Skip to main content

Sony Xperia 5 hands-on review: Compact, colorful, but not quite a winner

sony xperia 5 review red
Andy Boxall/DigitalTrends
Sony Xperia 5 hands-on review: Compact, colorful, but not quite a winner
MSRP $800.00
“Sony's Xperia 5 wins us over with its design and size; but there are concerns over the camera and a true reason to buy.”
Pros
  • Compact, stylish design
  • Great choice of colors
  • Snapdragon 855 processor
  • Attractive screen
Cons
  • High price
  • Camera has disappointed in the past
  • Annoying button configuration
  • Android 9 Pie, not Android 10
IFA 2024
This story is part of our coverage of IFA Berlin 2024

The Sony Xperia 5 is the wonderful return of the compact flagship smartphone; a true successor to the much-loved and mostly-deceased Compact series of Sony phones that packed winning specs into a smaller, more easy-to-handle body.

Recommended Videos

But the Xperia 5 is only It’s halfway there: there’s nothing small and manageable about the expected 800 euro price, which means it’ll likely be around $800 in the U.S. when it eventually goes on sale. While you get the power and performance you’d expect for this price, the Xperia 5 struggles to make itself known in a sea of strong competitors.

Compact and colorful

I love the 21:9 aspect ratio screen Sony has chosen for its most recent phone releases and pairing it with the Xperia 5’s small screen makes this a joy to have in the hand. The body is so easy to hold, making Twitter scrollable without having to stretch or juggle the phone. Yes, you have to scroll a bit more because the screen is thinner than others, but it never becomes a problem.

Andy Boxall/DigitalTrends

My thumb easily reached across the screen too, something that rarely happens with today’s larger devices. Speaking of the screen, the 6.1-inch OLED panel is almost perfect, with stunning color reproduction and contrast from the test images I saw on a demo unit.

The screen is a reason to buy, provided you can get past the unusual ratio, which doesn’t really have many uses. It’s supposed to be great for watching 21:9 video, but in my experience, there isn’t much content out there, so the true benefits are not often realized.

It has HDR and DCI-P3 support, which alters the colors to make them more cinematic. Sony wants you to watch movies on the screen, and it’s certainly great when you do, but you can’t be too picky about the title if you want to watch one in 21:9.

Andy Boxall/DigitalTrends

Another reason to buy is the beautiful colors Sony has chosen for the Xperia 5. The glass rear panel comes in a wonderful deep red color, a blue, a stylish white/grey, and a normal black. The red is the one to choose, as it’s a real beauty. 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 isn’t massive so the body isn’t too long, a problem I experienced with the Xperia 10 Plus. The Xperia 5 is almost 10mm shorter than the 10 Plus, and that makes a big difference when you carry the phone around.

Camera concerns

The fingerprint sensor is on the side of the phone, a position I find natural and easy to locate. However, Sony insists on not making it the power key as well and puts a separate power button under the fingerprint sensor. Above it is a volume rocker, and right at the end of the body is another button to activate the camera, that also works as a shutter release.

It’s a lot of buttons, and not making the fingerprint sensor turn the phone’s screen on and off adds an annoying extra step. The Honor 20 Pro does it without fault, so it’s not like it’s an impossible request.

Andy Boxall/DigitalTrends

On the back is a triple-lens camera made up of a 12-megapixel f/1.6 main lens, a 12-megapixel wide-angle lens, and a 12-megapixel telephoto lens. I wasn’t able to test the camera properly when I saw the phone.

Recently, Sony’s phones have not impressed us with the camera ability. I did try out a couple of the special features though. The eye-tracking mode — also known as Eye AF — works when taking stills, and maintains focus on your subject’s eyes, which in turn ensures their face is in focus.

In the well-lit demo area, it achieved this effect well with a relatively slow-moving subject and even worked in burst mode too. I like this feature and can see it being useful for taking photos of people at events or on stage when the focus can unexpectedly shift and ruin a shot.

.Spending this much money on a phone and be disappointed by the camera shouldn’t happen.

I also tried out a manual mode for stills and shooting video, which provides extensive control over different settings including color management. It’s undoubtably comprehensive, but it’s also complicated, and only likely to appeal to serious photographers.

The rest of the Xperia 5 specification is good. It has the Snapdragon 855 processor, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of memory, a MicroSD card slot, water and dust resistance, and stereo speakers. It sadly launches with Android 9 Pie, not Android 10, so you’ll have to wait for an update, and there’s no word on when it will come.

Conclusion, price, and availability

Why isn’t the Xperia 5 the new compact Sony phone of choice? The price is a problem, especially when previous Sony efforts have not won us over with the camera. Spending this much money on a phone and being disappointed by the camera shouldn’t happen, especially when the OnePlus 7 Pro costs less and has an ever-improving camera.

That’s before getting to the equally capable Galaxy S10, the Huawei P30 Pro, and the iPhone XS. There’s a lot of choices out there for the same money or less.

There’s plenty to like about the Xperia 5, but there’s not quite enough to make it stand out against these other phones. The size and the lovely colors are the main reasons to pay attention; but the camera needs to perform way better than other Sony phones recently to turn this interest into a compelling reason to buy. We’ll know more about the performance of the camera when we test the phone further, and hope that it surpasses our expectations, because the Xperia 5 definitely has potential.

Andy Boxall
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
Samsung Galaxy A53 5G hands-on review: Your long-term partner
Rear view of the blue Samsung Galaxy A53 5G.

Samsung has overhauled its great value midrange A-Series devices, launching the new Galaxy A33 5G and Galaxy A53 5G. At first glance, both look identical to each other, and arguably no different from the Galaxy A52 5G’s lovely design, but there’s a serious focus on longevity here with various changes to the spec that makes the new lower price even more tempting. I had the chance to try both phones out a few days before the launch.
Galaxy in your hand
The dimensions of the Galaxy A33 5G and Galaxy A53 5G are almost identical, and both are available in the same four colors, making the only immediately obvious way to tell the difference between them on their fronts. The Galaxy A33 5G has a teardrop selfie camera cutout, which Samsung calls Infinity-U, while the Galaxy A53 5G has a circular hole-punch selfie cam, called Infinity-O. There is a slight difference in weight, but as it’s only a few grams you won’t really notice.

The textured rear panel provides plenty of in-hand grip and has a pleasing warmth to it. The camera module blends into it for a smooth, classy finish. There are four colors, a pair of ordinary black or white models, along with a pretty sky blue and an unusual peach finish. I liked the sky blue a lot and was pleased the peach-ish version didn’t stray too far into the overdone pink territory. They give the design a fun, modern twist.

Read more
Sony Xperia 5 III is a $1,000 flagship in 2022 with hardware from 2021
sony xperia 5 iii

Sony is finally bringing the Xperia 5 III to the U.S. market, eight months after the phone was officially introduced to the world. Sony phones and delayed releases have been somewhat of a recurring theme lately. The $2,500 Xperia Pro 5G was launched in February of 2020 but only arrived in January of 2021. The Xperia 1 II flagship also took a few sweet quarters before making it stateside.

The latest case of a delayed Sony phone is the Xperia 5 III. It’s not a bad phone. Actually, far from it. It just doesn’t belong to the year 2022, especially with that handsome $1,000 asking price. It will be available unlocked from authorized retail partners, but only in its Frosted Black trim. If you’re eyeing the stunning green color, only the official Sony online store has it.

Read more
Vivo’s V23 5G looks quite a lot like the iPhone 13
Vivo V23 held in hand.

Vivo liked what Apple did with the iPhone 13’s squared-off body so much, it decided to have a go itself, and the result is the Vivo V23 5G. There aren’t many phones with flat sides, making it hard not to compare the V23’s design with the iPhone 13 (and iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 before it), but is there anything more to the phone?

The Vivo V23 5G launches alongside the Vivo V23 Pro, a higher specification device that doesn’t share the same flat-sided design, and instead goes for a super thin and light case. The V23 is similarly lightweight at just 179 grams, and also very thin at 7.39mm. However, the glossy, square sides make it slippery and quite uncomfortable to grip, accusations also raised against the iPhone 13.

Read more