Sony Xperia Z5, Z5 Compact, Z5 Premium review: Is a 4K display worth it?

Overview

Sony updates its flagship smartphones rather frequently. The most recent additions to the range, the Xperia Z5 phones were available just barely four months after the Xperia Z3+'s local launch (the Z3+ is also known as the Xperia Z4 in Japan). On paper, the Sony Xperia Z5 has similar specifications to the Xperia Z3+. What’s new to the Xperia Z5 is a completely revamped rear camera – with 23-megapixels and 0.03-second hybrid AutoFocus and a built-in fingerprint sensor is now incorporated into the power button.

Besides the 5.2-inch Z5, there’s also the larger Z5 Premium (5.5-inches) and the smaller Z5 Compact (4.6-inches). All three are powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 quad-core processor. The Z5 Premium also comes with a ridiculous 4K resolution display and a significantly larger battery capacity, while the smaller Z5 Compact has an HD resolution display, only 2GB RAM, and a smaller battery.

Design & Handling

All three phones follow Sony’s minimalistic design language that has persisted throughout the Xperia Z series. However, they still have some elements that differ from their predecessors – the Z5 and Z5 Compact devices now sport a frosted glass rear, while the Z5 Premium features a glossy fingerprint magnet. The new versions also depart from their raised display feel. All three phones have a thicker metallic rim, resulting in a display that sits slightly deeper inside the phone’s monolithic form. This change makes the smartphones feel friendlier to the touch.

The signature round, silver power button is also gone, replaced with a larger, oblong-shaped power button, which sits slightly deeper within the phone’s rim. These minor changes also make the Z5 phones slightly thicker than their predecessors. The Xperia Z3+ is just 6.9mm thin, while the Z5 Compact, Z5, and Z5 Premium are 8.9mm, 7.3mm, and 7.8mm thin respectively.

The combination of thicker phone bodies and raised rims gives the Xperia Z5 series a different grip feel when compared to their less palm-friendly predecessors. The edges feel secure in hand, while it retains the cold and smooth glass texture that highlights the premium build quality of the Xperia Z smartphones. The fingerprint scanner on the power button (located on the right edge) is particularly useful as it allows you to rest your thumb on the button before it’s out of your pocket, so you can swiftly unlock the phone by the time you’re facing the screen.

Beyond these changes, the Z5s’ main design language (dubbed OmniBalance) remains virtually unchanged since the first Xperia Z phone. While keeping its sexy signature look is fine, users upgrading from an old Xperia phone to the next version will probably feel like they are getting the same phone with the same stagnant look. One good feature they kept was the waterproof USB 2.0 port on the phones. The Xperia Z3+ boasted IP68 waterproofing without the need for a USB flap, and the Z5 phones keep the same flap-less design.

Display & Audio

The Sony Xperia Z5 Premium features a 5.5-inch 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160 pixels resolution) display at 806 PPI (pixels per inch). It’s the first smartphone with an Ultra HD display - Sony has been calling it a 4K display, but technically speaking, it’s actually UHD, as it has a slightly lower resolution than what's officially deemed to be 4K. It's likely to be the only phone with a UHD display for some time to come, as LG and Samsung have both decided against 4K displays for their phones.

Before you get too excited, you probably want to know about the Z5 Premium’s display limitations. Sony has officially declared that only video and image content found on the Z5 Premium will be upscaled to 4K resolution. This means that the phone’s interface (OS and apps) will be rendered in 1,080p or lower. On top of which, most of your video content is likely to be Full HD resolution at best anyway. While there’s loads of 4K content on YouTube, the YouTube app itself only lets you select up to 1080p because the app itself is only running at 1080p. Obviously you can load your own 4K content onto the phone, but the file sizes can be pretty crazy – a one and a half hour movie is around 100GB. In fact, even Sony’s own video store only lets you buy 1080p HD movies on the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium. So what this means is you’re only really going to get native resolution content on the display when you’re looking at still images – and even then, they’re going to look identical to Full HD displays anyway.

The Z5 Compact has a 4.6-inch HD (1,280 × 720 pixels resolution) display (319 PPI), while the Xperia Z5 touts a 5.2-inch Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixels resolution) display (424 PPI). All three versions come with Triluminos, X-Reality, and Dynamic Contrast Enhancer for mobile display formats. Together, the Sony Z5 trio offers different screen qualities for different needs. Below is a side-by-side comparison of all three different screens.

All three phones are consistent in terms of vividness and color reproduction when projecting the same test image. The colors are vibrant, distinct, but not oversaturated. They have a slightly cooler color temperature as well.

As expected, the sharpness between these three devices is the biggest difference. All of them are sufficiently clear and precise – but there’s a noticeable upgrade in screen quality between the Z5 Compact and the Z5, and between the Z5 and the Z5 Premium. Choosing a suitable display boils down to your needs. As mentioned, the 4K upscaling feature on the Z5 Premium only applies to video and images. Users who are content with Facebook videos, game apps, and music services could survive very well with its lesser (but still rightfully premium) counterparts.

For audio capabilities, the Sony Xperia Z5 line-up supports High-Resolution audio (LPCM, FLAC, ALAC, DSD). It features familiar enhancements, like DSEE HX for upscaling lossy audio to “almost as good as true Hi-Res Audio quality”, LDAC for higher quality Bluetooth audio transmission, Digital Noise Canceling, and proprietary ClearAudio+ enhancement that acts as an automatic equalizer.

Sound quality across all the three devices is good – you can still hear the subtle detail in different songs, such as guitar reverberation, hi-hat cymbals, and nuances in vocals. What stood out to us was how the three phones have little to no noticeable difference in sound quality. It’s safe to say that the Z5 phones are all equally well-provided in the audio department.

Features

All three Sony Xperia Z5 phones come with Android 5.1 (Lollipop) OS out of the box. They’re packed with 32GB onboard storage, and expandable with a microSD card slot (up to 200GB sized cards). They come with Sony’s DLNA certification, so sharing media across various DLNA-compatible products is a breeze with your home’s Wi-Fi network.

The hardware features are handy, and the software is just as practical. The Android 5.1 OS comes cloaked in a minimalistic interface, with sparse optional apps from Sony that are useful if you have a PS4 or if you’re an avid user the Sony PlayMemories suite. It’s truly free of gimmicks and we love it.

We’ve touched on the 4K display on the Z5 Premium and the 23-megapixel rear camera that has been covered here. The other significant new feature found on all three Z5 phones is its new Fingerprint Sensor. After trying it on all three devices, we found the Fingerprint Sensor to be fast and responsive. It’s also fairly accurate and easy to setup too. If the sensor can’t read your prints regularly, a quick re-calibration within the security settings should fix things in a jiffy.

Benchmark performance

Sony Xperia Z5 phones use a 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (divided into a Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 2 GHz Cortex-A57 array) which has a maximum clock-rate of 2.0GHz. That’s the same processor found in the Huawei Nexus 6P. Qualcomm’s old Snapdragon 810 was criticized for the its overheating problems, and we feel that the issue was taken care of. The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact with 2GB RAM and Xperia Z5 with 3GB RAM did not heat up during our tests, while the Z5 Premium (with 3GB RAM) felt a little warmer than the other two.

Given how Sony’s flagship phones have a shorter flagship product cycle compared to other rival Android phone makers (such as HTC’s one-flagship-refresh per year), we will see how the new Z5 phones compare to other flagship choices that were released in the same year.

Sunspider Javascript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. The Sony phones here did pretty well with web-surfing, and we didn’t experience any noticeable lag when loading web pages.

Quadrant

Quadrant benchmarks a device’s CPU, I/O, and GPU performance. We encountered some minor issues with the Z5’s Quadrant benchmark as it occasionally reported scores that were higher than the Note 5’s (which is generally regarded as one of the most powerful smartphones among the 2015 flock). Numerous tests and cross-references brought us a more realistic score. Good numbers aside, there’s a mild delay when you open some apps. Otherwise, the Z5 phones are certainly great to use on a day-to-day basis.

3DMark 2013

We ran 3DMark’s Ice Storm Unlimited test, which uses a mix of graphics and physics tests to measure hardware performance. The first test measures the GPU’s ability to process lots of vertices, while the second does the same thing with lots of pixels and post-processing effects. Finally, the physics test switches the load to the CPU to test its ability to process physics simulations, while keeping GPU load low. The Z5 phones generally scored well in this benchmark and we had no issues with games across different processing requirements. Performance-wise, the Z5 phones are a very well rounded trio with no significant issues.

Camera Performance

All three Xperia Z5 phones feature a new 23-megapixel camera thanks to a 1/2.3-inch Exmor RS For Mobile image sensor, with a Sony f/2.0 G lens. It also features technology from Sony's α series, such as the 0.03-second Hybrid Autofocus system. It also boasts superior low-light performance with ISO support up to 12,800. There’s also their built-in optical image stabilization, called SteadyShot, which Sony claims to be the best in the industry. Their claims of having the world’s most light-sensitive camera in a flagship phone (among others) are detailed in a blog entry that is accurate as of July 2015. The phones have a front camera with 5.1-megapixels resolution.

The Xperia Z5 trio has a Manual mode for their camera, but it’s limited in control – you can only adjust the ISO and white balance, and that’s about all the significant changes you can make. However it comes with a Superior Auto mode for automatic settings, and a Scene mode for optimal shots in a suitable situation. There’s also a 5x image zoom feature built into the phones.

We have a smartphone camera quality test for flagship phones released in 2015, and the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium did pretty well in terms of detail under good light, but mediocre performance in low light. As a whole, it had pretty decent performance, but every category was surpassed by other rival flagship smartphones (across different models at different points of comparison). However, the Z5 barely addresses the old artifact problems it had since the Xperia Z1 and that's disappointing. We normally wouldn't expect so much from smartphones, but we expected more from a company that makes great cameras.

Between the three Xperia Z5 phones, there’s very little difference in camera performance and image quality. We find that the test shots above slightly washed out -  except for the Sony Xperia Z5. Images are detailed but only to a limited extent – you can read the bottle’s label quite effortlessly in all three images, but the detail on the spools of thread suffer from the noise levels in the image. Overall, it’s definitely decent, but it’s not the best smartphone camera when there are rivals like the Huawei Nexus 6P. Even so, it’s going to be tough to beat the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, which has one of the best-performing smartphone cameras among Android OS handsets (as reported in our shootout).

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones includes the following parameters:

• Looping a 800 x 480-pixel video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

Battery capacity-wise, the Xperia Z5 Compact, Xperia Z5, and Xperia Z5 Premium has 2,700mAh, 2,900mAh, and 3,430mAh respectively. All three phones have Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0, even though the Z5 Premium is the only one who lists the quick-charging feature in its online specifications list.

We’ve already covered Xperia Z5 Premium’s battery performance against other Android devices. To re-cap, the Z5 Premium scored a little lower despite its huge battery capacity, because of its 4K resolution display and video upscaling capabilities. The other Z5 phones do slightly better, but it’s still nowhere as efficient as the AMOLED-equipped smartphones (Note 5 and Nexus 6P). That said, battery life across all three Z5 devices is acceptable, since you can still use the phone for a large part of your waking day. Just remember to charge it before bed.

Conclusion

There's no doubt that the Sony Xperia Z5, Z5 Compact, and Z5 Premium smartphones are good smartphones. They have good real-world performance, premium build quality and design, and handy features like waterproofing. The phones have a clean interface that matches their appearance, but the Sony-made camera modules performed a little below expectations. New features like the Fingerprint Sensor work exactly like they should, while battery life isn’t terrible either. Our only real problem with the phones is that there's nothing really special about them to help them stand out from the competition. The Z5 Premium's 4K display is nice, but it's excessive and superflous, and not worth paying more for. Even the overall outlook and design, while pleasing, hasn't really changed in years.

Having said that, the phones are priced reasonably well, given how many flagship smartphones are crossing the thousand-dollar mark. Seeing a S$828 Xperia Z5 Compact, a S$998 Xperia Z5, and a S$1,098 Xperia Z5 Premium lets us breathe easier. Perhaps the only exception would be paying S$828 for the Z5 Compact that has a standard HD display. Choosing one is a matter of catering to your own needs and handling comfort.

Do note that the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact is exclusively available from Sony stores (just like the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium Dual).