Sony Xperia 5 II review By GSMArena Official

Hey, what's up guys will here for GSM arena? Sony has just released a new flagship phone, the Xperia 5 mark ii, the second gen Xperia 1 made a big splash earlier this year, but it's looking like this one could be even better. Let's see what it's all about in our full review. The Xperia 5 mark ii was a premium glass smartphone with a glossy mirror-like finish and a small pocketable form factor. Its display has a narrow, 21 by nine aspect ratio. So the whole device feels thinner and lighter in the hand than many phones, but is still able to hold a relatively large four thousand million power battery. You get the same ip68 water resistance here that you do on the larger model and really any Sony flagship.

Unlike the Xperia 1 mark ii, this device has a rounded edge instead of a sharp flat one and there's also an extra hardware feature on the Xperia 5 mark to a dedicated button for summoning the Google Assistant. This isn't tappable to other functions, though the Xperia 5 mark ii's display is a tall, narrow, 6.1 inch OLED with a 1080p resolution. It's special in that it brings a superfast, 120hz, refresh rate. This results in a much smoother experience than a regular 60hz panel, when you're swiping, the interface scrolling or using supported, apps or games, and a 240hz touch sampling rate combined with some software optimizations all promised a 25 faster touch response compared to the previous model, while the 1080p screen resolution is technically a downgrade from the Xperia 1 series, 4k displays the trade-off for the higher refresh rate feels worth it. This panel is still plenty sharp at 450, PPI and content.

Looks great max. Brightness is about the same as the Xperia 1 mark ii, which means it's not too impressive. We measured a max of 330 nits with a slider and a boost to 530 nits in auto mode when in bright conditions, the color reproduction is handled in a typical Sony fashion. First off there are extensive controls for white balance and settings, and if you turn on the creator mode, the phone will adjust colors to match content with a wide color gamut like most OLED displays. This one has an always-on feature that will show you the time and notifications and in addition to that, there is a RGB notification led up at the top.

Like most Sony phones, you don't have an under display fingerprint reader, but a side mounted one. It doubles as the power button and does a decent job, though it did run into a misread from time to time for audio the Xperia 5. Mark ii has a stereo speaker setup with the earpiece acting as the second speaker. The bottom speaker faces forward rather than being on the bottom of the device. This makes for a more balanced setup, with a more symmetrical sound pressure and phasing than if the speaker were facing downward.

We recommend turning on the Dolby Atmos enhancer, which gives you more loudness and improved sound quality with it turned on the opera.5, scored a good mark in our loudness test and had a nice boost to the trouble, there's also a dynamic vibration slider. If you turn that up the phone will vibrate to the music, and you'll get a bit more of a bass feeling, but it's all a bit gimmicky. To be honest, the Xperia 5 mark ii also has a 3.5 millimeter jack, so plugging in traditional headphones is simple here, and you can keep plenty of media on the device. There are options for 128 or 256 gigs of storage, and it's expandable. The Xperia 5 mark ii's interface is mostly styled.

Android 10, with a few Sony features on top. For example, you still get Sony's own music player. App side sense is a handy feature that lets you access a list of shortcuts by double tapping on the edge of the screen. There are other functions within this menu like a pair shortcut, which can let you set up a split screen between two apps and access. This on the fly and there's a game enhancer, which provides plenty of options for your games accessible while you're playing performance profiles include battery saving options, touch response rate and screen refresh rate for your game.

Titles focus settings have to do with turning off notifications and other distractions while gaming, and there are screen capture options, as well as extensive video capture options in this menu as well powering these features is a snapdragon 865 chipsets. Besides 5g connectivity, it provides great results in benchmark tests, although it is slightly behind the improved snapdragon 865 plus that just came out still, even though it isn't chart topping performance is really nice here and every bit flagship grade, and while the phone does get warm while performing heavy tasks like gaming, it's nothing extreme, and we didn't notice any stuttering or performance issues. As a result of that, the Xperia 5 mark ii comes with a 4 000 William hour battery inside quite the upgrade over last year's model. It does an excellent job. As far as battery life goes with the screen set to 120 hertz, the phone was able to score an endurance rating of 102 hours in our proprietary tests.

The Xperia 5 mark ii supports the USB power delivery charging up to 21 watts, but you get an 18 watt charger in the box. It's able to top of the phone at a decent speed from zero to 45 percent in half an hour. Nothing too exciting, though, if you care about the health of your battery, there's a set of battery care options with a new ability to set a hard limit to the charging you can make it, so the battery will never charge above 80 or 90 percent to prolong its lifetime. The Xperia 5 mark ii has the same camera system as the bigger Xperia one except there's. No TOF camera here, there's a 12 megapixel main cam, a 12 megapixel telephoto cam with three times optical zoom and a 12 megapixel ultra-wide cam, with autofocus all with mass t certified lenses like the Xperia 1 mark ii.

There are actually three camera apps here. On top of the regular camera app there's a photography pro app, which acts as a souped-up manual mode and for taking videos. There's the cinema pro app, which now has the ability to record 4k at 120 fps in HDR. These apps do come with a fairly steep learning curve and sometimes even require post-processing on a computer. We're not sure most general users will have the motivation to dive deep into them in daylight.

Photo quality from the main camera is great, basically indistinguishable from photos taken from the Xperia 1 mark ii. There's plenty of detail, and it looks natural thanks to the balance, sharpening, there's low noise and although the HDR is rather conservative, resulting in contrasted photos, the dynamic range is still wide, even though there's no TOF camera portraits taken with the main camera excellent subject: separation and natural, looking refocus backgrounds, however, there seems to be a lack of HDR processing, so bright parts of the scene will be blown out three times the zoom shots from the telephoto cam are rather nice, while those from the Xperia 1 were a bit soft. These are consistently sharp. Colors are similar to those of the main cam and dynamic range is great. The images from the ultra-wide cam also have a similar color rendition to the main cams.

There is a little more noise, of course, but the dynamic range is wide, and the detail level is great for an ultra-wide and since the ultrawide has autofocus, you can get close to subjects to take some neat shots with an exaggerated perspective. However, this isn't a true macro mode in low light. The Xperia 5 mark ii's images are again quite similar to that of the Xperia 1 mark ii. You get contrast shots with dark shadows, well contained, highlights and nicely preserved, saturated colors. There is no dedicated net mode here, but if you go into the auto HDR mode in the photo pro app, you will get lifted shadows, but highlights are about the same.

If you want to zoom at night, the telephoto cam will kick in it does a respectable job. Providing good detail will contain noise and saturated colors, provided it isn't too dark. The ultra-wide angle cam can take good pictures with excellent sharpness and detail and good color saturation. The exposure is a bit on the darker side, though. We wanted to test how the Xperia 5 handles focus in low light as well, since it doesn't have a TOF camera like the Xperia 1 does, despite the claims that this camera plays a role in low light, focusing the focusing speed on the 5 mark ii wasn't any slower, so the TOF camera won't be missed.

Now onto selfies. The Xperia 5 mark ii has an 8 megapixel front facing cam the same as Sony's other recent flagships. It's not the best selfie shooter out there, but the pictures are good with likable, colors and decent detail. The Xperia 5 mark ii can record video in up to 4k with each of its three cams, though you can't record 4k video in higher than 30 fps. Unless you switch to the cinema pro app there, you can go as high as 120 fps, regardless 4k.

Video quality from the main camera is great. You get a natural look thanks to the laid back processing with nice detail and spot on colors zoom 4k video from the telephoto cam is great too, and just like with photos its much sharper than what we saw on the Xperia 1 mark ii. The ultra-wide angle, cam's footage is great as well. The colors and dynamic range match the main cam so well that it's hard to tell the difference. Besides the wider field of view, electronic stabilization is available on all three cameras in all modes.

It does a fairly good job, though there is some visible jitter here and there we had a smoother experience on the Xperia 1 mark ii. So that's the Xperia 5 mark ii. It has a light and compact waterproof, build a high refresh rate, OLED screen, front-facing stereo speakers, flagship grade performance, excellent battery life and a versatile and well-rounded camera setup. Plus you get a headphone, jack and expandable storage. There are some negatives to consider, though the screen doesn't get as bright as some competitors charging isn't blazing fast, and the selfie cam is a bit outdated.

The narrow design isn't for everyone and the bezels are anything but minimal, but these are all tiny nitpicks that most people wouldn't mind. The Xperia 5 mark ii improves upon the Xperia 1 mark ii in a lot of ways, and it's probably the best Sony phone you can get right now. If you're looking for a great compact flagship for around 900 bucks, the Xperia 5 mark ii definitely deserves a recommendation. Thanks for watching guys, stay safe and see you on the next one, you.

Source : GSMArena Official