Black Shark 5 Pro Review: Uncompromising Power Alternative

In the packaging of Black Shark 5 Pro we find a soft black silicone cover, a USB / USB-C cable and a very powerful 120W power supply. Nice stickers included.

Black Shark 5 Pro slightly changes its design, while still remaining recognizable as a smartphone of the brand, with the back in statinate glass “studded” with modern and somewhat flashy graphics and with an element that turns out to be an RGB LED. The cameras move to a block in the corner. In the hand it is still a heavy smartphone with its 220 grams of weight and overall also massive in its proportions although the thickness is slightly less than in the past: 9.5 mm. It has no certifications for water or dust resistance. On the right side we find two switches that when activated make two physical buttons “jump out” to be used as a backbone when the smartphone is horizontally to play. They then return to the body thanks to an ingenious system of magnets. The same solution as the previous model.

This Black Shark 5 Pro it exists mainly with a view to upgrading the processor compared to the previous model. Having been launched for over a month already, however, we have the processor inside Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and not the newer Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which we have seen perform better, at least on competing devices. It is a 3 GHz octa core processor with Adreno 730 GPU and 8 or 12 GB of RAM available. This RAM is then coupled with 128 or 256 GB of non-expandable UFS 3.1 internal memory.

The performance of this smartphone is amazing, also because the device does not “hold back”. Thanks to a good cooling system, the CPU usually remains quite cold by transmitting the heat to the outside on the body. The smartphone can therefore get hot quite quickly, while guaranteeing truly top performance for an extended period of time, unlike many competitors.

Excellent connectivity: 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC chip. Unfortunately, there is no audio jack for headphones, but instead there is excellent stereo sound, voted number 1 by DxOMark, truly impressive for volume and quality.

Black Shark has updated its smartphone’s main and wide-angle camera to 108 megapixels ƒ / 1.8 and a 13 megapixel ƒ / 2.4. The macro camera remains a 5 megapixel ƒ / 2.4. The shots taken by this smartphone are generally good, much better than at least our expectations for a gaming smartphone. The images have good detail, good color balance and precise focus. Night mode also does its job well, adding detail and light to the final shots. If we want to find a fault we would point out how HDR is sometimes not strong enough. This isn’t helped by the fact that HDR mode turns off automatically for no reason. Don’t expect top-of-the-range premium 2022 photos, but overall you won’t be disappointed with the performance of this Black Shark 5 Pro.

Selfies with the 16 megapixel front camera are also discreet. Videos are recorded from the main camera in 4K at 60fps and they are discreet, even if we report a noticeable loss of framerate in the first moments of recording of each video. We hope it will be fixed in future updates.

The display is a large 6.7-inch diagonal with FullHD + resolution (1080 x 2400 pixels) and made in OLED technology. Supports theHDR10 +has a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz and a touch sampling that can be raised up to 720 Hz. The peak brightness is finally of 1,300 nits and a function is also integrated that allows you to recognize the most intense pressure on the two halves of the screen.

Black Shark 5 Pro arrives on the market with Android 12 updated to the patches of May 2022 and customized with the Joy UI 13, a version of MIUI 13 slightly modified to adapt to the ideal “gaming” with a more appropriate theme and with some specific dedicated functions. Overall the software is blazing fast, although we do hope for a faster cycle of future updates.

Inside the Shark Space we find the possibility to start your own games in which you can open a panel that will allow you to customize the performance provided by each component of the smartphone for each game, going to modify every aspect in a very precise way, such as touch sensitivity or the power delivered by the processor. You can then obviously monitor the performance in real time and configure the physical keys, as well as the “strong” pressure on the screen and the side “shaking” gestures of the phone. You can then activate various other modes, such as the one to not be disturbed, the one to have an additional viewfinder in shooters and many others.

Among the features not specifically related to the world of gaming we find the possibility to customize the operation of the rear rgb led, a second space to create a separate environment for two different aspects of your life and a convenient side menu to always have your favorite apps available. Do not miss the one-hand mode, the speaker cleaning function and the possibility, as in the previous model, to customize the operation of the physical keys when not in a game. Too bad overall for the infrequent updates and some decidedly approximate Italian translations.

Black Shark 5 Pro comes with a battery from ben 4,650 mAh. Not huge considering size and weight but overall more than good to take you to the end of the day. Autonomy, however, obviously suffers from long gaming sessions, also by virtue of the power delivered, which is practically never held in check. In that case he comes to your rescue lightning fast charging at 120W which guarantees you a full charge from 0 to 100% in just 15 minutes. And if you want to during gaming sessions, in order not to overheat the phone you can disable the recharge and take power from the cable to keep the autonomy unchanged.

Black Shark 5 Pro is sold at € 799 in the 8/128 variant and € 899 in the 12/256 variant, perhaps the most interesting given the amount of internal memory. Prices are not contained and that a little clash with those of other devices on the market with the most recent version of the Qualcomm CPU. However, it is on par with the charging technologies and all the optimizations for gaming. Check the boxes below Amazon for any discounts.

At the time of publication for example there is a very interesting coupon of 50 € in version from 899 €.