Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Epic stamina
- Solid build quality
- Cheaper than the opposition
Cons
- Poor 720p display
- Limited camera flexibility
- Lots of bloatware
- Chunky bezels
Our Verdict
The Oppo A5 5G ostensibly offers good value, and its huge battery and robust build stand out, but a sub-standard display and underwhelming camera set-up drop it behind the budget phone pack.
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An awful lot of people just want a phone that does all the basics competently for as little expenditure as possible. The pricing sweet spot for such a phone is deeply subjective, but for my money, it’s around the £200 mark.
This is where the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G, the Moto G56, and the Poco M7 Pro 5G all live. Now it’s where the Oppo A5 5G lives, too.
At just £179, Oppo’s new budget phone undercuts those rivals a smidgen on price, and it also offers a couple of standout features when it comes to its build and stamina. But does it get the balance of price-to-performance right?
Design & Build
- Aurora Green and Mist White options
- IP65 and MIL-STD 810H military-grade shock resistance
- Plastic, but solid
Give that it’s a cheap phone with a correspondingly ’cheap’ plastic back, the Oppo A5 5G is surprisingly hefty, weighing in at 194g. There are a couple of reasons for that, and both are positives.
One is simply that it’s packed with a huge 6000mAh battery, which we’ll discuss soon enough. The other reason is more relevant to this section.
Jon Mundy / Foundry
Oppo has built the A5 5G to last. That means both IP65 water and dust resistance and MIL-STD 810H military-grade shock resistance – two things that are far from common in the sub-£200 category.
In order to achieve that additional level of robustness, Oppo says that it has used a “high-strength alloy frame” and double tempered glass. It might look and feel like a cheap phone, but it’s evidently built of sterner stuff.
It’s not an unpleasant phone to behold. Its frosted finish is easy enough on the eye – at least in the Aurora Green model I was sent – and also nicely resistant to greasy fingerprints. I’m not a huge fan of the reflective camera surround, but at least it’s a reasonably fresh touch.
Jon Mundy / Foundry
My least favourite part of the Oppo A5 5G’s design is also an inevitable one – its large display bezels and huge chin. It tells you straight from the off that this is a cheap phone. Still, at least the front camera is a hole punch, rather than the old fashioned teardrop design of the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G.
Another cheap inclusion is a power button-based fingerprint sensor – though that’s a fairly normal provision at this end of the market. It’s reliable enough, if a little sluggish at times.
Screen & speakers
- 6.67-inch LCD, not AMOLED
- Only 720p
- Mono speaker
Cheap phones are all about compromise, but I fear Oppo has cut too deep with the A5 5G’s display.
It’s a good size at 6.67 inches, and it packs a fluid 120Hz refresh rate, not to mention a decent top brightness (in typical usage) of 850nits.
Oppo has used an LCD panel, which means that it lacks the vibrant colours, deep inky blacks, and rich contrast
Jon Mundy / Foundry
That’s about where the good news ends, however. Oppo has used an LCD panel, which means that it lacks the vibrant colours, deep inky blacks, and rich contrast of the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G and the Poco M7 Pro 5G.
Perhaps even more problematic than that is the use of a mere 1604 x 720 resolution. Call it 720p, call it HD+. The end result is the same: a panel that simply isn’t up to scratch in rendering media with sufficiently sharpness.
Jon Mundy / Foundry
You might not notice in general navigation, but it’s clear whenever you jump into a web page, view a photo, or attempt to stream a decent-quality video.
An altogether underwhelming audiovisual offering is finished off with the provision of a weedy mono speaker on the bottom of the phone. It’s loud and clear – which a presposterous Ultra Volume Mode that supposedly pushes volume up to 300% (whatever that means) – but very top-heavy, and obviously lacks a sense of spaciousness.
Specs & Performance
- MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset
- 4GB RAM and 128GB storage
- 128GB of storage, plus microSDXC
The Oppo A5 5G runs on MediaTek’s Dimensity 6300 chipset, backed by a mere 4GB of RAM. It’s a decidedly modest component, and it results in predictably low-end benchmark results.
Indeed, the Oppo A5 5G falls below the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G, the Moto G55, and the Poco M7 Pro in Geekbench 6 multi-core terms.
It does better in our usual suite of GFX Bench GPU tests, but
