Oppo Find N5 review: It's not just the world's thinnest foldable

Discover the Oppo Find N5 in our in-depth review. Explore its features, performance, and why it's the thinnest foldable smartphone on the market!

Oppo has gone all out with the Find N5, promoting it as "the thinnest foldable phone in the world." Beyond the veracity of this claim, the question that came to my mind was whether this extreme thinness would translate into comfort during daily use. And the answer is a resounding yes: the Oppo Find N5 has become the "fold" type foldable phone that I have enjoyed the most to date. Saying goodbye to it was a minor torment.

Current marketing focuses on impressive numbers: exorbitant megapixels, multiple cameras, brute power, and vast amounts of RAM. However, a nostalgic trend is resurfacing: the obsession with extreme thinness, a fashion I already witnessed in pre-21st-century phones. And foldables are not escaping this trend. If the Honor Magic V3 already surprised me with its slenderness, Oppo's proposal raises the bar even higher.

Oppo Find N5 review: thinnest foldable

Oppo Find N5 Technical Specifications

Design: Thin Yes, But Not Only That

The packaging of the Oppo Find N5 comes in a square box that reveals the phone upon opening. The internal screen maintains a 9.9:9 aspect ratio, almost as square as the box, which implies a considerable height when folded (external screen ratio: 20.7:9).

Two usage formats, extreme thinness, and a notable folded height define its design. Oppo has used high-quality materials: a solid aluminum body with a hardened glass back. The straight edges with beveled borders feel comfortable in the hand, both folded and unfolded.

However, the placement of the power and volume buttons, too high up, makes them difficult to press with one hand and reaching the top of the screen cumbersome. The power button integrates the capacitive fingerprint reader, which sometimes forces you to look for its position. A more centered placement would improve ergonomics.

Despite the button placement, the inclusion of the volume mode slider inherited from OnePlus is excellent news. Putting the phone on vibrate is a simple and quick gesture.

Opening the phone also requires effort: the hinge is very solid and keeps the screen open at almost any angle, with a barely noticeable crease that became slightly deeper with use but without being exaggerated. It's the foldable where I've noticed the crease the least.

The back of the Oppo Find N5 is minimalist, with a camera module that doesn't protrude excessively, which favors grip. However, this compact design seems to affect the photographic quality, which was lower than my expectations.

Screens: A Visual Delight with the Inherent Drawbacks of the Format

A "small" and vertical external screen, and a huge and almost square internal one: the versatility of a foldable allows you to choose the most suitable one depending on the need. Both screens on the Oppo Find N5 offer excellent quality, although with a key difference outdoors: the internal foldable screen is better visible under direct sunlight. The external one makes it difficult to see the content in very bright conditions.

Both screens are perfectly calibrated by default, offering a smooth visual transition, a variable refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, high contrast, and high touch sensitivity. As usual, the crease of the hinge is noticeable when sliding your fingers, an acceptable trade-off for a foldable smartphone. Additionally, the foldable screen is more susceptible to marks and requires care with nails and styluses (it supports stylus).

Playing games and watching multimedia content is an immersive experience, especially when the content adapts to the aspect ratio of the foldable screen. Games take full advantage of the internal screen, although some may display black bars if they are not optimized.

Oppo includes visual enhancements based on the phone's power and AI, such as upscaling videos and images to improve their resolution (optional settings in the screen customization).

Sound: In Line with its Category

The overall audio quality is very good, regardless of the audio source. The Oppo Find N5 features powerful external stereo speakers that do not distort excessively at high volume, although they exhibit some stridency in the treble at maximum levels. My measurements on the phone reached a maximum of 90 dB.

With Bluetooth headphones, the listening experience was pleasant, with a clear and slightly flat sound. I missed some bass reinforcement, even with the optimization enhancements and a ten-band equalizer (only with headphones connected). The Oppo Find N5 supports Hi-Res audio and most Bluetooth codecs, and includes a player anchored in the front camera (folded), similar to iOS's Dynamic Island.

With wired headphones, the phone offers very good quality through the USB-C port, even slightly better than the Bluetooth connection. It does not have an analog audio output (requires an external DAC) but does have DisplayPort, allowing you to project the screen onto a monitor or television with the appropriate USB-C cable.

Performance: Unable to Sustain Maximum Power for Long

I have tested several phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite and confirmed its excellent performance and efficiency in light tasks. The Oppo Find N5 inherits these benefits, although with the usual limitation of noticeable "throttling." The chip offers very high raw power figures but fails to maintain them for extended periods. Performance stability is around 49% (according to 3D Mark data), a somewhat low figure. However, for everyday use, the demands of apps and games do not usually reach these peaks.

The drop in sustained power is due to the phone's thinness and its limited ability to dissipate heat. Despite this, the Oppo Find N5 does not overheat excessively, neither during charging nor in long gaming sessions (hence the drop in sustained performance).

The phone runs very smoothly in all tasks and executes games with maximum graphics settings. Enjoying a Genshin Impact perfectly adapted to the unfolded screen dimensions and with maximum graphics is an absolute delight.

Below is a comparative table of the Oppo Find N5's performance with similar devices in benchmark tests:

The rest of the hardware works perfectly: fast, stable, with more than enough RAM and storage, zero problems with Wi-Fi and 5G networks, the fingerprint reader under the power button rarely causes issues beyond its high position, the phone unlocks instantly, includes a dual nano SIM tray, and is also compatible with an eSIM. It allows two simultaneous numbers (two physical SIMs or eSIM and SIM).

Software: ColorOS 15 Suits it Well, the AI Better

The Oppo Find N5 comes updated to Android 15 with the latest version of its layer, ColorOS 15. The software offers a large number of options, as usual, and does not include an excess of pre-installed apps beyond Oppo's own. The gallery is duplicated (Google Photos comes pre-installed), and it has its own app store.

In my experience with the evolution of ColorOS, I have appreciated the brand's effort to make a layer quite similar in design to Google's Android (within logical limits). The extreme customization, the option to apply a Material look to the icons, the app drawer, and a minimalist interface style are aspects I like. However, I didn't like not being able to adjust the shortcut grid on the desktop (limited to 4x7).

As I mentioned, the Oppo Find N5 is highly customizable, offers many advanced options, is well adapted to extended use (floating apps, parallel window, expanded multitasking), apps adapt to the screen size being used, and in general, the phone allows you to make good use of the extra extension of the internal screen. Working with this phone is very comfortable.

Artificial intelligence is a key feature, and Oppo's AI has earned a recognizable place in ColorOS. In my opinion, it is very well implemented. In addition to text summaries, text creation, and transcription (the floating side bar activates AI in almost any app), the real-time translator was very useful to me. By simply activating it from the floating menu, I could automatically translate all navigation in Chinese to Spanish, with the text placed in its original position.

Another point where AI stands out positively is in photo editing. Oppo's gallery includes its own magic image editor that allows you to remove unwanted objects and people (with very good results) and generate new portions of the image. Not only that, but this AI can also upscale photos, correct blur, and remove reflections. The entire process requires internet but has no added cost.

Battery: Surprisingly Long-Lasting

The battery life is one of the aspects that surprised me the most about the phone, especially considering its thin and foldable design. Oppo has integrated a 5600 mAh battery made of silicon and carbon, which is not only generous on paper but also in practice. With excellent standby consumption supported by the efficiency of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Find N5 does not consume more than 2% of battery in an 8-hour night.

If standby consumption is minimal, consumption with the screen on is not excessive either, even when unfolding the internal foldable screen. On average, I got almost two days of autonomy, even with intensive use outside the home, obtaining about seven or eight hours of screen time with games and streaming consumption (folded and unfolded). It has more battery than many "normal" phones, even those with larger capacities.

The phone charges very quickly. It includes the charger in the box and does not overheat excessively during the process. Consumption is very contained, the battery capacity is large (there are two, one in each wing of the phone), and the 80 W SuperVOOC fast charging (with charger included) is outstanding. It also has 50 W fast wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. The charging times with its cable and charger were:

• 5 minutes of charge: 15% battery.
• 10 minutes of charge: 27% battery.
• 15 minutes of charge: 40% battery.
• 20 minutes of charge: 50% battery.
• 25 minutes of charge: 60% battery.
• 30 minutes of charge: 70% battery.
• Total: 51 minutes.

Photography: The Very Thin Thickness Ends Up Being Noticeable

An extremely thin foldable phone usually entails a smaller battery and a significant thickness in the area of the rear cameras. We have already seen that the battery of the Oppo Find N5 is not exactly small, which plays in its favor. And the lenses do not protrude excessively from the body, which is initially positive for grip. However, this compaction seems to affect the photographic quality, which was lower than my expectations.

Oppo's Find N5 camera system is composed of:

• Main camera: 50-megapixel sensor (f/1.8, 21mm equiv., 1/1.56", PDAF, two-axis OIS).
• Ultra-wide camera: 8-megapixel sensor (f/2.2, 15mm equiv., 1/4", 116º).
• Periscope telephoto camera: 50-megapixel sensor (f/2.7, 75mm equiv., 1/2.75", 3x optical zoom, two-axis OIS).
• Internal and external selfie camera: 8-megapixel sensor (f/2.4, 21mm equiv., 1/4", 91º).

On paper, the performance does not seem bad, especially considering the extreme thinness of the OPPO Find N5 and the low thickness of the camera module. However, this size reduction implies a shorter focal length and sensors that are not too large.

Added to the physical limitations of the cameras is the automatic shooting system: in my tests, all tend to underexpose. Outdoors and with plenty of light, there are usually no problems (the ultra-wide shows watercolors with some zoom), but when the light drops, it is difficult to distinguish the elements of the image with the naked eye.

The automatic HDR with the main camera needs to be more active in automatic shots: the darkest areas tend to be very underexposed. In addition, the camera app tends to be very conservative with the shutter speed, even when the main and telephoto cameras are stabilized. The result is an underexposure that does not usually correspond to the general lighting of the scene.

The color treatment is good, respecting the original colorimetry and saturation. However, the detail in the automatic processing is not the best, showing watercolors with some zoom even with good lighting. At night, this situation is more pronounced.

In backlight situations, with a somewhat limited dynamic range, the shots suffer especially, resulting in an indistinguishable foreground after processing.

The automatic mode of the Oppo Find N5 seemed very improvable to me, obtaining better results in manual mode, adjusting the shots to the millimeter. It saves in RAW with an average size of about 30 MB per photo.

The phone has a versatile and powerful manual mode, but it is not only aimed at those who want to manage the sensors in detail: Oppo offers various playful modes. The usual portrait modes (natural blur with accurate contour profiling), night mode (performs decently in very dark situations), high resolution to squeeze the 50 megapixels of the main sensor (the shots have more detail), various image filters, beauty modes, to create stickers... And it has the Hasselblad seal; even though its brand is less visible than in the Find X.

I have gathered all the photos and videos in this Google Photos folder. They are unedited, just as they came out of the phone.