Sony Xperia M5 review: Shoots 13MP selfies, but is the rest of this phone any good?

For a company that’s struggling to make its mobile business work, Sony sure like to pump out smartphones. The top-end Xperia Z range has three models to choose from, ranging from the excellent pint-sized Z5 Compact all the way up to the entirely superfluous Z5 Premium. Then there’s a budget range represented by the Xperia C selection and, finally, there’s Xperia M. That’s M for mid-range, represented here by the Sony Xperia M5.

None of these are bad – in fact, some are downright brilliant – and yet Sony continues to struggle. The M5 is unlikely to change any of that: it’s another solid device, but no trends are being bucked in this particular neighbourhood, and certainly not enough to justify the inflation-busting £100 the M5 has on last year’s M4 Aqua.

Sony Xperia M5 review: Design

At a glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at the Z5 when examining the 5in M5 for the first time, which is quite the compliment, considering the latter retails for £220 less. It’s something of an acquired taste, depending on how much you like oblongs. Sony hasn’t been quick to embrace curves, unlike HTC and Apple, although the edges are gently rounded off. The back is completely flat, although it does have a slightly raised “lip” like its more expensive sibling.

There’s actually no need for this here. On the Xperia Z5, the lip is presumably designed to prevent the glass back plate from cracking (something that didn’t help Jon Bray when his review unit succumbed to that very fate), but the M5’s frame is all plastic. You can’t tell at a glance, and it’s not unpleasant to the touch, but if you’re scratching your head and wondering where Sony are making the savings, that’s a pretty obvious starting point.

Another is the lack of a fingerprint sensor. The Z5 had by far the nicest fingerprint sensor I’ve ever used on a phone because it was situated on the edge of the handset rather than the front or rear. However, for cost saving reasons, there’s no scanner here, with the button replaced by a small round power nub.

It does retain the Xperia family’s traditional waterproofing, though, with an IP68 rating, meaning it’ll survive if you drop it in the bath, or subject it to the kind of toilet dunking that would prove terminal for other mobiles. I don’t recommend you make a habit of that, however.

Sony Xperia M5 review review: Screen

The similarities continue when you switch the phone on. Like the Z5 (and the Z5 Premium when not in its two supported 4K apps), the M5’s 5in screen has a resolution of 1,080p, which means that everything is pleasingly sharp. In our tests, we found quality was very good, although not quite up there with company’s pricier offerings.

Maximum screen brightness hit an impressive 543cd/m², which is high compared to the majority of handsets (and near identical to the iPhone 6s) but a lot lower than the Z5, which crushes pretty much everything else on the market with its maximum brightness of 684cd/m².

In other areas, the Xperia M5 fares less well, reproducing 92% of the sRGB gamut spectrum, compared to the Xperia Z5’s 99%, while its contrast ratio is a fair bit lower too: 840:1 compared to the Z5’s 1,078:1. These aren’t bad scores, though. The hugely popular OnePlus 2 scored 90% on sRGB coverage, and you may not be able to spot the differences or care about them, but they are most definitely there to be seen.

Sony Xperia M5 review: Performance and specifications

Performance is where the cracks begin to show, but it’s perfectly acceptable for day-to-day use, with app switching and scrolling between windows snappy, even if the camera app does take a while to open. The Xperia M5 has 16GB of storage, with a microSD slot for extending that by up to 200GB.

While the Xperia Z5 series is backed by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip, the M5’s duties fall to the MediaTek MT6795, and its benchmark results are markedly weaker, even with the M5’s 3GB of RAM backing things up.

Then again, it does retail for £220 less, so for comparisons’ sake, here it is compared to a couple of similarly priced quality handsets: the Nexus 5X (£339) and the OnePlus 2 (£249).

It isn’t good reading for the Sony Xperia M5. It’s one thing to be roundly beaten by a more expensive model in the same family, but quite another to be beaten by one slightly more expensive and another £50 cheaper. True, both the Nexus 5X and OnePlus 2 two of the finest handsets you can buy right now, but performance-wise, they’re in a different league to the Xperia M5.

Sony Xperia M5: Camera

Historically, Sony’s smartphone cameras have been pretty good. In fact, it supplies sensors for a huge swathe of other manufacturers, too. What we have here, however, is merely okay. It’s certainly nowhere near as competent as the Xperia Z5.

On paper, it doesn’t look that bad. The maximum resolution is 21.2 megapixels, it has fast, phase detect autofocus, and the aperture is a reasonably bright f/2.2. In practice, my test photographs came out looking soft and blurry, even in bright lighting. Colour and contrast remain solid, and it’s not the worst camera I’ve ever used on a phone, but I’d hope for better, considering the phone’s price tag and the company’s camera pedigree.

The ace in the hole is the front-facing “selfie” camera, if you like that kind of thing. Sony thinks you will, giving it a whopping 13 megapixels and HDR, the one area the M5 gets any kind of upgrade on its more expensive siblings.

There’s lots to play with here for selfie fans, too, including various “style portraits” so you can really let your vanity run wild. You can add an artificial suntan, if you like, or automatically apply virtual lipstick and mascara to your face (these photos will never, ever see the light of day, by the way, so don’t ask).

You can even set it to automatically shoot when you smile to ensure you catch that perfect moment. The quality is good enough to upload to social media, which is most definitely the point.

Sony Xperia M5: Battery life

If you’re constantly uploading selfies, you need a battery that can go the distance, and on this score, the Xperia M5 is pretty poor. This may come as something as a shock, given Sony’s constant boasting about two-day battery life, but as I’ve written previously, this is more down to software tweaks and aggressive battery management rather than any secret sauce in the hardware. A similar effect can be had by downloading a battery manager from Google Play and minding your background tasks.

With that in mind, when you level the playing field and compare it to other phones on our standard battery tests, the M5 doesn’t fare well, and it’s a fair bit worse than its Xperia family relatives.

In our tests, run at 170cd/m² screen brightness and in Flight mode, the Xperia Z5 achieved 11hrs 29mins and the Z5 Compact lasted 13hrs 21mins. The M5, on the other hand, huffed and puffed its way to a disappointing 8hrs 55mins. That has more in common with cheaper handsets from the likes of Prestigio and Acer than the Nexus 5X (10hrs 14mins) and the OnePlus 2 (11hrs 13mins), and it’s almost half that of the Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo with its astonishing 16hrs 27mins.

Again, in the real world you’ll find it performs better than this, but the point is you can get even more impressive times from other handsets by employing tactics similar to those Sony employs with its battery management software. Believe me when I say the M5’s battery life is nothing special when you take away the smoke and mirrors.

Sony Xperia M5: Verdict

So, with the Xperia M5, you have a decidedly mid-range phone in a stylish-looking frame. That’s a pretty good proposition if it weren’t for the price: £299 is a lot for a handset like this, no matter how nice it looks when you look at what you can get elsewhere for slightly more – or in the case of the OnePlus 2, slightly less.

The OnePlus 2 is now free from the “invite only” requirement and now costs a mere £250.

And it’s the price that’s key here. If Sony had launched the M5 at a similar price to last year’s M4 Aqua, I’d have given it a solid recommendation.

If you see it well below RRP in a few months, or on a particularly good value contract, then you’ll find the Xperia M5 a solid and dependable mobile phone. But it’s just extremely hard to justify buying at its current price.

See also: The best smartphones of 2016 – these are our favourite handsets