Black Shark 5 & Black Shark 5 Pro Review

Black Shark is a brand that is known for its gaming esthetic design which is a trend thing for the company that is in line with the rise popularity among mobile gamers. Although we did not review their past generation devices, it is known to many that Black Shark is gaining its followers around the mobile Esports side.

Today we will be taking a look at both of the Black Shark 5 and 5 Pro, two of Black Shark flagship phones that further gives improvement and several features that we will talk about in this review.

Design

Black Shark design differs from many of the traditional, normal looking phone, which when we mention about phones we see today, its either came with normal colors and designs that dont differ much than others. Black Shark took the approach with a mix of futuristic style back cover design, cyberpunk like and looks cool when showing off to others, if not, even placing calls near your ear might make other notices that you are using a different type of device.

While we actually focuses at the back of the phone, the camera is slightly placed on the left position which is common for most phone, a group of island lenses that lined together with a subtle bump on it. There is a full RGB LED located beside the camera flashing status and notification too, which is a plus to us especially when the phone is facing down, and it is configurable in the software side.

Apart from it, the 3.5mm headphone jack is missing (as most gamers would still prefer a perfect no-latency audio) but you still do have the dual pop-up triggers that enables you to have more options on how you play games, for example you can map it for target and firing on FPS genres type of games. The rest remains standard on smartphones, which is microphone placements, USB C port, Power Button and Volume buttons are situated around the body frame of the phone.

Display & Audio

Both of the model houses a very decent 6.67 inch OLED display with 144hz of refresh rate and L1 widevine certified for streaming, great for those who loves watching Disney+ and Netflix on the go. It does have DCI-P3 color gamut support and HDR ensuring a higher range of colors and clarity can be displayed vividly over any of your visual enjoyment. Brightness when outdoor can be boosted up over 1000nits which makes it highly suitable to be used in bright environments. On top of that it is also equipped with a highly sensitive

Audio wise, both model has a pair of speakers that will sound up together when comes to playing your games or movies, or streams that you loved. This will also work on your phone’s speakers and headphones via USB C port and wireless via bluetooth, and the only critical thing missing is the 3.5mm audio jack, which is kinda bummer to me in my personal opinion. Other audio features includes HiRes Audio and all the Audio Codec commonly found on most higher end phones.

Camera

When it comes to the camera, most gaming phone will not be at the stellar level like what you will expect from flagship premium phones on the market. But that said, Black Shark still able to fit in a decent level of camera setup. We tested both of of the phones during day time capture over similar environments, and the results for the both came out very decent, decently usable for uploading over social media, but definitely not large format prints, with good visible objects accuracy but lack of sharpness and sometimes the contrast can be abit off. There is an AI mode available to compensate things, but it may vary. Selfie camera specifications are similar so the results came out almost similar with wide capture capability and portrait mode.

Black Shark 5 Pro Camera Shots

Black Shark 5 Camera Shots

Different modes are tested with sets of 5x zoom, normal, Hi Res, HDR and automatic shots taken with minimal noise so far. Other modes such as movie effects, long exposure are also available and these features are carried over partially from MIUI, as Black Shark choose to use MIUI as their UI along with JOYUI.

On video recording you get support up to 4K at 60FPS, with occasional stutters visible during recording however details are still captured with playback test over good recording bitrate. An example of above is captured with 4K at 60FPS which is still fairly good and outcome is pretty satisfiying with some minor stutters over certain moving frames.

Performance, Benchmarks & Features

Performance wise, the Black Shark 5 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 while the Pro version is using Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Both of which when it comes to processing power is known and proven with other models utilizing such chipsets delivering good performance of all times. The rest is over the RAM that starts from 8GB and Internal storage starts from 128GB for both variants. No SD card slot were present but you do have dual sim capabilities, should you are out of storage options, your next bet is to upload your data over cloud services or just get a bigger storage versions.

Operating system is on Android 12 with the JOYUI which beneath uses the base of MIUI 13. Basically if you are used to MIUI, you are used to this layout UI also, with Shark Space and Black Shark customised UI on it. This enables more customised function such as trigger customisation, layout, FPS monitoring, network status, gyro controls and so on, just to list a few. Then you have Shark Chan, the brand’s mascot in an app that is a personal assistant that you can interact with, albeit is limited in control, but it is a good to have and deem indeed can be further enhanced in the future when there is an update.

Over to the gaming side, basically this phone will perform well on games such as Mobile Legends, Genshin Impact and Call Of Duty with medium to high settings applied. While the two triggers can be used as a button controller mapping for almost all of the games such as Genshin Impact and Asphalt 9. Apart from that you can also assign the presses towards your favorite apps and command actions when not in game.

Benchmark perspective wise, it is within expectation so it is on par with most of the competition within the category and class. To us benchmarks are synthetic but as long your day to day use and gaming satisfied (as we were), this is also one of our choice as well, given the part from the balance on power management and performance is there. Both Black Shark 5 and 5 Pro cools down pretty fast also with Dual VC cooling technology which prevents throttle on speeds.

Battery performance wise, you will get around a whole day of it with the built in 4650mAH battery, a mix of calls, surfing, email, streaming, and a few game matches. Turning on the battery saving mode under 20% will get you around extra 3 hours of conservative usage. Both Black Shark 5 and 5 Pro comes with a 120W turbo fast charger, which will charge up the phone to 100% from 10% in around 20min average thanks to the split battery cells, which makes charging faster while keeping the battery cycles longer and reliable over time. 

Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion 

The Black Shark 5 and 5 Pro is a phone that includes everything a gaming phone should have, from pop-up triggers and gaming oriented app support that is included with it, a good design esthetics and looks that is very decent to look at, yet you get a phone and doubles as a reliable gaming device. The battery life can stretch long also which last you for the whole day conservatively and it even includes bypass charging to keep battery healthy and temperature in check. So whichever model you choose, both will give almost close to the same experience as a gaming phone.

Pricing and availability

Starting from now, the Black Shark 5 and 5 Pro is widely available and can be purchased HERE