Sony Xperia Z5 Compact review: One year on

‘Plus’ looks to have superceded ‘Mini’ phones these days, making tiny, compact smartphones an ever-growing rarity as more and more manufacturers ditch their diminutive flagship spinoffs for jumbo-sized phablet versions. Fortunately, Sony’s still firmly ensconced in the Compact camp, even if its latest effort, the rather underwhelming Xperia X Compact was a bit of a disappointment.

This makes last year’s Z5 Compact even more attractive. It’s the perfect antidote to the prevailing phablet mania, and even a year on it’s still a fantastic smartphone that can more than hold its own against its newer competitors.

That’s mostly down to it sharing a lot of the same DNA as its big brother, the Xperia Z5, including its octa-core processor, 23-megapixel camera and flush fingerprint sensor. However, as its name implies, it’s all packed into a much more petite chassis and has a smaller display and screen resolution to go with it.

Design

Measuring just 127x65x8.9mm, the Z5 Compact is delightfully easy to hold in one hand, and you don’t have to stretch to reach the top or opposite side of the screen. Instead, everything is in easy reach, making a refreshing change from larger screen devices. It is comparatively chunky, and its lightly rounded corners can feel a touch slippery at times, but nothing serious enough to take the sheen off this pleasingly diddy design.

Admittedly, it’s a shame the pearlescent reinforced corners of the Z3 Compact have been swapped for a more uniform, matt aluminium frame, but the new engraved Xperia logo in the top right corner of the phone does go some way to help make up for it.

Likewise, I’m a big fan of Sony’s new frosted glass effect on the rear of the handset, and the yellow and pink coral models look particularly stylish. Even better, the frosted finish means it doesn’t pick up half as many fingerprints as its glossy glass-backed predecessors either, making it look much smarter than its competitors.

Fingerprint sensor

Another brilliant new addition is the Z5 Compact’s fingerprint sensor, which has been built directly into the power button on the side of the phone. This is a better idea than having it on the back of the phone, as on the Nexus 5X, and it’s nowhere near as awkward to use as the home button sensors of the iPhone 6S and Samsung Galaxy S6. Instead, it’s already in the most natural place possible when you go to turn on the phone, and its support for multiple fingerprints means you can instantly turn it on and unlock it no matter which hand you use to pick it up.

The Z5 Compact is dust resistant and waterproof up to one metre of fresh water for 30 minutes, but its handy capless Micro USB port doesn’t need to be covered up if you decide to take the phone for a dip. The only thing you do need to worry about is making sure the plastic flap covering the microSD and Micro SIM card slots is firmly sealed, as you wouldn’t want to ruin a 200GB microSD card if you happened to drop the phone down the loo or take it for a dip in the bath. Either way, it comes with 32GB of integrated storage, of which 22.5GB is available to the user, so you should have plenty of space for your music and photos.

Display

As well as being practical, the Z5 Compact’s 4.6in 1,280×720 resolution display is one of the best around, as our colour calibrator showed it was displaying an impressive 98.8% of the sRGB colour gamut. This is fantastic for an IPS panel, and it’s not far behind the Z5‘s nearly perfect 99.4% coverage. It’s certainly one of the most accurate displays I’ve seen in this price range, and it beats the similarly-priced Motorola’s Moto X Style by almost 6%.

Colours were beautifully rich and punchy, and there was plenty of detail on show thanks to a contrast ratio of 1,161:1. Admittedly, the screen isn’t as bright as the Z5, as I only measured a peak brightness of 461.05cd/m2 as opposed to nearly 700cd/m2. Still, it’s perfectly bright enough to use outside, and it also means the Z5 Compact’s black levels are much lower than the Z5’s as well, coming in at 0.39cd/m2 to deliver deeper, inkier blacks. Continues on Page 2

Battery Life

A smaller screen also does wonders for the Z5 Compact’s battery life, as its 2,700mAh battery lasted an excellent 13h 21m in our continuous video playback test when we set the screen brightness to 170cd/m2. This is superb for a phone of this calibre, as it not only surpasses the battery life of the Z5 by a good two hours, but it’s also just 15 minutes behind the Samsung Galaxy S6.

This should be more than enough to keep you going all day, although Sony claims it should be good for up to two days of normal usage. You can also extend the battery further by enabling one of the Z5 Compact’s stamina energy-saving profiles, but this will limit the phone’s performance and disable data usage.

The Xperia Z5 pales compared to some of the current generation Samsung Galaxy handsets, however. The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge lasts a truly incredible 18 hours and 42 minutes, whereas the Galaxy S7 lasts an also excellent 17 hours and 48 minutes but both are considerably more expensive.

Performance

Good thing, then, that the Z5 Compact is one of the fastest Android phones you can currently buy, as its octa-core 2.0GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip and 2GB of RAM give it a huge advantage over similarly priced competitors. Other phones in this price range, such as the Motorola Moto X Style, only have the hexa-core Snapdragon 808 at their disposal, and the two extra cores here make a big difference to the Z5 Compact’s overall speed.

In Geekbench 3, the Z5 Compact finished with a score of 3,794, putting it almost 200 points in front of the Moto X Style, and even the HTC One M9, which also has a Snapdragon 810 chip. While not as fast as Samsung’s Galaxy S6 family, which comfortably lead with an average of around 4,750 points, the Z5 Compact is easily the fastest phone for the money, and Android 5.1.1 Lollipop felt beautifully smooth and slick. Apps loaded quickly, even when jumping in and out of multiple apps simultaneously, and Sony’s dynamic undulating ribbon background looked lovely and fluid as I swiped through the home screens.

Likewise, its gaming capabilities are superb, just edging out the Galaxy S6. With a whopping result of 1,545 frames (or 25fps) in the offscreen Manhattan test of GFX Bench GL, the Z5 Compact has plenty of power, regardless of whether you want to play something demanding like Hearthstone or something a little more lightweight like Threes or Alphabear. Up against the Galaxy S7 is a different story, however. The Galaxy S7 managed 2,336 frames (or 38fps) in the offscreen test, and 1,656 frames (27fps) in the onscreen test.

The ace in the Xperia Z5 Compact’s hand when it comes to gaming is with its PS4 Remote Play support on board. The Z5 Compact can become your own miniature, portable display for your PS4 console, allowing you to carry on gaming if someone else in the house wants to use the TV.

Web browsing was equally quick, and its huge Peacekeeper score of 1,609 was originally the highest I had seen on an Android phone but has since been eclipsed by the Galaxy S7. It’s still nowhere near as high as the iPhone 6S’s score of 4,568, but it’s more than capable of handling even complex web pages without any signs of stutter or jerky scrolling. News articles on the Guardian, for instance, often prove troublesome for Android phones due to their high number of images, adverts and embedded videos, but the Z5 Compact handled all these with ease.

Camera

Another feature the Z5 Compact borrows from its big brother is its new 23-megapixel sensor. This is the first time a new camera sensor has been introduced to Sony’s Z range since the Xperia Z1, giving the Z5 Compact, in particular, a real edge over other mid-range handsets that still only have 13 or 16 megapixels to play with.

One of the best features is its 0.03-second auto-focus, which Sony claims is the world’s fastest. This is thanks to Sony’s new hybrid AF system, which uses a combination of phase detection and contrast detection to get a faster, more accurate idea of the distance between you and your intended subject.

In my initial test shots, images looked great. Colours looked bright and natural and there was plenty of detail on show. Photos could be rather grainy close-up, though, creating rather gritty looking textures when viewed at full resolution. This is a shame, though you’re unlikely to notice on outdoor shots when you’re just sharing pics online.

^ There’s not a lot of smoothing going on, but colours look great and there’s plenty of detail present

It was more noticeable indoors, as I could see some very prominent grain and speckle in these photos at full res, but it did cope very well under all lighting conditions. Colours looked great regardless of whether I had my external lamp turned on or off and objects and text were very clearly defined in our still life arrangement. I didn’t see any evidence of the Z5’s brightness problem either, as the paints and felt tip pens managed to retain their vibrancy.

^ Indoor photos are quite grainy at full resolution, but colours are very accurate despite the low lighting conditions

The only real problem is Sony’s placement of the volume keys. These control the camera’s digital zoom, but they’re now located below the power button next to the dedicated shutter button. This is fine when you’re holding the phone in portrait, as your fingers rest there naturally when using the phone in your left hand. Turn the phone landscape, however, and you can only rest your forefinger on the shutter button or the zoom, not both, which makes zooming in a little fussier than I would have liked. Still, it’s a small complaint, especially given that many will never use them anyway, preferring to crop the image afterwards instead.

Conclusion

With its excellent screen, superb performance, long battery life and great camera, the Z5 Compact is the complete package if you want top performance in a small package. Especially as fewer manufacturers are making well-specified smaller handsets.

When it launched, it was a little pricey, though, as Sony increased the SIM-free price to £430 from the Z3 Compact‘s original price of £350. Nowadays, you can find it has decreased in price back to around £350. Contract prices, too, have fallen and you can now pick up the Xperia Z5 Compact from £22 per month.

When it first launched, it wasn’t as good value as its predecessor but wasn’t bad considering its flagship-calibre specs. It’s no more than what you’d pay for a Galaxy S6, for example, and I’d definitely choose this over an LG G4 and HTC One M9. The S6 has a larger, higher resolution screen, of course, but if you’re after something smaller, nothing does it better than the Z5 Compact. It wins a Best Buy award.

See all of the best Sony Xperia Z5 Compact deals on uSwitch