Sony Xperia Z5 Review

Display

As already mentioned, Sony has opted for a more traditional panel on the Z5. FullHD might be a letdown for some, but, then again, there the Z5 Premium to fill that niche and add some. In reality, 1080 x 1920 pixels are perfectly adequate, especially on a 5.2-inch screen and with 428 ppi, the phone is definitely not suffering from any shortage of pixels.
Other than that, the panel itself is o the typical for Sony IPS LCD variety, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, especially considering the improved tech, reportedly put inside - things such as Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2, Triluminos technology and X-Reality engine for mobile come to mind (and being able to quote those on the top of our heads can't be a healthy thing for sure).
All this amounts to nice and sharp images on the Z5 and the 1080p resolution also brings the added bonus of less stain on the GPU and consequently, less heat and a longer battery life, at least in theory, that is.
The Sony Xperia Z5 screen has an above average maximum brightness (583nits) and it can go even slightly higher in bright sunlight when in Auto mode (603nits). Unfortunately, these levels are a far cry from the ones achieved by the Xperia Z5 Compact and most importantly, the Xperia Z3+.
On a more positive note though, the blacks on this year's Sony flagship are deeper than on any of the predecessors. The reason for that most probably being the newly added Contrast filter between the backlight and LCD panel.
Unfortunately, these weren't enough to produce anything more than average contrast ratio (986:1), especially when compared to the Xperia Z3+ (1158).

Display test	50% brightness			100% brightness
	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio
Sony Xperia Z5 compact	0.10	106	1060	0.65	680	1053
Sony Xperia Z5	0.10	90	900	0.59	583	986
Sony Xperia Z3+	-	-	-	0.68	789	1158
Apple iPhone 6	0.17	207	1230	0.61	740	1213
Apple iPhone 6 Plus	0.17	208	1197	0.52	705	1361
Samsung Galaxy S6	0.00	208	∞	0.00	473	∞
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge	0.00	208	∞	0.00	473	∞
LG G4	0.09	108	1240	0.43	532	1238
Samsung Galaxy Note 4	0.00	291	∞	0.00	399	∞
Motorola Nexus 6	0.00	149	∞	0.00	372	∞
HTC One M9	0.15	175	1180	0.44	534	1221
OnePlus Two	0.16	180	1139	0.30	399	1334
Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML	0.13	107	796	0.44	390	879
Huawei Honor 7	0.07	89	1372	0.32	450	1398
Sony Xperia M5	0.08	110	1392	0.63	527	839
Meizu MX5	0.00	117	∞	0	346.00	∞
ZTE Nubia Z9	0.29	258	893	0.49	440	898

In terms of sunlight legibility, the Z5 is pretty comparable to its little brother. Both get decent scores, but there is still a lot of room for improvement left.

Sunlight contrast ratio

Much like on the Xperia Z5 compact, color rendering without image enhancements is off to a higher extent than we're used to see lately (Avg deltaE 6.6 for the primary colors plus black and white), but it's the white to blame as it has a relatively high purplish tint (deltaE 15.2). Still, you would certainly have a hard time noticing a color cast without a reference.
Color accuracy of course takes an extra hit when you turn on the screen image enhancements such as the X Reality for mobile mode (Avg deltaE 8.3) but the representation of the whites remains unchanged in this mode. The maximum brightness however is reduced in these modes down to about 550 nits. Interestingly, from there on the Super Vivid mode doesn't make things any worse and it's not as wild as the name suggests.
As usual, display colors are a matter of personal taste and perception so if you don't need calibrated color output, you will probably be quite happy with the default settings of the Xperia Z5 Compact display.
You can fine tune the display color rendering to an extent as Sony gives you fine grain sliders for adjusting the Red, Green and Blue channel, but the UI is far from user friendly and unlikely to produce any serious results without a reference point sitting side by side with the display. Even worse, as soon as you start fiddling with those sliders, the maximum brightness will take a hit.

Sony Xperia Z5 battery life

The Sony Xperia Z5 is powered by a 2900 mAh battery, sealed-in, as expected. That is quite a bit less less than the Z5 Premium at 3430 mAh, but still better than the 2700 mAh pack of the Z5 Compact. As for the Z3+, it has just a bit more juice at 2930 mAh, but that still makes the pair quite comparable and will help up see if Sony has, indeed, improved the power efficiency of its flagship offer.
Overall, with an endurance rating of 73 hours, the Xperia Z5 definitely did alright in our tests, but still not quite the 86 hours the Z5 Compact managed to clock in. Granted, the scores are pretty close, but we expected almost identical results, considering the identical hardware, but, apparently the display size played a huge role. Our test reveal that the Z5 did better than its smaller sibling in terms of call endurance and web browsing, but failed to impress with only about 8 hours of video playback and quite a draining standby mode.
On a more positive note, however, the Z3+ managed to last only 65 hours under the same test conditions, despite having a slightly bigger battery than the Z5. This is a definite improvement on Sony's end.
An endurance rating of 73 hours means that the Z5 should be more than happy to facilitate two days of average use, or at least our understanding of it - one hour of browsing, video playback and calls a day, respectively and the rest - standby.
Such usage pattern is of course entirely artificial, but we've established it so our battery results are comparable across devices. And if it doesn't quite fit your bill, you can easily hop on to our battery life chart and adjust the pattern to your liking for an even more comprehensive comparison.

Connectivity

Sony is offering the Z5 in both a single SIM and dual SIM variant, just like the Z5 Premium. The handset offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA support. LTE is enabled and Sony has multiple regional models to make sure the Xperia Z5 will work with the most widespread 4G networks. It is worth noting that the E6653 variant offers Cat.6 LTE with speeds of up to 300Mbps, while the E6603 one still has Cat.4 with a theoretical maximum of 150Mbps. This, however, makes little difference in real world conditions and shouldn't really be a consideration.
Local connectivity features dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac and Wi-Fi Direct. There is also support for Bluetooth 4.1 with A2DP. Satellite navigation is also a given, with additional A-GPS and GLONASS or Beidou (market dependent) support.
The Xperia Z5 also has an FM radio with RDS.
The phone doesn't offer an IR port, but it does come with NFC.
There is a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and data connections and now, thanks to special coating, it no longer needs to be covered by a flap. Media transfer mode is supported for accessing the phone's built-in memory and microSD card over the USB cable.
USB host functionality is present, but requires a little more work than simply plugging in a device. There is a special menu under Xperia Connectivity in the setting that allows you to "discover" a plugged USB device. It still works as expected, but it requires some extra legwork. This is most likely related to the aforementioned coverless USB that might be vulnerable to shortages under water.
Being part of the premium "Z" line has a few other benefits, like MHL 3 TV-out support. You can also output your phone's screen wirelessly via the Miracast protocol or Sony's Xperia Connectivity Throw option.
The app also lets you share your media over DLNA by creating a media server, as well as connect to a PlayStation DUALSHOCK 3 (or 4) wireless controller.
Last, but not least, the Z5 offers advanced active noise cancelling when paired with a supported handset like the Sony MDR-NC750.

Performance

Specs-wise, the Xperia Z5 is a true flagship, no doubt about it. It runs on a Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 SoC, which is still the chip manufacturer's top offer, at least until the 820 comes along. It has more than enough power to spare, but also happens to be the exact same hardware involved in the Z3+ overheating fiasco.
Whether it was Sony's fault or a faulty chipset batch doesn't really matter, as, at the end of the day, the Z3+ did, for a fact, overheat quite badly. This bad reputation quickly started dragging down Sony mobile's fortunes and looked like a primary motivator for the quick release of the Z5 family. This did, effectively, push the flagship issue under the rug and we are also happy to report that, as expected, Sony has made sure the Z5 doesn't suffer from overheating.
Sony has really gone the extra length to ensure the Z5 handles heat diligently by employing a dual heat-pipe cooling system and quite a bit of high-efficiency thermal paste. It definitely does a better job at pulling heat away from the chip, so, even though the Z5 and Z3+ share the same core computing silicon, the former has the added benefit of better thermal management, which is generally a major stability and performance booster. It is just like investing in a big and pricy aftermarket heat sink to replace the small OEM one on a desktop pc - quite a natural thing to do and we applaud Sony for it.
However, before we get too carried away, there is an important note to be made here. The Z5 might handle heat better than the Z3+, but it still got quite toasty during our benchmark tests. This time around, however, it is nothing to worry about and quite tolerable, so Sony did, in fact, remedy the original issues. Still, it is also worth noting that despite its small size and identical hardware, the Z5 Compact did run a little colder than its full-size sibling. That is odd, to say the least, but the Z5 did also manage to score a bit higher in CPU tests, so, perhaps, Sony is pushing it a bit harder. But, we digress.
The rest of the Z5's specs sheet seems just as worthy for a 2015 flagship. The aforementioned eight-core chip (Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 2 GHz Cortex-A57) is backed up by an Adreno 430 GPU, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expendable storage. The phone's price tag also puts it squarely in the high-end realm and lets it rub shoulders with most other current flagship smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S6, the LG G4 and perhaps even the 16GB iPhone 6s, although that might be a little bit of a stretch.
We made sure to pit the Z5 against all of these phones in the benchmark comparison below and also included a few other high-end offers that come close in specs to what the Z5 has to offer, like the Xiaomi Mi 4c, HTC One M9, OnePlus 2, Meizu MX5 and others. Last, but definitely not least, we threw in a few other Xperia handsets, like the aforementioned Z5 Compact, which we recently reviewed, as well as the nicely specked mid-range Xperia M5.
First up, we have the raw CPU performance test with GeekBench 3 and this is where the eight cores get to shine. We can happily report that the Z5 is performing up to par with other Snapdragon 810 devices. It fact, Sony seem to have done a truly terrific job in utilizing the raw CPU power to the fullest extent, outshined slightly only by the OnePlus 2, which has the same chipset. The Z5 did also score a couple of hundred points more than the Compact and seeing how this is a CPU only test and the extra gig of RAM couldn't weigh in like in some other scenarios, it does seem the Z5 is staining itself a bit more.
There is an interesting observation to be made here, pertaining to the Xperia M5. Like we already mentioned, despite being a mid-range phone by design, its MediaTek Helio X10 SoC definitely holds its own and scores only a couple of hundred points below the Z5 Compact. If it is raw computational power you are after, then the latter might be a perfectly viable choice and it does come with a lower price tag than the Z5. However, the weaker GPU does take its toll in most of the other tests, so there is a definite tradeoff in making the more economical choice.

GeekBench 3

AnTuTu is a compound benchmark, which also takes into account RAM and GPU performance. Surprisingly, the Z5 Compact blew all of the competition out of the water. It seems that Sony has invested in some quicker chips and now reaps the benefits with a whopping lead over its competitors, be it Snapdragon 810-based or not, including the Z5.
Taking the smaller screen resolution into account, as expected, it actually turned out that the Compact is comes out on top and outscores the full size Z5, as far as synthetic benchmarks are concerned.

AnTuTu 5

Basemark OS II is another all-round benchmark. It gives an overall score along with single, multi-core performance, math performance and more. One again, the Z5 really shines, especially in the single-core department. It actually leaves behind all of its Snapdragon 810-powered rival in the overall score, which is impressive. Multi-tasking, however, seems to be a bit lacking, which was also the case with the Z5 Compact. However, it is nothing serious, nor is translatable to real life performance. Our experience with the unit showed fluent performance with even the most liberal usage pattern.

Basemark OS II

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Moving on to pure graphics tests and namely GFX Bench. The Adreno 430 GPU inside the Snapdragon 810 chip is pretty powerful and offers nice graphics performance. The Z5 is more than capable of handling even the most demanding Android game, as you would expect form a flagship device.
As you might remember, the hardware platform in question is actually shared across the whole Z5 family, which means that the smaller Z5 Compact also has the Adreno 430 at its disposal. This, combined with a 720p resolution display allows it to achieve amazing scores, even with the new Open GL ES 3.1. The Z5, with its FullHD display is a lot more modest in on-screen frame rates, but still holds its own. As for offscreen rendering, results are comparable, as expected.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

In terms of browsing, the Xperia Z5 offers a splendid online experience. BrowserMark definitely backs up our statement, but the all JavaScript Kraken benchmark isn't quite so favorable. Naturally, we would be quick to point a finger at the built-in browser, but in the case of Sony, that is Chrome, so other forces must be at play here.

Kraken 1.1

BrowserMark 2.1

Overall, the Xperia Z5 is a true powerhouse and a worthy flagship in any sense of the word. Also, it is really encouraging to see that Sony worked hard and remedied the overheating issue. It might not be a perfect fix, but is definitely a lot better than the easier alternatives, like simply going with another chip and sweeping the Z3+/Z4 under the rug - a respectable decision indeed.
As for the other elephant in the room - Z5 or Z3+ - performance isn't really all that different and perhaps shouldn't serve as an incentive in itself to shell out the extra money. However, if you find yourself drawn to some of the Z5's other features, like the camera or fingerprint reader, then the steeper price might well be justified, but it is worth noting that either way, you will be getting a pretty powerful device.

Promising 23MP camera

No proper modern day flagship could be truly complete without a powerful camera and the Z5 definitely makes no exception. Sony has decided to equip the whole Z5 family with a new 23MP camera. That means that the handset should have pretty compatible photo quality to the Z5 Compact and even the Z5 Premium.
Sony might be marketing the new camera as simply a 23MP one, paired with an f/2.0 24mm-equivalent wide-angle lens, but there is actually a lot more going on behind the scenes. The sensor it uses, said to be the Sony IMX300 is actually what is known as a multi-aspect sensor and in reality has quite a bit more pixels - around 25MP to be exact.
Sony doesn't market this officially and instead cited the 23MP (well, actually about 22.85MP) resolution or 5520 x 4140 pixels that the phone does in 4:3 mode. Meanwhile, however, the 16:9 aspect ratio mode yields images measuring 5,984 x 3,366 pixels (20.14MP). What you'll notice, is that the 16:9 shots have a higher horizontal resolution than the 4:3 ones, hence they're not cropped from 4:3 as usual, but instead use a different part of a larger sensor. This might not sound like much, but you do actually get comparable resolutions in both aspects, which is nice.
The impressive hardware, in combination with the capable Snapdragon 810 chip makes it possible to shoot UHD 2160p videos at 30fps with the main camera and up to 1080p@30fps with the front-facing one.
The phone has a dedicated two-stage shutter button, which makes precise focus a whole lot easier. It is a shame that there is no dual-tone flash, but just a plain single LED one.
The camera viewfinder is the usual affair, nothing has changed on Android Lollipop, although the latest app update did move a few things around, most notable HDR, which is no longer hidden away in the setting. Perhaps there are other changes under the hood, but we are yet to fully experience it in the future, as the app is not in its final state yet even though our review unit runs final firmware.
We did also notice that scenes are no longer available in Manual mode. Perhaps it is intentional or a direct consequence of the changes, the app is undergoing. In any case, the Z5 Compact did have the scenes selector intact. We should also mention that the camera did exhibit odd exposure control when rapidly changing the lighting and sometimes refused to readjust its ISO until we restarted the application. Canceling a panorama mid-way was also buggy.
Back at the announcement of the Z5 series, Sony promised an updated camera app with a new UI, which it is yet to deliver even now that the phones have already hit the market. Hopefully, it will also come with fixes to the aforementioned bugs.
In Superior Auto mode stills and videos share the viewfinder and you can snap a photo or shoot a video without changing modes beforehand. While this is convenient, framing your videos correctly is nearly impossible as the two have different fields of view and you only get to see the actual framing only once you've started recording.
On a more positive note, however, Superior Auto no longer feels the need to lower your resolution and the Z5 can shoot at 5520 x 4140 pixels in Auto, as well as Manual.
Speaking of Manual mode, in it you can switch between stills and video capture so that you can see the framing of your images and videos correctly (each with its own field of view) before you've pressed the shutter.
In Manual mode you also get access to "manual controls" on the viewfinder. There's an exposure compensation slider and a white balance selector. You can also control the ISO, metering and focus modes, turn on/off image stabilization, but those are buried in the settings menu.
You also get a dedicated video mode, with a proper viewfinder with manual control, which is nice to have.
The Superior Auto shooting mode is what we've already seen in other Xperia phones. There are no settings you can change, everything here is done automagically.
Manual and Superior Auto aside, the Xperia Z5 Compact offers several other interesting shooting modes.
There's Sweep panorama but, it's not really all that great. Stitching is clearly visible, resolve detail is poor and so is sharpness.
Then, there are the Augmented Reality effects, which stamp one of several virtual worlds over your scene and you can even move around in this world thanks to some intriguing motion tracking effect (note that it needs real-life visual cues in the scene to track your motion). Children will love this mode, but us bitter adults are unimpressed.
Other modes include the regular Picture effect mode, which creates a 3 x 3 grid that shows all the available effects in real time. Also a few portrait tools for styling and the quite funny AR mask that overlays another face on top of your own.
Image quality
Sony's new 23MP sensor shows great promise. But regardless of how powerful the hardware is, the camera experience is still very dependent on software processing.
Sony does have some spotty reputation in this department with certain recurring issues like corner softness and a lot of noise under less than favorable lighting. Looking at the samples form the Z5 we sadly see many of these issues yet again - some shots came out quite blurry around the edges and a lot of detail seems to have this watercolor like look, which is usually a result of poor noise reduction algorithms.
We also noticed quite a few barrel distortions that weren't straightened out by the algorithm. Such distortion is quite expected with a lens that's wide (24mm), but it should be correctable in-camera.
Focusing also had its ups and downs, and at times failed to lock at our test subject so, overall, in its current state the Z5 doesn't exactly live up to the promise of a glorious hybrid auto focusing. The key word here, however, seems to be the current state. Like we already mentioned, Sony seems to be amidst a camera software update and we might see those changed for the better down the road.
We are actually quite inclined to blame the software for a lot of the imperfections at this point, as it did also exhibit a few odd bugs while shooting, like endless focus hunting and absurdly short exposure times, also the aforementioned failure to auto adjust exposure.
The Z5 camera also has a lot of redeeming factors going for it, like nice and accurate color representation, a good dynamic range and last, but not least, very fast auto-focus even if not terribly accurate.
Here are some camera samples form the 23MP shooter:
On another positive note, the fast hardware has made the camera app nice and responsive and Sony's legendary Superior Auto mode seems to have gotten better as well. It still has its hiccups and can sometimes toggle to an odd shooting mode, but it generally manages to produce far better photos than a zero-config manual approach. Here are two sets of shots taken in Superior Auto, Manual Mode and Manual Mode with forced HDR.
While Superior Auto would occasionally activate the HDR mode, if you really want to force it, you'd have to go to Manual mode and select Backlight Correction (HDR). Sony has now moved this toggle to a more convenient location, next to the White balance controls in the viewfinder, so you no longer need to browse setting to reach it. However, it is also worth noting that the HDR effect itself looks quite toned down, especially compared to other recent Sony models, like the Xperia M5. That, however, is not necessarily a bad things, as it does produce nice results.
We also tested how well the Z5 performs up close and personal. Superior Auto does a perfectly decent job of sensing our intentions and toggling macro mode, but for some reason, focus didn't work particularly well and completely failed in as we got closer for some macro shots. The Z5 Compact did exhibit the same behavior.
We also tested how the Z5 handles low light conditions and results weren't exactly impressive. Noise levels are off the chart in the night samples. On a more positive note, at dusk, the Z5 did fairly good and its flash seems to work well, bringing out nice colors and detail, despite being only "mono" tone (if that's a word).
Last, but not least, we also tested out the 5.1MP front-facing camera. Photos came out with nice colors and a lot of detail, as one would expect. Here are a few samples at slightly different lighting.
Still camera comparison
We've uploaded the full resolution (23MP) photos to our photo quality comparison database to compare against other high-resolution smartphones.

Sony Xperia Z5 in our photo compare tool
4K video recording
With a 23MP camera and powerful Snapdragon 810, the Xperia Z5 has all the required prerequisites to do 4K and should also do a pretty good job of it. It definitely lives up to those expectations, producing pretty impressive results. Videos come out with a lot of detail, nice colors and smooth motion.
The camcorder shares the same UI as the still camera, unless you go into manual mode. In manual mode you can set a timer and fiddle with settings like exposure, metering, etc. Again, we have to note that scene selection was unavailable on our test unit, unlike the Z5 Compact we previously reviewed.
For videos the Xperia Z5 features digital image stabilization - SteadyShot, but there's a price to pay - the field of view (FoV) is reduced (it's how all digital stabilization systems work). Also, it takes a toll on the quality. However, the Z5 does show major improvements in this area - quality isn't severely affected and the stabilization works surprisingly well. That is a trait also observed in the Z5 Compact.
The phone is smart enough to detect whether you are shooting hand-held or you have rested it on something stable but you get the reduced FoV either way if the option is turned on.
Sony has actually done some behind-the-scenes improvements on its video stabilization. Just like with the Z3+, the Z5 uses a combination of software and hardware to do the magic. The latter being an actuator system that shifts the whole lens unit to compensate for shakiness. This is slightly different from OIS and Sony has gone the extra mile to improve the de-shaking process in the Z5 family, by adding a position sensor and introducing a closed loop mode of work with feedback control from said sensor.
One notable absence in the Z5's new camera app is HDR mode in video. Hopefully, it will reappear with a future update.
The Z5 shoots truly gorgeous 4K videos with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels and a steady framerate of 30 fps. The bitrate is also quite impressive at 54 to 55 Mbps, coupled with a 48 kHz audio sampling rate, captured in stereo, of course. Resolve detail is really impressive. Overall, the Z5 offers 4K video fit for a flagship.
Auto focus, however, was far from docile and in typical Sony fashion, the phone hunted for focus while video recording quite a bit. Setting the autofocus to a single focus per video remedies the issue entirely. It is also worth noting that we shot on a pretty windy day, which brought in some shakiness.