OPPO Find X5 series buyer's guide: All you need to know about OPPO's flagships

The Find X5 and Find X5 Pro are OPPO’s first set of flagship phones for 2022. They succeed the company’s Find X3 series from last year, bringing a whole bunch of upgrades to the table. OPPO has also announced the cheaper Find X5 Lite which is a mid-range 5G phone with a MediaTek processor.

OPPO is once again banking on the imaging skills of the phones to set them apart from other premium phones. Both the Find X5 and Find X5 Pro take advantage of OPPO’s first in-house imaging chip and its partnership with Swedish camera-maker Hasselblad. Of course, you’ll also see hardware upgrades in the form of new processors, faster charging, a tweaked design, and much more.

Read on to know everything about the OPPO Find X5 series, from specs to unique features, pricing, availability, and more.

See also: Best Android phones you can buy right now

OPPO Find X5 series: At a glance

The Find X5 and Find X5 Pro represent the best OPPO has to offer right now. While the Pro model gets Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, the vanilla Find X5 makes do with the Snapdragon 888 chip that also powered the Find X3 Pro and is still plenty powerful.

That said, both the new premium phones get OPPO’s custom imaging chip — the MariSilicon X. It’s built to run OPPO’s AI imaging algorithms and promises immense gains in low-light photography as well as video shooting.

Another feather in OPPO’s cap this year is color calibration tech from Hasselblad. Just like its stablemate OnePlus, OPPO has joined forces with the legendary camera company for tweaking the photography skills of its Find series flagships at least for the next three years.

The Find X5 flagship duo also bring a ton of other improvements this year. OPPO has included its trademark 80W SuperVOOC charging on the phones. You even get bigger batteries compared to last year.

Unfortunately, the OPPO Find X5 and X5 Pro won’t go on sale in the US. Just in case you end up importing the phones, you’ll be happy to know that they now support the n13, n18, and n25 (Find X5 Pro only) 5G bands which are used by a number of North American carriers.

Meanwhile, the OPPO Find X5 Lite brings the MediaTek Dimensity 900 5G SoC to the table. The rest of its specs are largely the same as the Find X3 Lite that came before it.

Are the OPPO Find X5 and Find X5 Pro worth buying?

The OPPO phones offer up all the specs you expect from premium flagships. A fast 120Hz display, the best processors in the market, sizeable batteries, and a fancy camera setup.

The phones also look pretty great, especially the Find X5 Pro with its ceramic finish. The vanilla Find X5 doesn’t get the ceramic back but has a matte glass texture that looks pretty slick and should help keep fingerprints at bay.

But while everything looks good on paper, the OPPO Find X5 and X5 Pro have a few irksome qualities.

For one, the standard Find X5 model doesn’t get an IP68 rating, or any other official rating for water and dust protection. That’s something we don’t expect from a flagship device in 2022.

As for the cameras, both phones get dual 50MP shooters and a 13MP telephoto lens. OPPO has simply removed the 60x 3MP microlens from the mix and honestly, it’s not something we miss. What’s sad is that once again there’s no periscope zoom camera on the Find X5 series, like the one we saw on the OPPO Find X2 Pro. According to OPPO, there was simply no space to accommodate a periscope lens on the phones. Same excuse as last year.

That said, despite a few flaws, the OPPO Find X5 and Find X5 Pro are pretty good phones. You can expect solid day-to-day performance with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 888 SoCs. The phones also click good photos provided you don’t mind a bit of color oversaturation and oversharpening. Software-wise, Color OS 12 provides plenty of options for customization while keeping the best features of Android 12.

All-in-all, the new OPPO flagships aren’t a bad bet, especially if you want something that looks unique. You could definitely consider putting down your hard-earned cash for one of the two phones, but if you want the best of the best in the premium smartphone space, there are more well-rounded devices out there for a similar price.

What experts are saying about the OPPO Find X5 Pro

Android Authority’s own Robert Triggs found a lot to love about the Find X5 Pro, such as the sci-fi-like design, fantastic display, high-end performance, speedy charging, and solid battery life. However, OPPO’s partnership with Hasselblad and its new Marisilicon X NPU have failed to give the cameras the edge that’s needed to beat out the competition in the camera phone stakes.

Overall, Robert feels that the Find X5 Pro brings small improvements over its predecessor rather than anything revolutionary, but called it a “wonderfully imperfect phone here for those who can get on board with OPPO’s futuristic vision.”

Our verdict: OPPO Find X5 Pro review

What other reviewers from around the web are saying

Engadget’s Mat Smith says that the OPPO Find X5 Pro looks great. He tested the 4K Ultra Night Video on the phone and thought that it helps to amplify detail in the dimmest situations, but the NPU hasn’t translated to 4K video notably better than its competition.

Android Police’s Alex Dobie found the design of the Find X5 Pro to be slippery. He appreciated Color OS 12 features like the quick-access shortcut bar, the flexible windowed mode for apps, and the quick launch carousel. He said that the real strength of the Find X5 Pro camera is its low-light capabilities.

OPPO Find X5, Find X5 Pro, Find X5 Lite specs

MariSilicon X

Both the OPPO Find X5 and Find X5 Pro feature OPPO’s MariSilicon X NPU for AI imaging smarts. It’s not a full-fledged SoC like the Snapdragon or Exynos processors out there. Instead, it combines image signal processing (ISP), a neural processing unit (NPU), and memory components into a chip built for AI imaging. Essentially, OPPO aims to improve the quality of images and videos shot by the Find X5 duo using its machine learning algorithms.

Designed on a 6nm process, MariSilicon X runs an AI noise reduction algorithm designed by OPPO. The company claims it can detect and reduce noise in each frame while preserving finer details, skin tone, and color accuracy. In our experience, however, the phone tends to oversaturate colors. A high level of artificial sharpening in post-processing is also an issue.

Elsewhere, the MariSilicon X chip also facilitates improved night-time images and 4K videos, real-time live previews, and 4K ultra-dynamic range video. You can read about OPPO’s new NPU in detail here.

Are the Find X5 Pro cameras good?

OPPO is posing the Find X5 and Find X5 Pro as its most powerful photography phones. Both of them feature an identical camera configuration that includes two 50MP Sony IMX 766 sensors (wide and ultrawide) and a 13MP telephoto shooter with 2x optical zoom. OPPO has also equipped the phones with an improved 13 channel color sensor.

Also see: The best camera phones you can buy

Our own Robert Triggs thought the Find X5 Pro was good for regular daylight photography. Details and exposure are decent with the two 50MP cameras and the 2x telephoto shooter also performs well in brightly-lit conditions. However, the latter doesn’t produce details as clean as the larger sensors.

If you like colors popping in your photographs, you might like the oversaturated images the Pro model takes. In our review, Robert noted that he would rather dial in the colors in post-processing than be stuck with them for good. You can see below how the hay bale shows oversaturated colors across the browns, blues, and greens of the scene. The second and third image samples below also show clipping as a result of the color processing, while the last one shows oversharpening.

The zoom performs well in daylight at 3x and can extend to 5x without losing a lot of detail. However, Robert wasn’t impressed with 10x snaps or beyond and thought that the phone can’t match the likes of the Galaxy S22 Ultra.

The main thing that improved with the camera this year is low-light photography. OPPO’s custom ISP does a good job of multi-frame capture and low-noise processing. Robert’s review noted that even in very low lux (second shot below), you can spot plenty of details. The stary sky scene was captured in just three seconds compared to nearly 10 on the Pixel 6 Pro. The Find X5 Pro can indeed shoot in complete darkness.

How is the battery life of the OPPO Find X5 Pro?

The Find X5 comes with a 4,800mAh battery, while the Pro model dials it up to 5,000mAh. Both devices feature OPPO’s 80W SuperVOOC wired charging. Wireless charging standards vary across the series, though. The vanilla variant is capped at 30W AirVOOC charging, while the Pro gets 50W wireless charging.

In our experience, the Find X5 Pro’s dual-cell 5,000mAh battery easily lasts a full day for power users. Lighter users may even go into a second day. Robert got about six to eight hours of heavy use and 10 hours of video streaming from the phone.

Oppo’s SuperVOOC charging takes the Find X5 Pro from 0% to 100% in just 32 minutes. If you’re in a hurry, you can extract a 25% charge in just five minutes. OPPO rates the battery of the Find X5 Pro good for 1,600 full cycle charges, double the 800 cycle lifespan of its previous models.

OPPO also corrected a major omission from last year. At least the Find X5 Pro charges with USB Power Delivery plugs, albeit at an 18W speed. This is a big improvement from the sub-10W charging we saw on the Find X3 Pro and ensures that the handset will charge better with third-party accessories.

We haven’t tested the battery capacity on the regular Find X5. However, the charging time should be almost comparable, if not a bit faster than the Pro model.

OPPO Find X5 and Find X5 Pro: Software and updates

The Find X5 series ships with Android 12 and OPPO’s Color OS 12.1 build. Robert noted in his review that theming is consistent across the UI, showing great attention to detail. He also observed that Color OS is a very deep skin, in that it has a wide range of options for you to discover and tweak.

Moreover, Color OS 12 implements one of the best features of Android 12 — Dynamic theming. So the phones automatically pull colors from your wallpaper and apply them across the various notifications, system toggles, and more.

That said, Color OS 12 has its problems. It keeps recommending apps from OPPO’s proprietary app store and that’s a nuisance. Pre-installed apps are also abundant, taking away from the overall experience of the software.

OPPO has promised three years of OS updates and four years of monthly security patches for the Find X5 and X5 Pro. That’s not as much as Samsung’s promise of four OS upgrades, but it’s not bad either.

OPPO announced in May 2022 that the Android 13 beta 1 will be available for developers on the Find X5 Pro. A few months later, Color OS 13 made its official debut, bringing a new “aquamorphic design language” inspired by the latest version of Android. Find X5 and Find X5 Pro devices across more regions started receiving stable Color OS 13 in mid-September.

What are some good OPPO Find X5 series alternatives?

The OPPO Find X5 series faces stiff competition in the flagship space.

The Find X5 Pro goes up against Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra if you just consider the common Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. However, the camera package isn’t as robust as the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It’s good, but not worth the premium OPPO is charging. The Xiaomi 12 Pro and OnePlus 10 Pro are also worthy alternatives to the Find X5 Pro on paper, but we haven’t had the chance to review them. For the money OPPO is asking, you can even consider the Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max or iPhone 14 Pro Max if you’re good with iOS over Android.

Meanwhile, the Find X5 goes up against a sea of Snapdragon 888 flagships from last year. You have the Galaxy S21 series, the Mi 11 series, the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro, and more. You can even consider OPPO’s own Find X3 Pro which has a higher resolution display and virtually the same camera setup.

Pricing and availability

The Find X5 and Find X5 Pro will be available in the UK from March 24, with the Find X5 Pro starting at £1,049 (~$1,200) and Find X5 at £749 (~$855). OPPO also launched the Find X5 Lite which will be available at £419 (~$480).

In Europe, the Find X5 will debut at €999, while the Find X5 Pro will cost €1,299.

Below is a list of countries where the phones will officially go on sale.

OPPO Find X5 Pro availability: China, Germany, UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Egypt.

OPPO Find X5 availability: China, Germany, UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Egypt, and UAE.

Top OPPO Find X5 questions and answers

Help other readers out