Pros | Cons |
+ Great battery life | - Only 16GB of storage |
+ Good screen | - MediaTek processor |
+ Impressive camera | - Few extra features |
"The Sony Xperia M5 is almost a flagship but without the price tag. Great specs, a stylish design and a waterproof build ensure it punches well above its weight".
Looking at the specs list of the Sony Xperia M5 is an eyebrow raising affair, as this supposedly mid-range phone in many ways seems to have almost as good specs as the Sony Xperia Z5, especially when it comes to its camera.
Yet as a mid-ranger it’s likely to be a whole lot cheaper than Sony’s top tier handsets. So is it really as good as it looks? Read on for our full review.
The Sony Xperia M5 has a 5.0-inch 1080 x 1920 IPS LCD display with a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch. It strikes a great balance of size and resolution, being big enough to comfortably use, small enough to comfortably carry and sharper than even some flagships.
It uses the Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 for improved contrast and it’s an all-round impressive screen, with good viewing angles and fairly accurate colours. We’ve seen brighter, more vivid displays and we’ve seen sharper ones, the Samsung Galaxy S6 for example ticks all of those boxes, but given this is set to have an upper mid-range price we’re pretty impressed.
A glass back and stainless steel corners coupled with Sony’s iconic OmniBalance design leaves the Xperia M5 looking fairly high end and attractive.
It’s fairly slim too at 7.6mm thick and it’s got more than just a stylish design, as it’s also IP68 certified dust and water resistant to depths of up to 1.5 metres for up to 30 minutes. So you can use it in the rain, the shower or even the swimming pool without worry.
It’s not quite as premium looking as the Sony Xperia Z5, as only the corners are metal and while the OmniBalance design looks good it’s also arguably overfamiliar at this point, but these are small complaints against an otherwise good looking and durable smartphone.
There’s a 64-bit 2.0GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 processor and 3GB of RAM at the heart of the Sony Xperia M5, so it’s got a hefty amount of power.
MediaTek chips are typically cheaper and less powerful than their Snapdragon counterparts but nevertheless this is a high end processor, which in real world use shouldn’t prove much slower than the Snapdragon 810. That’s impressive for a mid-range phone.
The camera is perhaps the best thing about the Sony Xperia M5, as there’s a 21.5MP sensor on the back and a 13MP one on the front. In terms of sheer megapixel numbers both of those have most flagships beat. Of course there’s more to judge than megapixels, but with support for 4K video and 5 x digital zoom without noticeable loss of quality there’s a lot to like here.
There are plenty of camera apps and modes too, letting you easily add effects and edits to your snaps. In most scenarios the snapper can't quite rival that of the Samsung Galaxy S6 or LG G4, but it can certainly take impressive photos and in optimal conditions with good light it's not far off.
Most of the Xperia M5’s features fit into other sections of this review, but with its stylish waterproof design, high powered camera, speedy processor, 4G and long-lasting battery it’s hardly lacking for selling points.
The Sony Xperia M5 has a 2,600 mAh battery, which Sony claims can last for up to two days of use, or more specifically for up to 8 hours of video, 63 hours of music or 12 hours of talk time and you can take it even further with STAMINA Mode and Ultra STAMINA Mode, which limit the phones functions to eke out even more juice. It largely lives up to those figures, making for a phone with very good battery life indeed.
There’s 16GB of built in storage in the phone, which isn’t a huge amount, but it also supports microSD cards of up to 200GB, so there’s loads of storage potential.
There’s no shortage of connectivity options either, with Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, Bluetooth 4.1 and NFC all supported.
The Sony Xperia M5 is an impressive phone. With a stylish design, a high end processor, a great camera, long battery life and a water resistant build there’s a lot to like here and very little in the way of missing features or cut corners.
So why isn’t it a flagship? There’s the MediaTek processor for one. It’s good but it’s not quite the best. Then there’s the build, which isn’t quite as high end as the Xperia Z5 and there’s the lack of supplementary features like a fingerprint scanner or optical image stabilisation.
But these are all minor issues and given that the Sony Xperia M5 is going to have an upper mid-range price they’re not really problems at all.
Style and Handling: 4/5
User Friendliness: 4/5
Feature Set: 3.5/5
Performance: 4/5
Battery: 4.5/5
Overall score: 4/5
Dimensions : 145 x 72 x 7.6mm Weight: 142.5g Screen size: 5.0” (1080 x 1920) Screen Resolution: 1080 x 1920 display resolution Pixels Per Inch (PPI) : 441 Processor: Octa-core application processor RAM: 3GB On-board Memory: 16GB (microSD card supported) Camera: 21.5MP (rear) 2160p@30fps 13MP (front-facing) Operating system: Android 5.1 3G / 4G LTE: Yes / Yes Bluetooth / NFC : Yes / Yes Battery capacity: 2600mAh Colours: Black, White, Gold Launch Date: February 8th Price: TBC |
