OPPO unveiled the A5 Pro 5G last month, offering premium durability, performance, and design.
Priced at $399, the OPPO A5 Pro 5G the phone offers shock, water and dust protection while still looking great and having a super slim profile. It also offers a lot in terms of specs including a large 6.67″ display with a massive 5800mAh battery inside and 50MP
The phone runs OPPO’s Color OS 15, based on Android 15 with Gemini AI built-in. OPPO has included Smart Photography tools powered by AI in the camera app as well, and at under $400 it makes a pretty compelling package.
I’ve been using the OPPO A5 Pro 5G for a couple of weeks now, and here’s how it went.
Hardware
Design
The Oppo A5 Pro 5G comes in a choice of two colours: Mocha Brown with a matte plastic finish, and Olive Green, which has a vegan leather finish which is a little softer in the hand.
OPPO sent over the Olive Green model, which I love the colour – and the vegan leather feels fantastic, though I would prefer OPPO supplied a TPU case – however they haven’t included one in the box for some time, so it’s probably not coming back.
The lack of case is likely due to the increased durability of the OPPO A5 Pro 5G, which now includes MIL-spec shock resistance, as well as IP69 dust and water resistance rating – all of which help with every day protection, while also helping power the underwater photo mode, which we’ll get to shortly.
At just under 8mm thin – which includes the very minimal camera island on the rear, and weighing in at just under 200grams, the A5 Pro 5G fits easily into a pocket or bag.
The phone has the usual button and port placement – SIM tray on the left, buttons on the right, USB on the bottom.
The buttons have a satisfying clicky feel to them when you press them, and the power button plays double duty as a fingerprint sensor as well which tends to work fairly well, though can still hit and miss on occasion, with fallback to facial recognition or pin/pattern.
There’s a large 6.67” LCD display on the front which includes fairly generously sized bezels at the top and bottom, with noticeable bezels at the side. The display includes a punch hole notch for the front-facing camera, but looks great overall.
Performance
Powered by an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 6300 processor, the OPPO A5 Pro 5G comes with 8GB of RAM – however it also includes a RAM Boost which uses internal storage as swap memory to boost the performance as required.
The phone handles quite well, though has a fairly slow boot time. Once it’s loaded into the OS it loads apps and multi-tasks fairly well, though it can struggle even with the additional RAM Boost.
App use is fine once loaded for all your social media, streaming video apps and the touch input never feels too laggy.
While playing games, the OPPO A5 Pro 5G works well for Candy Crush and the like, however does seem a bit slow with some of the more power hungry games like Bleach and Genshin Impact.
I ran it through the 3DMark and Geekbench tests and here’s how it went.
Display and Audio
The front of the phone includes the 6.67″ LCD display which looks great even at the HD+ (720×1600) resolution. The display is paired with stereo audio thanks to the downfiring speaker on the base and the earpiece.
It’s a bright display, capable of up to 1,000 nits brightness which makes it an easy to read display whether you’re inside or out. It’s important too for outdoor use, as the display also includes support for use with both gloves, and wet hands.
You can also set the refresh rate up to 120Hz for super smooth scrolling, and it didn’t really seem to affect the battery life – so turn it on, and go for it.
Of course the LCD doesn’t quite pop as much as an AMOLED in terms of colour reproduction and those deep blacks we love – but OPPO have done a great job here pushing each pixel to get a great result.
On the audio front, the OPPO A5 Pro 5G includes stereo sound with support for a number of wireless codecs including SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD and LDAC.
The stereo sound in the OPPO A5 Pro 5G includes support for an Ultra Volume Mode which can ramp up the volume 300% without losing clarity to help you in noisy environments.
In practice, the audio sounds great from the speakers and even at the 3x volume boost it’s still very clear which was surprising.
Camera
There’s a 50MP Main sensor on the rear of the OPPO A5 Pro 5G paired with a 2MP depth-sensing camera. On the front you get an 8MP selfie camera in a punch-hole notch in the display.
The depth camera helps with portrait mode, so you’re left with a single sensor to do the heavy lifting. It takes decent photos in good lighting, and can do some decent low-light with the Night mode however it’s a little lacking when you really get into the details.
With the dual sensors on the back, there’s also no ultra-wide nor optical zoom, though you can blow it out to 10x digital if you want to.
As with the OPPO Reno series, the A5 Pro 5G also includes a neat underwater mode. While it’s the middle of winter, I can’t wait to see how this goes in the pool in summer. Still, it does a good job in the fish tank.
Battery and Charging
The OPPO A5 Pro 5G includes a 5800mAh battery with support for 45W SUPERVOOC Flash Charge – and unfortunately no support for wireless charging.
The battery will last all day with heavy use, and you can get into the second day fairly easily. Even if you need a quick top-up you can get a good fast charge if you have an OPPO charger.
The OPPO A5 Pro 5G does not include the SUPERVOOC compatible charger in the box, just a USB cable. To get the higher speed charging you’ll have to fork out $45 + Shipping for the supported charger to be able to use the VOOC charging.
Do you need the 45W VOOC charger? While I don’t have the OPPO 45W VOOC charger, I have their 80W VOOC charger and tried it compared to a standard 45W PD Charger and here’s how it went:
One thing I do like is the focus on battery health these days. According to OPPO the A5 Pro 5G will have an extended lifespan thanks to a combination of hardware and software tweaks, which they say means the battery can charge 1700 cycles (equivalent to 5 years) and still retain 80% of its original capacity – that’s pretty impressive.
While I can’t charge/discharge 1700 times to test this, this is a great win and will reduce the need to buy a new phone, as a common complaint of older phones is the degrading battery life.
Software
Android and Updates
Running ColorOS 15 based on Android 15 which includes Gemini AI.The phone comes out of the box with the April 1st security patch out of the box.
There was an update to the June 1st Security update during the review and OPPO says the A5 Pro 5G includes three years of OS updates as well as six years of security updates – which, based on this, are likely to be delivered quarterly.
ColorOS 15
Launched in November 2024, ColorOS 15 incorporates all the goodness of Android 15 while revamping it and even at times revamping things to improve performance, styling it more to their design philosophy and making it more user friendly.
The Color OS interface is incredibly smooth thanks to their Luminious rendering engine, with their Trinity Engine maximising the performance of the CPU and GPU offering more seamless transitions and smooth performance.
The theming is geared towards larger interactive surfaces like the Quick Settings in the notifications shade – giving it a Control Centre vibe, however the OPPO theming engine allows you to change colours and more across the OS.
There’s a big focus on AI across the board which of course means Google’s Gemini is along for the ride. You also get other features like the AI editor in the camera offering options like AI Unblur, AI Reflection remover and AI Eraser.
OPPO also includes their own AI Studio for generative imagery. You can create a range of things like turning your images into GIFs, create dynamic wallpapers featuring pets, or ‘Reimage’ your own photos into art.
ColorOS is a great OS to navigate, with a lot of features available if you need them.
App Market
OPPO has been installing their own app store of late. Called the App Market, you’ll find it on your home screen, and if you swipe across you’ll also find a bunch of pre-installed apps as well.
The list of apps is actually fairly decent, including LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, WPS office and Booking.com, as well as games including Solitaire, Bridge Race, WoW (no, not that one), Makeup Magic, Yatzy and VitaMahjong.
You can uninstall the games and additional apps if required, but it really is disappointing to have to do so on your new phone.
Final Thoughts
As a sub-$400 phone, the OPPO A4 Pro 5G makes for a very compelling phone with a durable, yet still very thin and light body. It can also easily keep up with you all day with that 5,800mAh battery.
There’s some performance rough spots when loading apps or playing higher end games, but for the most part it will handle the day-to-day load for most people.
The A5 Pro 5G camera, while it delivers good shots in the day, and in low-light, the dual camera array really feels incomplete without a telephoto or an ultrawide sensor.
If you are mostly interested in a great looking device which can keep up with lifes little challenges, while still being thin and light with excellent battery life, the OPPO A5 Pro 5G is hard to go past.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
