Oppo Find N5 Review: the best foldable that you can’t just buy

Every so often, a company launches a product that takes everyone by surprise. Oppo has done just that with the launch of the Oppo Find N5. It’s the world’s thinnest folding phone, and after spending a month with it, I can safely say it’s also the world’s best. There is little to dislike about it, aside from one key problem: you almost certainly can’t easily buy it.

Oppo was widely expected to launch the Find N5 as the OnePlus Open 2 in markets like the US and Europe, especially considering the recent re-entry of its flagship phones into the latter. Instead, it’s only available in Singapore and the US, so you must import it to most countries.

Is the Oppo Find N5 good enough that you should import it? That’s the big question I’ve been asking while using it for the past month; here’s what I’ve found.

Oppo Find N5: Specs

Oppo Find N5: Design

The Oppo Find N5 feels like the end game for folding phones, as Oppo has nailed every part of this form factor. It’s the world’s thinnest folding phone, and instead of the incremental improvements that have become synonymous with phones, it’s a huge leap forward for phones in general.

At 8.93mm thick when closed, it’s almost half a millimeter thinner than the previous record holder, the Honor Magic V3. It’s also 3.2mm thinner than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and 1.6mm thinner than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Unfolded, it measures 4.21mm, making it 1.4mm thinner than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and 0.9mm thinner than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. It’s still not as thin as Huawei’s trifold Mate XT, which measures 3.6mm, but it’s remarkably thinner than its chief competition in the US.

It’s so thin that it uses a custom-designed USB-C port, and it’s clear that for phones to get much thinner, we may need to rethink the current USB-C standard.

At 229 grams, the Find N5 is only ten grams lighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but it feels considerably lighter. It’s essentially the same thickness and weight as the best phones, except it has two displays. Over the past month, I’ve frequently mistaken it for the iPhone 16 Pro I carry in my other pocket.

Measuring 160.9 mm tall, the Find N5 is 5mm taller than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and 7mm taller than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. It’s not as wide as Google’s folding phone but is wider than the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which has a tall but narrow form factor.

The back features a triple camera array tuned by Hasselblad, designed in a circular array like the Oppo Find X8 Pro and the OnePlus 13. The black and white versions of the Find N5 use an “aerospace-grade fiber” material that feels smooth to the touch, looks matte in design, and is reminiscent of the sandstone finish on past OnePlus phones.

The fiber supposedly also improves the Find N5’s durability, which is further enhanced by IPX8 and IPX9 dust and water resistance. The latter means the Find N5 is the first folding phone to feature this added protection against high-temperature and high-pressure water jets, i.e., it can survive a trip through a dishwasher. Yes, it’s a folding phone, so it’s inherently more fragile than a candy bar phone, but I have no qualms about its durability.

Companies have taken different approaches to folding phone design, but none have felt ideal. In many ways, it’s been the tale of Goldilocks and the three form factors. Samsung has opted for a taller and narrower design, while most of the competition has opted for a wider, shorter form factor. Oppo blended both styles and found the perfect middle ground; the Oppo Find N5 design is the new gold standard for folding phones.

Oppo Find N5: An almost-creaseless display

The Oppo Find N5’s cover display measures 6.62 inches, with a resolution of 1140 x 2616 pixels and a 20.7:9 aspect ratio. It is slightly larger than the 6.59-inch display in the Oppo Find X8 but smaller than the OnePlus 13. The aspect ratio is virtually identical to the one used by most phones (20:9), making the Find N5 cover display feel like a regular smartphone.

Unfolded, you get an 8.12-inch display larger than any other book-style foldable. Coupled with the software — more on that later — it’s the ideal main display for this form factor. It’s larger than the iPad Mini, but the Find N5 weighs less than Apple’s tablet.

Here’s how the display sizes compare to the competition:

Much work’s been done to reduce the crease further, and you can’t see it unless the light catches it correctly. Yes, it’s still visible in certain conditions, and no, it doesn’t matter.

Both displays use LTPO OLED technology and offer a 1-120Hz variable refresh rate. This is one of the nicest screens on a folding phone, and it comes with a host of features, such as Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and HDR Vivid compatibility, and support for the Ultra HDR Image profile.

The main display brightness peaks at 2,100 nits and 1,400 nits in high brightness mode, while the cover display is brighter at 2,450 nits and 1,600 nits, respectively. I’ve used the Find N5 in several countries, and both screens on the Find N5 consistently deliver an excellent, all-around viewing experience.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 also appeals thanks to the S-Pen support on the main display, with the larger display proving to be a great canvas for the S-Pen features. However, it isn’t supported on the main display. The Find N5 takes it one step further with Oppo Pen support on both displays, although I haven’t been able to test this yet as the Oppo Pen is also not sold globally.

Oppo Find N5: Hardware and Performance

Like the rest of the experience, the Oppo Find N5 features flagship hardware throughout, but there’s a key caveat: the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. It’s the same processor many flagship phones use, but Oppo has used the new 7-core version specifically designed for thinner phones with more stringent heat requirements.

This new 7-core processor has two prime cores and five performance cores, one fewer prime core than the main Snapdragon 8 Elite variant. This should impact performance somehow, but the Find N5 hasn’t skipped a beat in the past month. There have been no glitches or stutters, and the experience is akin to any other Snapdragon 8 Elite phone.

The processor is paired with either 12GB of RAM (with 256GB of storage) or 16GB of RAM (with 512GB or 1TB). I’m using the middle variant and have no reservations about performance. Of course, that’s just my usage, so what do the benchmarks say?

Unsurprisingly, the additional prime core in the 8-core version of the OnePlus 13 is better at more resource-intensive tasks. The Find N5 significantly outperforms the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor in the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

However, it’s worth noting that they are both 4nm processors, while the Snapdragon 8 Elite runs on the 3nm process. We’re expecting the Galaxy Z Fold 7 to run the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy from the Galaxy S25 series and the next Pixel Fold to run the Tensor G5, both of which are based on the 3nm process and will likely narrow the gap significantly.

How about for advanced gaming, including testing hardware-based ray tracing? Much like the CPU performance, the 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite has reduced scores compared to the 8-core Snapdragon 8 Elite. A key reason for this was battery life, and the significantly lower battery drain during the stress test proves that the small hit on performance is worth it for the overall impact on battery life. As it turns out, this hit also doesn’t matter as it still delivers an experience much better than the current competition, especially the Tensor G4, which can’t run this test because it doesn’t support Vulkan.

The Find N5 also packs all the hardware you need in a flagship phone. There’s UFS 4.0 storage for fast file transfer and performance, Bluetooth 5.4 with a range of codecs, an infrared port to control your TV, Wi-Fi 7 for the fastest Wi-Fi speeds, and a gamut of GPS options for satellite coverage wherever you are.

There’s also a fingerprint reader built into the power button on the side, and it works fairly well, although it can be hard to find in low light, and you will often accidentally activate it when grabbing your phone out of your pocket. This also means there are a lot of fingerprint timeouts, which is a point of frustration but a small blot on the otherwise near-perfect ledger.

Oppo Find N5: Battery and Charging

The Find N5 sets yet another record for folding phones, as the 5,600 mAh battery is the largest in any book-style folding phone. It uses Oppo’s second-generation Silicon Carbon battery and packs a 27% larger battery than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (4,400mAh) despite being 3mm thinner. Given the benefits in capacity and longevity, every company needs to switch to silicon carbon batteries.

Oppo chose to go with one fewer core in the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, and an added benefit is that lower power consumption means better battery life. Over the past month, the Oppo Find N5 has proven to be a true multi-day workhorse, and you’ll never need to worry about its battery life.

On more than one occasion, it’s lasted two full days with around 8 hours of screen time and at least 20% remaining. Using the larger main display does drain it quicker, but you’ll always get a full day and at least partially into the following; it’s never been less than 30% after a full day’s usage.

Thankfully, it also has superfast 100W charging, the fastest on any folding phone I’ve tried. A quick 7 minutes of charging gets you from empty to 15%, while 20 minutes takes you to 50% and just 35 minutes to charge to 80%. A full charge takes 50 minutes, representing a significant upgrade over many competitors.

Standardizing the charging speed gets us to 112 mAh / minute, more than twice as fast as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (51 mAh / minute) and Pixel 9 Pro Fold (48 mAh / minute). Every folding phone should offer the same fast charging, like the Oppo Find N5, which puts Samsung and Google’s best efforts to shame. The only folding phone that comes close is the Honor Magic V3, which charges at 109 mAh/min. The Find N5 has the best battery and charging of any foldable I’ve tried.

There’s also support for superfast wireless charging, although this is somewhat more complicated. If you use one of Oppo’s AIRVOOC wireless chargers, you can get 50W wireless charging. There’s also a separate magnetic wireless charging cover if you want to use a magnetic AIRVOOC charger. It also works with any standard wireless charging pad but will be much slower at standard Qi charging speeds.

Oppo phones are renowned for fast charging and long battery life, and the Oppo Find N5 delivers both in excess. Oppo has proven that a thin device doesn’t need to compromise battery life, and the Find N5 sets the benchmark for battery life and charging on folding phones.

Oppo Find N5: Camera

One of the biggest challenges with folding phones is that their cameras are often less capable than those of their non-folding phone cousins. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is not as good as the Galaxy S25 Ultra — or even the Galaxy S25 Plus — and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold isn’t as capable as the Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL. Early leaks for the Find N5 suggested we’d finally get a flagship triple camera, but the Find N5 only partially delivers here.

The 50MP wide camera and 50MP telephoto follow Oppo’s wider product strategy of using 50MP sensors across all lenses. The main camera features f/1.9 aperture, phase detection autofocus, and OIS. It takes great photos in most conditions and can challenge the main cameras on most flagship phones.

I’ve been impressed by the telephoto lens and overall quality at different focal lengths on both the Oppo Find X8 Pro and the OnePlus 13, and the Find N5 can hold its own against these two, at least with the wide and telephoto lenses. Oppo’s partnership with Hasselblad has yielded yet another great smartphone camera, and photos are more saturated than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold but more true to life than the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

The biggest complaint with the camera is that the ultrawide lens is not as capable as the others. The 8MP sensor is similar to the 10MP ultrawide used in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and 10.5MP in the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but it’s not as good as the 50MP ultrawide used in other Oppo and OnePlus phones. That said, this is one of the few downsides to what is otherwise a fantastic camera and smartphone overall.

There are also two 8MP selfie cameras. I’ve used the one on the front of the phone a fair bit, and it works fairly well in most conditions, although, like many phones, it struggles in low light. The 8MP unit above the main display is better than the 4MP under-display camera used in the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but it is not as capable as the selfie cameras on most flagship non-folding phones.

Overall, I enjoy using the Find N5 camera, and it’s proven very reliable. It even helped me cover keynotes at MWC 2025, but while the Find N5 camera is better than the competition and my favorite foldable camera system so far, it’s not as good as it could be.

Oppo Find N5: Software and Oppo AI

The Oppo Find N5 runs Android 14 with Oppo’s ColorOS interface and two key features that help the software stand out from other folding phones. The interface is mostly stock-like and very similar to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold experience, but Oppo has also made a few key additions that make it one of my favorite interfaces.

One of the biggest surprises with the OnePlus Open was the new Open Canvas software, which aimed to rethink how we multitask on big screens. Rather than treat a display as one screen (or canvas) divided into sections, Open Canvas reimagines the phone as multiple screens and allows you to swipe between them. It was exclusive to the OnePlus Open as even the Find N3, the predecessor to the Find N5 and the phone that the Open was based upon, didn’t have it, but it’s now on the Find N5.

Like any folding phone, you can simultaneously open two apps on the main screen in a regular split view, but Open Canvas also adds the ability for a third off to the side. If you expand an app to full size, it disappears off the edge or underneath the other two apps and can be accessed via a single tap or swipe. This is still the best approach to multitasking on a folding phone, and it hasn’t been changed in the Find N5, except it’s quicker and easier to enable.

It makes the main screen a great computer for multitasking, especially when sitting on the couch or on the go. As I type this review on the main screen and swipe through different canvases while sitting in a cramped airplane seat, I’m reminded just how useful it is to have this feature while traveling.

The other big improvement is how the Find N5 integrates with the Mac. The O Plus Connect app has been expanded to support more than just file sharing between Oppo devices and the Apple ecosystem. Like previously, it supports easy and fast file sharing between the iPhone, iPad, and your Oppo device, but it now also supports file-sharing with the Mac.

The integration makes it quick to transfer files, and once set up, you can also mirror your Mac display remotely. It takes up half of the main display, so it looks tiny. Your Mac needs to be active to establish the connection, but both don’t need to be on the same Wi-Fi network, so it’ll work if you need to access something in a pinch.

If you’ve used a Pixel, OnePlus, or Oppo phone in the past, you’ll feel right at home with ColorOS on the Find N5. Open Canvas is the best multitasking feature on any folding phone, and the overall interface is a joy.

Like every phone, there’s a lot of AI throughout, but like Samsung’s Galaxy AI, Oppo AI Is mostly provided by Google. Gemini is the default assistant, and the camera uses AI extensively to improve the final image. Nothing particularly stands out against the competition, but Oppo has just announced that it plans to bring live in-call AI-powered translation in the coming months. This feature is being developed with Google, so it may also come to other Android phones. However, it’ll be a great addition to the Find N5 when it arrives as part of a future update.

Regarding updates, the Find N5 will get four years of Android version updates and six years of security updates. This aligns with other Oppo and OnePlus phones but is significantly less than the competition, as Samsung, Google, and Honor all offer seven years of updates.

Oppo Find N5: price, availability and competition

The Oppo Find N5 is disappointing in one key way, and it’s not the one you think: the price. Rather, it’s the availability or lack thereof, except if you’re in Singapore or China, at least for now.

Rather than a global launch, Oppo has announced that the Find N5 isn’t coming to Europe, and Oneplus has said that it’s not launching a folding phone either. This is the best folding phone you can buy, but buying it is a lot harder than it should be.

To import it, you will need to pay SG$2,499, which is roughly $1900, plus any applicable fees. The phone comes in black or white and includes a case in the box. The purple version — which has a vegan leather back instead of the aerospace fiber finish — is exclusive to China only.

It’s priced higher than the competition, likely one reason it isn’t launching globally. Price remains the key frontier that folding phones must overcome for the form factor to become the standard.

The folding phone we’ve been waiting for

The Oppo Find N5 offers an outstanding experience with fewer flaws than its principal competition. It is the folding phone we’ve been waiting for in many ways.

Oppo built a folding phone with the best compromises, resulting in the perfect design. Despite being the thinnest, it doesn’t compromise on key areas such as battery life, display, and performance. Two-thirds of the camera system is fantastic, but as a whole, it’s still better than most of the competition.

It’s more expensive than the competition and still too expensive for most, especially as you will likely have to pay for it outright without carrier deals. The high price and lack of availability essentially surrendered the folding phone market in the US to Samsung and Google. It’s disappointing; the Find N5 is so good that everyone should be able to experience it.