Sony Xperia 5 Review Rundown

At 8.2mm thick and 164 grams, the Xperia 5 is the ideal phone to slip into your pocket and not notice it's there. The screen is a reason to buy, provided you can get past the unusual ratio, which doesn't really have many uses. The glass rear panel comes in a wonderful deep red color, a blue, a stylish white/grey, and a normal black. It has the Snapdragon 855 processor, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of memory, a MicroSD card slot, water and dust resistance, and stereo speakers.

Sony uses the same camera setup in the Xperia 5 as in the larger Xperia 1. The camera app is nice and offers a professional mode where you can record in RAW format and set your parameters manually. The Xperia 5 records videos in 4K with 30 FPS or 1080p with 60 FPS. There is no headphone jack, so you must use Bluetooth.

The Xperia 5 has a 6.1-inch OLED panel, which has a 21:9 aspect ratio. The panel operates natively at 2520x1080 and achieved an average peak brightness of 599 cd/m² according to X-Rite i1Pro 2. Sony has equipped the Xperia 5 with stereo speakers that get reasonably loud and are dominated by midrange frequencies.

In daylight, the camera performed well overall, with solid color accuracy and crisp foreground details. Low-light photos are again disappointing, with shots looking muddy and flat. With good light, the Xperia 5 shoots solid 4K video, though we encountered a few skipped frames when panning. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset along with 6GB of RAM.

Sony has joined the 2019 trend of triple cameras, with wide, ultrawide and telephoto offering great flexibility for shooting. The Xperia 5 is particularly great at large, imposing subjects, and in good light you will get excellent results. The 3140mAh battery is average at best, a significantly smaller capacity than many phones at this price point. There's no wireless charging, although an 18W fast charger is included in the box.

The Sony Xperia 5 is a relatively long and thin device that's rather angular. The dimensions of the handset are 158 x 68 x 8.2mm, with a weight of 164g. The rear of the Xperia 5 houses the three cameras in a bump that's one of the thickest we've seen on a phone. The device is built around an aluminium frame, with Corning Gorilla Glass on the front and back.

The Xperia 5 has a 6.1-inch OLED screen, but in a 21:9 aspect ratio. Sony has three lenses on the back of the Xperia 5: a regular, a wide, and a 2X telephoto. Image quality is decidedly average, which, in late 2019, is actually higher praise than you might expect.

The 3,140-mAh battery inside the Sony Xperia 5 isn't particularly large among premium phones. Sony's Android skin, to its credit, adds a lot of functionality that doesn't come baked into Android by default. The phone doesn't support wireless charging — something that's quite surprising, given its glass sandwich design.

Sony has followed up on the Xperia 1 with the more compact, yet ostensibly similar, Xperia 5. It sacrifices the former phone’s large 4K display for a more manageable and affordable flagship phone. It retains its 21:9 OLED display – although a little smaller and less sharp than the iPhone 11 Pro. The Xperia 5 sacrifices a little wow factor for a little more usability – but we’re happy with the trade-off.