Sony Xperia 5 V vs Sony Xperia 5 IV: Engineers on a Holiday

The next compact flagship from Sony is here! The Japanese company has been perfecting its Xperia trio for quite a few years now, and the Xperia 5 Mark V is the latest iteration of the small flagship, sitting just beneath the Xperia 1 Mark 5, and way above the budget Xperia 10 Mark V.

How does it compare to the previous model, though? Which one should you buy if you want a compact Xperia, and should you upgrade if you already own the Xperia 1 IV? Today we're going to answer all those questions, as we're pitting against each other the Xperia 5 Mark V and the Xperia 5 Mark IV.


Xperia 5 Mark V vs Xperia 5 Mark IV in a nutshell:

• 52MP (48MP effective) main camera vs 12MP on the Xperia 5 IV
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 vs 8 Gen 1 on the previous model
• New camera aisle design (now housing only two cameras)
• New Video Creator app
• New amplifier for the front-facing stereo speakers
• Notification LED is gone

Table of Contents:

Let's start with the design. Both phones are unmistakably Sony and follow the same omnibalance design philosophy the company has been pursuing for years and years. The main design difference between the Xperia 5 V and the Xperia 5 IV lies in the camera aisle; the new model has only two lenses, and the bump is more prominent, but it also looks a bit more modern, with separate glass covers for each lens.


Surprisingly, the new phone is thicker and heavier and has a sort of protruding inner frame. It's not a night and day difference, but the Xperia 5 IV feels better in the hand. Let's move to the display.

Well, this one's easy. The display is virtually identical on both phones. It's a great 6.1-inch OLED, bright and color accurate, and it also supports 120Hz refresh rate but no LTPO magic or dynamic mode. You can toggle the High refresh rate on and get 120Hz or leave it off and settle for 60Hz. And that's it.

Display Measurements:

The side-mounted fingerprint scanner is (unfortunately) the same on both phones. It gets the job done, but it's neither fast nor extremely accurate. We feel Sony has been using the same scanner for the past couple of years.

Performance and Software

Fast aplenty!

The Xperia 5 Mark V uses the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and performs accordingly. That being said, the older model, which features the 8 Gen 1, is no slouch either. The synthetic benchmarks are absolutely consistent with what other phones sporting the same chipsets show, and the real-life performance is smooth and fast on both phones.

The memory configuration situation is the same: you get 8GB/128GB as a base, and you can expand the onboard memory with up to 1TB via the microSD card slot. One thing worth mentioning is that both phones get hot under load, with the Xperia 5 IV getting much hotter than the new model.

Performance Benchmarks:


As far as software goes, you get the Sony experience on both of these phones, which is mostly stock Android with Sony's pro-grade creator's suite. One new addition to this arsenal is the Video Creator app on the Xperia 5 Mark V. It's a neat and fast way to stitch cool videos together without the need to export them and work on a PC or laptop.

Camera

Exmor T minus one

The biggest difference between the Xperia 5 V and the previous model lies in the camera system. The new model sports the same 52MP Exmor T sensor found on its bigger brother, the Xperia 1 V. In comparison, the Xperia 5 IV comes with a 12-megapixel main camera. You can always check out the specs and compare the two camera systems, but snapping a bunch of photos and comparing them is, in our opinion, the better test.

Main Camera - Day

Main Camera - Low-light

Zoom Quality

Ultra-wide Camera

Selfies

Audio Quality and Haptics

Xperia phones have a couple of cool features that you won't find on modern flagships, and one of them is the 3.5mm audio jack. It's present on both phones, and you can plug your favorite wired headphones in and enjoy quality audio.

There's a new amplifier driving the loudspeakers on the Xperia 5 V, and it does make a difference. The phone is noticeably louder and clearer than its predecessor. It's not a huge difference, but if you like to watch movies or listen to music using the main speakers, the Xperia 5 V is clearly the better choice.

As for haptics, the situation is virtually the same between these two. They use the same haptic motor, producing short and snappy vibrations but not overly strong ones.

Battery Life and Charging

More or less the same

Another area left unchanged is the battery and charging. Both the Xperia 5 V and its predecessor feature 5,000mAh batteries and support up to 30W of wired charging speeds. Unsurprisingly, web browsing, video streaming, and gaming results are very similar, as is the real-life performance of both phones. You can get a solid day or a day and a half even with heavy usage out of both phones.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:


Charging speeds are also the same. Here's a quick charging profile:

15 minutes - 20%
30 minutes - 40%
45 minutes - 50%
Full charge - 110 minutes

Specs Comparison

Here's a quick specs comparison between the two phones:



You can delve deeper and check out the full Xperia 5 V vs Xperia 5 IV specs comparison on our site.

There's no way around saying this. It seems like Sony's engineers took a long vacation between the launch of the Xperia 5 IV and the Xperia 5 V. The differences between these two are pretty minor—just a new camera sensor and a faster processor, basically.

And given that this new camera sensor is taken from the Xperia 1 V, we can't help but wonder what Sony's R&D department has been doing the whole time. Which one should you buy, then? The Xperia 5 Mark V, without a shadow of a doubt. It's a better phone, not by much but still better than its predecessor, and it's also a bit cheaper (999 euros vs 1,049 euros). If you already own the previous model, though, there's little to no reason to upgrade.