Sony Xperia Z5

Sony makes the sensor for the Z5’s 23Mp camera, but somehow the Z5 gets it wrong on quite a few levels. While some – notably DxOMark – rate the Z5 very highly, we’ve tested both the Z5 and Z5 Premium and come to very different conclusions.

First up, that massive megapixel rating. Sony has been cagey about revealing specific details about the sensor and the phone defaults to 8Mp so you have to actively change it to 23Mp. And as you can plainly see from our landscape comparison crops, there’s less detail in the Z5’s photo than you get from phones with 12Mp cameras. Really, that high number is misleading.

There’s more trouble, too. You’ll find SteadyShot in the menus, but this isn’t optical stabilisation. It’s actually software cropping which smooths out video in the same way video editing software does. Plus, it can only record slo-mo video at 120fps at 720p. Most rivals offer double the frame rate and some will record 120fps at 1080p.

There is one bonus: a dedicated two-stage shutter button, something no other rival in this group possesses. The phone is also water resistant like the Galaxy S7, so you don’t have to put it away if it starts raining heavily. Unfortunately, Sony did a U-turn on its waterproof claim in September 2015

and you’ll now void the warranty if you start trying to take underwater photos and videos. In low light, its photos aren’t too bad but lack detail compared to the best (the Samsung Galaxy S7) and in good light, colours tend to be washed out. For selfies, the front 5Mp camera has a very wide field of view, but images are very soft at the edges.

In the right circumstances, the Z5 can take a decent photo and video, but it’s far from the best phone camera.

Key features

Rear: 23Mp, 4K, 1080p at 60fps Optical image stabilisation: No Front: 5Mp; 1080p video Panorama: Yes Slo-mo: 720p at 120fps Rear: Time-lapse: Yes