This phone is SO CLOSE. - Sony Xperia 5 IV

A headphone jack, excellent cameras, and a small form factor -- this phone seems to have it all, but does Brandon think Sony has struck the perfect balance between Professional-grade and a phone you actually want to use?

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CHAPTERS
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0:00 This is exciting...
0:35 Unboxing
0:48 Design, cameras, buttons and ports
2:44 Display specs and other new features
4:34 Sponsor - Epidemic Sound
5:12 Lets talk cameras
6:22 Selfie camera and mic test
7:23 Quick main camera test and display impressions
7:52 Speaker impressions
8:27 Testing out the camera
10:15 Taking a closer look at the photos and videos
13:51 Listening to the Music Pro "enhanced" audio
15:10 Doing another Music Pro test
16:15 Overall thoughts
16:58 Outro

[gclar]

It was hard to really determine how well the phone performed during the voice recording because there was still music playing while the voice over played back. When Brandon was talking about hearing the background noise on the recording I just had to take his word since I couldn't hear the pure audio by itself! I heard the wind over the music but not the plane, train, and lawn work. Next time I might suggest you stop playing the background music during a section where the point is to listen to just the recording.

[walid]

3.5 mm jack is super underrated, the experience you got with decent headphones it's incomparable to the wireless counterparts

[GruntyGame]

Props to Sony for making both, wireless earphones AND a headphone jack on their higher end phones.

[SEMIA]

Can we have Brandon host a shootout of the 2022 flagship smartphone cameras once the Pixel 7 is out? I feel like he's one of the best "formal" hosts at LTT and he's really knowledgeable about cameras, I always learn stuff when he hosts.

[xunyap]

As a Sony fans, it feels really great that big tech channel like you guys are still willing to do a review/ first impression for Xperia smartphones. Really appreciate that

[mndlessdrwer]

The naming convention is why I insist on calling them Xperia 1 Mk.IV, or Xperia 5 Mk.IV. product naming schemes of such an iterative nature where the product name already has a number in it should be delineated with a designation of mark, or Mk., followed by the revision number, to show iterative versioning. I do really wish that Sony were big enough to be a legitimate influence on the rest of the smartphone market. I adore the fact that they listen to their customers. Their customers were like, "We really like phones with headphone jacks" so Sony put it back after they tried to ditch it with the Xperia 1 Mk.1. Their customers were like, "We really like stereo front facing speakers" so Sony put them back after they tried to ditch them several times. Their customers were like, "We really like expandable storage" so Sony maintained a MicroSD card slot in their phones. Their customers were like, "We like larger screens to scroll through our social media feeds but our hands are too small for them" so Sony made 21:9 aspect ratio displays. It really is an admirable quality in a company when they listen to their customers. If Apple had done so then we'd have Type-C and a less obtrusive front-facing camera solution by now and Samsung wouldn't have ditched the Note lineup or removed the headphone jack and expandable storage.

[coreymartin]

I've been running the 5 (2) for a few years, I'm not a photographer or anything and it's still almost a perfect phone for me. My favorite part is the 21:9 screen gives tons of vertical space for scrolling but makes the phone narrow enough that you can one-hand it. Also having a flat top bezel is so nice, plenty of room for notification icons.

[StaySicEver]

For sure best designs. Would be good to see longer software support.

[suske]

Microsd capability is high on my list of things a phone just needs to have. Headphone jack is nice to have.

[industrialvectors]

It's strange to say. I really like most of the hosts of LTT. But to me Brandon is probably the second best (after LS) because his delivery is not overdone. He's calm, talks at a good pace without any of the jokes and humor of some other. All together his presentation feels more genuinely himself than a forced persona.

[ajb]

Brandon is one of my favorite reviewers on the channel

[alex]

The naming scheme is easy enough to understand if you look over to cameras, its supposed to be Xperia 5 Mark 4... It gets weird with the offshoots like Pro-i and such but the 2 models Sony makes are the xperia 1 and xperia 5 with the digit/numeral following designating the generation of that device.

[_observado]

Their cameras are so fast, even my old Xperia could compete with my most recent phone in terms of speed, and it had an amazing feature when you hold the shutter and it takes pictures to keep the focus on no matter the movement the moment you release

[jdpsnow]

man. I always enjoy Brandon. I'd love to see him do more mirrorless and DSLR reviews - especially for stills.

[AxR]

For me the two things that are missing from the xperia phones are longer software support and improved computational photography. I returned my 5iii due to the image quality of indoor (non-ideal lighting) photographs, which is where I take about 90% of my photos. It just needs to be better, lagging behind a lot of other phone manufacturers that don't have an in-house camera division. I felt like I needed to process everything in lightroom before posting it, even my 4-year-old pixel 2 produced better images straight out of the phone.

Edit to add: if they revived the xperia compact with the feature set this phone has (just shorter) I'd probably overlook the photography issues entirely!

[codname]

7:43 the 4K resolution gives you another much better advantage than just pixel density, on streaming Platforms like YouTube and Amazon Prime Video it gives you the 4K option which gives you much higher bitrates than 1080p and trust me you will notice a difference in bitrate.

[jerrycaidic]

This first impressions video is soooo much better than the Flip 4 video. It might be best to just let Brandon host the first impressions videos for phones (and cameras, of course) moving forward.

[ProphetC]

Pretty happy with my Xperia 1 III. Definitely reignited my interest for photography to the point of thinkering, understanding the settings, experimenting a lot; something I hadn't done in at least 8 years with a cellphone. Audio is great, amazing display, and the battery could be better (I think it's the weakest point in my personal use case, but passable).

[pickypenelope]

I had the 5 II, and now have the 5 III, and I couldn't help myself, I pre-ordered the 5 IV. I still wish they had even smaller phones (really miss my XZ2 Compact), but out of the crop of current phones, nothing can out compete the Sony 5 series for me. The expandable memory is an absolute must for me, and the headphone jack is pretty close to a must as well. I can't wait to get the 5 IV. Thanks for whetting my appetite even more.

[robertlawrence]

I have the original Xperia 1. Purchased it at launch and it's going strong. I love it. Such a great device. I plan on getting another one in the future.