Sony Xperia 5 IV Review | Best Pro Camera Smartphone?

Now Sony's Xperia 5 is one of those smartphones that I do actually really look forward to reviewing every single year. If the Xperia 5 was a whiskey it would be a 10 year old Glenmorangie: surprisingly complex and so enjoyable that you'll soon forget how many you've had until you finally end up with your head down the bog, evacuating every drop and probably half your internal organs. Okay, possibly not my finest metaphor ever. The Sony Xperia 5 Mark IV won't have you heaving up your kidneys thankfully, but it certainly is complex, appealing to everyone from movie fans and music lovers to gamers and even creators like my good self. There is an awful lot going on here considering this is one of the dinkier premium smartphones of 2022. Anyway, I've had my SIM slapped in there for over a week now, so it's my full in-depth Sony Xperia 5 Mark IV review.

Design & Build

If you're a Sony fan, prepare to be entirely unshocked by the design of this latest handset. It looks almost exactly the same as the Xperia 5 Mark III, which looked remarkably similar to the Mark II, which was almost a direct copy of the Mark I. The Mark IV is practically the same dimensions as last year's model as well, just a micro-pube slimmer and ever-so-slightly lighter. But it is proper light at 172 grams, and the Xperia 5 Mark IV is a smart-looking device even if that design is feeling a bit stuck in time. It's distinctively Sony, different enough from any other smartphone to stand out in a crowd, but it will be overly familiar for fans.

I do love the hand feel of these Sony smartphones as well. They're impressively comfortable to clutch despite the fact that they've got flat edging, and that's because of the really skinny design. One-handed use feels great, although this is a tall boy so you'll definitely need to use the screen-shrinking tool unless you happen to have enormous clawed fingers like Skeletor. You've got Gorilla Glass Victus front and back which helps the Xperia 5 to not shatter into pieces when I drop it onto hard floor, like I may have possibly done a couple of times this past week after far too many disturbingly neon-colored shots. However, as with quite a lot of other Victus smartphones, unfortunately that screen has scratched up in a few places just in a few days of use, so definitely stick on a screen protector, people.

This one is IP68 water resistant, so I felt fine taking it into the bath, even had it in a steam room randomly. You can grab it in three different colors: black, green and ecru white—whatever ecru means. "Ecru white"? Okay, so it's basically the same color as the pus that spurts out when you pop a whitehead. Lovely. Anyway, I got the black model, which basically means that dust and lint are now my mortal enemies. Every time I pull this thing out of my pocket it was absolutely coated. But on the flip side, that matte surface does seem quite resistant to fingerprints and other grime.

Software & UI

For the software you can expect Android 12 out of the box with Sony's own apps and other bits chucked on top, as usual. Like the hardware, this will be very familiar to Sony fans. The UI hasn't really changed up in years and would probably benefit from a bit of a facelift. Unfortunately the Xperia 5 Mark IV does come with some crapware bundled on here—the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook—and you can't actually uninstall these either; all you can do is disable them. Still, the UI is easy to get on with, keeping most of that Android design language intact. It's handy having fast access to the audio and the video controls from the notifications bar, and most of Sony's own apps are undeniably impressive.

Anyone with actual musical ability can get the fresh new Music Pro app on the go. This allows you to record and edit together your tracks and give them a proper studio-style tuning. However, bear in mind if you want that Pro Studio tuning you will have to spunk up a little bit of cash every month. You've also got some excellent gaming and camera tools which I will bang on about in a bit. With the Xperia 5 Mark IV, Sony is offering three Android OS updates—that'll be 13, 14 and then 15—and 3 years of security patching as well, which makes you feel less bad about blowing this amount of cash on a fresh new blower, hopefully see you through a good few years of use.

Display & Media

The edge fingerprint sensor usually works first time as long as your hands aren't wet or anything, and you've got face unlock as a backup. The haptics are a little bit noisy, so I do feel a bit guilty when I'm typing out messages in a really quiet bit in a movie or something like that, but it definitely gives you good force feedback when you are typing.

Speaking of movies, Sony phones have always been a delight if you're into your flicks and music as well, and the Xperia 5 Mark IV thankfully doesn't bollocks that up. For a start, that 128 GB of internal storage can be boosted with a microSD memory card, which is a very rare feature at this sort of premium price point, so that means you'll be able to download loads of albums, shows, whatever else. Then there's the lush 6.1-inch OLED screen, which is delightfully punchy and proper sharp, even though it doesn't boast the slightly over-the-top 4K resolution of its more expensive sibling. But as with the Xperia 1 Mark IV, Sony has increased the brightness here for more comfortable viewing outdoors. I found in my early days with the Xperia 5 Mark IV the auto brightness could be a little bit chunky—sometimes it would just dim down a little bit too much at night times for instance—but it seemed to improve over time randomly.

That 21:9 aspect ratio is ideal for cinematic fare, although if you're a fan of old-school telly we're talking some proper thick pillar-boxing. Sony's Creator mode is automatically enabled for supported apps, tweaking the visuals on specific content so you can see exactly what the director intended. Most people won't care at all, but cinephiles may get a kick out of it.

The Xperia 5 Mark IV's well-balanced stereo speakers pump out clearer sound than previous generations thanks to the freshly redesigned enclosure which reduces vibration. It's definitely good enough for enjoying movies when you can't be arsed with headphones. All of Sony's usual audio tools are once again on board, including Digital Sound Enhancement Engine Ultimate for making crappy or low-res tracks sound less crappy. You've got a 3.5 mm headphone jack, you've got high-res audio support, you've got LDAC and high-res audio wireless support if you're using a bit of Bluetooth streaming—the whole bloody shebang. As a big music fan, I definitely enjoyed listening to my tracks on this thing.

Performance & Gaming

Performance on the Xperia 5 Mark IV is unfortunately behind the times a bit, as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset has been stuffed inside, not the 8+ Gen 1 like most other top-end Androids. All the same, the everyday running is perfectly smooth, helped along by the screen's 120 Hz refresh rate. If you're a gamer, you're gonna love the Xperia 5 Mark IV as much as movie and music fans. Genshin Impact and other resource-guzzling Android titles play perfectly; that frame rate is stable even at the highest possible graphics settings, although the off-end of the phone does get pretty bloody warm pretty bloody fast. Thankfully it didn't get so toasty that the performance suffered or so my fingers started to sweat, even when I had been gaming for quite some time.

If you're into some Call of Duty Mobile, well that morphs into a super-fluid 120 frames per second with a pleasantly wide view of the action, so those cheeky chaps on the other team can't creep up on your flank and put one right in your ear. You've got Sony's usual Game Enhancer gaming tools stuffed on here as well, including some fresh new streaming features. If you're not absolutely mortified at how badly you suck at games like I am and you actually want to share your performance with the world, you've got the usual performance-boost shenanigans, display-tweaking tools, and a battery-bypass feature if you want to charge and game at the same time, although the Xperia 5 still gets rather toasty so probably best avoided where possible.

Battery Life

On the battery front it's pretty good news all around, because the Sony Xperia 5 Mark IV packs in a 5000 mAh battery, which is considerably bigger than last year's 4500 mAh effort. Only one day in the past week did it actually die before I managed to stumble into bed, and that was because, to be fair, I got up at 5:30 a.m. and then didn't go to bed until 3 a.m. the following day—you can blame that one on Munich and these enormous steins. More times I managed to get at least six hours of screen-on time from a full charge, and that was making liberal use of the old camera tech as well, so definitely good stuff. In further good news, especially if you can't bloody stand USB cables for whatever reason, the Xperia 5 Mark IV now supports wireless charging, although there's no wireless-charging pad or power adapter or pretty much anything at all bundled in the box—you will have to provide your own.

Camera System

If you want point-and-shoot ease from your smartphone's camera, then the Xperia 5 Mark IV isn't your huckleberry. However, if what you're craving is a proper professional DSLR-style experience, well Sony has you covered with the Photo Pro app. When you first load it up it will be in Basic mode. In this mode you can swap between photo and video, and you can also shoot selfies using the front-facing camera tech if you like. However, you can cycle between the different modes just by tapping up here and then flicking on through them. In the Auto mode you've got very limited control—you can piddle about with the 4K color area and more—but that's about it; the camera will basically handle everything else, although you can manually flick between the three different lenses as well. Then if you keep on flicking you get to the likes of the Program modes. In this mode you can have a proper play around with the different white-balance modes, you can control the ISO levels, the EV, and get exactly the kind of shots that you want.

The Xperia 5 Mark IV's 12 MP, 24 mm primary sensor with optical image stabilization can generally capture good-looking pics on auto mode with minimal input and no heavy processing, but it does saturate HDR shots and it can struggle in all kinds of tricky light. The best performance comes from the Program modes where you can quickly tinker with that EV, the ISO, etc., and you get to see the results accurately represented on screen. With some time and care you can get some great-looking shots even when the light is in full-on nightmare mode, and it's very rare to see any lens flare or other issues like that.

As well as that 24 mm lens, you've got a 12 MP, 16 mm shooter that can capture an ultra-wide snap if you need to fit more into frame, albeit with the usual impact on color temperature, and you've also got a 12 MP telephoto shooter slapped on the back end, although it's not a variable-range zoom lens like what you got on the Xperia 1—this one is locked at 60 mm unfortunately, due to the general space constraints on this smartphone. This maxes out at a 7.5× total zoom, and the results are comparable to simple digital crops on ultra-high-res smartphone sensors, but it is still handy for getting a closer view of the action when you're shooting scenery or an unobtrusive family shot.

The real-time eye autofocus is supported across all three lenses now; it just gives you a little bit of freedom to experiment with your shots. Sony has apparently upgraded the real-time object tracking on here as well, using fresh new clever-clogs AI shenanigans, although it's tough to say how effective this upgrade has been because Sony phones have always been great at keeping action shots sharp, and the Mark IV is another banger in that respect. As long as you're not shooting in very low light, then people and pets will stay crisp—that's something that's helped along by the burst-shot mode as well; just hold down that shutter button and you'll get 20 frames per second auto-exposure and autofocus as well.

Video & Creator Features

With HDR support for all movies you'll want to swap to the Cinema Pro app, and in here you can shoot 4K video at up to 120 frames per second again with all three lenses, and once again with full control over the camera settings and focus. However, shooting 4K footage at 30 frames per second—even just for a couple of minutes or so—does often cause a big fat nasty warning worm and "fun is overheating" message to flash up on the screen, which then disables a lot of the features. So unless you're capturing really short clips, you don't want that; you tend to have to stick to Full HD resolution. You will once again need to tinker with settings to get the best possible results, of course, especially when you're shooting in ambient light, but the image stabilization is as great as ever. As long as you know your restraints, then you can get some good-looking footage.

You've got live-streaming support built into this thing, so again great use for creators, and if you happen to have a Sony Alpha DSLR as well, you can use this thing as an external journal monitor. Last up is the 12 MP selfie shooter, boasting a larger sensor than the previous generation for better low-light results. It is still chunky at times, however, especially with brighter backgrounds—definitely not as good as many rivals. Unfortunately, if you dive into the basic camera mode as well, you can also shoot video using that front-facing camera at up to 4K resolution; it absolutely does the job fine for a simple bit of vlogging or if you're Skyping your teams and all that good stuff.

Verdict

That right there is my full, final, frank review of the Sony Xperia 5 Mark IV: a certain improvement in some areas, the battery life is absolutely bloody lovely on this thing, now you've got that wireless-charging support. Of course, there's a lot of reasons to get this thing if you're a big movie fan, if you're a gamer, or of course a music lover—especially if you're a music creator. Now, unfortunately, it isn't cheap; it's got some issues like the overheating when you are using that camera, an issue that might have been a bit alleviated by using the latest, freshest Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which unfortunately Sony didn't. Anyway, that's what this bald Northern bloke reckons.