Sony Xperia 5 II | First Look By B&H Photo Video

Hey everyone, it's Doug with BNP here, to talk about a new phone today. This is the Sony Xperia 5 mark ii. Yes, I've heard you all building off the Xperia 1 mark ii that launched earlier this year. The Xperia 5 mark ii carries over many of the same features into a slightly smaller body and most of all maintains a lot of that. Phone's, photography and connectivity features. The Xperia 5 mark ii features a triple camera arrangement, along with a dedicated shutter button micro, SDC expandability, an impressive 21x9 HDR OLED screen, and yes, there is indeed a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, but a lot of what makes the Xperia 5 mark ii stand out is how its software leverages the available hardware. In fact, I'd argue that this is any phone's real strength.

Let's start with what this phone's working with inside is a snapdragon 865 chipsets, bringing with it the arena 650 GPU. This is identical to the Xperia 1 mark ii, meaning you're getting the same available processing power here. The phone also features eight gigabytes of ram and is available with either 128 gigabytes or 256 gigabytes of storage. I was very pleased to see the return of the cinema pro and photo pro apps. Both of these apps provide extraordinary manual control of the phone's three cameras.

Now we've covered the apps before in our Xperia 1 mark ii. Video, but to just summarize, the cinema pro app allows you to record 21x9 4k videos with full manual control over color ISO white balance, shutter angle, that's right, focus and even project frame rate, Sony's, Venice color science, which is indeed inspired by the Sony Venice cinema camera returns here. Similarly, the photo pro app takes almost every cue from Sony's alpha series of still cameras and that's most obvious in the menu design, while the app offers full manual control as well. If you're, a Sony shooter already you'll recognize almost everything here: phase detection autofocus, which works across the board here, can be configured as AFS or AFC, just like a dedicated, still camera and there's even an AF, lock button, eV, dial and simultaneous JPEG slash raw shooting, just like a real camera. Naturally, you can use all three camera lenses here like before.

If you want to see a deeper dive into the photo pro app, I recommend our Xperia 1 mark ii, video one of the more unique features of several Xperia phones is the 21x9 screen this time. We're looking at a 6.1 inch OLED display with a resolution of 2520x1080, colors and brightness are great here, but as an OLED display, it's the black levels that really stand out. Gamers will also love that this display supports a 120 hertz refresh rate now to go with all those pro apps. The display can be set to creator mode which provides color accuracy across the board. Of course, standard mode is available as well, which does expand the color gamut.

So if you want the best of both worlds, the auto creator mode can switch the setting over depending on your app. The sheer height of the display also makes it a great multitasker and the multi-window switch allows you to split the screen. Any way you want gamers will love this phone. It should be no surprise that the Xperia 5 mark ii supports connection to the PlayStation dual shock 4 controllers and, while the OLED display and high-end chipset provides smooth gaming, what's fascinating here is the phone's use of its 120 hertz refresh rate. You can turn it on by default and use 120hz all the time, or you can go over to the phone's game, enhancer app and customize a profile for every game you play.

You can change everything from refresh rate to touchscreen response speed. I was pretty surprised to see not only 120 hertz support here, but even lower refresh rates such as 40 hertz to save battery or a special 240 hertz simulation mode, that inserts black frames between each frame to provide clearer images. There's one more feature that stands out here and that's the HS power control option. Normally, when you charge a phone, it gets kind of hot as the battery sucks up power, and this ironically enough, can reduce speed as the phone then throttles itself to cut down on the heat generation. The HS power control allows you to disable charging while connected and simply run the phone off.

The charger thus maintaining full speed and preventing excessive heat. Let's talk audio, it's 20 20, but I get it. Some of us still want a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. Well, it's here on top of the phone connection support though the Xperia 5 mark ii includes Dolby Atmos support and Sony's see technology, which returns here to help improve streaming audio quality. Bluetooth.5.1 is also here for wireless headphone users and supports the apex HD codec. So the design of the Xperia 5 mark ii is strikingly similar to its bigger brother.

There's a glass surface on the back, and you can see that there are three 12 megapixel cameras, 16 millimeters, 24, millimeter and 70 millimeters, carrying over from the Xperia one on the front at the top of the OLED screen. Is the 8 megapixel front-facing camera? While we're up here? Let me just chime in and say that I'm thankful to see no notch on the display on the bottom. We have an USB-C connection that supports fast charging, so many claims that you can hit 50 charge in just 30 minutes and on the right side of the phone. We have a few buttons from the top there's: a volume rocker, a recessed power button, a customizable Google Assistant button and a dedicated shutter button. The sim card and micro SD BC storage can be accessed from the left side.

Naturally, the slightly smaller size of the Xperia 5 mark ii means a lighter phone overall and comes in at just 163 grams for those who loved everything about the Xperia 1 mark ii, but maybe wanted a slightly smaller phone. This carries over almost every single feature. As I said, then it could be the best phone for video and photography and the game. Enhancer is honestly pretty fantastic for those who want to control their experience and, of course, the expandable storage and the headphone jack just sweetened the deal. So that's it for the Sony, Xperia 5 mark ii, I'm Doug, with b h, and I'll, see you next time along with a dedicated.

Now you too, all right. We got another one here, but she doesn't want to stay. You.

Source : B&H Photo Video