone also scores high on cameras and performance. Do note that the phone isn’t available to buy in India officially yet. 

The lowdown

Clad in white, the Find X5 Pro looks gorgeous, and its ceramic body gives it a luxurious look and feel that really can’t be matched. The camera module at the back protrudes out of the body, but the bump merges with the chassis so seamlessly that the entire back panel feels like a single, uninterrupted slab of ceramic. Then there’s the screen on front that curves into the metal frame on the sides.

The left spine holds discrete volume keys, while the right is home to the power button. The bottom is where you’d find the Type-C port, speaker and SIM tray. The phone tips the scales at over 200 grams, and does weigh down the hand a bit, while its smooth finish makes it a tad slippery as well. Worth mentioning that there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack, but the phone is IP68 certified and impervious to dust and water. 

The 6.7-inch quad HD AMOLED display is of the LTPO variety and can go between 1Hz and 120Hz as and when required. It’s pretty capable too, and thanks to 1,300 nits of peak brightness, gets sufficiently bright as well. HDR10+ is supported, and the display produces crisp, vibrant colours, doing its bit to add to the premium usage experience. There are a ton of customisation options at your disposal if you want to customise the viewing experience, and this includes an ambient colour temperature mode, choosing between vivid, natural or pro for colours, with the pro mode itself including cinematic and brilliant colour options, an eye comfort mode, and more. OPPO also provides something called 01 Ultra Vision Engine which gives you an option to sharpen the images and enhance video colours, and there’s a Bright HDR video mode as well. Suffice it to say that you won’t be left wanting for more when it comes to the screen capabilities.

The same applies to the camera department as well. The Hasselblad-tuned snappers include a 50MP primary sensor with OIS, a 50MP ultra-wide and a 13MP telephoto that can do 2X optical zoom. On the front, hidden inside the punch hole on the top left, is a 32MP selfie shooter. One of the headlining aspects of the Find X5 Pro’s camera setup is the new MariSilicon X NPU chip that OPPO has added, promising better machine learning and computational photography. It’s tough to say how well it works, but the results speak for themselves. The Find X5 Pro is an excellent shooter regardless of lighting conditions.



In daylight, the shots turn out crisp, sharp and laden with detail and good dynamic range. The ultra-wide shots are excellent too, with even sharpness across the frame and barely any distortion. The 2X telephoto zoom lens does leave a little something to be desired though, especially when pitted against rivals. The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is unbeatable when it comes to zoomed shots. The Find X5 Pro also can’t match up in terms of overall video capabilities, an area where the iPhone 13 Pro takes unassailable lead. On the positive side, low-light shots captured by the Find X5 Pro are excellent. I can’t say they’re true to life because apparently the phone can see more than the naked eye, and churns out shots that can be a tad bit oversaturated at times, showing colour and vibrancy even with minimal lighting. The dedicated night mode, in fact, doesn’t really seem to add anything extra to the output. The 32MP front camera can do decent selfies, though at the cost of a bit of overprocessing. In a nutshell, the OPPO Find X5 Pro might not really be the best camera phone out there, but can still hold its own when compared to other premium flagships. 

From a software standpoint, the phone runs ColorOS 12.1, with Android 12 as base. The overall look of the UI isn’t too different from stock Android, though you do get tons of tweaks and customisation options. There’s a fair bit of bloatware preloaded, and most of It can be uninstalled. A few software features worth special mention include the ability to run apps as floating windows, a customisable sidebar, a system cloner that gives you a separate space to segregate your apps and data, customisable system haptics, and a smart driving mode. 

With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC under the hood, performance is top-notch, as expected. The phone comes with 12 gigs of RAM, and 256GB UFS 3.1 storage. Needless to say, day-to-day tasks are handled with aplomb and general usage is extremely smooth. The phone keeps its cool when stressed and can handle intensive games with ease too. However, the benchmark numbers are generally a tad lower than what we’ve seen on other SD 8 Gen 1-powered phones. The CPU Throttling test shows that the phone throttles to 83 percent levels after half an hour of testing, though that doesn’t seem to have an impact on usage as such. The 5,000mAh battery turns in good numbers and can last the entire day with ease. With the screen set to high refresh rate and QHD resolution, PCMark’s battery test logged a little over 13 hours, indicating how good the battery is. 80W fast charging support juices up the phone fully in about 35 minutes flat. There’s support for 50W wireless charging as well, and the phone even offers reverse wireless charging.

Final Verdict

It’s tough to put a handle on whether the OPPO Find X5 Pro makes for a good buy or not, simply because the phone hasn’t been launched in India and doesn’t carry an official Indian sticker price. You can’t just walk out and buy it from a store. If the global pricing of the phone is any indication, it’s likely to cost a shade over Rs 1 lakh, putting it squarely against rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (review) and the iPhone 13 Pro (review). It’s not as if the Find X5 Pro is perfect… it does have its share of issues. The telephoto sensor could have been better, there’s a ton of bloatware and there’s no feature that screams for attention. And at that price, it could face an uphill battle against the likes of the Galaxy S22 Ultra. That said, the Find X5 is a truly loaded smartphone that scores high on design, display and features, and it’s disappointing the phone isn’t available to buy officially. 

Editor’s rating: 4 / 5

Pros:

• Luxurious look and feel
• Smooth performance
• Lovely screen
• Capable main camera

Cons: 

• Slippery and heavy
• Cameras could use more zoom
• Bloatware

Competitors for Oppo Find X5 Pro 5G

Oppo Find X5 Pro 5G

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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

Oppo Find X5 Pro 5G

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Apple iPhone 13 Pro

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