Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Sony Xperia 5 IV Review: Always Almost”.
This video is sponsored by extra back in may. I called sony’s xperia one mark iv, an entire film studio in your pocket. The trouble is it’ll cost nearly sixteen hundred dollars when it finally launches in the u.s later this month too rich for my blood. Fortunately, sony did what sony always does it condensed most of the important parts of the one mark iv into a more petite package with a similarly shrunken shelf price? I’M michael fisher and i took the new xperia 5 mark iv to sun valley, idaho, to see just how much compromise you need to settle for when you buy a sony phone for 9.99, all right, let’s get this out of the way! First, why idaho? Well, with a camera-centric smartphone, i usually take a page out of david cogan’s book and i try for a testing ground, that’s out of the ordinary, or at least a little far afield, of the urban canyons of my native new york city, and it just so happens That sony was hosting its annual condo trip for creators and photographers right around the time. I got my review device, which is not to say that i’m covering this device because of that i’ve been reviewing xperia since well before sony sent me experience to review. But you should know that sony did provide my travel lodging and entertainment during my time at condo trip, and it loaned me this xperia 5 mark iv for review. But as always, the manufacturer had no editorial input of any kind into my review conclusions, which you’ll see when we get to the downsides of this device. But let’s start with the good stuff, much of which came over unchanged from the five mark iv’s. Sixteen 1600 sibling, an xperia phone, is one of the last places you’ll be able to find the headphone jack.
That makes it possible for me to use an external microphone while recording the host shots. You just saw it’s still got micro sd support, so you can expand. Storage on the fly mounted back-to-back with a sim card on a tray, you don’t need a tool to access. The cameras are still launched by a dedicated two-step shutter button on the side and alerts are still announced by that holdover beloved by a generation of aging phone fans.
The notification led it’s all packed into a slightly smaller version of the xperia housing. Still distinctively stretched still dust and water resistant and still offered to reviewers only in matte black when there’s a lovely green option also available. So where did sony find six hundred dollars in savings? Well, i think mostly on a component that makes a lot of sense.
The display i’ve said over and over that the near 4k resolution on the xperia 1 series is overkill in the extreme and while someone out there can probably tell the difference, i don’t miss those extra pixels at all on this fhd plus panel. It’S still plenty bright. Plenty smooth at 120 hertz and you can go ahead and slide both those settings to maximum, because there’s also plenty of battery 5 000 milliamp hours of it. The endurance has just been phenomenal for me, often leaving me with more than 40 left in the tank after 16 hours, even with the display set at 120 hertz. Maybe someone could kill this thing before the end of the day, but this uh increasingly hypothetical someone would not be me yep.
Those are front firing speakers with new enclosures this year for better base response, there’s even wireless charging this time around. First, i believe for the 5 series. The other obvious money saver is in the camera module, while the main and ultra wide cameras seem unchanged from xperia 1 that fancy variable periscope zoom has been replaced by a conventional 60 millimeter telephoto on the xperia 5, backed by a 12 megapixel sensor like the rest Of the cameras, those cameras are powered by the same homegrown pro apps, that sony’s been using for the past year or so apps, which give you tremendous capability. If you have the time to learn them, i’m talking familiar stuff here: 20 fps burst, shooting with auto focus and auto exposure.
Calculations happening at 60 times per second manual focus is here custom color profiles, optical steady, shot, eyeball based, auto focus. Sony gives you a packed toolbox here. As always, i was surrounded by some of the best content creators in the world on the condo trip, from whom i took no small amount of inspiration and guidance, as i captured some of these sun valley samples, more of which i’ll share. After this, my wallet has been with me for years and, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong with it, but just like it is with tech. Sometimes you take a look around at what’s new and you just need to change it up a little bit. This video is sponsored by exter, whose mission is to make your wallet easier to use and harder to lose.
If you’re a traditionalist, you might like the modular bi-fold, with its removable magnetic holder, to keep more cards or for you cashless, cruisers out there. The card holder comes in lightweight aluminum, carbon, fiber or leather, all of which have this very slick switch with which to deploy those cards and if you’re like me, you might split the difference with the parliament. Cash on the strap pop out cards in a skimmer resistant casing and an available solar powered tracker card or apple air tag, holster to make it less losable. All of these can be modified with accessories to tailor them to your specific needs and it doesn’t stop at wallets extra has laptop sleeves phone cases, even duffel bags to make your everyday life easier visit them at the link in the description and thanks to extra for Sponsoring this video, so this year’s xperia 5, has far more in common with the flagship xperia 1 than ever before, including the improved selfie camera i’m using here and we’ve just seen all the other places where that’s great news. Now, here’s where it’s not for one thing, the software hasn’t changed at all and that’s not necessarily a negative, but for me, xperia home just doesn’t bring much additional utility to android 12..
The sidesense panel usually just gets in my way it’s something. I’Ve also found to be true on samsung phones and, personally, i’m just so tired of the look and feel of sony’s ui that this time i fell back on niagara, my go-to launcher for tall phones. If you don’t care about that stuff, you probably won’t care about these issues either, but i’ll call them out anyway. Sony tends to be stubborn.
In my opinion, it always wants you to use the camera with the shutter button on top, so it refuses to invert the interface, even if you have to shoot with the phone upside down. For whatever reason, the phone also still does the bulk of its work optically. In camera, instead of through post-processing, which is a valid creative choice on the part of sony mobile, but it also means that rushed shots, especially in low light, will continue to suffer when put up against shots from say. The google pixel. And while all three of the experience cameras are capable of recording 120 frames per second in 4k, sony makes you use the professional grade cinema pro app to achieve that. It’S a great app wonderful for mobile filmmaking.
But please add this feature to the fast and easy photography pro app too. You know for those situations where you don’t have time to fiddle with project settings before the opportunity for the shot has passed, and none of that is as frustrating as the phone’s thermal management or lack thereof, this phone overheated. On the very first day, i tried filming with it on a warm but not hot day, in the shade, with a stiff boat breeze blowing by the snapdragon 8 gen 1 might run hot, but i’ve reviewed plenty of phones running that processor and i’ve never met one As eager to overheat as sony’s are, there are other problems that have lingered over the years. The perennial annoyance of the screen failing to stay off during a phone call. Those phone calls generally not being as clear as on competing phones, but with the mark iv line. Sony specifically said it wanted to focus on video creators and i’m sorry, but a phone that overheats a half minute into shooting a video does not achieve that objective.
Despite those compromises year after year, i keep hoping sony will finally build the phone. It says it wants to a one-stop pocket shop for mobile creators. The last ingredient to that elusive stew comes in the form of the music pro app, which was teased on the one mark iv. I used music pro to record this segment from a place. I’M at pretty often a hotel room, most of which are not exactly known for great acoustics sure i could plug in an external mic, as i did with the host segments and wireless mics before.
But if i’m stuck using the integrated microphone and i pony up for the five dollar a month subscription, i can process the voice over through music pro servers to clean it up a little. It’S an imperfect end result, but it’s a nice option in a pinch and it’s further proof that sony is still trying in meaningful ways to develop the perfect phone for creators when you look at it through that lens. The xperia 5 mark iv almost makes sense to a creator who wants to establish a mobile first workflow on a limited budget 600.. After all, is a lot of money to save versus the one mark iv and you’re, really not sacrificing all that much.
I forgot to mention you can even use the five mark iv as an external monitor for uvc capable cameras. If the phone’s built-in cameras were a little bit more adaptable in automatic mode or if the damn thing didn’t overheat as much as it did, 999 would be a steal for all this capability, but given the compromises sony brought over alongside that capability, well, yet again, it’s Not the slam dunk it could otherwise be while xperia continues to be synonymous with laudable ambition in the mobile space. It also continues to be a synonym for almost this video was produced following 12 days with an xperia 5 mark iv review sample provided by sony, and, as i mentioned earlier, the company also provided travel and accommodation for mr mobile at condo trip 2022, but sony had No editorial input whatsoever into the content of this review and was not given a preview of it prior to publication. Nor did it provide compensation in exchange for its production until next time from michael fisher, thanks for watching and stay mobile, my friends .