Sony Xperia 5 III

The Sony Xperia 5 III is well-made with solid performance but is let down by an inconsistent camera and thermal issues.

The Sony Xperia 5 III earns a place as a worthy rival to most of 2021’s best flagship phones, offering competitive specs to key handsets including the Galaxy S21 Plus and OnePlus 9 Pro. But its high price and a few missing features make it a good alternative to, rather than an easy recommendation over, most similarly priced Android phones.

Flagship power in a compact form, but with a price that's stepped up for this generation, making it fairly expensive. The design and build is great, as are the audio and display, but the camera - while offering lots of advanced controls - isn't the most consistent or usable in a modern smartphone.

The Sony Xperia 5 III successfully scales things back from the lavish Xperia 1 III, with comparable performance and almost equal photographic potential wrapped up in a more compact body. Battery life is even better, too. It’s still lacking in a few fundamental areas, however, and those omissions sting all the more in light of flagship pricing.

Don’t get me wrong, the Xperia 5 III is still a technology masterpiece. It’s pretty, fast, and comes packed full of features. The latest Snapdragon chipset? Check! A microSD card slot? Check! The list goes on and on - there’s a 3.5mm audio jack, an IP65/68 water and dust protection, a big 4,500mAh battery with fast charging, and of course, the most advanced camera system in a smartphone to date. The 6.1-inch 21:9 OLED display is as beautiful as they get and it also boasts a 120Hz refresh rate.

The Xperia 5 III is a feature-packed smartphone, but not much of an improvement over last year’s model.

If you're looking for a high-end Sony, the Xperia 5 III is the sensible choice over the 1 III. But, more importantly, the 5 III is hard to beat by any reasonably-sized outside competition either. And by that, we mean there's no match for the completeness of its spec sheet and more or less its actual overall performance.